0:00

What activity streams could enable in podcasting? Strap in because this is

0:03

a long episode, and we get deep in the technical weeds.

0:22

Get your geek on because we've kicked out Dave Jackson for this episode, and

0:25

this could end up being a little bit nerdy. It's just me, Daniel j

0:29

Lewis with a special guest, Sam Sethi from truefans.fm,

0:33

formerly known as Pod Fans. And we are going to talk about something

0:37

that has some really awesome potential for

0:41

podcasting 2.0 and several other cool things as well

0:45

as siloed into specific apps, especially like what you're going to learn

0:48

that Sam has been able to do with True Fans. So, Sam,

0:52

here's my first question. Activity stream Mhmm.

0:56

And activity pub. Mhmm. What is the difference?

1:01

Very simple. Thanks. Good question. Okay. So a little bit

1:04

of a walk down memory lane.

1:08

RSS dot 2 dot o, Dave Weiner froze

1:12

it and gave it over to Harvard. So the IETF created

1:15

this thing called the Atom Feed which was a competitor

1:19

to RSS. And the Atom Feed's

1:23

core function was the extensibility that it had within

1:26

it. And as we now know, you

1:30

know, Daniel, there's a name space extensibility to

1:34

RSS as well, so it was very odd. But in the day, there was a

1:37

battle between RSS and Atom, and I'd have no

1:41

idea. Betamax versus VHS. No idea what the difference is. Or

1:45

or for the more modern kids, Blu ray versus HD Thank you very

1:49

much. Or DVD HD. What was it? HD DVD. Yeah. That's where it

1:52

was. Bring that one up to date. Now what happened was

1:56

Atom morphed into something called the activity stream, and what is an

2:00

activity stream? So a couple of very clever people,

2:03

Christmas Cena, Jason Snell, and Evan

2:07

Prodimo said, look. Wouldn't it be cool with social

2:11

networks where you could basically track the activity of

2:14

people into an XML file and that was a structured piece

2:18

of data. And so it started off with a very simple structure. It was

2:22

called active verb object. Actor

2:25

Daniel played object podcast. So the name of the

2:29

podcast, future podcasting. And you can record that as an entry.

2:33

That's very simple. And there were more verbs that you could use. So

2:37

you can extend those verbs to be follow, like,

2:40

share, whatever. And what that gave you was a nice

2:44

structured piece of data, XML based, that

2:47

wasn't a set of activities that were carried out by the

2:51

chapters, in this case, you. And I could

2:54

then read that file and I could then pass it. I could do other things

2:58

with it. So I like to liken it to a user

3:02

generated RSS feed. That's the best way I like to talk about

3:05

it. Now activity pub is the

3:09

protocol over which you deliver activity stream. So

3:13

think of TCP IP and then RSS is

3:17

the data and TCP IP is the transfer protocol. So in the

3:20

same way, you have an activity stream and you then

3:24

send it to over an activity pub protocol

3:28

to a client like Mastodon or whatever. And

3:31

so in that client, they can then read the activity stream

3:35

and then pass it out and then display whatever's in there. So a

3:39

good example is Dave Jones has created something called the

3:42

activity bridge. I don't know if you've seen this yet. So

3:46

you can go into podcast index, look up in

3:49

our, feed or a podcast. Sorry. It has a

3:53

unique ID number. You put that ID number with

3:56

atap.podcastindex, and boom, it

4:00

suddenly appears in your Mastodon as the podcast, and you can follow

4:04

it. And so what you've got is the activity stream is

4:07

a set of, data based on users'

4:11

activity in a social network. In this case, it could be Truefans.

4:15

It could be or another third party client. It could be, you know, if if

4:18

Twitter supported it, you could have it in there as well. And then

4:22

you deliver that over the activity pub to a activity

4:26

pub client such as Bastogon. That's it.

4:30

So trying to simplify this as well as understand it.

4:33

Because some of this stuff I'm learning too along with our audience and also

4:37

wanting to Yeah. Make some of this a little more plain English. So

4:41

activity stream is basically how the data is stored. Yep. Is

4:45

that correct? And then activity pub is how it's

4:49

delivered. Correct. Okay. You should've said you should've done this for

4:52

me. It was much easier. No. See,

4:56

that simple understanding came from the

5:00

complex explanation. Right. Thank you. So

5:03

what is some of the potential with this? First, let's

5:07

jump to what you're doing with activity stream on truefans.fm.

5:11

Yeah. So we built Truefans, with activity

5:15

streams at the core of it. So we said that as a

5:19

user, I can log in, and we will then give you your

5:22

personal activity stream of all the things you do while using

5:26

Truefence. So I could go in, and I can see how many,

5:31

episodes I've played, how many people I've followed, how many

5:34

times I've created a clip, how many times I've boosted, how many times I've

5:38

zapped. So we've created 30 verbs within

5:42

Truefans that enable us to track the activity of

5:46

all users. Now what we wanted to do and have done is make

5:49

sure that that activity is private if the user wants

5:53

it to be. So you can go into the user settings and say hide activity

5:57

and the only person who will see that activity is you, the

6:00

user. Or you can say, actually, I wanna make everything

6:04

public. No problem. And anyone can then go to your profile and see

6:08

what activity you've done or converse the 3rd way, which I think is

6:12

the best way is we've made all the 30 verbs available. So you just tick

6:16

the ones that you want public, and the ones you want private are then hidden.

6:20

And see, I might say, I just want to show my plays and boost, I

6:23

don't wanna show the show to people I follow or any other

6:27

activity I make. So, yes, so we create the activity

6:31

stream for each user. And because we've got a social

6:35

network element, I can follow Daniel, Value can follow me.

6:39

Because we have that model, you can then go and see my profile and see

6:42

my activity. And therefore, you might say, oh, what

6:46

what was Sam listening to yesterday? Or what did he

6:50

boost just now? Or what did he clip? And,

6:53

again, that might be a signal for you to go and

6:57

listen to a podcast or listen to a clip because you can

7:01

see my activity. Okay. So where I want to switch this

7:08

around a little bit is when we're thinking about the future of podcasting.

7:12

And we've got a lot of things in development with podcasting

7:15

2.0. And my impression, the more I

7:19

understand activity stream, the more it seems

7:22

like this could be used for a

7:26

lot of things inside of podcasting 2 point o. Like, I'm

7:29

thinking years ago, it feels like now, I

7:33

proposed a webhook idea where podcast apps

7:37

could report back play information to some

7:40

central server or something. And that's how we could then get

7:44

the playback and completion rates from an app, and an app

7:48

developer could report that kind of information back. Can can

7:51

activity stream do that kind of thing? Yeah. So what

7:55

we've done is, apart from the verbs, we've also attached

7:59

things like time listened, percent completed, and value paid.

