Okay, it is really my honor and pleasure to introduce Alas Speaker, who is Mr. Ben Pate, who
I've got to know a tiny bit on the Fediverse, and through events like 34 and his general
enthusiasm for making cool staff to self-problems, which I think is something that a lot
of us relate to. So, Ben, you are the final speaker on the longest social that webbed
every day that we've had at Foss Dam, I believe it may also be your first time in this
part of the world.
The whole continent.
Yeah.
So, really warm welcome, please everybody to that for Ben, I'll leave it to you.
James is tiny.
Okay, awesome.
Hi, I'm Ben.
I'm doing a bunch of stuff, I'm working on a whole bunch of projects, and it doesn't all
make sense when I try to explain it. So, this presentation kind of is going to wander
a lot, and I apologize, but I know it's going to come back around eventually and I hope
it makes sense to you guys, because it makes sense to me when I go to sleep.
I'm the creative emissary, which is a Fediver server, it's open source, anyone can install
it, and emissary is the platform that other services can run on top of, and I'll show
you a couple of those.
The news of the world is dark, and I put that directly in the hands of social media and
the internet, and the good thing about going last in a day like this is everyone's already
said all the cool things. I can just kind of put them together a little bit. I really
think that distributed networks are the way out, and so this is my way out. This is the
one thing I'm going to work on for my whole life, because I need to feel like I'm doing
something to make things better. There's a scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo has just
been, oh, we all speak high Elvis here. Okay, good.
Cinderin, I'll translate for the normies, but I figured that there's this one scene where
Frodo has just been given this horrible task, and he's like, I don't want to do this,
and Gandalf says, well, we don't really get to choose, but we can choose what we do with
the times it's given us, and so that is what I want to do. I want to choose what I'm
going to do with the time that's given me. This is another thing that really sticks in my
head a lot. I went out and counted not everybody, but I went to Google, and there's 8 billion
people, and so when I look at what I want to do with the time that's given me is I think
that the Fediver should serve everybody. And thank you for clapping so much, because that's
not always met with like cheers. There's a lot of people who have really good reasons to
want to keep things small. They came here. I feel like we're a network of misfits and
outcasts, and as I am as well. But to the people who say that we want to keep it small,
I say, no, it needs to be big, because you can't just make something beautiful, and
then keep it to yourself. If this is worth what we say it's worth, if it is as good, and
the force for change that we want it to be, then it has to be available to everybody. We
can't afford to just serve 1% of the population. And at this point right now, if every
Fediver's server in the world, 10 times it's number of users, we would serve maybe 1% of
the population. That's not enough. So what do we do? This is a model for the technology
adoption cycle. It's pretty well understood that how people come into using any sort of new
technology. There's this thing called the chasm, which basically represents this idea
that different groups of people need different things out of every new kind of technology.
And in Fediver's terms, the innovators are you guys. And then the next group of people
coming down the line wanting to use this, they're going to need different things out
of the software than what you need out of it. Innovators fall in love with the technology
themselves, but early adopters, they look for new stuff, but I got to have a good use
case for it. So what's preventing the Fedivers from crossing that chasm? Fortunately, we've
seen many other software packages platforms that don't cross the chasm. I asked Google,
why did you fail? And the answers were the same across the board for all of these. And
I double-clicked it. So you missed my cool animation. But they all failed for the same
four reasons. Low user engagement, user experience issues, lack of a killer feature, and
operational failures. I want to focus on the first three because I'm so short of time. I'm
already like five minutes behind. But if we put these into a little chart and we say,
well, what can we do about each one of these things? Here's my proposal. I think user engagement
requires compelling content. There's also relationships and are my friends there and everything
else, but I've got to have a reason to come to this network. And I think that user experience
is something that people are going to judge across the entire Fedivers. User experiences
isn't just what color of blue are you using for your button, but it is, how do I get from
point A to point B? And killer features have to be something that the big networks can't replicate.
It's a fundamental structural thing that they can't do because they're always going to out
on us. They're always going to have more people and resources and time and everything else.
So we have to come up with something that fundamentally a centralized network can't do.
