I joined mastodon today because the CEO of #tumblr had a complete meltdown recently when people called him out for deleting a trans woman's blog because she posted a transition timeline. The vibes were definitely off, just doesn't feel like a safe place right now. I'd love to follow more #trans and #queer folks on here! This is my second social media account (third if you count myspace. omg should I go back to myspace??) so I need all the help I can get with navigating this place.
Thinking about the #Tumblr engineer who said they believe interoperability with the social web would just be a cost center and wouldn’t bring any profits. The point is not how interoperability affects the bottom line, the point is that it allows your platform to survive in an ever changing social media landscape and have a bottom line at all. If #Pebble was part of the social web, they would have had a network of 1.8M active users, not 1,000, and perhaps wouldn’t have had to shut down.
UPDATE: Seems it already happened. Content from 2014-2023 has already been shared. So your opt-out will just be honoured going forward. If and how already sent content will be handled by the receiving 3rd party after you opt-out remains a mystery
I just had a look at #Meta's recent press release about #Threads, and something caught my attention right away.
For the very first time, they're acknowledging another #Fediverse platform alongside #Mastodon. Specifically, they're highlighting that #WordPress can now connect through #ActivityPub.
Now, you know Meta's PR department doesn't say things by accident. So here's why this is a big deal. Last time I checked, WordPress powers a whopping 43% of the Internet. Yeah, you heard that right! If you visit a website, there's a good chance it's using WordPress as its CMS.
Now, if even a fraction of those WordPress sites start federating, it could have a huge impact on the network effect of the Fediverse. Of course, Meta isn't oblivious to this. I've been talking about the potential of WordPress and ActivityPub for quite some time now.
But if you're particularly observant, you might also notice that they mention #Tumblr. We've known for a while that Tumblr is likely to integrate ActivityPub into their platform.
But here's an interesting tidbit: Did you know that one company, Automattic, not only owns Tumblr but is also the driving force behind WordPress?
I don't want to jump to conclusions, but once again, PR departments don't just drop hints randomly. I have a strong feeling that Meta has been having some high-level discussions with Automattic about the future of ActivityPub. It wouldn't surprise me if Meta has some insights into Automattic's upcoming plans for the Fediverse.
Tay gently pushed the plastic door of the printer shut with an edifying "click".
Servicing Dark Printers had been illegal for years now. They enjoyed the seditious thrill.
It had started as a subscription grab after the printer companies tried hobbling third party toner cartridges.
"Subscribe for a monthly fee and you'll never run out of toner again."
"Let us monitor your printer so you don't have to."
People saw it for what it was - vendor lock in - but they had no choice really, not after all the printer companies started doing it.
Then came generative AI.
Everyone wanted to scrape every word ever written on the internet, tokenize it and feed it to an #LLM. #Reddit sold out, then #Tumblr, even open source darling #WordPress - selling out their user base for filthy token lucre.
So people started hiding their words, their art, their thoughts, their expression, not behind disrespected robots.txt, but through obscurity.
Rejecting Website Boy's "fewer algorithmic fanfares", they forked into the Dark Fedi.
Unscrapeable, unscrutable, ungovernable.
But people had forgotten about the printers.
The printers had to be connected 24/7, for "monitoring".
But you could tokenize postscript as easily as HTML.
And so every time a document was sent to a printer, it was harvested for tokens. Even secure documents. Documents not online.
Tay shut the metal door behind them, Dark Printer cossetted safely in its Faraday cage, and shuffled the hot stack of A4 paper it had borne.
It was a children's story, about how words were sacred, and special, and how you had to earn the right to use them.
If you're on Tumblr, the AI scraping is being rolled out NOW NOW NOW.
You can turn on 'Prevent third-party sharing for [blog name]' to opt out.
You have to do this for each blog individually. It wasn't there for me at first, but when I navigated to my blog settings via View blog it updated - don't know if that was coincidence. Anyway:
On web: select Account > Your blog > View blog > Blog Settings
I'm off to see if there's anything I can do on WP. #tumblr
Keep criticising Matt Mullenweg. But please don't throw those of us who have worked for him and on the #WordPress project in various capacities under the bus.
Many of us not only dislike the guy, but have been hurt by him in one way or another.
But for some of us, WP is our livelihood.
Self-host your website outside of WordPress.com. There's plenty of hosting providers out there who support the open source WordPress ecosystem without involving MM or Automattic Inc.
Wow it gets worse. This is a post from someone who used to work at Tumblr talking about Matt Mullenweg:
"A disproportionate amount of queer people have been fired or forced to leave in the last year, bc he has personally been sending messages pressuring all leads to pick a "weak link" and going on about culture fit in ways that are fucking loaded."
Bluesky will remove their login wall next week: all profiles will be available to non-logged users. Accounts can opt-out of this but will still be public through ATproto federation (like they currently are).
Threads will launch in EU on December 14th, most likely at the same time the "delete account" feature is deployed to fit EU's privacy laws.
Tumblr reaffirmed their commitment to federate with ActivityPub, despite not expecting a big audience boost from it.
I don't like the use of the word "fight" here, but this is a good overview of the issues and what's at stake.
Money quote: "Soon, Meta’s Threads app plans to become interoperable with ActivityPub networks like Mastodon. Flipboard and #Automattic, owner of #WordPressDotCom and #tumblr are also betting on ActivityPub."