8:03

So if you play the future of podcasting, I might

8:07

have time listened 88 let's say, 28

8:11

minutes, which might be 60% of the show and I

8:14

gave you 10,000 cents. Right? All of that's interesting

8:18

data metric as well that gets attached to your activity stream.

8:22

What we're missing right now is the ability to centrally

8:26

aggregate all of that into a single point. So the

8:30

next step for Truefans is that we're gonna allow users

8:34

on Truefans to publish their activity stream to an

8:37

activity pub client. So you might say, I want to

8:41

publish, all the things I play automatically. Or anytime

8:45

I make a a clip, just let me have the option to click it and

8:48

then share it on an activity pub client in the fediverse.

8:52

So that's a good second step to what we wanna

8:55

do. I aggregate all my activity and then I share the bits I

8:59

want with my social network, and that's good. And then that's a

9:03

signal to my social network maybe to come and listen to another podcast or

9:07

whatever. But the core bot part, and and I think the

9:10

holy grail of podcasting is cross app comments. The idea of being

9:14

able to make a comment in one app and then have a comment in

9:18

another app, and then they synchronize over a single

9:21

episode, let's say. So the way to do that would be I

9:25

would create an activity stream in Truefans, somebody want to create 1 in Podverse,

9:29

someone creates 1 in Fountain. Because we've got this

9:32

unique GUID, this, and the feed item, which is

9:36

a a unique identifier for a podcast and an

9:40

episode, we could aggregate everything around that

9:43

single core ID ID. And so

9:47

Fountain would publish the activity stream for Daniel

9:51

from fountain with your permission. And then if you use true

9:54

funds again, that would happen. So you could actually aggregate all of

9:58

your activity from any apps you use

10:01

or it might be Dave

10:14

the apps could just listen to updates from the central

10:17

database repository and pull down the additional

10:21

comment or pull down additional data. It doesn't have to be comments.

10:25

It could be, for example, on fountain, you followed Adam,

10:29

and then, we don't need you to follow

10:33

Adam again on Truefence. Why would you want to replicate that social

10:37

graph? So the point is we would see that activity and

10:40

then we could replicate that activity in all the other apps as well. So when

10:44

you went into the alternative app, guess what? You're

10:47

following Adam. So when we're

10:51

talking about this, especially, like, with the cross app comments because

10:55

that's the like you said, that is the holy grail. That is something that I

10:59

wish we had solved by now. And it feels like it's not

11:02

so much a data storage issue, but

11:06

an interoperability and a, both the

11:10

whole cross app aspect of this. Because what I've

11:13

seen that's frustrated me so far, and

11:17

before, maybe as recent as before a month

11:21

ago, I didn't know there was a difference between ActivityStream and

11:24

ActivityPub because every time people were talking about ActivityPub,

11:28

I thought Mastodon. But Mastodon is just an

11:32

Activity Pub client. Yes. Right? Think of Activity Pub and

11:35

Nosta. The same they're a protocol. That's all. Okay.

11:39

Well and I know nothing about nosta either. But,

11:43

so these are protocols to be able to access the activity

11:47

pub. So, like, when I think about cross app commons

11:51

Mhmm. One of the frustrations I faced is the understanding of just how,

11:54

like, Mastodon works. How there is no one central server,

11:58

but these multiple instances or multiple servers

12:03

can connect with each other. And so

12:06

you can follow people who are on a different server.

12:10

Mhmm. And you can bring in

12:13

content from another server into your own server. Yep.

12:17

Where I see some complications with this,

12:22

performance is a big thing that I'm worried about. Because the first time

12:26

I saw cross app comments using activity pub implemented,

12:30

it was dead slow Yeah. To load just a single episodes

12:34

comment stream. And there were not a lot of comments. There were only

12:38

under a dozen, I think. How do we solve

12:42

that with what we're talking about here? Or is that Let's take

12:46

a step back. Right? You use email. I use email. Right? You don't need to

12:49

know the underlying structure of the email, whether it's pop 3, IMAP 4,

12:53

whatever. Right? I just need to know you're [email protected]

12:58

somewhere. And conversely, you just need to know mine. Right? You click a

13:02

button, the email goes off and you don't think about it twice.

13:06

That's a federated network. Right? That is a federated network

13:09

of email And we we are used to that and we know it

13:13

works and, you know, that's it. It has its own,

13:17

foibles. Sometimes email doesn't get go out, but fundamentally, it

13:20

works 99.999 percent of the time.

13:24

The social network, Mastodon, Plex,

13:28

and all the others are federated servers of,

13:32

Activity Pub. And again, you have an address. I have,

13:36

Sam Sethi at Sam Sethi at podcast index dot

13:39

social. Right? That's my Mastodon address. And

13:44

if you wanna follow me, that's how you find me. You go to it it

13:47

basically finds that address like you would an email, and then

13:51

you just type something out to that address and boom, it appears in

13:55

my inbox. And in fact, activity pub

13:58

clients are fundamentally an inbox and outbox. That's all they

14:02

are. Very, very simple. Your inbox is the stream of information

14:06

you're reading, and your outbox is the messages you write that appear in

14:09

somebody else's inbox. That is as fundamentally simple just like

14:13

email. And that's why I think it will work and it will scale because we

14:17

know that we can scale email that's gone and done for 20

14:21

plus years. And what we're seeing with the Fediverse is

14:24

more developers are putting time and energy into it and

14:28

fixing some of those bugs and those slowness and those issues. So I

14:32

think, you know, again, give it give it another year. I think all of that's

14:36

gone. So your your problem around scalability and your problem

14:39

about speed, I think, are just short term road bumps on

14:43

the road to where we need to get to. Okay.

14:47

Because as I understand it, like, even with the metaphor

14:51

of an email inbox, when

14:54

I get my email in my mail app, it is downloading

14:58

the messages and I've got that on my computer there.

15:03

You don't if you send me an email, you don't have access to all of

15:06

my emails. I don't have access to all of yours. We are

15:10

sending one thing directly to the other JSON,

15:15

but not making that whole conversation thread visible to a third

15:18

party. Mhmm. Whereas cross app comments, we

15:22

want it all to be visible to everyone else.

15:25

So, what it seems like and please correct me if

15:29

I'm wrong here. I hope I'm wrong. What it seems like the way

15:33

that it has to work now is that there is a

15:37

a root post that is basically the episode post.

15:40

Is this is episode 5, and that's the thing that

15:44

everyone is commenting on that or replying

15:48

to each other. But when they're replying to each other, there's still the it's

15:52

just a downward tree or a cascading of

15:55

all of these connections and replies and relationships across each other.

16:00

It seems like every one of those individual messages

16:03

could potentially be on a different server.

