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.
Barcelona is the acid test we've always known would come. If we're resilient, other corps/groups will come, presumably lessening meta's influence. With the larger hope that government systems will see the value of running their own instead of a shoddy meta account
@atomicpoet@evan “killed” in this context doesn't mean “removed from existence”, it means “wiped out from the collective consciousness of Internet users”. There used to be a time when every website proudly sported clearly visible links to their RSS feeds. Today you'll be lucky to find it mentioned at all in the visible part of the page, and often the links to feed won't even be included in the HTML head when though the site still supports them
1/
@atomicpoet@evan
and the are major sites that either don't advertise them or don't even produce them anyone —notably, in this context, the Meta silos. RSS may still exists, but it's now relegated to stuff for nerds. It's even worse for XMPP. (Compare and contrast with email, still widely used by a significant portion of Internet users.)
2/
@atomicpoet@evan good or bad as it may be, Mastodon and the Fediverse currently have a “mindspace”. Average users get to hear about it. And this is what Meta is going after: remove it from the mindspace with the same bait-and-switch they pulled on RSS and XMPP. When they're done, ActivityPub will go back to being stuff for nerds only. Sure, some of us will keep using it, but it will be gone from the global consciousness.
3/
@atomicpoet@evan
I'd expect someone interested like you in bringing as many people as possible to the Fediverse to be wary of that.
It should be obvious that Meta's aim isn't interoperability: if they cared about that at all these plenty they could do even now, even without AP. But that's not what they're after. They're after Twitter, BlueSky and the Fediverse, and they can sink all of them at the same time with this bait-and-switch.
4/4
@oblomov@evan To a certain extent, Meta’s concern is interoperability. The concern is selfish, and they’re not exactly in it for the good feels. But if they weren’t looking for interoperability, why bother with ActivityPub? They would do just as fine without it.
But that’s neither here nor there. Going back to my earlier points, what’s the alternative here?
It’s not Fediblock. You know why that’s not likely, so it’s silly to discuss that.
It’s not wagging our fingers at Meta and telling them to stop using ActivityPub because we don’t have control over that.
And it’s not migrating to AT protocol because that’s a different can of worms in and of itself.
The only practical option I see is to leverage interoperability to offer alternatives to Meta.
Meta isn’t our friend. But just because they’re not a friend doesn’t mean we abandon interoperability.
@atomicpoet@oblomov@evan The enemy isn't Meta, and it's not Blue Sky, the enemy is ourselves. Admins are walking out and shuttering instances, gatekeepers are chasing away new users, and inter instance disputes are starting. IMHO These are far more threatening developments than anything going on externally.
@atomicpoet@evan
They're bothering with ActivityPub because that's what they need to do to kill its momentum. It's a temporary measure so that the disgruntled users that still pine for what they remember as old Twitter will jump in, before they close the door and defederated for good.
Fediblock WOULD be the right answer, even if it probably won't be given especially by the some larger generalist instances like m.s
1/
@atomicpoet@evan If you will, it's like with the environmental crisis: we know what should be done, but it won't be done because some of the people in power prefer a short term illusion of gain over the longer-term resilience of the whole. But if we don't even take our time to discuss what the best approach would be, we're done for.
@atomicpoet@evan
And yes, we can and should make extra-P92 platforms palatable to Meta users, but that's the paper straw equivalent of stopping climate change. It may give us a good feeling and maybe help keep our local environment in better conditions, but it'll be completely ineffective at stopping what's coming (out of metaphor, the Fediverse being wiped out of the general consciousness).
@oblomov@evan Where you and I disagree is on this point: I don’t think Meta is trying to kill ActivityPub. They’re trying to exploit it. Here’s why this matters.
Okay Fediblock happens, and we’ve become Diaspora. We know how that goes.
Or here’s, the other option. Some servers block to preserve the culture they have. And other servers provide a migration path from Meta.
Not everyone talks to Meta. And those who do provide a migration path, and set terms on what is allowable for federation. In this way, decentralization wins.
@atomicpoet@evan my take is the complete opposite: if we DON'T Fediblock Meta, the Fediverse will go the way of Diaspora, because Meta will leverage the bridge to stuck out all of the ActivityPub momentum, and then defederate on its own a couple of years down the line, after it has managed to bring the Twitter Exodus into its folds, leaving AP to “just us nerds”.
@atomicpoet@evan and you can rest assured that while it's federated, the movement between the Meta servers and the rest of the Fediverse will be almost entirely FROM the Fediverse TO Meta. Very few, if any, will go the other way.
