News from fediverse @fedia.io Taylor Lorenz @mastodon.social 3 wk. ago

Question for something I’m writing: would it be possible for Substack to make substack Notes (its twitter like feature within the Substack app) part of the fediverse?

I’m wondering if this is something that’s technically possible or not and I don’t know enough about how the fediverse operates to know if it would be feasible. #fediverse

27 comments

@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social Sure, they just need to implement #ActivityPub, the underlying protocol of the fediverse the way Wordpress, Peertube and others did.
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social those two can provide knowledge and contacts: @ErikUden@mastodon.de @leyrer@chaos.social
- @Boss @taylorlorenz @ErikUden
  Substack is a platform I personally do neither recommend nor support.
  See https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-extremism-nazi-white-supremacy-newsletters/676156/
  
  @leyrer @Boss @ErikUden I found this ultimately not very compelling. A handful of problematic newsletters, most of whom never published, with a collective 27 followers between them is not any sort of widespread issue compared to other platforms. Also Ghost’s biggest publisher is a far right, many would say Neo nazi, blog (which was even promoted on their website).
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social probably, but as they’re a nazi-accepting platform, they’d probably get defederated by a whole lot of servers rather fast, so there might not be much of a point.
- @jvnknvlgl@mastodon.social Ghost also accepts nazis, I realize they’re not part of the fediverse but I struggle to find a single publishing tool that doesn’t allow allow reprehensible people to publish.
  
  @taylorlorenz @jvnknvlgl there will of course be some nuances with Ghost being an open source product, but as far as I can tell, this claim is at least misleading as far a it goes for their hosted product.
  
  @taylorlorenz@mastodon.social feels funny to respond very narrowly here but: Ghost is currently adding ActivityPub support so is kind of prototyping being part of the fediverse https://activitypub.ghost.org/
  
  @taylorlorenz@mastodon.social do they? I hadn’t seen anything about that yet.
  
  @taylorlorenz@mastodon.social @jvnknvlgl@mastodon.social check out buttondown. a follower kindly provided this link to their ToS when I asked: https://mastodon.social/@jandi/113376268019802243
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social Definitely possible, but would require substantial engineering investment, so not that cheap.
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social totally possible yes.
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social doubt any fedi servers will ever federate with SS, questionable opinions notwithstanding
Hello there @taylorlorenz@mastodon.social,
I'm not too familiar with Substack, but a short look at “Substack Notes” makes it seem like it's a microblogging feature similar to Mastodon. I think that could easily be part of the Fediverse. As a matter of fact, considering that the “default incoming maximum post character limit” for a Mastodon server is ~100,000, even regular Substack Blogs could be federated without any hurdles or display issues.

There is a plug-in for WordPress called “ActivityPub” which turns every WordPress blog into an ActivityPub enabled server. If you wish to compare it, it's like turning the RSS feed feature on or off.

If your WordPress Blog has comments enabled, ActivityPub replies could be displayed as comments. A Substack Blog could do the same, Substack Notes could basically be a microblogging platform akin to Mastodon.

I believe it could be federated, it just takes more work. Next to the general implementation of ActivityPub, which has its hurdles, now that anyone from across the interweb could write a comment, would you need an additional spam filter? Should federated posts be displayed on their platform too? What advantages does Substack have for opening up their platform (next to being good for their publishers and users)? So maybe just publish Notes and Blogs to the Fediverse but don't display any interaction? Some of these questions may be what hinders Substack from doing this. Technically, it would be doable, how easy it is I cannot judge as I don't know Substack's code. Taking Ghost or the aforementioned ActivityPub plug-in as an example, their implementation of making blog posts federated was quite simple and didn't take longer than a few months (the ActivityPub plug-in is open source, its code doesn't seem too complex, especially considering it's merely a plug-in and nothing that changes WordPress fundamentally)...

TL;DR: Yes, Substack Notes could be federated, same for Substack Blogs.
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social yes it would be possible.
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social I pitched the idea to their CEO right before they launched Notes, but seemingly unsuccessfully. A few days later there was the catastrophic interview with @reckless1280 that ensured I never followed up on it. But technically of course it's totally feasible.
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social Totally technically possible!
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social It'll never happen. But I'd love it if it did.

But then again, another f*cking Seth profile on here. LOL

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