So I feel like I know about this a little bit. I didn't talk too much about my projects yet,
but bandwagon is a site for musicians to post their content. And through bandwagon, I talk
to hundreds of musicians and they all have really the same thing. They want to sell their stuff
online. They're working, maybe they just want to pay for the new guitar, maybe they're trying
to make this their side gig, but they need to be able to pay, or they need to be able to sell their
work in a place that's designed for them that isn't going to charge them too much for it,
and isn't going to go down that instead of vacation rabbit hole. And whenever I mention money
on the Fedivers, someone says that this isn't the place for that, but the thing is it's not about
these money on the Fedivers or not. It's more about how do we put money on the Fedivers. We already
have plenty of ways to pay for things and buy things, everything else, but can we do it in a way
that respects people at an individual level and doesn't put the profits for the platform first?
When I talk about being judged as a single ecosystem, what I mean is this. In the early 2000s,
Jake Mealson was the monotheistic deity of all of user experience, and he said it's a really
simple idea, but users expectations for your website are formed on other websites. They don't
they don't come to your website and want to read the manual, right, and that really hasn't
changed. So I think that the same thing applies to the Fedivers, but when people come to the Fedivers,
their expectations are formed out there, not on your Fedivers app, not on the client, not on your
website. Everything that happens on the web starts out there, and then maybe comes to you,
if you do the right thing, but you can't start with the experience being here or else that user experience
dies. I couldn't see the person, but I hope that there's still here, someone was asking about
share buttons. Share buttons and signups and all these things that they've come up several times
through the day. I went to share this to get their buttons just as an example of it, and they've
even got dig on there. I don't think that the new platform has launched. They've got this thing called
Plurk. You people know that? The hell is Plurk? I will derail the whole conversation, but what is
I picked it was a social network where stuff didn't go up and down because left side to side.
That was the killer feature. All right, and this I'll bring up this is why MSR exists because someone
wants a side-to-side fee. But if I can't do this with the Fedivers, and this has already been pretty
well described and documented, getting something to share or like on the Fedivers from where I already
am out on the website, that's very difficult to do. Fortunately, there's this brilliant software
developer in the United States. He has been working on something that so activity intents are
my attempt to fix this, and activity intents basically are a way for a server to publish. Here's
a list of the things that you can get to remotely, and then a client out on the web can post a link
that post that little button that gets me back to the right place on my own server. I don't have to
worry about OAuth connections or any other additional APIs. All the interaction happens on my home
server, but activity intents connects those things together so that I can get where I need to be.
Activity intents is just an example of connecting the Fedivers more tightly together. This same
idea applies for search, discovery, conversations, all of that stuff. We have to behave like a single
organism, not like many interconnected individuals. The last thing about the last thing on our
checklist is it must be a strategic advantage. I think that the most strategic advantage we have
on the Fedivers is it should not stuck. You shouldn't be stuck on one particular instance.
All the corporate for profit networks that they need you to stay on their thing to see their
ads and to pay them more money. I don't care if you're using my software or my servers. I just
want you on the Fedivers because that is a part of the solution I'm working for. There's a bunch
of other things that I think that we can do. I think that we can do better jobs serving micro
communities with targeted applications. I think that the Fedivers has an opportunity to be
something like a universal inbox. I think we're always going to do a better job of credibility
trust and safety. But to go back into the freedom to leave, we have this technology right now.
We can do this right now, but just people aren't quite implementing it yet. The W3C is working on
the Lola data portability standard, which allows you to pick up your whole profile, your whole
friends and move over here to a new server. If we can get that implemented, I will have QR codes
and stuff for you at the end. Get out your cameras in a minute. But if we can get that implemented,
then we have a strategic advantage that prevents intensification and actually helps solve the
instance-chooser sign-up situation where I come in. I don't know where to go. Well, here's a list of
15 servers in your country. With Lola, all you have to do is start somewhere. Anywhere, it doesn't
matter. You can always move to the server that matches you better when you figure out this whole thing.
So, that's my checklist. That's what I think would make the Fediverse more competitive and help us
to grow in this area. Bring creators, avoid the pitfalls of the past, make lightweight apps for
micro-communities, activity intents, FEP-3B-08, please implement it. Better search and discovery tools,
being able to move from server to server, unified inbox for small digital spaces,
and better trust and safety. So, now let me take a second and show you what I'm doing with the time
that I have. The activity pub, the Fediverse story, usually goes something like activity pub is the
core. We've got massed on, does that for micro-blocks, peer tube, add something else for video,
and then PixelFed, add something for photos. You can do articles with right freely, but I keep hitting
double buttons. I'm sorry. But how much is in the middle? How much is like redone again and again
and again. And this is what Fedify is trying to solve. This is what bonfire is trying to solve.