16:07

Is that true? Yep. It could be on a potential different server. It could be

16:10

a federated index that we're looking at. Again So that's

16:14

the nightmare. Yeah. We haven't, to be honest with you, Daniel, this

16:17

last part of the leg, the step 3 hasn't been

16:21

really finished. I was I was interviewing Evan Prodimo.

16:25

I was talking about cross app comments and there is a server based

16:29

capability where you can publish your activity streams to, but it's not

16:32

quite, you know, fully baked out. And so I think

16:36

there's still another step. So I think what I've been trying

16:40

to do is say to the community, look. Here's a w

16:43

three c open standard. This is not some

16:47

something. I I asked actually, I asked

16:51

the Mastodon group, you know, all of the guys you you're involved in

16:55

it as well. I put out a message. What does TLV

16:59

record stand for and who created it? Oh, my god. It

17:02

wasn't very clear. And I think Dave Jones eventually said it was somebody from Sphinx

17:06

who created it many years ago. And then Steven Bell said, well,

17:09

actually, the TLV record which is this,

17:13

payment record of what's been paid on a podcast is

17:17

an activity stream. But it's a proprietary activity stream

17:20

devised by somebody that we don't really know anymore who's not involved in the community.

17:25

It's got 4 verbs in it which is stream, boost,

17:28

auto, and reply. That's the 4 verbs.

17:32

And within those 4 verbs, the stream verb, for example, you

17:36

will put payments, you will put sender, you'll put receiver, you'll

17:39

put, podcast episode, all sorts of data will go into

17:43

that one bit of information. But that's just an

17:47

activity stream, but we've created this TLV record

17:50

activity stream fundamentally by

17:56

by by chance, I think. What's happened was somebody started off this idea,

18:00

and I then think Dave Jones created helipad for Adam to be

18:03

able to read them. And then we've sort of gone and followed this

18:07

whole concept of the TLV record, but

18:10

nobody's actually really understanding how we expand it, how we

18:14

extend it, and what's the value of it. And and cross out

18:18

comments won't come from the TLV record. So Adam is doing

18:22

something that I find, a little frustrating.

18:26

The TLV record which is a, basically, it's

18:29

the whenever you listen to a podcast and you make a payment, a stream, or

18:33

a boost, it creates a like a receipt. Okay? Think of it as like

18:37

a receipt and telling you Sure. What you've paid and who you paid it to.

18:40

Right? That's private to you and the person who

18:44

receives it. So if you paid me,

18:47

a a 1,000 boost a 1,000 sat as a boost, I receive that. But

18:51

if I then decide to put James Cridland in the split, James now sees

18:55

that TLV record. Yeah. If I put 15 people in the split, all

18:59

15 people will see the split. And that is right there, that's

19:03

a, I've raised this concern as well. That is a major privacy

19:06

concern because the person listening may

19:10

not know who all is going to receive this message. And some

19:14

people in a boostagram, they may say upfront, please don't share

19:17

this on the podcast, but I wanna send you this gift because I was gonna

19:21

commit suicide last night, but I listened to your episode, and it stopped me

19:25

from pulling the trigger, and that's why I'm sending you this they do not want

19:28

the world to know that message. And now, everyone in the splits will get to

19:32

know that message. Right. And there could be even

19:36

worse scenarios than that. So that does

19:39

create a problem. One of the things I would love to see is

19:44

this activity stream idea be used for more

19:48

than cross op comments. And, we can get back to cross op comments. But, like,

19:51

for the boostograms, which you and I both see boostograms

19:55

as basically comments With payments. Yeah. That's it. Yeah.

19:58

So we could write boostergrams to

20:02

the activity stream as well, or has that have that as some

20:06

kind of option. We do that now anyway. On.

20:09

True fans are doing that? Okay. Yeah. And

20:13

then the maybe that could even be an an option

20:17

to the person sending the boostagram where there is that toggle that

20:21

is, like, make this public. And if they say yes, then it goes into

20:24

the And, again, we have done that. So in your user settings,

20:28

you choose which verbs you wanna meet private and fit

20:32

which verbs are public, and that is it. Nobody you know,

20:35

if you want everything to be private, you set it to private and no one

20:39

sees your activity. Set it to fully public and everyone sees

20:43

it or set that intermediary. I choose the verbs I want to be

20:46

public. Now we talk about cross app comments, but what about cross app clips?

20:51

Right? Yeah. Or, you know, we we've

20:54

got other things that we've got planned that would allow you to

20:58

have interoperability between apps. So

21:02

I think what I'm trying to do and I'm I I I don't know if

21:06

I'm failing, but I'm I'm still knocking this door very

21:09

hard, is saying to people, look. We are very good

21:13

as a community of saying RSS is the, you know, the truth

21:17

of feed a feed of truth. Right? Right? It's an XML structure piece of data,

21:21

and we're adding tags into it. Think of those tags as verbs.

