alt.hn

4/23/2025 at 6:08:39 PM

Spring 83: a draft protocol intended to suggest new ways of relating online

 https://github.com/robinsloan/spring-83

by SinePost

4/23/2025 at 6:50:53 PM

One of the things I love about RSS and its clients is that I can walk away from my computer for a month, and then catch up (or not! I can mark feeds, folders, or the whole thing as read!) on what I've missed, whether it's from someone posting something once an hour, or something once a year, as the author suggests.

But with Spring 83, I leave a board, and may come back to a totally different board, knowing nothing of the context of how it got to where it is now. It's the equivalent of AIM status messages!

That's probably a feature in some people's minds, which is fine, but it's definitely not a feature for me.

by pavel_lishin

4/24/2025 at 12:59:16 AM

I hear you. Though I doubt our minds are made to withstand that indulgence as much as we want to believe.

Creatures like us have mostly evolved to survive in a world of realtime comms. Forgetfulness is evolved. If we remember everything we want to, notice everything we try to, capture everything we wish to, we are profoundly crippled.

We've monkeypatched our brains' protocols with writing systems, in a way that no other creature has found it possible [or perhaps not "beneficial"] to do, but I suspect there are limits to how much we can lean into this mode.

I think at some threshold, it's more beneficial for us to live in a gentle flowing stream than climbing down an ever-towering stack. I suspect we need protocols that resist our hubris toward information.

Yes, we all make our own choices. But it doesn't escape my notice that the minds that tend to build tech products, tend to have a predisposition toward information gathering and hoarding. I wonder what societal distortions there are, due to how these minds build the platforms and choose the defaults in which all our minds are forced to live

by patcon

4/23/2025 at 11:39:40 PM

I love this about RSS too, but I think the internet has generally trained us to be afraid of ephemerality and preyed upon FOMO. The desire for ephemerality has led to permanent platforms subsuming the idea of controlled ephemerality, like IG stories and status messages. Plus, it seems like the level of context can be controlled by the creator, like a space for permanent links on the board vs a series of rambles that get wiped away daily. The narrative explanation of the protocol seemed to dive into this a bit more.

by nsriv

4/23/2025 at 11:36:05 PM

I found the narrative explanation of this protocol really beautifully written.

https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/specifying-spring-83/

by nsriv

4/24/2025 at 2:43:41 AM

I would expect nothing less from Robin Sloan! I absolutely loved reading "Sourdough." https://www.robinsloan.com/books/sourdough/

by cardamomo

4/24/2025 at 4:04:01 PM

Wow, I should have clicked through his site more, didn't know he was an author! That's what I get for HN'ing at work.

by nsriv

4/23/2025 at 8:22:26 PM

> Spring ’83 doesn’t formalize interactions and relationships. The protocol doesn’t provide any mechanism for replies, likes, favorites, or, indeed, feedback of any kind. Publishers are encouraged to use the full flexibility of HTML to develop their own approaches, inviting readers to respond via email, join a live chat, send a postcard … whatever!

I think this is one of the biggest missing features of this sort of decentralized approach to following/aggregating content. There is so much in the commenting/interaction handling of the current centralized approach that keep people coming back.

by clueless

4/24/2025 at 3:52:14 AM

I love Robin Sloan, but why not just build this on Nostr?

It can do everything required here and more, and you get immediate community support, and therefore increased adoption, a broad existing list of compatible clients (depending on event kind) and immediate ability to give back real value to those who provided you with content you found valuable.

His objection to Mastodon is that it is a "timeline" but he doesn't even mention Nostr. There are Libraries, App Stores, Podcasting Apps, Job Boards, Live Streaming services and more built on Nostr. It can be whatever you want it to be.

by shark_laser

4/23/2025 at 8:21:06 PM

Question: why would I use this, when it seems like it has less functions than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) ?

by unquietwiki

4/24/2025 at 5:29:25 PM

I keep an eye on Gemini. I have a browser for it, and I look around once a month or so. It's refreshing. It represents a simpler time I'd like to go back to, occasionally.

by deanebarker

4/23/2025 at 9:47:27 PM

Why would you use Gemini, when it's more restricted than HTML+HTTP?

by wgd

4/23/2025 at 9:52:26 PM

That's the best part. :)

by mfro

4/23/2025 at 7:01:21 PM

This kind of reminds me of Instagram stories, somewhat ephemeral, the current state of being of people I follow, and things I'm interested in. I guess I like the federated timeline because it's a federated timeline of things I care about.

by redm

4/23/2025 at 11:45:55 PM

It's a beautiful goal, but like so many things on the Internet, it wants a social change and hopes to achieve it via a technological solution that rejects most of the things people want from their Internet. And neither nostalgia nor technology will fix social issues.

If I were to put it in a quip, I'd say "Doesn't support cat pictures, dead".

If you truly want to fix what's broken about the Internet (and there's so much!) you will need to engage with why it's broken, why those forces shaped it the way they did, and how you will address those forces in your new proposals. You will need to think about why people would want to change their behavior.

I mean, don't get me wrong - it's still a very cool experiment & art project, from the builder perspective. But like most art projects, it will only reach a small audience.

by groby_b

4/24/2025 at 7:30:01 PM

I think this is pretty clearly not a project which intends to be used except in an experimental way. It's fine to write software just to help you understand something, same as you would an essay.

by ElevenLathe

4/25/2025 at 6:13:48 AM

> Each publisher maintains just one board

And that's where it went wrong...

by throwaway290

4/23/2025 at 8:48:29 PM

Interesting!

by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF