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---
layout: post.njk
title: Ann, the Small Annotation Server
tags: post
date: 2023-10-19
---
<p> Ann is a minimal ActivityPub-based decentralised alternative social media built around <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/">Web Annotations</a>. An annotation can be thought of a comment, recommendation or a like on any piece of content. Ann allows you to store your annotations, send annotations your followers and receive annotations from people that you follow.</p>
<p> Ann is different from other social medias and federated social medias. It is not really meant to have a single webpage you go to where you see all your "Ann related content" (though you could build that). Instead, it is just a server, so on it's own it's not very usable. What does get cool is when you connect it to front-end applications, so for example some applications could be:</p>
<ul>
<li>A comment section in a <a href="https://geminiprotocol.net/">Gemini</a> browser or for your blog.</li>
<li>A research department could have a private setup where they comment and share papers.</li>
<li>Get article recommendations from people you follow.</li>
<li>A web browser plugin that allows you to view other people's comments on content all around the web and add your own comments.</li>
<li>A network of annotated content that can be used for AI training.</li>
<li>A org mode/obsidian/logseq plugin to enable commenting and sharing files.</li>
<li>A hashtag or user to follow where people share/like/comment recommendations, essentially recreating Reddit and Hackernews.</li>
</ul>
<p>
Many applications, from LibreOffice, Logseq to video players could all benefit from having social functions to compete with centralised solutions like Notion, YouTube etc. Expecting each of these to implement servers for comments and annotations is not realistic. However with a self-hosted annotation server, these apps would only need to implement one integration and users would only need to be connected to a single server. My vision with Ann is a web that is not dependant on having "web apps" with Javascript and trackers, but instead enable embedding annotation capabilities to our favourite applications in a way that gives us choice of how we want to consume content, respects our privacy and keeps us in control.
</p>
<p>
Sadly, Ann does not exist today and what I have atm. is not usable in any way. However, I have started working on it and you can follow the progress <a href="https://git.mccd.space/ann/about/">here</a>.
</p>
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