21:24

They're just the same wording. Right? We're just using a different word

21:28

in RSS, but they are just verbs. Right? So the person

21:32

tag, the transcript tag, they're verbs in the

21:35

RSS feed. And then we know what we do with them. In the

21:39

same way with a user generated feed, the activity stream, we

21:42

just have verbs and we can extend those verbs to as many

21:46

verbs we want. You know, things that we haven't thought about now we can add

21:50

as a new verb. And so, what I'm trying to say is,

21:53

the top end we've got RSS with a a structured piece of data. At the

21:57

bottom, we've got activity team with a structured piece of data. And that our

22:00

activity stream just in its basic format as I said earlier, can you can

22:04

just say, I just wanna publish it to my Mastodon client. And so everyone can

22:08

see who's in my social network, who follows me what I'm doing. And

22:12

that's one simple way of sharing. And then the other one, as

22:15

I said, is to aggregate it around an episode. And then, yes,

22:19

maybe we start with cross that comments, but then we end up with cross that

22:22

clips. Maybe we end up with other things that we haven't developed

22:26

yet that can be interoperable between apps, but you've got

22:29

structured data which means it's possible. It's totally

22:32

possible. I know that some of the complication

22:36

with building things in the modern web and with podcasting 2.0

22:40

is we've got in podcasting, we have a combination

22:43

of centralized and decentralized. The

22:47

the data for a podcast, from a podcast Mhmm. The podcast

22:51

itself is centralized. The consumption is

22:55

decentralized. So like the RSS feed, there is 1 or

22:59

there should be only 1 RSS feed Yes. For a podcast. There should

23:02

not be hundreds of feeds and mirrors and all of these

23:06

proxies you have to worry about. There is 1. Mhmm. So that's centralized. There

23:10

are other aspects of podcasting. Like, there is one media file. Yes,

23:14

it does get syndicated across a CDN or a content distribution

23:17

network. But still, that's super easy for the publisher when they upload a new

23:21

file or replace it that then all of that gets flushed out and then refreshed

23:25

with a new file. It's still centralized. The podcaster themselves

23:28

is in control. The decentralized asset aspect

23:32

is the consumption of all of JSON, And

23:36

that's where we have hundreds of apps that people can use to

23:40

consume centralized information but consume it

23:43

in a decentralized way. So looking at activity

23:47

stream, one of the ways that I could see this working out for cross hop

23:51

comments, for a lot of things, for the webhook or,

23:55

John Spurlock came along and also proposed a similar idea calling it the events

23:59

tag. Same thing. Webhook events. Same thing. But all of this could go

24:02

into a central activity stream that

24:06

the podcaster controls or owns in some way, whether that's through

24:10

their podcast hosting provider, some service that they run themselves

24:14

or pay for, whatever. But it's a centralized service, centralized

24:17

location. And then all of these other

24:21

activity pub clients built into apps or

24:25

other, systems can read

24:28

that centralized information. And maybe the solution to this performance problem is that whatever is

24:36

hosting that centralized activity stream

24:40

is responsible to go out and find everything that

24:44

was federated, that was networked with it and sent back into

24:48

it, And then pull that in

24:51

whenever one of those apps, like, sends that ping into

24:55

that activity streams inbox. And please correct me if

24:59

I'm, like, saying something incorrectly. I'm along the way here, but What you've got

25:03

to think of is, if I write a boost in

25:07

Truefans, in my activity stream, that's now my

25:10

outbox. Okay? And then I publish it.

25:14

That gets published, then we where it get published to today

25:17

is the question. Right? That's what we're trying to figure out that part, that that

25:21

last part. But wherever that gets published to,

25:24

fountain will then have an inbox, which is the

25:28

boost section of that episode where that

25:32

will then appear as a message into that

25:36

section. So my boost that I wrote in True Fans gets published.

25:40

Fountain listens for that episode, and there's a new piece

25:43

of data in there, like, think of it as an email, and it gets then

25:47

published down to Fountain. Right? So fountain

25:51

is an inbox in this case because it's getting data from another

25:54

app. And I'm an out box because I created

25:58

it in Truefence. Conversely, if you were using

26:02

fountain and you created a clip or a boost in

26:05

fountain and then published it, That's then goes out of

26:09

Fountain's outbox for Daniel, and I then listen for

26:13

that, and then I bring it into the inbox, which is the episode

26:17

where it then gets aggregated with any other comments

26:20

made by Truefans people. So you then get a

26:24

mixture of Truefans comments and you get a mixture of Fountain and

26:27

Podverse and, podcast guru. And that's how you

26:31

get cross outcomes. This concept of an inbox and an

26:35

outbox is fundamentally critical to understanding how

26:39

activity pub works and how activity streams are just

26:42

messages. So activity streams are just messages,

26:47

but they happen to be richer than an email message, which is a single verb.

26:51

It happens to be multiple verbs. And so I'm creating

26:55

fundamentally a boost in email message if you wanna think of it. I'm then putting

26:59

in my outbox in Truefans that then gets published, and that could be

27:02

published to my Mastodon or to a central location. And then

27:06

others are listening for it just like they would on an email, and then

27:10

gets dragged into the inboxes of those applications.

27:14

So that whole publishing aspect and the other apps listening, that is

27:18

something where when you publish, you're sending it

27:21

to those listening services. Right? It's a it's a push. Yes.

27:26

Okay. So they could receive that push. They don't have to be

27:30

running a server that is pulling p o o or p o

27:33

l l Yeah. I n g. That is pulling these

27:37

other services. They don't have to do that. They can just have a listener webhook

27:41

endpoint, whatever. Ping. Yep. And it can receive that

27:45

and then publish it to the centralized activity stream that

27:49

belongs to the podcaster. Yep. And by belongs to, I mean, is in their

27:52

control. It might be on the podcast hosting provider server,

27:56

but it's in their control. And then one of the

28:00

other problems, haven't mentioned yet in this episode, a big thing that I see is

28:03

the need for moderation. Not in the sense of what the world

28:07

is talking about with content moderation, but in the sense of the podcaster

28:11

wants to be able to moderate content and control what content is

28:14

seen with their content. So, a

28:18

practical example here is maybe I have a clean

28:22

podcast designed for kids and someone

28:26

comes JSON, and they make a comment that's laced with profanity

28:29

and sexual content, whatever. Yep. And I might not

28:33

be able to block their whole activity pub server

28:37

because maybe they're using an open server that's used by a lot of other

28:40

people. But I need to be able to either remove that

28:44

comment completely or maybe it's a

28:48

genuinely valuable comment, but they just didn't realize, oh,

28:51

this is to an audience of children. I probably shouldn't use this profanity.

28:55

So, I would want the ability to then just edit

28:59

out, censor that profanity so that the value they're

29:02

giving in the comment could still be there, but it would still

29:06

be appropriate for being

29:10

alongside my podcast. So that's why I think that there is the need for

29:14

a centralized storage of the activity stream. Yeah.

29:17

So so two parts to that. 1 is how do

29:21

you moderate comments? I mean, look. We've we've all had this

29:25

problem across the web. Right? I mean, look at look at YouTube's

29:29

comments. Look at, you know, every time that Facebook has comments,

29:32

there's a whole bunch of issues. Right? So, with

29:36

Boost right now, we have no moderation in the sense of

29:40

keyword lookups or keywords that we don't want. Right? That hasn't been built. But

29:44

what we have done again in true fans is got a flagging system and a

29:47

moderation system. So for example, in your admin dashboard

29:51

for the future of podcasting, if I made a profane

29:56

boost, right? And somebody reported it, you don't have to

30:00

see you you don't have to do it yourself but you can read all of

30:03

your own comments that people are making. And you might say, right, flag that

30:07

one, delete that one, get rid of that. As the owner of the podcast,

30:11

you will get a flag notification and then you can read it and

30:15

go, you know what, Sam? That wasn't very clever.

30:18

I'm gonna delete it or I'm gonna send you a message which says, by

30:22

the way, Sam change that. Take those words out and I'll I'll let it be

30:25

published again. So we've built that in already as

30:29

well. That moderation. That was built day 1 fundamentally

30:33

because my wife used to run MSN UK and they had to close

30:36

down all of the community, sites because of all

30:40

of the pedophiles and the dodgy content that was going.

30:44

So I've had that drilled into me from day 1. And I think we haven't

30:48

even thought about that in the podcast community yet, about cross app

30:51

comments and the whole of what you just said. We, you know, we

30:55

we know that, YouTube commerce is a cesspool of commentary

30:59

half the time, and we haven't seen that yet because guess what?

