Discussion
There are simple services that exist that — when a user fills-out & submits a <form> on the Web that simple service e-mails someone that data.
These simple services are alternatives to more complex back-end with a database.
An alternative to this alternative could be — instead of e-mailing someone the submitted data, send that data via the Fediverse using ActivityPub.
ActivityPub them. (Can “ActivityPub” be a verb‽)
Probably as a private DM.
@reiver why though? the great thing about email is it being asynchronous (and I mark each message as read/unread and order them in my inbox).
not everything has to be bolted onto AP ;)
For the people who want to use e-mail, they can. No one is going to force them to switch.
But, not everyone wants to use e-mail.
Some (like me, and others) would prefer an alternative "rails" because of all the difficulty and problems with e-mail.
...
Also, ActivityPub is asynchronous (in that way), too.
...
In some ways, ActivityPub is a modernized e-mail.
It has an 'inbox' and an 'outbox'.
You send and receive 'messages'.
Etc.
> "because of all the difficulty and problems with e-mail."
care to elaborate? (yes, IMAP is a dumpsterfire 😉 )
> "In some ways, ActivityPub is a modernized e-mail."
That's a streach ;)
Regarding:
"""
> "In some ways, ActivityPub is a modernized e-mail."
That's a streach ;)
"""
At its core, SMTP uses 7-bit bytes.
ActivityPub uses 8-bit bytes (like most computers nowadays).
That feels like a major modernization to me.
Regarding:
"""
"because of all the difficulty and problems with e-mail."
care to elaborate? (yes, IMAP is a dumpsterfire 😉 )
"""
For example, trying to get an e-mail message delivered to a GMail e-mail address from your own Internet domain running on a self-hosted e-mail server is at the very least an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish — and sometimes even practically impossible.
And, if you are lucky enough to get it working, you have to re-do over and over again.
@reiver Erm... but that's not the issue with the email per se but the network and the sorry state of it.
In case of email it got monopolized by single entity (entities) which dictates the rules.
But - absolutely sam thing can/could happen with AP if ended up on the wrong path and there would be single biggest instance that can rule the whole network/protocol.
You said that it's very difficult to deliver email to gmail but even right now masto instances are banning themselves "just because" and I'm 200% certain that if at one point someone would decide to send mass spam from their self-hosted instance it would be banned to the ground.
It's just a matter of scale combined with ease of sending basic email (`echo "hello" | mail -s "your subject" your@email.com`) that resulted in more and more restrictions. However, with correctly set DNS (with SPF/DKIM) it should work just fine.
As for 7-bit/8-bit... yeath, that's true. But it is and will be true to any protocol that ages (SMTP is ancient) that has huge network that wants to maintain compatibility. It's quite possible it will happen to AP and distributed mastodon network. Right now its miniscule compared to email...
Compared to that, ActivityPub is a much easier option to go with (than e-mail).
@reiver this one is in my long list of WP ActivityPub plugin ideas, along with a live chat version.
But none of it makes much sense without a good ActivityPub API client, which is what I’m focusing on now!
Yes and those simple services have huge problems with spam…
@reiver For the #posse amongst us, my service should you wish to send a private message to me is https://khleedril.org/dmbcs/contact.
@reiver HUGE WARNING: ActivityPub DMs are not really very private. Modern e-mail is better if this is your intention.
AFAIK, e-mail isn't really private either.
Wouldn't an e-mail be about as private as an ActivityPub DM?
I.e., you have about the same level of privacy with both an ActivityPub DM and e-mail?
Or, am I missing something?
@reiver @khleedril in general - yes (and most of the time it's centralised around gmail =,=);
Alas, PGP email is quite well-defined and well-supported.
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