I've tried avoiding talking about #Tumblr directly (though there was far less reason to do so, before recently).
Making any project a foil to another existing work will always define it in terms of that other work and, I think, comes off as a waste of everyone else's time.
But I've been seeing a lot of excitement around Tumblr adding #ActivityPub and it has me…Concerned™.
Not due to the size of an instance this would add to the network (though it's a fair concern) nor due to possibly making
federated posts able to, possibly, never die the way Tumblr reblogs cannot (another /very/ valid concern) nor even that I'm currently working on a federated #Tumblr clone, already (like, c'mon; rude).
If we stop and think about what #Mastodon is (in the context of Twitter collapsing, recently; this applies to other Fediverse projects, as well), it's…incredible, right?
Like, it's not just a microblogging platform with no ad.s and no algorithms that has managed to transplant a good chunk of
It's software you can run yourself, that requires that – if you want to use or modify it – you have to give it back and make it available for others to be able to use or modify it: even if you never distribute it and only ever run it on your own servers.
Again: that is /incredible/.
Don't like, entirely, how the software works? #GlitchSoc and #Hometown can relate; so they modified things and run their own versions.
corporation (though that /is/ relevant) but we've started developing federated software that we, collectively, can own with no binding need for corporate reliance and…we're already discussing trading that away?
Like, – unless #Tumblr open-sources, /first/ (and I mean #AGPL or equivalent; not even just #GPL), and I'm able to run it on my own server – going to #Tumblr or recommending people to them is just losing the ownership you would otherwise have with a #PeerTube, #GoToSocial, or #BookWyrm.
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