#indieweb 2022-07-27

2022-07-27 UTC
jacky, silberfuchs, ren, unl0ckd, unl0ckd1, gxt_, gxt__, angelo and n8chz joined the channel
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vikanezrimaya I think I might've started an outline for a small essay on IndieWeb, modern web and a proposed new generation of social readers. The recent short discussion and my experience with my website being degraded for more than a year, leaving me unable to use the usual social web tooling gave me a burst of inspiration. I hope it lasts.
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Loqi [indienews] New post: "Proposal for a new-generation social reader concept" https://fireburn.ru/posts/aZMsCbz
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vikanezrimaya oops. I suppose I overestimated the time it would take me to write an article.
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[KevinMarks] interesting https://taylorlorenz.substack.com/p/you-dont-want-the-old-instagram
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petermolnar > A successful social product has a symbiotic relationship with its user base. It taps into users' latent desires and allows them to better connect with each other.
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petermolnar There. Given this isn't true for IG, FB, or any social network after MySpace, should I keep reading?
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petermolnar There is so much wrong with that article.
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petermolnar All it takes into account is trends, and not what people actually enjoy(ed) or like(d).
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mdemo FB didn't do much of anything at launch
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petermolnar that was the point of it
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mdemo I object to a lot of the "designed to" talk around social media
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mdemo I seem to remember the feed going algorithmic sometime after the explosion of farmville posts
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petermolnar quite some time that is
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[tantek] came here to also rant about that article but I see petermolnar is already doing a good job 😄
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[tantek] It's a pretty sad apologism. I expect better from Taylor.
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[tantek] This is nonsense in so many ways -> "That time is gone and the internet and culture have irrevocably changed."
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[jeremycherfas] After all the fuss I decided this morning to use the tools at my disposal and mute suggestions and hide adverts in IG. The result, when I looked a minute ago, was much better. Only two posts I had to hide. And although it takes an effort to do that, as opposed to strolling on by, it improves my experience and may even send a signal.
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[tantek] ^ agreed jeremycherfas.
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[tantek] "time is gone" -> more like "time is a circle" 😛
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[tantek] "internet and culture have irrevocably changed." -> nah, that's why we see recurring loops of culture, 80s, 90s, etc.
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[KevinMarks] which old instagram do you want back though? if you want the original you need to rehire Jay Zombie to tummel it again
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[KevinMarks] https://twitter.com/frankieboyle/status/1552304891908980741
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@frankieboyle Fucking hell Instagram we just want to see our friend’s lunch, some celebrity flesh, and the occasional dog. The hubris of thinking strangers are going to start making videos for you. We’re too old. Are they even called videos? Anyway, stop. (twitter.com/_/status/1552304891908980741)
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[KevinMarks] "We're too old" is exactly what Meta is fretting about. They have the same need the BBC does for "replenishers"
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[tantek] friends-only photo posts would be amazing
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[tantek] i.e. protected posts granularity instead of protected accounts granularity
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[tantek] I feel like what happened is that TikTok figured out how to make a better Vine and now content silos are jumping on that
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[KevinMarks] friends only is flickr, it still works
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[KevinMarks] this is like "I want a free hosted blog" - so use Blogger…
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[tantek] except Flickr has dropped the ball on their mobile UI
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[tantek] except Blogger is ugly by default on mobile
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[tantek] bad mobile UX = looks like something is dead/abandoned = no one is going to pick it up as a new thing
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[KevinMarks] can you fix the UX by putting them in your mobile social reader?
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[tantek] if there was a way for a mobile social reader to view and interact with protected posts, but no one has figured that out
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[tantek] looking at Flickr's mobile app again, there are so many obvious things that show they just "gave up" or don't care about mobile UX
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[tantek] Flickr used to "make your photos look good" on the web, and they do the opposite on mobile. They put annoying white margins around your photos (differently sized margins when viewed in a reader stream vs a profile stream!)
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[tantek] They fell behind with implementing "mute" (as in they don't) as well
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[tantek] distinguishing the social connection (contact/friend/family) from whether or not I want to see their photos in my reader stream is something others have done for ages and Flickr dropped the ball on.
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[fluffy] So I’ve been into VR stuff lately and there’s a huge opportunity, I think, for an IndieWeb-style VR community effort to happen that would build on top of IndieWeb stuff. Would it be appropriate for me to start up a brainstorming page at, say, indieweb.org/VR or the like? And to namespace the discussion pages for the protocols? (e.g. /VR/Room, /VR/Instance, etc.)
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[tantek] I think I have accrued something like almost 2000 contacts on Flickr and no I'm not actually close enough with all of them (even most of them, duh!) to want to see all their photos in my reader view
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[fluffy] oh I see we have a /VR as a stub already
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[fluffy] so I take that to mean that maybe I could expand on it 🙂
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[tantek] fluffy, definitely, especially for "a huge opportunity" -> start a Brainstorming section
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[tantek] and feel free to expand that as much as you like 🙂
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[tantek] rather than prematurely using "/" URLs, stick with "#" URLs for now (subsections inside Brainstorming)
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[tantek] this is more #indieweb-meta tho
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[schmarty] fluffy: interested to read your thoughts! I've been keeping an eye on some of the stuff from the "M3" org (closing my eyes to the NFT-related bits) because they have some experiments around interoperability in virtual spaces. https://m3-org.github.io/research/
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[tantek] what is the microblog photo app?
