The newsletter service Ghost, a competitor to Substack, declared its intention to become part of the fediverse early this year. The fediverse is a collective of interlinked servers hosting various apps such as Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard, and the more recent Instagram Threads, among others. Ghost has now fulfilled this ambition by federating its own newsletter service.
Recently, Ghost has celebrated achieving two significant goals toward becoming a federated entity. Remarkably, it has successfully federated its newsletter service, marking the debut of the first federated Ghost instance online.
Followers can subscribe to the newsletter via their preferred federated application at @index@activitypub.ghost.org. However, Ghost has cautioned that there might be some technical glitches and issues as it continues to refine its integration with ActivityPub, the protocol behind Mastodon and other federated applications.
“This development is monumental for us because it signifies our initial active engagement with the vast fediverse, transitioning from merely local testing to participating in the global social web,” Ghost announced during its latest update.
Moreover, Ghost has made its ActivityPub GitHub repository entirely open source. This opens the door for anyone interested in Ghost’s federation efforts to monitor its development closely, offering a chance for learning, modifying, distributing, or even contributing. Developers looking to collaborate with Ghost are encouraged to get involved following this new development.
Previously, Ghost outlined how integrating with ActivityPub presents a favorable alternative to closed platforms, like Substack, by providing readers with more flexibility in how they subscribe to newsletters. Now, readers have the option not only to follow via email or the web but also through RSS or ActivityPub-compatible apps. Furthermore, Ghost is in the process of developing a feature for managing access for paid subscribers through ActivityPub, though it has not been implemented yet.
The adoption of ActivityPub is gaining traction in the media industry as a means to navigate the diminishing web traffic from Google and Facebook and to tackle the challenges AI poses through content summarization, whether by licit agreements or through plagiarism. Media outlets such as The Verge, MacRumors, and MacStories—and soon TechCrunch—are incorporating features to attribute their reporters in articles viewed within the fediverse.
Ghost has attracted notable entities to its platform, partly as a response to Substack’s minimal moderation policies, which have been criticized for allowing hate speech. Prominent figures like Casey Newton, formerly with The Verge, and publications such as Garbage Day, have left Substack citing moderation issues and have since joined Ghost. Ghost’s platform is also home to renowned publishers like 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever, and Tangle, among others.
Compiled by Techarena.au.
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