Many people are asking me, "How will #ActivityPub ultimately be #Meta's own undoing?"
Meta's current business model is not built for an open protocol like ActivityPub. It's very much dependent on them owning and controlling the network effect of services like Facebook and Instagram.
Not only does Meta want to collect all your personal data -- they want to control it too. They enforce this control through proprietary APIs. In this sense, they're not different from Twitter and Reddit.
The point of ActivityPub is that services, such as #Mastodon, #Kbin, and #Calckey, can depend on an open protocol instead of a proprietary API.
What if I, the admin of calckey.social, don't like what a dev is doing? Well, too bad. The protocol is open. I might be able to twiddle with my own server, but I can't do jack with anyone else's.
And what if I'm a greedy asshole who wants to monetize the user data on my server? Too bad for me, everyone on my server can migrate elsewhere.
This is not how Meta does business. In almost all ways, ActivityPub is counter to their business. Yet, here they are -- wanting to join the Fediverse.
The tech industry is awash in stories of big corporations that own proprietary tech that become undone by open standards.
Remember IBM's dominance of PCs? It was undone by the EISA standard.
Remember Novell's dominance of networking? It was undone by the bundling of TCP/IP in operating systems.
Remember AOL's dominance of online services? It was undone by the World Wide Web.
ActivityPub is yet another standard that pierces the opaque walled gardens that largely depend on proprietary technology owned by one company. And Meta happens to be one company that owns an opaque walled garden.
If history is to be repeated -- and usually it's worth learning from history -- then Meta opening the door to ActivityPub is company suicide. It's the first domino to fall before everything else in their catalogue of walled gardens also falls. Contrary to popular opinion, creating an ActivityPub enabled social network does not "kill" ActivityPub -- it validates it.
As it happens, I've known quite a few people who work at Meta. I have a little insight into what they're thinking.
Most folks at Meta know very well that Facebook will eventually die. But not just Facebook, Instagram too. Social networks, by their nature, are generational and transient. They have a shelf life.
Meta very much wants to build the app that kills Facebook and Instagram.
They have to build it because they can't acquire competition. That will raise the ire of regulators.
Likewise, Meta have already tried to leverage their own proprietary APIs to build compelling platforms. We've already seen this with the likes of Portal and Oculus.
What's apparent is that, even for a Big Social company like Meta, it is extremely hard to build a network effect from scratch. Sure, billions of people use Facebook and Instagram, but it was a whole lot of work for Meta to do that themselves.
And what was the end result of building Facebook and Instagram's network effect? More regulation by governments.
Thus, ActivityPub gives Meta two things it craves: the ability to piggyback on the network effect of an open protocol, and the ability to head off regulators by saying, "Hey, we don't own this protocol -- we're no different from Mastodon and Calckey."
Again, open protocols usually mean the demise of big corporations who leverage success through proprietary APIs. And ActivityPub will be no different.
Meta joining the Fediverse means that Automattic was right to build ActivityPub plugin for WordPress. It also means competitors, such as Apple and Microsoft, should probably start investing in ActivityPub.
What else does it mean? That small developers should start building apps that appeal to people who use Meta services. They should build these apps based on garden-variety ActivityPub -- because Meta can't own or control ActivityPub.
@atomicpoet This is a very smart and wise look at the situation. Thank you for sharing! At the same time very observant and hopeful. Not blindly, but profoundly optimistic. 👌
Am I missing something? I’ve read a lot about defederation ufoi-style these past days but I can’t really find what P92 is besides a Meta Twitter alternative built with ActivityPub. Nothing else is made public AFAIK.
So why is people loosing their minds?
I share your views on this. meta joining is a good thing. It’s a validation of ActivityPub as the WP plug-in.
It will take joining forces, not division to ride this. I spun up my own instance in dec22. Will keep it going.
@jens People are upset because certain devs and admins have been talking to Meta about their upcoming software. And that's a big no-no in some peoples' books.
To me this gives me the same feeling when things went crazy around ufoi. It’s like when Malfoy extends his hand in helping Harry Potter sort out who his friends are. And HP says: “I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks.”
However, I do understand that the servers who creates a safe space for their users need a different approach than mine. I couldn’t host a safe space. But I want to be an ally. Choose to be kind is our motto.
@atomicpoet
I've been so curious about this in general. If Meta federates with other servers, is there a likelihood it might try to leverage that as just another access point for data scraping? (In reality, it doesn't strictly need such a thing. Information that is available online can generally be retrieved.)
I guess, I just wonder what it might feel like it can try to gain? Is it hoping to woo people onto its platforms with the appeal of being able to reach out to people on other smaller networks?
@avividtale They don’t need to federate in order to data scrape. In fact, there’s plenty of easier ways to scrape. Nothing stops Meta from grabbing your RSS feeds—which are enabled by default on most Fediverse servers.
@atomicpoet Yeah, I didn't think so. But, I was curious if there was some other angle I wasn't aware of? I really find it hard to believe they're truly abandoning the walled garden. I'm just speculating at this point, but you seemed better informed on the topic. I've only just started hearing about it and the varying degrees of anxiety folks seem to have.
@atomicpoet@avividtale This is an interesting / frustrating (sometimes) feature of GoToSocial that I discovered was enabled by default: authorized fetch.
That is, an HTTP GET is a 403 unless the request is signed with the key of an actor and that actor is allowed to see the resource.
That basically breaks RSS feeds in general if enabled for those, since no reader supports it so far. But it's interesting for outbox and actor resources.
@atomicpoet this is a good take. Also the other context is: #Meta is in trouble as a company. They put their whole brand and billions of dollars into the Metaverse, then quickly pulled the plug on it because it’s a stupid idea that no one had any interest in. Their FB business is aging and stagnant, and IG doesn’t have much growth potential either. So if they see an opportunity to challenge Twitter’s space, they’ll be desperate to do it as quickly and cheaply as possible. Hence using an already-established protocol. Which carries its own risks. I don’t see this as a move of aggression from Meta, but one of desperation.
Of course it’ll fail miserably because they won’t moderate, they’ll be defederated for hosting extremist content and end up holding Gab 2.0. Like I said, desperation.
@atomicpoet AP being a push protocol means they can be extremely restrictive about what gets out to who, when, and how, which will make it extremely hard to pry/breakout data. Plus, what they're federating with is a new service, not FB or IG, so there's very little data to worry about in the first place. And most importantly, they can (in fact, will) turn off federation themselves a few years down the line, which will definitely seal AP an “also ran” with no more growth momentum.
Add comment