> there really oughta be a text-only implementation of mastodon or one of the other fediverse ecosystems<p>Something like this that I know of, in a very simplified form.<p>> twtxt is a decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers.<p>> So you want to get some thoughts out on the internet in a convenient and slick way while also following the gibberish of others? Instead of signing up at a closed and/or regulated microblogging platform, getting your status updates out with twtxt is as easy as putting them in a publicly accessible text file. The URL pointing to this file is your identity, your account. twtxt then tracks these text files, like a feedreader, and builds your unique timeline out of them, depending on which files you track. The format is simple, human readable, and integrates well with UNIX command line utilities.<p><a href="https://github.com/buckket/twtxt">https://github.com/buckket/twtxt</a><p>I have used this format a little bit when I first found out about it. But haven’t felt like adding any more entries to my twtxt file beyond the ones that I added to it in the first couple of days of having set it up.
It is text only, sort of. The ActivityPub protocol is basically just JSON, which is text. It's the Mastodon software that chooses to go above and beyond merely implementing that spec and doing things like fetching and hosting images, making a federated timeline, etc.<p>What we really need is an ActivityPub protocol reference app. An ActivityPub server that is built to the spec and nothing more. All it does is have inboxes, outboxes, and shuttle the JSON messages back and forth. No web UI. No nothing else. Just ActivityPub. Then it can be entirely up to users to provide their own client software of their choosing to engage with the platform.
In all honesty, this is exactly what the Gemini network feels like, especially with capsules like Antenna, Midnight.pub and probably others.<p>Let me advertise my own CLI browsers which will turn the whole web, including pictures, into a text-only-verse ;-)<p><a href="https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/" rel="nofollow">https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/</a>
A somewhat related aside/question for the crowd- I've been hosting my own website for a little while with no issues, but I also don't really have any media stuff up on there. I added a wiki recently and have really enjoyed working on it. But, right now, that also has no media stuff on it, and I think I would like it to, but I also feel like this is one of those "haha you thought this would be easy? fuck you' things.<p>I'm not worried about it from a normal usage standpoint. The website isn't interactive, I plan on being the only person with edit privileges on the wiki, for example. But I feel like based on things I've read, mostly on HN over the years, that this is opening a...different sort of box of worms than I already have open. Easier DDOS? Abuse of my image hosting, killing my monthly bandwidth allotment? I really don't want to have to set up a CDN just to host a wiki that is averaging less than one not-me viewer per month...<p>Am I paranoid, or just uninformed?
Hmm, how about go "all-in" with the text-only approach and dispense with the database backend as well (use the filesystem-as-database). In a sense focus on the absolutely minimum resources and layers, avoid any moving parts and fragility and deliver the basic activitypub federation experience but in a very solid way?<p>Would this be attractive to more people than a niche? Not clear, but coupled with a performant language it might be "blazing fast" while very economical.
I’d love to see a “solo install” fediverse/activitypub setup. Like a true microblog, where my domain is just my content and people find/follow me based on my domain.<p>I guess it’s really just an evolution of RSS.<p>I’m running a Mastodon instance right now that people are free to join but it feels too heavy handed. I’d love a sports car not a school bus, if that makes sense.
You could use something like honk and post nothing but text yourself:<p>⌘ <a href="https://honk.tedunangst.com/u/tedu" rel="nofollow">https://honk.tedunangst.com/u/tedu</a> (you _can_ post images, so the top posts of that timeline is a poor example right now)<p>Source et cetera available from <a href="https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk" rel="nofollow">https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk</a>
I was on this track for a while for a text-based dating app: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JzfNncWJs5km06dx9ejdFl8uxaG-FBeTxWZL1ZhYi-U/edit#heading=h.l30t7ozf8r6g" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JzfNncWJs5km06dx9ejdFl8u...</a><p>But it turns out with some user research that people really want photos so my thinking has evolved to something more standard.
Markdown really seems like more sensible target for the "microblogging" than text or HTML. All the formatting you need for even a proper blogpost, readable plaintext, with extensions can even be pretty useful for programming stuff
Pleromas MRF can do this rather trivially. Pretty sure a wildcard in the right mrf_simple field would take care of all incoming statuses.<p>Removing the upload on the userside would maybe be more work, I don't think it's a setting?
It would be fun to build a TUI Fediverse app using Textual[0] or something<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/Textualize/textual">https://github.com/Textualize/textual</a>
I'm pretty sure both Mastodon and Pleroma can be set to only relay images instead of cacheing them, ones posted by local users are ofc hosted.<p>I think its a good idea to build a fediverse server that doesn't host media at all.