Well, you’re here on Lemmy using the ActivityPub protocol. How’s the experience been? Does the filtering fit your needs?

I realize you might be talking about the server side rather than for users, ie if you were gonna set up your own instance. In which case, what you’re referring to is called “federation/defederation.” My understanding is that you just have to go flip a switch on your backend to filter out a whole instance, a person, a community etc and nobody on your instance will see it anymore.

For whatever reason I’m struggling to remember how to properly explain the difference between push/pull protocols, but AP only moves data at a users request.

This means that if I follow you on Mastodon, and you comment on a post by some other third party which I have no interaction with, it’s going to bring that comment to me and bring along any other related data. In this case, that means the post you commented on and all of the other comments and data related to that post.

This cycle works constantly, so I get content from the other side of the world because I (in reality, my instance, not me in particular) interacts with a chain of instances to keep data flowing

I look at it like this: ActivityPub is to RSS as a GUI is to a CLI.

Meaning, you could already use the tools (RSS or the CLI) that are there to do the task, but someone has created something (protocol, AP or application, GUI) to make that task easier. In the case of RSS and AP, that task is generally getting content in front of the user. With RSS I have to go hunt down RSS feeds and whatnot, but with AP I just interact with stuff and wait for the people I interact with to interact with stuff, and then I get content.

I don’t think I could restate this any better. So many people hear about “logical brain” and “emotional brain” and just start trying to eliminate any emotion from logic.

Brother the entire reason we invented homes was because we didn’t fuckin like the alternative. But if we used logic way back in cave man time, it would have been more individually efficient to burn those logs for warmth. It took emotions to get us to the next step and then realise that it was more systemically efficient to burn logs inside of a little cabin and only then could we start applying logic to housing.

Emotions are so important

Strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding

My feelings about capitalism are largely fueled by how well I understand it. When I understood it less, I didn’t mind it as much

I don’t like this quote