Newsletter platform and Substack rival Ghost announced earlier this year that it would join the fediverse, the open social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard, and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others. It has made good on that promise — with its newsletter as a start.
Major Milestones
Over the past few days, Ghost says it has achieved two significant milestones in its move to become a federated service. It has federated its newsletter, making it the first federated Ghost instance online.
Federated Newsletter
Users can follow the newsletter through their preferred federated app. The company warns there will be bugs and issues as it continues to work on the platform’s integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon and other federated apps.
Announcement and Achievements
“Having multiple Ghost instances in production successfully running ActivityPub is a huge milestone because it means interacting with the wider diversity for the first time. Not just theoretical local implementations and tests, but the real world wide social web,” the company shared in its news announcement.
Open Source Initiative
In addition, Ghost’s ActivityPub GitHub repository is now fully open source. Those interested in tracking Ghost’s progress toward federation can follow its code changes in real-time, and anyone else can learn from, modify, distribute, or contribute to its work. Developers who want to collaborate with Ghost are invited to get involved following this move.
Benefits of ActivityPub Integration
The company had earlier detailed the benefits of an ActivityPub integration as an alternative to closed platforms, like Substack and others.
Subscriber Options
Offering a federated version of the newsletter gives readers more choices on how they want to subscribe. Instead of only following the newsletter via email or the web, they can also track it using RSS or ActivityPub-powered apps, like Mastodon and others. Ghost said it will also develop a way for sites with paid subscribers to manage access via ActivityPub, but that functionality hasn’t yet rolled out with this initial test.
ActivityPub in Media
ActivityPub integration is becoming more common in media as writers and publishers grapple with reduced traffic from sources like Google and Facebook. At the same time, AI technology summarizes their work through paid content deals or plagiarism. Several sites, including The Verge, MacRumors, and MacStories (and soon TOPCLAPS), recently adopted a new feature that will add their reporters’ bylines to news articles when they appear in the fediverse, for instance.
High-Profile Users and Moderation Policies
Ghost itself has also attracted several high-profile users to its platform, often because Substack’s lax moderation policies meant it increasingly became a home for hate speech. Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack this year due to moderation concerns and migrated to Ghost instead. Another newsletter, Garbage Day, also left Substack. Other famous Ghost-powered publishers include 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever, and Tangle, to name a few.