Can we do something that is a little more flexible? Because these have a, oh sorry. These applications
take a lot of extra stuff. There's so much in the middle of there. It takes years to build these
applications. And so when you start looking at it in those terms, can't we do something that combines
all of these together that maybe doesn't do everything that each one does, but gives us enough of a core
that we have something we can build customizations on top of. And that's the primary work that I'm
doing. It's called Emissary. And I've built several test apps, example apps, and I want to show
you a couple of those. Bandwagon is, as I said, it's a, it's a site for musicians to post their music.
And right? And everyone has brought tremendous creativity to this. I'm blown away. And in
really good Fediver style, there's some wacky stuff. But you people can bring all sorts of music
and creativity to the Fediver so you can share and like online. Bandwagon has a really cool
search engine that doesn't just let you look from music, but it lets you hear, let's search for
metal. It lets you follow those search results as an activity intent. So right here, I can click
this button and then I will get essentially a pop up that says, do you want to follow this?
And you'll get any time someone posts on that tag, you'll get those results in your newsfeed.
Bandwagon also works with the indie beat, which go Kirsten. Kirsten is a complete rock star
and I'm sad that she couldn't come all the way across the the ocean to be here. But the indie
beat radio is a radio station that's playing music that was opted in by bandwagon artists and they
even just released a indie beat TV. So now they're doing music videos as well.
That's bandwagon. Then I did Atlas Maps, which is a social mapping app that lets you annotate
different places in time and space in the world. I made a demo here of this is Boulder.
Is that the bookstore? Oh, that's Triton. Triton is the best most hippiest
bookstore in all of Boulder. Here's another one. But I can go and put annotations on the map
and then share that with my friends. The coolest thing about Atlas Maps is I built this in six
weeks and most of that time was actually spent building in a whole bunch of new geolocation
services that I hadn't had to use before. So it uses the same federated search engine that I have
in bandwagon. It just looks different because now it's all displayed in the different UX on the map.
And then I can even share search results in a QR code with a friend and then they can look at
that and follow themselves in this particular place in time. I was also building something called
Quartilicious, which is going to be something like Patreon or Substack where you can subscribe
to a person and using the same payment processing that we have in bandwagon, you can actually
buy a premiere feed from that. But then Evan here, we'll talk about that. I think you get the
idea. Emissary is one server that does many, many things. And each one of those is programmable.
I can basically post anything I want on a GitHub and then download that into my emissary
and use those templates. It's mostly programming, but it's programming inside of a very tight
box. And so I'm trying to make it so that we don't have runaway plugins or processes that we
can't quite trust. Everything runs inside of these little action steps that do the actual work.
So it makes it really easy for you to mix and match and plug and play the stuff that you want.
In 2025, we rolled out the online payments. That uses your own Stripe account. I'm hoping I can
have other payment processors in the future. But this is the mechanism that lets us share things
or charge for one time download or possibly a membership subscription. And then at the end of last
year, I rolled out what as far as I know, the first real implementation of Lolo. So I want you to
leave my servers. Please go make your own server over there and then use the data portability to pick
everything up and put it all down in a new place. I think that is, again, the best thing we can do
for the future of the Fediverse. Going forward, there's a lot. There's really a lot. One of the
big things that I had planned was to make a better inbox, a better experience for small spaces again,
a way to have small communities that stand out from this larger worldwide network that we have.
And then, and then Evan came along and said, hey, well, you do some into encrypted messages as well.
And so I am really excited and kind of honored that I'm doing this. But with funding from the
sovereign tech fund, with leadership from the social web foundation, bonfire and emissary are
going to be building end to end encrypted messages. And there's a lot of technical stuff in there.
And people are come out with a whole bunch of questions, well, we'll do this or we'll do that.
The basic thing is that MLS messaging is an industry standard that has been very, very well thought through
by people who know so much more cryptography than me. It is the right kind of foundation to be doing this on.
And then we're building it into activity pub so that right alongside of my existing network and with my existing
contacts, if they support end to end encrypted messages, everything is just already ETE. And if not,
then we can use regular direct messages. So when I go back to my checklist for 2026,
that's what I'm a series doing. And all the things that I believe are going to help us to grow
the Fediverse are there. And then I got an extra bonus encrypted messaging is another killer feature.
I hadn't even thought of. So that's what I'm doing. It's been a crazy year.
