In a significant development, Ghost, the open-source alternative to Substack’s newsletter platform, is considering joining the fediverse. The social network of interconnected servers includes popular apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard, and more recently, Instagram Threads.
Ghost Founder’s Vision: Federating with ActivityPub
According to a post from Ghost founder John O’Nolan, the company is considering federating Ghost over ActivityPub, the social networking protocol that powers the fediverse. O’Nolan stated that the most requested feature over the past few years has been to federate his software.
"It seems like there are many potential ways to do it," he said in a post on Threads, which was syndicated to Mastodon via Threads’ own integration with ActivityPub. "Curious to hear how you would want it to work?"
Survey: What Would You Want from Ghost’s Federation?
A survey has been launched to gather feedback from users on what they would like to see in terms of federation functionality within Ghost. The survey asks users if they use any ActivityPub platforms, such as Mastodon or Threads, and how they would expect ActivityPub functionality to work in Ghost.
It also invites respondents to optionally provide an email address if they want to be contacted for more input in the future.
Federation: A Portable Social Networking Identity
The launch of this survey is another signal pointing to the broader reshaping of the web that’s now underway. Following Twitter’s acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk, online users have experienced the downsides of putting their trust in centralized platforms.
With a shift in ownership, Twitter was overhauled to be a different type of platform called X, with revised ethics and long-term ambitions. (Musk wants X to be an ‘everything’ app for transactions, creator content, video, shopping, and more.)
For those unhappy with Musk’s changes, having a portable social networking identity suddenly seemed like an idea that had more value. That is, if you don’t like the way your Mastodon server (or other federated service) is run, you can pick up your profile and move it elsewhere, followers in tow.
Ghost’s Federation: A New Web of Open-Source Services
With Ghost joining the fediverse, it would be similar to how WordPress federated with ActivityPub after the acquisition of an ActivityPub blog plug-in. When enabled, WordPress blogs can be followed by people on apps like Mastodon and others in the fediverse, and then receive replies as comments on their own sites.
Assuming Ghost went this route, it would allow writers who use Ghost to publish their content across multiple platforms, including the web, their newsletter subscribers, and the fediverse. These posts could also exist in the fediverse, where others could read, like, and reply to them from their preferred app.
These replies could also potentially syndicate back to Ghost, where they could exist as comments on the original post. This would enable a more open and decentralized form of communication between writers and their readers.
A New Web in the Making
The fediverse is an exciting development that has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with online services. By providing a platform for multiple, interconnected servers, it allows users to maintain control over their data and have more flexibility when choosing where to host their content.
With Ghost joining this ecosystem, it will be interesting to see how this opens up new possibilities for writers, readers, and service providers alike. As the fediverse continues to grow, we may soon find ourselves in a world where online services are no longer siloed, but instead connected through open-source protocols like ActivityPub.
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