The #fediverse exists as the antithesis to centralised networks. Which is why, IMHO, it is absolutely not needed to welcome #Meta#facebook. Fox, henhouse and stuff. If they want to implement some sort of gateway using #activitypub — let them build it. But we are under no obligation to help them. Or discuss with them under NDA. Simple. They are not friends or allies. They will extend, embrace, extinguish what we have under the disguise of cooperation should you help them.
Divide and conquer. They will try to make you feel special and elite. They will give you the VIP treatment. Pay for flights, hotels to meet and discuss. Photo opp with Zuckerberg. But they are not friends.
#activitypub#activitystreams are open standards. Loads of code to implement and interoperate is readily available as open source. If they really want to implement #activitypub they can just do it.
But also: calls for preemptive defederation and blaming/shaming/infighting isn’t helpful. Quite the opposite. It helps with the divide and conquer strategy. And Meta gets all of that disruption of the fediverse for free! #SarcasmButOnlyHalf
This is obviously (and now explicitly) all IMHO. Based on many years of work in F/OSS and Open Standards and having been involved in similar things in the past. But I do not claim to know everything and I respect you if you completely disagree.
@jwildeboer Just my "+1". One thing I have learned actually from you (thank you!) is that open formats and protocols are actually more important than open source. If #Meta, #Google, #Microsoft, or anybody else want to create proprietary project working 100% with #ActivityPub and #ActivityStream, it is The Good Thing™ (of course, Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish is always an option, after all, that’s how Google killed #XMPP ).
@mcepl@jwildeboer I don't think Google killed XMPP. They dumped it for their own use, yes. Gchat defederated and then seased to exist. But the rest of network could happily continue operating. XMPP was not much more relevant before Google than after Google. They just killed the hope that XMPP would be a universal standard.
It will be the same now. Meta wants to support ActivityPub? Good. If they decide to drop it? Fediverse will go on on a small scale like before.
@mcepl@jwildeboer well, for Google to have a motivation for EEE, XMPP would have had to be relevant back then. Frankly, it was as niché as Fediverse is today. I have hard times believing Google was adopting XMPP to preemptively kill it, just like I don't believe Meta wants to support ActivityPub to kill it.
@mcepl you have to look at it from the point of view of someone who just wants to have a competitive service. They tried to build it on an open standard, it didn't work for them (and there were objective reasons), so they reconsidered it. I'm not going to praise them for it because open standards are paramount to me, too, but I also don't necessarily see evil doing in it.
@sesivany@jwildeboer I don’t think they planned to kill it from the start, but they sure prepared and used the opportunity when it was useful for them (actually, it wasn’t … see Google many successes in the chat universe).
@sesivany@jwildeboer Well, it is not more or less evil than #Microsoft ’s (failed) effort to kill #Java or their effort to kill Firefox (almost successful except their bored in the final phase). If those are evil to you (and that’s a matter of opinion), then this was not less evil.
@mcepl@jwildeboer XMPP committed suicide. Too much bureaucracy to extend the standard, so everyone gave up in the end. My diploma thesis was XMPP based and it was just a big mess. Maybe Google & co. could try harder but...
@RezzaBuh@jwildeboer I don't think so. Yes, there was a lot of bureaucracy, but there were perfectly working and collaborating implementions of all software required. Just when they were in danger there would be inter-server #XMPP federation (both #Facebook and #MSN had working versions of gateways), they rather pulled the plug than not having everything under their 100% control).
@mcepl@jwildeboer Google tried to get video calls to XMPP for years and they failed. And they tried hard. I understand why they moved forward with own proprietary protocol(s).
@mcepl@jwildeboer not only Google killed XMPP, Meta (or Facebook as it was called then) was also involved in this whole embrace, extend, extinguish the XMPP world experienced!
@jwildeboer@0xDEADBEEF Unfortunately, I am afraid, we exactly need to go there, because many won’t believe how easy it is to kill a platform, and experience of those who were there could help.
@gbraad@jwildeboer although Tumblr is centralised they pretty much act like they are their own weird niche community, which they kind of are, and not a ~150million MAU social network (half an old twitter) which they're also are. Noting that they're also responsible for an earlier migration of people to the Fediverse due to policy changes.
@jwildeboer I concur, but a simple block will not work as #Meta & #Google can access our RSS feeds or use web crawlers to analyze our content in the #Fediverse.
Instead of fearing #Instagram by playing interference with weak defensive tactics, we need to go on the offensive & engage the tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of users & enlighten them to various #ActivityPub platforms.
@darnell@osma@jwildeboer I try to explore these alternatives, but they're not clear to me at all. How to use, where to go, how to reach people, etc. I wish there was easier access for the un-enlightened (like myself)
@osma@darnell@jwildeboer Thank you! I saw that one before and I tried to check out WriteFreely but got stumped. However, now I am interested in exploring Pixelfed and will check out if it benefits my creative endeavours.
@osma@jwildeboer Friends & family do not let friends & family wallow in the #Zuckerverse without a long, protracted fight! 😂🤣😂
I will type up a post on #WordPress & #WriteFreely on the steps I am actively taking to enlighten my friends & family about the #Fediverse, using #Instagram’s pending #Threads as a stepping stone to (re)introduce #ActivityPub to the people I care about.
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