31:03

There isn't enough, usage of boosts to

31:07

make that a worry. The hope is that because a boost has a micropayment

31:11

with it that that trolls won't leave, you know,

31:14

crappy comments. That's what we're hoping, but that's not true. I've

31:18

seen advertising comments. I've seen other comments that

31:22

are, you know, one sat sort of made a micropayment

31:26

but they put up total rubbish. And I remember from my days

31:29

in, WordPress. You know, we had, something called a

31:33

pingback, which was a great idea. Yeah. Right? Which was, you know,

31:37

somebody's made a comment that's referenced you. You get a notification, blah blah

31:40

blah. Well, of course, the the the spam has worked out that you could use

31:43

pingbacks to go and do all sorts of other things, and we had to close

31:46

that down. So I think we have got some challenges in the

31:49

future, but, they're not there yet. And I think, you know, just make

31:53

being able to do first level moderation flagging and deleting, I think,

31:57

is the thing we have to look at. Yeah. And I think that the the

32:00

solution for that is if that activity stream can be centralized

32:05

that the podcaster has control over, and that is then

32:08

seen as the source of truth Yeah. For that podcast. So the

32:12

podcast apps would default to loading from that even though

32:15

that comment would still exist somewhere out there in the

32:19

fediverse. Mhmm. It would not be in my

32:22

comment stream, in my activity stream because

32:26

I've removed it. And so when a podcast app loads the cross app comments from

32:30

my podcast, it would be loading from my activity stream,

32:34

and therefore, it would not show that comment. I think again, you

32:37

know, let's go back to basics. Right? So an activity

32:41

stream now, now that we've discussed it a little bit, is basically a

32:45

set of activities of a user on a podcasting

32:48

app. Daniel played feature of podcasting.

32:52

Sam played podcasting 2 dot o.

32:56

Daniel boosted Daniel clip. Right?

33:00

That becomes a stream of activity that you own that is

33:03

your data that you can have hidden

33:07

for privacy or public. The bits that we know is that

33:11

that can be published to your activity pub client like a Mastodon,

33:15

so I can choose what I want my social network on Mastodon to

33:18

know about what I'm doing or not. And then the final part

33:22

is how we publish it to a central repository

33:26

that will then allow cross app comments, cross app clips. And that third

33:30

part is still being developed or thought

33:33

through and and is not finished. Right? So let's be

33:37

clear that part isn't. But my worry is what we're doing

33:41

in the podcasting 2 dot o community right now is we're using the

33:44

TLV record as a proxy for an activity

33:48

stream with 4 verbs, and we're creating,

33:51

as you said rightly, a privacy issue that the person

33:55

who's receiving the money can create splits and then

33:59

multiple people get that TLV record without the user

34:03

who made the payment knowing where that record went to.

34:06

And I don't think it's scalable because, you know, as I said,

34:10

it's 20 podcast apps. Right? So Adam today puts 1%

34:14

in for the boost to gram bot on fountain. What if Podverse has

34:18

a boost to gram bot? What if I have a boost to gram bot? Does

34:20

he have to put 3 splits in now? What if all 20 of us

34:24

have a boost to gram bot? Is there 20 splits in Adam's wallet so

34:28

that we can all see that TLV record? That is not a scalable

34:32

solution. That is a hack, and it needs to stop.

34:36

Yeah. And one of the things that I brought up before, and

34:40

I'll I'll mention what shot it down in a moment, but

34:43

I I brought up a proposal of what if we have on the

34:47

value tag for whatever split that you were putting in there. Now we

34:51

have to think about also the time based splits, but for whatever

34:54

split, you could have a flag on there that is basically

34:59

like do not send messages with this.

35:04

For for Podverse or for whatever. If we've got them in the

35:08

split, then they do not get whatever message

35:12

someone is sending, but they do get the split of

35:16

the this booster grant or the, the sats that are being sent with

35:19

them. One of the things that

35:23

was used to shoot that down though was saying that all

35:27

Boostagrams are already public. Is that true? Like, on the

35:31

blockchain sort of public or what? Yeah. I mean, if you go to

35:34

Olby, and you go to a product they've called Saturn, you can see

35:38

pretty much most streams that are coming through. I can see so

35:42

anyone who's sending stuff to True Fans, I can go and see.

35:45

Right? But because it's But you can only see it because it's being sent to

35:49

True Fans. You can't there is no public record. And

35:53

which is why you put somebody in the splits to make them available so

35:56

that they can see that same TLV record. And I just

36:00

think you know, let's be brutally honest. I think

36:04

the idea of value for value is great. I love the idea of the micropayments.

36:08

I love the idea of wallets and splits. I think that's a brilliant model.

36:12

Don't wanna change that. But I think the data

36:16

mechanism of how we record those activities

36:20

around payments boosts streams,

36:24

replies shouldn't be done through a TLV record.

36:28

Okay. So I just had this light bulb moment that all this time when you've

36:31

been saying that, like, dissing on the whole 20 different splits in a

36:35

single podcast episode and saying the activity stream solves this, all this time

36:39

I was thinking, how in the world so for anyone else that was there

36:43

with me wondering how does this solve the splits, this was the light bulb moment

36:46

that finally I realized is when you're adding like a Podverse

36:50

or an OP3 or whatever in there, the only reason

36:54

that many podcasters are putting that in there is so that those

36:58

apps get access to the data. Yeah. So that they get access

37:02

to the activity. Yes. Not so they get

37:06

a portion of the fee. Although, I'm sure some of the people And they will

37:08

get a portion of the fee as well. They'll get a 1% portion of the

37:11

fee. So what you're saying that we could do with this and

37:15

the activity stream and everything is so that those services

37:19

that only need to be able to track the activity could instead

37:23

use the activity stream as long as the apps, whenever they send a boost to

37:26

gram, also send that data over to the activity stream.

37:30

And to your point, I could then say, yes. I want

37:34

John Spurlock in o p 3 to have access to my activity, but, no,

37:38

I don't want I can't think of anyone. Facebook

37:42

on threads, which is an activity pub client to have access to my

37:46

activity stream. Right? So I could choose

37:50

where my activity stream is public when it's published, who has

37:53

access to that published data. That's the point.

37:58

And the problem is I, as the user, can

38:01

set my permission levels on what I want public and private

38:05

and access levels on who should get access to my data

38:09

that I have published. So then you would be

38:12

splitting right now it's data and payment is

38:16

together. Mhmm. So you would be splitting it so that you only put who you

38:20

want to receive a payment in your value time splits

38:24

or your value splits. But data would be completely

38:27

separate from that. It can be. It doesn't have to be. It can be. So

38:31

as I said very earlier, the activity

38:35

stream structure is active verb object. The object is

38:38

fundamentally the episode, but we can extend the object to

38:42

be the timeless and the value paid and the percent completed.

