@reiver@mastodon.social1/
A Fediverse Custom Feed is — part UI/UX and part Protocol.
2/
The Protocol part of a Fediverse Custom Feed is a new Actor Type — the "Feed".
We already have Actor Types:
• Application
• Group
• Organization
• Person
• Service
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#actor-types
Add "Feed" to that list.
3/
The UI/UX part of a Fediverse Custom Feed is making apps understand what to do with a Actor type="Feed" actor.
For example — when the user "Follows" an Actor type="Feed" actor, then the app could make the content from that actor show up next to the home-feed, as an alternative feed.
4/
Fediverse Custom Feeds are a powerful technology!
And are one piece in creating a "plug-in" system for the Fediverse.
@reiver you don't need a new type for this btw
I think, if you care about user-experience (UX), you probably do need a new Actor type (or somewhere else to put the information).
I will explain, by explaining the problem that the new Actor type="Feed" is trying to address.
...
I think you can get a feel for this if you consider the Lemmy Fediverse software and compare it to Mastodon.
❦
So, let consider 2 Fediverse IDs that on a Lemmy server.
Here is one:
＠memes＠lemmy·world
And:
＠cm0002＠lemmy·world
(Note I used U+FF20 for the at-symbol rather than U+0040, to prevent tagging them.)
...
The former one (＠memes＠lemmy·world) is Actor type="Group".
The latter one (＠cm0002＠lemmy·world) is Actor type="Person".
...
When I look at the latter (＠cm0002＠lemmy·world), which is Actor type="Person", I see this in the Lemmy front-end.
(Which is reasonable.)
...
When I look at the latter (＠cm0002＠lemmy·world), which is Actor type="Person", I see this in the Mastodon front-end.
(Which is also reasonable.)
When I look at the former (＠memes＠lemmy·world), which is Actor type="Group, I see this in the Lemmy front-end:.
Which is good. It is a reasonable UI for this type of thing.
...
And note that Lemmy is showing something different depending on whether Actor type="Person" or Actor type="Group".
And I think this is a good thing from a user-experience (UX) point of view.
...
Now, how does the former (＠memes＠lemmy·world), which is Actor type="Group", look like in the Mastodon front-end.
The answer is — currently, not good. It is actually a mess.
...
And, the reason that any Actor type="Group" is a mess in Mastodon is that it presents Actor type="Person" and Actor type="Group" the same.
But to have a good user-experience, it shouldn't.
Mastodon should do something more like Lemmy, and present them differently.
So, now lets consider feeds.
To create a good user-experience (UX), the front-end should NOT present Actor type="Person" and Actor type="Feed" the same.
And the front-end need way to be able to tell when to show one presentation versus another.
That information should be somewhere in the activity file (i.e., the application/activity+json file).
A new Actor type seems like a reasonable place to put that information.
@reiver or mastodon could just display things differently using existing types — which btw, actors in AP are not limited to the 5 types in AS2. anything can be an actor as long as it has an inbox and outbox. protocol-wise there’s nothing stopping you from following a Collection for example. it’s a mastodon limitation that they only allow those 5 and force them through the same interface/abstraction.
@reiver Behold, the sausage being made!
@reiver i built on #fedialgo to make a customizable feed algorithm that is pretty much how i interact with #mastodon these days. it's available as an #npm package.
here's the demo app: https://github.com/michelcrypt4d4mus/fedialgo_demo_app_foryoufeed
this is what the demo app looks like:
@reiver no, #Fedialgo isn't an app - it's an npm library for usage in other apps. i've thought about deploying the demo app linked above to vercel or something so non-devs can use it more easily (not that it's very hard to run locally but you do need to run a few commands in terminal) but so far have not.
i will probably see if i can integrate it into #Phanpy at some point.
@cryptadamist @reiver This is super interesting. I have been working on something similar to create my own custom feeds as well but this might get me ahead. I’ll check it out.