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[//]: # (title: Create a Mastodon bot to forward Twitter and RSS feeds to your timeline)
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[//]: # (description: Take your favourite accounts and sources with you on the Fediverse, even if they aren't there)
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[//]: # (image: /img/twitter2mastodon.png)
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[//]: # (author: Fabio Manganiello <fabio@platypush.tech>)
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[//]: # (published: 2022-05-06)
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## The search for a social safe harbor
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My interest into the [Fediverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse) and
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its ideas, protocols and products dates back to at least a decade.
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I've had an account on the [centralized Diaspora
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instance](https://joindiaspora.com/) more or less since the service was spawned
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in 2010 until it shut down some time last year.
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And I've been running a [Mastodon instance](https://social.platypush.tech)
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mainly dedicated to Platypush for a while, although I haven't advertised it
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much so far because I haven't been spending much time on it myself until
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recently.
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However, my interest used to be quite sporadic until recently. Yes, I would
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rant a lot about Facebook/Meta, about the irresponsibility and greediness
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rooted deep in its culture, their very hostile and opaque approach against
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external researchers and auditors and the deeply flawed thirst for further
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centralization that motivates each of its decisions. And, whenever I got too
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sick of Facebook, I would just move my social tents to Twitter. Which is far
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from perfect, but it probably used to be the least poisonous between the two
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necessary evils.
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That applies [until
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recently](https://www.economist.com/business/2022/04/23/elon-musks-twitter-saga-is-capitalism-gone-rogue).
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I don't feel comfortable anymore sharing my thoughts and communications on a
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platform owned by the richest man on earth, which also so happens to be a chief
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troll with distorted ideas about the balance between freedom of speech and
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responsibilities for one's words.
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So, just like [many other
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users](https://uk.pcmag.com/social-media/140065/mastodon-gains-30000-new-users-after-musk-buys-twitter)
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did after Musk's takeover, I also rushed (back) to the Fediverse as a safe and
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uncompromising solution. But, unlike the majority of them, instead of rushing
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to [mastodon.online](https://mastodon.online) (I don't like the idea of moving
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from a centralized platform/instance to another), I rushed to upgrade and
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prepare my dusty [social.platypush.tech](https://social.platypush.tech)
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instance.
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## Give me back the old web
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The whole idea of a Fediverse is as old as Facebook and Twitter themselves.
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[identi.ca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identi.ca), launched in 2008, was
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probably the first implementation of an open-source social network based on
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[Activity Streams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_Streams_(format)), an
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open syndacation format drafted by the W3C to represent entities, accounts,
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media, posts and more across several social platforms.
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[GNU Social](https://gnusocial.network/) followed in 2009 (and it's still
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active today), then
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[Diaspora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)) in 2010
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brought the world of alternative open-source social networks into the spotlight
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for a while.
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A lot of progress has happened since then.
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[ActivityPub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub), another open protocol
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drafted by the W3C, has become a de facto standard when it comes to sharing
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content across different instances and platforms. And tens of platforms
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(including Mastodon itself, Pleroma, PeerTube, Pubcast, Hubzilla, NextCloud
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Social, Friendica) currently support ActivityPub, making it possible for users
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to follow, interact and share content regardless of where it is hosted.
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Anybody can install and run a public instance using one of these platforms, and
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anybody on that instance can follow and interact with other users, even if they
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are on other platforms. This is possible because the underlying protocols are
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the same, no matter who runs the server or what server is run.
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In my opinion, this is the way social networks should have been implemented
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from the very beginning. Anybody can run one, it's up to admins of instances to
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decide which other instances they want to _federate_ with (therefore importing
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traffic from other instances into a unique _federated_ timeline), and it's up
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to individual users to decide who they want to follow and therefore be part of
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their home timeline, regardless of who runs the servers where those accounts
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are hosted.
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It's an idea that sits somewhere between email (you can exchange emails with
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anyone as long as you have their email address, even if you have a `@gmail.com`
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account and they have a `@hotmail.com` account, even if you use Thunderbird as
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a client and they use a web app) and RSS feeds (you can aggregate links from
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any source under the same interface, as long as that source provides an
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RSS/Atom feed).