38:46

We can extend objects to be multiple objects. It doesn't just have to

38:50

be the episode name. Right? So what what

38:54

did Value, the actor, do? He played the object. And

38:58

what happened with that object? It had these extra attributes on it,

39:02

value, time, and etcetera. That's data.

39:05

That's just we've done it. We've seen this structured data. Right? You know?

39:09

So that's data that that can be read. I could then, as

39:13

a user through apps, choose what verbs are

39:17

published. But once I've published that, I can then choose

39:21

who has access to that as well. And so you aren't,

39:26

separating payment from data. Sorry to be clear.

39:30

But what you are doing is separating the for people to

39:34

access the data I choose to publish because they have to have my

39:38

permission to access my data. And that's all it is.

39:41

So Fountain would request access to it and I go, yeah, I love

39:45

Fountain. Yeah. I love Podverse wants it. Yeah. Go. You go for it. OP 3

39:48

fantastic. Meta, nah. I'm not giving you my data. That's it.

39:52

That's a simple Sure. Thing. And I don't think

39:56

look. It it takes a little bit of thinking and time, but but you start

40:00

off small and you can build it. So as I said in True Fans, we

40:03

we create your activity stream around 30 verbs. We're going to

40:07

step 2, allow users to publish that to chapters Don clients

40:10

over activity pub, and then we're gonna work on a

40:14

model for centralization of activities around

40:18

a central repository. And when people say, oh, you can't

40:22

centralize things. I go, isn't the podcast index a central

40:25

repository? You know, I I won't say who told me that. And then I

40:29

said, strange that, isn't it?

40:33

And you know one of the cool potentials I'm realizing with this is right now

40:37

we already have a great model of a way something like this is being used.

40:40

Whenever you connect one App to another App, often there are certain

40:44

permissions that you're giving. Certain apps require certain permissions,

40:48

but you have control sometimes over those permissions.

40:52

Like, you might say that for this app, I'm giving

40:56

it permission to read Mhmm. All my data from this other app, but

41:00

not to write to it. Exactly. Or like here in the activity

41:03

stream aspect, where maybe it's Saturn taps into

41:07

your activity stream, and then you're saying, I am giving Saturn permission

41:11

to read all of the value

41:15

of my satoshis I've received, but not

41:18

the messages Yes. That came in from it. So, like, whatever that

41:22

server is that's hosting the central activity stream could then handle

41:26

that authentication, creating the different API endpoints, or all of that. That's all

41:30

developer stuff that they can take care of. The podcaster themselves and the audience

41:34

don't have to worry about that. That's pure developer stuff, but

41:37

that's possible with this activity stream idea. Yes.

41:41

Why don't we just switch why don't we just ditch RSS completely and switch to

41:45

activity stream? Well, boy, don't don't don't No. No. No. Don't do

41:48

not. I didn't say that, Adam. Yeah. That takes us back to

41:52

RSS versus Atom. That's where that the whole discussion started.

41:56

Look, I think what it is, I I

42:00

I don't know whether we'll we'll get activity streams, if I'm honest,

42:04

to to be adopted by everybody. I don't Because I think there's

42:07

a lot of people who are invested into the TLV

42:11

record and the way it works. So I think

42:15

it could be the inertia of people saying, I'm not even gonna

42:18

bother to look at what's going on elsewhere with an open standard. I'm gonna keep

42:22

this proprietary standard that we have within our community because there's

42:26

too many people invested into that proprietary standard.

42:31

Well, one of the things that I've noticed with podcasting 2.0 is what

42:34

catches an idea is when it can be shown

42:38

that it's working and also the actual code

42:42

shown like this is how easy this is to integrate with this thing or the

42:45

other thing. And it has me thinking like

42:49

with Podgaugment, Sam and I are both developers here and

42:53

we are developing on very similar code stacks even. Mhmm. But it has me

42:56

thinking where I want to go with Podgagement, all about engaging your

43:00

audience with a podcast, I want it to support cross app comments and I

43:04

will build that in whenever we figure out how that's possible.

43:08

But I'm kind of wondering, maybe I should just

43:11

start trying to work with you on what can I get

43:15

from true fans and bring it into Podgave already?

43:19

Yep. And then we can show that to the world to say, look.

43:22

Here are 2 apps working together, and look how

43:26

fast they're working because the activity stream is centralized. And one

43:30

of the things one of the big reasons why I think that the activity

43:34

stream itself needs to be centralized as a source of truth that the

43:37

podcaster can control is the portability of it. Mhmm. That's something

43:41

that else is, I think, very important in the podcasting space.

43:45

Because everything else about podcasting is portable too. The

43:48

activity stream needs to be portable as well. So to the point

43:52

that you could take that activity stream, export it from

43:55

whatever tool is currently hosting it, import it into the other

43:59

tool, and then you just pick right up Yeah. Where you let them know. Guess

44:02

what? It would contain your social graph and your podcast graph.

44:06

So your social graph of people you follow and your podcast graph

44:10

of the podcast that you JSON to. That's contained

44:13

within the activity stream as well. So it's not just containing

44:17

boosts and and and values paid and streams. It

44:21

contains follows and, and, you know, we have we use

44:25

the verb become a fan but that's subscribe. Right? That's fundamentally I

44:28

subscribe to the future of podcasting. The minute that there's a new

44:32

episode of the future of podcasting, I get a notification.

44:36

Boom. That's simple. We just call the verb become a fan but underlying, it's

44:40

really subscribe. And if I follow Daniel in True Fans

44:43

and Daniel happens to listen to a new podcast or or makes a boost or

44:47

a clip, I get a notification that says Daniel made a boost or a

44:51

clip. And so the activity can be linked to

44:54

notifications, which is, like, fundamentally webhooks. And

44:58

again, that aspect of it as well is is really interesting.

45:02

But I think where we are as an industry, I think we need

45:05

to think We're getting excited about

45:09

activity pub and then we sort of go,

45:12

yeah, but we're not gonna use that. We're gonna use this other thing. And

45:16

I I worry. That's where I am. I'm I'm very worried that

45:20

we so I'm trying to find out if we could

45:24

aggregate both activity streams and the TLV stuff together because all it

45:27

means is I can take what I've got internally in Truefans, the verbs,

45:31

and I can go to Dave Jones or I can go to Adam or whoever,

45:34

Nathan. Say, hey, I've got an extrovert to add to the TLV

45:37

record, follow or become a fan or subscribe or

45:40

whatever. I don't even know who would make that decision

45:45

to extend the TLV record with a new verb. I just don't know.

45:49

It may be just down to Dave Jones, which is fine. I love Dave Jones.