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "microblog photo app" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "microblog photo app is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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[tantek] microblog photo app is /Sunlit
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Loqi ok
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[tantek] alright I think I will go down the onboarding experience of /Sunlit and contribute feedback there
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[tantek] maybe it's time to help Sunlit replace Instagram
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[schmarty] thanks for taking care of the puppy tantek++
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Loqi tantek has 11 karma in this channel over the last year (77 in all channels)
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[tantek] 😂
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[tantek] will take the /Sunlit experience feedback to #indieweb-dev because I have a feeling it will get into those topics quickly
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[KevinMarks] what was called Social Media has been Parasocial Media for a while now
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[tantek] yes that's been "true" for a while, and more recently (the source of many complaints about IG) it's been much worse
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[fluffy] [schmarty] I wrote a very, uh, detached ramble last night at http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/10109-VRChat-continued and I just added a bunch of rough thoughts to https://indieweb.org/VR
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[tantek] aw no opinion of Hubs?
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[schmarty] fluffy++ i read it with interest! hope the VR symptoms improve soon!
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Loqi fluffy has 10 karma in this channel over the last year (30 in all channels)
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[schmarty] ah good point about hubs.
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[fluffy] [tantek] I completely forgot about hubs
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[tantek] sad duck is sad
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[fluffy] furries are all about VRChat, is all
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[tantek] I added https://indieweb.org/VR#Open_Source at least for discoverability (and encouraging listing other OSS approaches/projects, since theoretically they could be used for the basis of IndieWeb solutions)
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[fluffy] anyway that was quite the brain-dump storm, and I have a lot of other stuff I need to do today. but this is something I feel quite passionate about and I wanted IndieWeb to be the starting point for something better.
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[tantek] tbh I typically hesitate to add Mozilla stuff to the wiki because it feels semi-conflicty, unless I'm personally working on it or using it for my site
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[tantek] (which I'm not in this case, Hubs that is)
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[fluffy] It’s so alarming how the VR community is so bought-in to silos and the current discourse around “VRChat is Bad, Actually” all involves the search for the perfect silo to move to, rather than just removing the need for a silo at all
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[fluffy] Yeah the main thing that strikes me about Hubs is that it feels very, er, corporate VR. It’s not as bad as AltspaceVR or the like and I do appreciate that it has a level of personal expression, but the whole “Zoom but in 3D” thing is something that people reject, even if VRChat is pretty much just “Zoom but in 3D.” Presentation matters a lot.
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[tantek] presentation++ yes matters a lot, as does design focus, which I think you're alluding to
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Loqi presentation has 1 karma over the last year
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[tantek] are these all focused on *chat* ? VRChat, AltspaceVR, ChilloutVR, NeosVR
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[tantek] chat seems to me to be a very specific (narrow?) use-case for VR
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[tantek] tbh biggest use-case I've seen for VR on the web is real estate 3D walkthroughs
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sknebel I guess VRChat is "chat" in that it is primarly about interaction with other people (i.e. not really used as a singleplayer VR game eg, although you probably could build one in it)
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sknebel its not just "meetings in VR" ;)
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[tantek] sknebel, by "focused on chat" or even "only about chat" I mean there's literally not much else you can do in those "apps". e.g. it's not like Minecraft where you can create stuff in the world (potentially collaboratively)
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[tantek] chat = you can talk (text, audio) with others in the same "chat room" and they see a representation of you (avatar = 3d version of a personal icon)
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[tantek] what else is there in those apps? that's it right?
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sknebel it has scripting features, so the "room" can be interactive and you can build games etc. not sure how far in-world editing etc goes
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[tantek] ok I'll try to scope accordingly
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[marksuth] HWC Europe/London will be starting in 10 mins if anyone wants to join: https://events.indieweb.org/2022/07/homebrew-website-club-europe-london-dJc1aeZhxeku
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[fluffy] I’d say a good term for it would be “social VR”
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[fluffy] like, most of the interaction on VRChat is just, y’know, chatting, but there’s also a lot of other interactions which have been built in it, like doodling or exploring. People have ported entire video games to VRChat, there’s fun physics sandboxes to play in, etc.
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[fluffy] there’s no in-world editing though, but Second Life did have that and did it very well
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[tantek] that is more of the traditional meaning of "social" yea, as opposed to "social media"
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[fluffy] yeah, I’m thinking “social” in the same way that IndieWeb has “social readers”
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[tantek] in "social media", there *is* in-world editing (and publishing and commenting)
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[fluffy] I eman I think social VR should have that too
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[fluffy] VRChat’s limitations are because the platform is crappy, not because it’s a good idea
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[fluffy] like, Second Life had this 20 years ago
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[fluffy] and some of the other social VR platforms do as well. It’s just VRChat that’s limited and cruddy (and very popular despite that)
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[fluffy] most spaces in VRChat at least have 3D doodle pens that people can play with, but that’s a locally-running user script, not something that involves server-side persistence.
