I've seen a bit of discussion lately about Mastodon's AUTHORIZED_FETCH and DISALLOW_UNAUTHENTICATED_API_ACCESS settings and since I had a hard enough time myself figuring out what they do based on the documentation and Discord comments, I wrote up what I hope is a more approachable explanation.
This is important reading. What Google did to the open XMPP messaging protocol -- adopting and then poisoning it -- is an object lesson as the fediverse ponders Facebook/Meta entry.
I'm still leery of pre-emptively blocking Meta here, but we need to be absolutely clear on what's at risk -- and ready to instantly respond if they try to take over.
@privacat@tokyo_0@Daojoan@dangillmor You're setting up an analogy like the ones made about GNU/Linux in the past. There may be some snobbery and elitism among techie communities but it is not everyone. Also the Fediverse does not have technical barriers that require special expertise to join in as a normal user. Your analogy does not hold water for the status of "big social" versus the Fediverse. The XMPP and OOXML example might not apply 100% but it shows the standard tactics used.
@RyunoKi In this case I don't think we can be isolated. Maybe in the eyes of some people but these are the same ones who mocked the fediverse (and GNU/Linux and FOSS and Creative Commons...) for being nerdy outliers in the first place. We may not have the loudest voices but we plod on and we have built a good federated community that doesn't really care about big numbers and corporate branding anyway.
@owncast I am trying to verify my owncast site with my mastodon account (to get the green box around it). I put the link code in the header of the "index.html" but it hasn't verified. Is there somewhere else I should be putting it?