@atomicpoet@evan P.S. note again that I'm not taking about the protocol itself. I don't mind nor care if and how they contribute to AP. The threat isn't there (although they can essentially impose their own preference by sheer size, like Google does with HTML). I'm taking about the users and their awareness of the federation. That's what's going to be wiped out before the bridge is closed on their side.
@oblomov@atomicpoet@evan Right - my immediate thought was to double check on MySpace - because, as it turns out, it's still "Not extinguished" officially...but the public consciousness doesn't think to usually go to ( https://myspace.com/discover/featured ) specifically for non-niche use cases, beyond checking if it does exist, or (Presumably, never had an actual account for it - by the time I would've, Facebook became the big go-to social network) as an musician
@atomicpoet@evan I think you are really understating the damage Google Reader did to #RSS.
Yes, I still love and use RSS!
But, at the time, a broad mainstream community also loved and used RSS — almost entirely via Google Reader! When Google dropped it, that whole ecosystem disappeared. That mainstream community, which at that point was playing on Twitter but still followed RSS feeds, shrugged and fully embraced siloed social media. 1/
@atomicpoet@evan Speaking very personally, it was absolutely devastating to me as a writer. Over the years, my core asset had been the presence I had built in the RSS feeds of journalists, academics, and other writers. That all just… disappeared.
Life goes on and nobody owes a shit like me a whit of attention. I have only doubled down on RSS, going as far as writing RSS libs of my very own for newer projects. But professionally, I've not recovered from it, and doubt I ever will. /fin
@atomicpoet@evan What about algorithm-creep? The users of any instance federated with the 1 billion Meta users will rapidly find that they get more engagement when they post in whatever way Meta upranks on their users' feeds. It's going to destroy the way we communicate on the fedi.
And sure, 'extinguish' doesn't mean completely gone. But that's just thinking in terms of a protocol existing, and ignoring the thriving culture that's evolving in the absence of a corporate behemoth like Meta.
@atomicpoet@evan ok and my entire point is that we have a really awesome culture here in a lot of ways, and federating with meta will destroy that.
It really feels like the fedi royalty are selling out this community tbh, and reading the other responses, it seems I'm far from alone in feeling like this
@smallpatatas@evan My intent has never been to build a singular culture and gatekeep it. It’s to help build infrastructure that allows a multitude of cultures to interact with each other.
The intent is to replace Big Social with the Fediverse. That’s always been the aim.
The way to accomplish that is to build through a protocol that allows interoperability between a variety of servers, clients, and micro services.
I’ve been consistent about this and I’m not doing a U-turn.
@atomicpoet@evan Meta can use whatever protocol they want. And it can all be technically interoperable. Whatever.
What I do care about is having a place where people have genuine discussions and are not performing an act to game a Big Social algorithm. I will reiterate: users on instances federated with Meta will start to communicate in the way that Big Social wants them to. There will be no reason to get off their servers, and soon enough they will create reasons to join theirs.
@smallpatatas@evan Those are all big “what ifs” that don’t line up with my experience. I run numerous Calckey servers. People here don’t interact how mastodon.social wishes we would. We have a very distinct culture separate from Mastodon.
> 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 hope I get credit for this rebuttle to "embrace, extend, extinguish" one day. Not that it matter. Its more important that people stop thinking it. I should have just made an english article to point to.
What are the other examples where #Meta has "conceded" like this and it's worked out well for the communities they've "conceded" to?
... and you discussed RSS, XMPP, email, and Google Buzz.
Which really clarifies why we see things differently. If your standard for success for the products and communities you're building is "just as successful as RSS, XMPP, and Google Buzz", then you may well be right that working with #meta is the best way to get there.
@jdp23 I feel you’re being disingenuous here. I never said anything about “working with Meta”. Quite the opposite.
I spoke about Meta interoperating with us. That’s not “working with Meta”. That’s something Meta is doing on their own regardless of whether anyone likes it or not.
Interoperability will happen because ActivityPub is an open protocol, and you can’t control who uses it.
I also spoke about why Fediblock is not feasible, and why addressing Meta requires a different strategy.
I also didn’t point to RSS, XMPP, or email as successes (though they are) but as examples of why the “extinguish” part of “embrace, extend, and extinguish” doesn’t work.
More to the point, nobody is offering any alternative solutions here other than Fediblock. However, Fediblock is not a migration path, and it’s unlikely that’s ever going to happen.
So no, this doesn’t clarify “anything” except that you either didn’t read what I wrote, or imagined me saying something else entirely.
If it’s about persistence, nothing beats open protocols.
If it’s raw numbers, tech goes in and out of fashion. Nevertheless, something like email is still the most popular communications tool we have, and that won’t change.
What we’re trying to change here is to focus on protocols, not platforms.
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