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And that's indeed the trajectory that social networks were projected to follow
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until the early 2010s. The W3C and ISO had worked feverishly on open protocols
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that could make the social network experience open and distributed, like the
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whole Internet had been designed to run up to that date. And implementations
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such as identi.ca, GNU Social and Diaspora were quickly popping up to showcase
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those implementations.
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But that's not how history went, as we all know. Facebook underwent an
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exponential growth through aggressive centralization and controversial data
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collection practices and monetization practices. Most of the other social
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networks also followed the Facebook model. Open chat protocols like XMPP were
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gradually replaced by centralized apps with nearly no integrations with the
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outside world. Open syndacation protocols like RSS and Atom were replaced by
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closed timelines managed by centralized and closely guarded algorithms. This
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was in part also due to Google killing Reader, the most used interface for
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feeds, because it was in the way of their idea of web content monetization.
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Open activity pub/sub algorithms were replaced by a handful of walled gardens.
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Transparent, machine-readable data access was replaced by proprietary user
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interfaces, and a few half-heartedly implemented APIs that cover only part of
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the features and can be deprecated with nearly no notice depending on whatever
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objective a private company decides to pursue on the short term.
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I would argue that the aggressive push towards centralization, closed protocols
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and walled gardens of the 2010s has only benefited a handful of private
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companies, while throwing a wrench in a machinery that was already working
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well, replacing it with a vision of the Web that created way more problems that
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the ones that it aimed to solve, and overall the 5-6 companies behind that
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disaster named Web 2.0 are responsible for pushing the innovation of the
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Internet back by at least a decade.
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The wave however, as it always happens in that eternal swing between
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centralization and decentralization that pushes our industry forward, is
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changing. The drawbacks of the centralized social network model have been under
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everyone's for the past few years. The "you can check out any time you like,
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but you can never leave, because all of your friends and relatives are here"
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blackmail strategy starts to be less effective, because alternatives are
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popping up, they are starting to gain traction, and the bleeding of active
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users on Facebook and Twitter has been a fact for at least the past two years.
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Twitter is well aware of it, and it has in fact decided to scale up the gear on
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their [Bluesky
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project](https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/4/23057473/twitter-bluesky-adx-release-open-source-decentralized-social-network).
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They have recently published a [Github
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repo](https://github.com/bluesky-social/adx) with a simple MVP with a server
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and a command-line interface, and a (still quite vague) [architecture
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document](https://github.com/bluesky-social/adx/blob/main/architecture.md) that
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resembles a lot the ActivityPub implementation, except with a more centralized
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control that would sit in the hands of a (still vaguely defined)
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consortium/committee and a Blockchain-like approach to manage documents. This
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has probably been an instinctive reaction to the bleeding of users towards
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decentralized platform occurred after Musk's takeover, but to me it's too
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little, too late:
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- There are nearly two decades of work behind ActivityPub. A lot of smart
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people have already figured out the (open) solutions to most of the problems.
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I don't see the value of reinventing the wheel through a solution owned by a
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private company, with a private consortium behind it, that proposes a
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solution that is largely incompatible with what the ISO and W3C have been
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building since the mid 2000s.
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- I don't trust the sincerity of Twitter and the BlueSky investors. I feel like
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the timing of their announcement is odd, it sounds much more like a
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primordial reaction against Musk's takeover and the consequent bleeding of
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users towards `mastodon.online` rather than a sincere effort to improve the
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social media experience. And the publication of the Github repo (and
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therefore the opening of the discussion with the community) has occurred way
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too late. Had they been that interested in building a decentralized social
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network, they should have been taking active part in the discussions around
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ActivityPub for the past 10 years. Instead, they have milked their
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centralized cow as long as they could (even when it was clear that it wasn't
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profitable), built some hype around BlueSky in the past two years that was
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all stale marketing talk, and they have rushed to publish a half baked MVP
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from some engineer's laptop after the richest man on earth bought them. All
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of this, just to prove the point that Twitter❤️open -source, that their cow
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has run out of milk, that the geek community had been right all the time,
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that they can't go anywhere without the open-source community (even if
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they've been ignoring us for the past few years), but that they still deserve
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get a chance of running the show their own way, with their own protocols, and
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with a project where they still hold a majority stake. We shouldn't allow
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their efforts to succeed, because they don't deserve to succeed.
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## The problem of content
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