What if you could follow a Web site that publishes its content in an Atom feed in Mastodon, the same way you follow people?
And you could boost items from that feed, and your own followers would see them just like they do when you boost a toot?
In other words, what if we cross-bred a social network with a feed reader?
@jalefkowit I really like this idea but I think @Gargron is opposed to it. At least he was the last time I saw it brought up
@zack @jalefkowit i mean in a way mastodon is already based on feeds, but the problem is where you draw the line of what constitutes an ostatus account. right now the minimum is feed + salmon endpoint (for sending replies) + websub hub (for receiving real-time updates). I don't think it makes sense to remove those minimums.
@jalefkowit @zack if you remove websub requirement, you will have accounts that never update. if you remove salmon, you will have accounts that are black holes for interactions. plus webfinger is the only way we can define things as username@domain
@Gargron @zack @jalefkowit Agreed about the minimum. I've been wondering about treating RSS as a bridging problem, trying to have a small number (maybe one, mostly) hosts doing the bridging using full OStatus. So you follow mit_edu_topic_media_lab@bridge.example (with full ostatus support) until the media lab is ready to do ostatus properly. Also maybe bridging reddit, tumbler, medium, ...
@gargron @zack This is very helpful context, thanks! I figured there'd be complicating factors hiding in there somewhere 😃
(not least because if it was easy, someone would already have done it)
I get the desire to keep a solid baseline for what constitutes an ostatus account, too -- if for no other reason, just to keep crappy half-baked experiences from tarnishing the overall image of ostatus/masto/etc.
@gargron @zack
Like, I could see a very simple use-case where the answer _could_ be no:
* I give software a list of feeds
* it watches them via websub (or even polling, I know yuck but for purposes of discussion)
* it displays content items from those feeds, each w/boost button
* If I hit boost, that item gets posted as a toot via my OStatus account
So interactions with these sites would not be near as rich as with real OStatus users. But could still have utility.
@zack @gargron But that would require finding ways to draw bright lines between plain ol' feeds and real users, to avoid confusion. And it means at some point you're not building an OStatus client so much as an "OStatus plus this other thing" client. So maybe less appropriate as an ambition for future-Mastodon than as a separate thing that just happens to be able to federate with Masto & the rest of the fediverse.
Lots to think about! 😁
@Gargron @jalefkowit I don't know anything about these protocols so bear with me please.
Re: removing websub requirement. Why would somebody create an account that never updates? Couldn't the server purge accounts with no activity within a threshold period?
Re: removing salmon requirement. These accounts could be marked or use a reserved handle. (At feed at example.com)