I think the last thing I want to leave with is what can you guys do. And here's the things that I know
of that I'm involved in. And if anyone is interested, this is something that we're building right now.
And I'm going to put status updates on this page about where we are and what's happening.
It will be usable. Well, it will be something that we hope other platforms will join us and
do this as well as soon as we have worked out how all of the specs go. If you are a developer,
no developer happens to be the head of communications for a large software platform.
I really want you guys to look at activity intents because I think that this
helps bring the Fediverse much more closely together. If you are involved in any software platforms,
please, please, please look at data portability. The spec for me was not super easy to look at.
It's still a lot of brainstorming. But that's okay. The core ideas are there. And if anyone wants
help with this or with with any of these, I want to be a resource to try to make these things happen.
And then the last thing is if you are an HTML developer, and that's all you know. Well,
HTML and JSON, you can build a completely working federated app on the Fediverse today
if you can figure out how to use emissary. I want to work with anyone who is interested in building
their own custom things to see if emissary can be the platform that would work for you.
I don't know what that QR code is. Oh, that's my master on. So if you'd like to connect
on a master on, please do so. I just made it. So the last thing is that whatever you do,
whether it is working with the things that I've put up here or your own software packages or
your own communities or anything else, I really believe that anything we can do that makes the Fediverse
better is a win for humanity. And so if this is the last thing I get to say up here for the time
that's given me, let's do that together. Thanks.
Now, all of the speakers in my favorite, but I have to say that was an amazing way to
to close us out today. And from the applause I just heard, I think that's a shared view.
Does anybody have a question for Ben? Ian has one and then there's another one?
I'm going to have to read self-ish question. So as someone who understands
service side setup and also is a front end designer, could I build the apps that I've been thinking
about for us? Okay, let's talk. So the templates that JSON that I showed, that is like the skeleton
and then within that skeleton you have HTML files that would represent the different views
of an object that we're looking at. You also can set up the data schema a bunch of rules about
how it behaves and you can even map things in and out. So if you want to create custom JSON
LD, that can be driven by that JSON config. Thanks for the talk. I just looked into
your Go activity platform implementation and it says it's going to explode my computer
who uses and we're currently exploring with loudly, we also right and go. So what would
be the first steps to maybe integrate MSRE for our entry point activity panel?
I think the first thing is to install it and play with it. Look at the templates that are there.
I've tried to do as much documentation as I can without knowing what people were going to want
documented. But there are a number of different end points into it. You could also drive the
it's MongoDB in the back end so you could just write stuff into MongoDB and it would show
up straight on on the MSRE site. Did I answer your question correctly? Cool.
Okay, so the last two talks kind of have a point at which they sort of overlap and meet.
So with bandwagon, right? One of the important things for musical artists is live performance
for a whole bunch of reasons, right? Not every musical artist, right? But a lot of people,
the live performance is where you really get the spark, right? In addition to the cash.
And so that clearly has an interaction with what mobiles on and other people who are doing
events do, right? So have you thought about how that fits together? And then in terms of,
if I just a little bit extra, in terms of what Alexander was talking about, in terms of
importing events, could one say use MSRE to build on to an existing platform to bring it on to the
Fediverse, so it could federate with mobiles on. Do you think? Yeah, so federating between apps
is certainly a possibility. Typically, you wouldn't take one app and put it on top of another,
because they have so much of their own. That whole thing that mess I showed up there, like it's
it's a mess. But I wanted to show you one thing. Can you see it? Yeah, so bandwagon actually does
have a calendar. Bandwagon actually does have a calendar. And it is, at its best, it might become a
third of what mobiles on does. But it does allow band members to post information about where
they're going to be and when they're going to be in links to the tickets and everything else.
Now, this search engine could certainly pull in things from other sites, and that is something
that it is intended to do. Right now, it can understand other MSRE sites, opening that up to others.
We just got to do another thing on the task list.
No, no, absolutely not. No. The birds have had that right. That's what the question
I could be there and we could talk about it. Right. But the feature will not. Right. That's what I
thought they're going to miss me. Yeah. I'm going to try. If I'm out of bed, I'm an American,
and I'm waking up at like two in the morning to do all this thing. So I might be passed out
tomorrow. I don't know. All right, listen. We're just coming up to the top of the hour. Thank you,
band again. So much for coming over. Thank you for coming. Really, really appreciate it.