I like the way you like it like that

Descartes famously said "I think, therefore I am" — but it wasn't until several years later when we started getting likes on Instagram that we collectively came to the realization that the meaning of life, in fact, revolves around a consistent stream of dopamine hits from the internet.

But Descartes also said:

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

And while some networks used the 'like' as a growth hack to build habitual dependency with push notifications, the feature permeated the rest of the web because of the versatility of how it's used.

As well as a nod of affirmation, the 'like' has utility value for bookmarking and remembering your favorite things.

It's with that totally-not-over-the-top philosophical introduction that we join our furry heroes this week as they take on a fearsome new decentralized gauntlet.

What's new with ActivityPub?

This past week we started working on inbound likes. Specifically: When you publish a post into the Fediverse and somebody clicks the 'like' button, that information makes its way back to you.

The good news: We succeeded! A new notifications tab inside Ghost now shows inbound likes on your posts, as they happen.

It's a simple thing, but it's kind of a big deal. With this milestone, Ghost is for the first time exceeding the functionality of a basic RSS reader. This is 2-way interaction. You publish, and your readers can respond.

The eagle-eyed among you will note that our roadmap so far is following a pretty similar sequence of events of Threads. First they implemented Fediverse Following, then came Fediverse Likes, and just recently they added support for receiving Replies from the Fediverse.

The main difference is that we're going quite a lot faster. Part of that is simply because they're testing with several million users and we're testing with... several. But many of you have voiced questions about where Meta fits into the picture of the Fediverse more broadly, and what about Bluesky? And how is all this going to shape up over the next few years?

This week MKBHD and his team published a Fediverse deep dive episode on the Waveform podcast — answering all this, and more. John makes a guest appearance, and if you look really closely and squint a bit, you can see the Ghost logo in the background just over David's right shoulder.

Enjoy!

What about the merch?

Oh yeah! Thanks for all your comments last week. We're going to work on turning some ActivityPub merch into a reality. It'll take us a little while to get some prints organized, but we'll keep you updated.

Also, if you don't like AI-generated images of pugs... That's totally ok! Feel free to just not engage with them and go about the rest of your day.

This is a questionable newsletter using small dogs as the centralized theme for developing a decentralized networking protocol while quoting Descartes and making obscure pop-culture references.

That's how serious it is.