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[fluffy] and there are definitely games with local-only instancing tools and sometimes they involve rough creation tools as well, but they’re all world-specific and all creations disappear when the instance does.
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[fluffy] and no way to meaningfully preserve them beyond screenshots.
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[fluffy] Much of that is just because VRChat is a glorified wrapper around Unity.
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j12t So what would the Indie VR look like? What's the equivalent of a website, web mention or microformats?
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[schmarty] j12t: a VR equivalent of a website could be a virtual space/scene, or several such spaces/scenes connected by portals, all under your control. webmention and microformats are just plumbing. webmention in particular could be used to create connections or responses between spaces.
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[tantek] j12t isn't this you answering your own question? https://indieweb.org/metaverse#Johannes_Ernst
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[tantek] metaverse << Brainstorming: {{schmarty}} a VR equivalent of a website could be a virtual space/scene, or several such spaces/scenes connected by portals, all under your control. webmention and microformats are just plumbing. webmention in particular could be used to create connections or responses between spaces.
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Loqi hey [schmarty], [tantek], I don't mean to be a bother, but Microformats seems like a better conversation for #indieweb-dev
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Loqi ok, I added "Brainstorming: {{schmarty}} a VR equivalent of a website could be a virtual space/scene, or several such spaces/scenes connected by portals, all under your control. webmention and microformats are just plumbing. webmention in particular could be used to create connections or responses between spaces." to the "See Also" section of /metaverse https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=82389&oldid=82388
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[schmarty] tantek++ loqi++
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Loqi tantek has 12 karma in this channel over the last year (78 in all channels)
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Loqi loqi has 6 karma in this channel over the last year (24 in all channels)
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[tantek] goes back to gardening
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j12t I just fooled around a bit there, and no final answers. I am more interested in the plumbing part ... such as: what does it mean to "visit a website" in VR? If you visit my site / space, how can I see you in my space?
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aaronpk is that a requirement? i can't see you visit my website
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j12t Isn't that what you would expect in VR? Maybe not in a "mass space" like, say, the VR version of the Sistine Chapel where I probably don't want to see all the people visiting it at the same time, just my party so we can ohh and ahh together.
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aaronpk i'm probably not the best person to answer this since I don't even have a VR headset, but no I would not expect that if I visited someone's VR space that they would also be there at the same time I happened to visit
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aaronpk if I made a VR space, I'd expect that you could visit it any time, even if I'm not there. sure if I'm there and we can see each other and talk that's a nice upgrade, but that is also true with regular websites
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[schmarty] presence (and interaction between folks advertising presence) sounds to me like an annotation layer.
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j12t I don't mean they have to be there. But they could be there. I think the use case is "let's meet in your office / space / website". Where we can sit on the virtual furniture, look at each other, and hand some objects to each other, such as a virtual tablet with my latest blog post draft so you can mark it up.
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j12t The latter part is where decentralized VR gets reaallly tricky, permission-wise.
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j12t ... and protocol-wise.
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j12t schmarty: something where the base scene is "immutable" and the mutable objects (like people's avatars) are in a "session layer" of some kind, like an annotation as you say, might be a good design for a bunch of use cases, I agree. But it sort of moves the problem from one layer into another where I think the structure of the problem is basically the same.
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jacky what is owning your URLs
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "owning your URLs" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "owning your URLs is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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jacky what are owning your urls
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "owning your urls" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "owning your urls is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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jacky hmm shouldn't have expected casing to matter
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jacky manually searches
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jacky hm nope
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jacky well wanted to share a little tweak I made to my site using some nginx changes
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jacky https://jacky.wtf/2022/7/sIWP
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Loqi Small QoL change to my site (on a proxy level): I've added support for "owning" my own URLs. So /twitter/status/1545916088956903424 properly redirects to Twitter and /github/sqlite-hypercore goes to the right place. Long-term goal is to retroactively...
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[tantek] what is own your links
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Loqi Own your links is the concept of creating links on your own website that redirect to other properties you own, for instance social media accounts or content you have created on other websites https://indieweb.org/own_your_links
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[tantek] own your links << IndieWeb example: {{jacky}} https://jacky.wtf/2022/7/sIWP silo path redirects for /twitter and /github
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Loqi ok, I added "IndieWeb example: {{jacky}} https://jacky.wtf/2022/7/sIWP silo path redirects for /twitter and /github" to the "See Also" section of /own_your_links https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=82400&oldid=82086
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jacky thank you!
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jacky I think you have some examples too?
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[tantek] yup: https://indieweb.org/own_your_links#Tantek 🙂
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GWG I've been meaning to do own your links my own way