45:53

But I don't know, and it's not a standard that I could

45:56

follow, whereas activity streams is a standard.

46:01

Yeah. And what I like about it is how extensible it

46:05

is. I think I've made a couple enemies in the Podcasting 2.0 space because Well,

46:08

I think I am as well, Daniel. I tend to come in with one of

46:12

2 things. Yes. Or it's a bonus if you get both of these things from

46:15

me. One is, hey, the tag should be called this instead. Yes. Yes.

46:19

That's one of the things that I'm, to put it in British for you, I'm

46:22

on about often. The other thing is I often

46:26

think of the future. That's why I wanted so much to

46:30

be involved with this podcast with Dave, the future of podcasting, because I keep trying

46:33

to think about what is the potential for this? What are the

46:37

things that we could foresee doing with this? So how can we

46:41

build it now so that it supports these things in the

46:45

future? And, I see that with activity stream so much

46:49

that in a way, it's almost like this beautiful blank

46:53

canvas that we can do almost whatever we want with

46:56

it. We will need a structure to it, of course, and

46:59

certain verbs and a set of these things. But it could be easily

47:03

extensible to the point that app developers who

47:07

build in support for activity stream and cross app

47:10

comments, at some point we could say, alright. Here

47:14

is the protocol or the spec

47:17

for podcast consumption data. So, report the

47:21

playback at every 5% mark or every 1% or whatever it

47:25

is, every 10 seconds, 5 minutes, whatever. And whenever

47:29

we come up with that standard, then the developers who are

47:32

already supporting cross app comments through activity stream could know that,

47:36

hey. I already know how to write to the activity stream.

47:40

All I need to do is add an extra trigger into my App

47:44

that will send this slightly different data that's

47:47

in the same structure, just slightly different verbiage here and there in the

47:51

data to the same destination. And now,

47:55

boom, we've got this other new feature and easily populating it. That's what I

47:58

love about this. Yeah. And look, I think going back to what

48:02

you said, I think, you know, post this, I'm very happy to sit down with

48:06

you and show you how we've built the activity stream in True Fans and then

48:10

how we can share that data, you know, with you.

48:14

I can do it from my own activity stream, so I'm not asking for anyone

48:17

else's permission. So before everyone goes, you're not giving all of your data

48:21

to Daniel. I no. I can just do one. It doesn't have to be all.

48:25

And Daniel can do his, so we've got 2 sets of streams and we can

48:28

share that and we can cross that comment and we can do all sorts of

48:30

different things with it. And then once we've worked it out and and one of

48:34

the jokes in the industry, Dan Daniel, you said one of yours is, you know,

48:37

you always talk about certain things and people go, oh, Daniel Varian. You don't have

48:41

to do that. What's the name of this tag? Mine is and I get it

48:44

often. Oh, True Fans has built every name space tag, have

48:47

they? Right? And the answer is yes. And why do I

48:51

do that? I I do that because seeing is believing.

48:55

I believe that so we implemented pod roles first.

48:59

And and the reason why James Cridland did it and I did it was because

49:02

we could show it working. Then we could give it out to everybody and go,

49:05

look. That's what it is. People then came back and said, you could tweak it

49:09

here, comment there, blah blah blah. We did that, and now it's rolled

49:13

out. Same happened with, you know,

49:16

publisher feeds that we've been working on recently. Okay?

49:20

Those are, you know, aggregated podcast feeds of,

49:24

you know, so Wondery might have 50 podcasts. Right?

49:28

How do you find the other podcast that Wondery has if you re if you

49:31

just like 1? Well, there's a publisher feed. Now we built those

49:35

and Dovidast did that with me and and we made it work and it's

49:38

looking great. There's a couple of tweaks still left to be done. But

49:42

once those are done, that will be published as a standard. And so, yes, I'm

49:46

a great believer in build fast, fix quickly.

49:52

Yeah. And a a lot of potential. And

49:56

I like that with since you're building a web app

49:59

Mhmm. Where the cool thing these days is to call it a PWA, which

50:03

I see that those three letters thrown around all this time and so many people

50:07

don't even know what a PWA is. But progressive web app. But

50:11

what is great and what I want other developers to

50:15

understand is that you can be so agile

50:18

with your development because for one thing, there is no gatekeeper

50:22

for you. You're not waiting for Apple to approve your latest app and

50:26

they're not homing through your code to make sure that your app update

50:30

can be allowed onto the store. Like, look at Podcast Addict. Man, the

50:34

problems that Xavier has faced with Google Mhmm. And Google

50:37

is much more lenient than Apple is, but that he'll add a new

50:41

feature and then Google will basically say, no. You can't do that.

50:45

And so he runs into that problem. You don't have that problem. So you get

50:48

to be agile, and you don't have to wait

50:52

until True Fans 5 can launch to start thinking

50:56

about podcasting 2 point o No. Support.

51:00

JSON. But you can just put in that feature right away and

51:04

that's what's really neat about the web based development of

51:07

this. And that that was really just a little

51:11

tangent aside there. But what I would love to see

51:15

then is more of these web based tools

51:19

being this agile like this since we

51:22

can. And so that's why I'm thinking, since I've got Podgageman,

51:26

I wanted to have more Podcasting 2.0 support. I'm thinking,

51:30

what can I do to demonstrate what's

51:33

possible with ActivityStream? And there's just so much that we could do with it

51:37

Mhmm. That could solve a lot of problems. And even

51:41

I I was thinking too that you don't necessarily have to

51:45

have a single activity stream for a podcast. No. You

51:49

could potentially have multiples. Like this is the

51:52

the comments activity stream. This is the

51:56

playback consumption rate activity stream if they needed to

52:00

be split apart like that. Because I know, I talk

52:04

about episode metadata file, and some people hate me for that term,

52:07

the chapters and all of that stuff. But what's cool about

52:11

the way that we are doing chapters right now is that it can be split

52:14

into a separate file and you can have other episode metadata in a

52:17

separate file or you could merge these all into the same file.

52:21

There's that same kind of potential with Activity Stream. So

52:25

I love how this looks possible, and I am now

52:29

an advocate of this. I know that here on the

52:32

future of podcasting a few months ago, I was all gung ho about this

52:36

proposal I had for Cross App comments of a way to do things.

52:39

And, Basically, what I was describing,

52:43

I was kind of reinventing Activity Stream but in

52:47

a very clunky way and a not

52:51

not backed by certain standards. Like, the activity stream

52:55

is a W3C standard Yes. Which is the World

52:59

Wide Web Consortium. Yep. So this is a standard of how to

53:02

form this data and how to structure it, so it's not like we're making up

53:06

something on our own. But it's a flexible standard.

53:10

Yes. I like it. The other thing that you you should be aware of, you

53:14

mentioned, podcast streams and and and creator streams.

