WEEKLY WHEATIES #2446
Fediverse, McDonalds, Software, Headlines, Engineering
In this newsletter:
📝 Post: Understanding the Fediverse and the Future of Social Media
🗞️ In Case You Missed It: McDonald’s McFlurrys
🗞️ In Case You Missed It: Keepitonthe.download
🗞️ In Case You Missed It: Tech Headlines
😎 Pick of the Week: Engineering Picks
📦 Featured Product: Audible
📝 Understanding the Fediverse and the Future of Social Media
Imagine if you were able to make one social media post, and all of your followers on every platform could see it. Now imagine if everyone you followed on social media across platforms could be seen in one central location. This is regardless of the type of content included in the post, too (text, images, links, videos, or a combination of all). And what if I told you this already exists? Well, kind of…
It’s called - the Fediverse.
But the way it works is pretty interesting and isn’t exactly what you may think it is. It is not a new app that simply shows a feed of all of your social sites in one list. Although, that could be a million-dollar idea, right? Instead, the Fediverse essentially uses a newer protocol - called ActivityPub - to help centralize a ‘new’ social media platform. In practice, you would download one app of many offerings that fit your style and customize your feed how you see fit. Do you prefer the look and layout of Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram? Whichever you prefer, there’s an app for that.
To explain in further detail, let’s compare this new Fediverse to email.
If you’re reading this, it’s either on the website or through your email inbox. An email is composed of a username @ (pronounced “at”) and some domain (the part before the .com). Common examples are Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, etc. A full email address looks like “yourname@gmail.com” and this acts as an online address of sorts for other people to contact you.
In order to read your emails, you need to use an email client. These are applications or programs that allow your email address to communicate with others to send and receive emails. Meaning that you can utilize one or more email clients depending on the device you are using - web, desktop, tablet, or mobile, among many other unique devices. You’ve all done this at some point, but describing it like this is important as we move forward.
These email clients use certain email-specific protocols to communicate through. Popular ones are IMAP, SMTP, and POP3. Just about any of the email clients can use any of these protocols to communicate. Microsoft has their own proprietary protocol you’ve probably heard of, too - Exchange.
The point is - there’s a back-end that communicates with all the other apps, programs, or platforms. Based on the email client in use, the front-end can change the looks or function of how the user interacts with their email. You can see this in action simply by using a different email client (Outlook, Gmail, the typical Mail app on your phone, and more). Consider the actions you can take on your email within these clients: read, delete, send, draft, filter, organize into folders, and more. All of these actions tell the application what to do with an email - regardless of the protocol or tool in use.
Now, let’s shift gears and compare this to the Fediverse. In any social media app, there are also actions one can take: create a post, like a post, follow someone and much more. These actions use the ActivityPub Protocol to communicate with the social media app to complete the task at hand. In this new social media landscape - the Fediverse - there is no single app one must use. Tons of apps have been created (and will continue to be created) to modify the view of that app based on the protocol.
This opens up the opportunity for users to create their own level of privacy, moderation, and customize their experience. For one example, there are no ads in the Fediverse. It may make sense if one app becomes popular, but it is highly doubtful as others may spin up. And users police what they see and don’t see - to some extent. The specific apps can do that, too, but many have settings the users can change. Since anyone can essentially make their own apps to use the Activity Protocol, there are many unique and niche versions of these apps, too. For example:
Mastodon is probably the most popular, an early supporter, and acts as a microblog
Threads is Meta’s version of Twitter
Lemmy has communities that allow voting, similar to Reddit
Pixelfed is an Instagram alternative
Bookwyrm functions as the social place for books instead of Goodreads
PeerTube provides videos similar to YouTube or TikTok
All of these apps are essentially a different user interface that sets the app up to function in one specific way for ease of use. In theory, there could be an app that allows each of these features to be built into the same app (I don’t know of one that exists - but I’m sure one does, or at least could). This would allow any user in the Threads app to be followed in PeerTube, and vice versa. That’s what this protocol allows - freedom from a specific provider, app, or curated content. Users have the power to set their feeds in a way they want to consume content.
An interesting and other unique advantage of the Fediverse is, in fact, the ‘feed view’ we’re familiar with. People can create their own servers dedicated to specific use cases, topics, locations, and much more. Fediverse.party has an extensive list of alternate servers available where I’m sure you’ll find something of interest if you want to dive into the Fediverse. Still not sure? The Verge has a much lengthier article on this if you’d like to research it a bit more.
All that said, there is another alternative protocol to Activity Pub called the AT Protocol - made famous by the Bluesky app. The premise is similar, but it hasn’t gained as much traction. I’m not making an argument for or against either of these, just wanting to share!
🗞️ ICYMI: McDonald’s McFlurrys
When was the last time you visited the Golden Arches and were actually able to order a McFlurry? If it’s been a while, that may change soon. The “United States Copyright Office granted McDonald's the “right to repair” broken machines by anyone other than its manufacturer.” In case you didn’t know - this is actually a very big deal. To catch up a bit, you may want to watch this incredible documentary on The REAL Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken. Essentially, the machines are very finicky, and only Taylor-certified professionals are able to work on them, per McDonald’s policy. Now, maybe Kytch can finally sell their devices to franchises and make the mcbroken site obsolete.
🗞️ ICYMI: Keepitonthe.download
Over the years, I’ve saved and shared thousands upon thousands of links to softwares, services, and random websites. Many of them are outdated or now useless, but many of them are not. Many of the links I’ve shared before through this exact newsletter. Well, a random domain I purchased finally spurred an idea to build out a website of websites, if you will. By visiting Keepitonthe.download, you can browse or search for services that fit a variety of topics. There’s bound to be something listed you haven’t heard about or even full genres of topics you didn’t know existed. I can just about guarantee you use or could benefit from using many of the services listed, too. Enjoy!
🗞️ ICYMI: Tech Headlines
Apple is snapping up one of the best non-Adobe image editors, Pixelmator
ChatGPT search is now available on the Chrome Web Store
Copilot and Designer is coming to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family
TikTok Canada Unit Ordered to Dissolve Operations on National-Security Concerns
😎 POTW: Engineering Picks
Engineers are pretty cool people! I’m fortunate enough to know a lot of them. They come in all styles to build some pretty cool things we use every day. Many of them we probably take advantage of, but some we may have been curious about their construction. Check out some of the picks below, and maybe you’ll be convinced to build something yourself!
📦 Featured Product
For the next month and a half, Audible is offering a Holiday Deal for new subscribers for $3 for 3 months. This equates to 3 credits in total (usually, each audiobook is 1 credit). A normal plan is $8/month for 1 credit, including other perks, so this is a great deal. There are tons to pick from, but may I suggest two of my favorites - each read by the author - Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. Note that you may either have to tie this account to your Amazon account or make a new one. Also, consider using Privacy.com to create a new card and keep the auto-renewal from getting you!
Audible - Holiday Deal | $0.99/mo for the first 3 months
