Ghost, an open source rival to Substack’s newsletter platform, has confirmed that this year it will officially join the fediverse – or the open social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and, most recently , Instagram Threads, among others. Last week, the company revealed its plans by surveying its users on how they would like the federation to work.
Founder John O’Nolan had explained in an article on Threads that there are many potential ways Ghost could leverage federation in its software, but he wanted to know how users would expect things to work.
According to some responses, the hope was that the authors of the Ghost blog and newsletter would become fediverse accounts, while each of their articles would be federated to the fediverse. This would allow users to follow Ghost authors from their favorite app, as well as like and reply to their posts from the fediverse. These responses could then be published on the author’s site as a blog comment.
This setup is similar to how WordPress federated with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers the fediverse, after acquiring an ActivityPub blog plugin. When enabled, WordPress blogs can be followed by people on apps like Mastodon and others in the fediverse, and then receive responses in the form of comments on their own sites.
Last week’s Ghost announcement sparked a flurry of activity, including outreach to Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput, who offered to help integrate ActivityPub.
On Monday, Ghost officially confirmed its intention to unite its service in 2024 and detailed how it would work.
Ghost said it plans to add tens of millions of users to fediverse once the integration is complete. In total, the fediverse is expected to reach 170 to 200 million users by this summer, including Instagram threads in the total.
The company explained that Ghost publishers would “soon” be able to follow, like, and interact with each other in the same way they normally would on a social network, but from their own website. Additionally, they will be able to follow, like and interact with users on other federated services like Mastodon, Threads, Flipboard, Buttondown, WriteFreely, WordPress, PeerTube, Pixelfed and others.
Meanwhile, an ActivityPub-powered feed will be integrated into Ghost so users can follow the people, posts, and topics they care about across the web. They will also be able to subscribe to these sites via ActivityPub, in addition to RSS. And when Ghosts authors post, their posts will appear on networks like Mastodon and others.
Ghost’s announcement details the benefits of an ActivityPub integration, noting that each platform could design how it wants to present its content while remaining compatible with other services. Readers will also have more choices in how they want to subscribe to an author’s content: via email, RSS, or ActivityPub subscriptions. Secure access to sites with paid subscriptions can also be managed through ActivityPub, but Ghost hasn’t yet explained exactly how this aspect would work, only that it will do its best to “create a seamless experience.”
“And because this technology is completely open, you maintain full control of your subscribers,” the blog states. “When you publish a new piece online, your distribution comes from your own website rather than relying on third parties.”
Ghost has seen increased interest in recent months, as more and more high-profile authors have made the switch.
Notably, Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack and instead migrated to Ghost due to concerns about how Substack moderated – or rather didn’t moderate – some of the content on its platform . Garbage day is also gone. Other popular publishers include 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever, and Tangle, to name a few.
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