Both Threads and Tumblr have publicly stated that they are planning on joining the fediverse, and from both companies we received some more information this week.
Threads held a meeting, titled “Meta’s Threads Interoperating in the Fediverse Data Dialogue” with various people who are active in the fediverse in some ways. Johannes Ernst shared extensive notes of the meeting, which are worth reading. Some of the items that stand out to me, based on these notes:
Meta’s decision to roll out federation in a step-by-step approach makes a lot of sense from a technical perspective, but does have a major cultural challenge. Many people already distrust Meta, and an implementation that starts with only partial federation of one or two features will likely increase, not decrease trust in Meta. Combating this will require significantly more open communication to the entire community; as Meta again risks increasing distrust in the community by only partially communicating to only some people within the fediverse community.
According to Johannes Ernst, Meta could not provide a clear answer to the main question as to why the fediverse integration is happening, and what has changed at Meta that the company is now touting openness as a strategy. A lot of the distrust around Meta revolves around a lack of clarity of the motives of the company, and it seems so far that it is difficult for the company to produce a clear and concise answer.
Tumblr is still working on it
Tumblr also confirmed that the fediverse is still being worked on. Over a year ago, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg made a statement that Tumblr would “soon” add ActivityPub support. During the year, not much news came about, and over the summer an engineer for Tumblr claimed that the project got cancelled quickly after the announcement. Now, Sarah Perez reports that Tumblr did move over someone to work on the project, but that Mullenweg also cautioned that they have not seen outsized user demand yet for federation.
I agree with Sarah’s take, that “reading between the lines, it seems the company isn’t ready to place a full bet on ActivityPub”.
Just spent 40 minutes writing a response to #Tumblr staff regarding Matt Mullenweg's recent behaviour, and how Tumblr overall fails the LGBTQ+ community that is so essential to their continued existence.
Yeah, it is not the same as Tumblr embracing the #Fediverse, but it is a temporary solution until Tumblr figures out how to inexpensively embrace #ActivityPub (I suggested via email to make Fediverse support a premium feature but Tumblr did not like the idea).
He is currently doing a live stream for Tumblr users, and in response to an epileptic user asking if there could be a standard to prevent vibrant, strobing ads as they’re a seizure risk, he made some vague noises like “yeah I guess” then instantly uggested that the user buy the no-ad upgrade.
The latest drama is that Automattic is about to sign a deal with OpenAI to train AI on WordPress.com and Tumblr content.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. Everyone also conveniently forgot to even mention that OpenAI probably already had crawled most if not all of WP and Tumbler.
Automattic also allows users to opt out and that fueled the Opt Out/Consent discussion that started a bit earlier. I’ll get to it later.
Just the day before (or it feels like it) Google signed a deal with Reddit to get all the data to train their AI.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. Everyone also conveniently forgot to even mention that Google of all corps probably already had crawled most if not all of Reddit. The $60M Google paid is a convenience fee to get a nice db bump instead of having to scrap and clean up all that text.
Reddit doesn't let user to Opt Out.
Last week (or it feels like it) one guy wanted to bridge public toots from Mastodon to bluesky.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. Everyone also conveniently forgot to even mention that people could read those toots just using a different client or a browser. All the bridge did was bring toots to a different audience and allowed them to engage with those toots.
The bride also allows people to opt out and that rekindled the Opt Out/Consent discussion that started a bit earlier. I’ll get to it later.
Some time last year a guy built a Fediverse search engine because discovery between instances is terrible.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. Everyone also conveniently forgot to even mention that most toots are indexed by big search engines anyway but because they rank low they just rarely surface in the results.
The search engine also allowed people to opt out and that kinda started the Opt Out/Consent discussion. I’ll get to it in a bit.
Some time later a completely unrelated thing happened. Discord decided that they won’t let people hotlink images uploaded to Discord.
Everyone’s got very angry about it. But also this time people didn’t forget to mention that you shouldn’t use discord for anything you don’t want to lose. Thing like lore, documentation and basically anything that can be useful 5 minutes after it was said better be somewhere else. The reason is Discord servers are private in the sense that you have to use a specific piece of software with an account to access it. Anything posted there is not accessible outside, including through a search engine.
While all this was going on quite a few people in seemingly unrelated fashion were expressing dissatisfaction with interactions they were having on Mastodon. Specifically they were angry about certain types of replies they were getting. The replies were not threatening or insulting but they were not welcome in a way that I’m having trouble articulating. The most common case I saw is someone would post something open-ended or state a problem they have and they would get a bunch of suggestions how to possibly solve it or people sharing their experience either affirming the problem or otherwise.
Some people got very angry about this. They also conveniently forgot to even notice that this is a non-standard arrangement and they want to Opt Out of the more common case provided by the platform.
So finally we’re at the Opt Out. There’s a lot of different takes but the main thrust is that things should be Opt In instead of the other way around. And I agree. Where I don’t agree is that you all Opt In when you post stuff publicly on the internet. Once you do you set your thing free into the world. You resign control over it. You do not expect to opt in to every single read on your blog. If you want to control who access what you write you don’t post it on the internet in public, you send it in private. Consequently you do not retroactively revoke access. You all know that internet never forgets. You can’t unpublished things on the internet. It was already copied, screenshotted, and archived. And you didn’t know what happens to it unless you’re told.