First off, @evan sees this from the perspective of someone who's co-authored #ActivityPub. It's his job to spur and enable adoption -- and that's something he's done exceptionally well for 20 years. Of course he wants to help Meta abide by open standards. Which, even if you dislike Meta, you would hope they would do.
My perspective is as one who is building products that compete with Meta. Ideally, I would like people who use Meta to migrate away from there and instead use #Calckey, #GreatApe, and the numerous options available on #SpaceHost.
But even from the perspective of a competitor, I want interoperability with #Barcelona. And even more, I want interoperability based on open standards.
Yes, yes, yes -- "embrace, extend, extinguish". At this point, that phrase is a broken record.
But every time that phrase comes up, I keep asking folks: when has the "extinguish" part of "embrace, extend, extinguish" ever worked?
People say #RSS, but RSS is still here and I use it every day. Hell, Calckey even has an RSS widget and it works like a charm. RSS is not extinguished.
People also say #XMPP, but I can run an XMPP server right now -- no problems. People say XMPP "died" because it's no longer as popular now, but is it because Meta and Google dropped support, or is it because Slack, Discord, Signal, WhatsApp, and even Matrix have come along to eclipse it in popularity? Regardless, even if XMPP is no longer so popular, it's not extinguished.
The most ludicrous example of "extinguish" people bring up is Gmail's dominance of email. But email is the most popular communications technology we have today, even though it's 50 years old. What's more, look at the raw stats. Gmail is only 18% of the email server market -- that's no monopoly. Go have a look at the stats for yourselves:
The pessimistic notion that we will "lose" by allowing Meta to interoperate with ActivityPub -- again, an open standard -- just doesn't convince me. In fact, if Meta is adopting standard ActivityPub, I think "losing" is impossible.
With Meta adopting ActivityPub, we're not losing. We're winning. We're not conceding to Meta by adopting their proprietary APIs for interoperability. They're conceding to us by adopting ActivityPub.
Again, I'm not saying you should all federate with #Barcelona. I'm saying that Meta adopting an open standard that allows for interoperability is a win because, remember, they're adopting our standard. We're not adopting theirs.
Some also ask, "But what if Meta does a bait-and-switch and drops ActivityPub support?"
Well, there's kind of precedence for that.
Not enough people realize this, but Google once adopted the predecessor of ActivityPub. Specifically, they used OStatus for Google Buzz. Certainly, like many Google products, Google Buzz shuttered.
But the development for an open social media protocol lived on, and we all use what was developed right now.
No doubt, if Barcelona becomes Meta's Google Buzz, ActivityPub will live on. It will still be developed. We'll keep using it.
In the meantime, I'll consider ways to help Meta users migrate to platforms that I believe are better.
> Of course he wants to help Meta abide by open standards. Which, even if you dislike Meta, you would hope they would do.
I mentioned it before, this is the disconnect between the #1stGen (2008–2015) and #2ndGen (2016–Present) #Fediverse users.
Us, 1st Gen, our concern is to bring the down the walls and enable a decentralised and federated #SocialWeb. The idea itself is older than the fediverse, there were many names involved and who pioneered the pushed for it and are now forgotten.
Even me, to this day, I do welcome them federating even if they already did something EEE-like before (for example, FB Messenger federating and then defederating from #xmpp).
While I do want people to migrate over to a fediverse service made for it by developers who believes in it, the main goal is still to bring down the walls, and get them to federate … permanently.
It's why I also I welcome #Flickr and #Tumblr into the fold (and waiting for them to do so).
And for someone like me who was banned from #Instagram for no reason at all other than because I am #Autistic (I rarely use my Instagram, and when I do, it was to upload a work of mine, so clearly there were no violations), having them federate would enable me to communicate with Instagram users once again.
I just rediscovered a #tumblr I made YEARS ago called “The Man in the White Suit,” where I Photoshopped the man in the white suit—from the famous photo of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot—into other well-known settings. I may pick this up again. I’ll hashtag them #theManInTheWhiteSuit
haha wow. on a lark, I decided to try #tumblr again since they theoretically allow nudity now, so I tried to log into the years-old account I had and it turns out tumblr terminated it? Well that makes that decision easy!
Yet again, mainstream platforms are soulless pieces of fascy shit. Mastodon/Fediverse may have maybe 1 / 1,000,000th of the users, but at least you can switch instances and KINDA keep your followers if you should get obliterated on one instance (and in general, you can appeal to real live mods, not just soulless lines of code)
Ich bin ja skeptisch, ob es für das #Fediverse wirklich so gut ist, wenn die etablierten großen Player hier mitmischen. #Automattic und #Tumblr traue ich ja noch halbwegs, aber #Meta / #Instagram?
answer: not very hard as long as admins keep leaving their federated timelines open
you'd want to base this on regular periodic timeline sampling so that instances that defederate will automatically drop off the blocklist after a week or whatever
So while one key piece of the #Fediverse is that entire instances can be blocked as a form of moderation, and keeping things safe for people. I think it should be clearly stated to newcomers to any instance if entire platforms such as #Meta / #Tumblr / #Medium / #WordPress.com / #Bluesky (through a bridge) are being blocked.
If someone wants to have a federated identity and follow family/friends on Meta then they are SOL if an instance completely blocks the entire platform. #fediblock
Lange nichts mehr von #Tumblr gehört, während seit ihrem Bekenntnis zu ActivityPub ein halbes Dutzend Twitter-Klone aufgeploppt sind. Wenn es nicht Automattic wäre, würde ich jetzt annehmen, sie hätten das Projekt unter den Teppich gekehrt.
#WordPress 6.3 Planning Roundup. Looks like Matt Mullenweg is stepping aside as release lead (i found it unsustainable he could do that plus #Tumblr CEO).
I love Mastodon and I haven't been on Twitter for months. But I feel like I'm not meeting new people here and frankly a bit bored. I want to discover new voices and see more opinions, which is hard when there are no suggested people to follow. Tips anyone?
Playing around a bit, the official #Mastodon app for #iOS is getting better. It doesn’t feel as slick as #Mammoth, #Woolly or #Ivory yet. Especially things like settings, notifications (don’t expand likes), profile (bookmarks, etc. at the top), or federated tabs could use some love.
The new icon set is overal nice, but the compose icon is now like the rest of the tab bar, which feels odd, tapping it accidentally opens the compose window which doesn’t allow you to switch to the others anymore.
They way it displays messages, well the best way to describe it, it appears like #Instagram or #Tumblr. On one hand it’s nice for images I guess, but because there is a lot of text, it feels too spacious compared to other #Mastodon apps when scrolling through my timeline.
I almost forgot I have a 7 year old "Computers Are Funny" tumblr. It features those cheesy but amusing computing comics scattered through computer magazines from yesteryear.
how much of a bubble do we have to be in, to see Twitter as the biggest platform that needs an alternative? I am glad that @pixelfed is trying but we need a wayyyy bigger push in that direction. 90% of my friends AFK mainly use instagram for all communication online.
@liaizon I really don't think #PixelFed is taking a slice of #Instagram's cake any time soon, to be honest. I think if / when #Flickr & #Tumblr adopt #ActivityPub, they might be able to steal away a few users who want to share photos - but Instagram has its feet firmly grounded right now.
I'm considering writing a formal document (FEP?) that specifies how an ActivityPub service (including both server and client behavior) may implement domain-only names like #Bluesky has. Because it's the biggest beneficial thing Bluesky has that we don't (the one other thing is detached "preferred" handles, which is related). I've reasoned somewhere else before that it would be super helpful for #BridgyFed, #Tumblr, and #Wordpress.