53:17

So first the first stream that you as a user

53:21

on Truefence see is your own personal stream. Right? Of everything you that you've done

53:25

across if if you think about it multiple podcasts, so that's your view

53:28

of the world. But when you go to a podcast

53:32

site, let's say the future of podcasting, it will show an

53:36

activity stream of any user that's interacted with

53:40

that podcast. So so who played, who boosted, who clicked

53:43

on the future of podcasting. And non fans

53:48

and all of their

53:52

activity. So and non fans

53:55

and all of their activity. So then you get an aggregated

53:59

view. So Sam played my, latest episode,

54:03

but he only played 70% of it and he gave me

54:07

6,000 sats. Right? That's an activity entry and

54:10

then we can roll that up for that episode. So now you can

54:14

roll up all of that activity and say, this podcast episode

54:18

earned 27,000 sats. There were 16 listeners

54:21

and the on average they dropped off at 44%,

54:26

and it was 60% complete. Right? Whatever that so

54:29

because that's just data from the individual that became

54:33

aggregated at a podcast episode level and then rolled up

54:37

again. Eventually, we will roll that up to a total podcast level. So you've

54:40

got, I think, 35, 36 episodes of the future of podcasting.

54:44

You will then see how many sets has that future of podcasting at, how many

54:48

fans have they got, etcetera, etcetera. There's so much you can

54:52

do from the activity stream data just within the

54:56

app itself, let alone sharing it cross app,

55:00

let alone sharing it with analytics companies and whatever.

55:04

So, yeah, there's a lot you can do with it because it's good structured data.

55:09

Let's keep that, like all the bigger things, a little secret just between us and

55:12

our audience for now just so we don't overwhelm everyone when we come

55:16

back saying, Hey, we're all gung ho with Activity Stream.

55:20

There's I'm excited about this and what we can

55:24

do. I'm totally on board with this now, especially now that I understand a little

55:28

bit better. And you listening right now, I hope I know we got in the

55:31

weeds on some of the stuff we know. Sorry. We probably lost everyone in that,

55:34

unfortunately. I didn't mean to. Well,

55:38

I I think the people who need to understand this

55:42

most can probably figure this out. And we'll have put some

55:45

links also, like, to the w three c standard and some more information. And

55:49

there's also a book coming out Yep. About all of this. We'll have those links

55:53

in the notes for this episode, number 39, on future of podcasting.net.

55:58

So there is a lot of potential for this. And the nice thing is that

56:01

the individual podcaster eventually will not have to

56:05

learn this. Years ago, I gave a keynote at a podcasting

56:09

conference, and the keynote was the future of podcasting. And one

56:13

of my predictions was the technology will disappear

56:17

in the aspect of the audience and the podcaster won't

56:20

even have to worry about what's running it. They won't have

56:24

to worry that it's activity stream. It will just work. Yep. That's when

56:28

the technology disappears. Nobody who's using

56:33

Spotify or Apple Podcasts or YouTube, you know, the main

56:36

big three, let's say, knows that the underlying delivery technology

56:40

is RSS. They don't need to. Right? The fundamentally

56:44

it ends up in the Apple Podcast and they play it. And that's it.

56:48

End of story. They don't need to understand how it got there and

56:52

what it was delivered by. Right. And it's the same with, I

56:55

I just wanna know that there was a comment made on this app and it's

56:59

over on this app, and now it's at the same they're aggregated together under one

57:03

episode, and that's magically happened. I don't need to know how it

57:06

happened, and that's that's what we have to get to. So you set me a

57:10

challenge on Macedon this week, which was I said,

57:14

you know, I've put the best I can as version

57:18

1, a help system into this in into

57:21

Truefans. And we use activity streams with gamification.

57:25

So, when you, enable your wallet, that's

57:29

a a verb, you know, and then we give you some sats for doing that

57:32

750 sats for enabling your wallet. When you do your first boost, we

57:36

can give you sats. We can do that 10 times. So you're learning

57:40

and earning at the same time. But then your 11th boost, we won't

57:43

pay you. Right? That's just a gamification model that we've attached to

57:47

Verbs. And the thing about it is you said to me, well,

57:51

don't do the videos because I'm in the middle of doing loads of videos just

57:54

showing how it all works. And my my answer to you is

57:58

yes. You're right. It shouldn't need videos and it shouldn't need extensive

58:02

help files to make this work because complexity has failed

58:05

simplicity. And, fundamentally, though,

58:09

what we're struggling with is vocabulary.

58:13

Yeah. Somebody on the Mastodon list said to

58:17

me, I don't even understand the difference between a Zap and a boost. So when

58:20

I explained it to them very simply, a Zap is a a like with a

58:23

payment and a boost is a comment with a payment. Why doesn't anyone ever

58:27

say that to me? Right? I'm like, well, they probably have, but now

58:31

they've got so far down the weeds of not having to re explain

58:34

every time when they say the word zap and when they say boost because they

58:38

expect everyone to understand it. And we have to remember people don't even know

58:41

what those things mean, Let alone value time splits and

58:45

wallet switching and everything else. Right? So there's

58:49

a lot of complexity in what we're all doing. And,

58:53

yeah, that vocabulary just needs to be

58:57

common knowledge. And then I think a lot of it becomes easier to not

59:01

have to explain how to do it with a video, but people think, oh,

59:04

yeah. Oh, you wanna boost it? I've got a wallet. There's

59:08

there's 50 sats done. Right? It all becomes second nature. I just

59:12

don't know when it'll become second nature. And speaking

59:16

of boosts, we got a boost here that is,

59:20

100,000 It sounds bad person.

59:24

It says great show, great episode. Please keep them coming.

59:28

And am I back at the top of the leaderboard? And that

59:32

came from Sam. Thank you so much. You're very

59:35

welcome. I was I was gutted when Dave Jackson said I was on top of

59:39

the leaderboard. So I went, well, that's it. 100,000. Send that straight

59:42

over. Let's see if that gets me back there. So I don't know if I

59:45

am or who knows? Yeah. And just to be clear,

59:49

that boost is not what got Sam onto this podcast. No. Thank you. Sam and

59:52

I have been wanting to have a conversation for a long time. It just worked

59:56

out really cool to be able to thank you personally here on the

59:59

podcast for that boost. So thank you so much.

1:00:03

Anyone else who would like to send us a boost, please do send that inside

1:00:07

of your podcast app, and recommend that your own audience, if you've got an audience

1:00:10

of other podcasters or listeners, recommend that they check out a new

1:00:14

podcast app over at podcasting2.org/apps. For Dave Jackson, I'm Daniel j Lewis, And Sam Sethi

1:00:22

was our guest here from truefans.fm. Check him out. Thank you