Eugen RochkoDec 13, 2019

So the Verge article for which I wrote some thoughts about Jack Dorsey announcing #Bluesky is out and it used only a few sentences from what I came up with, so I wanna share the full thing...

I was asked, if Twitter did indeed adopt #ActivityPub instead of coming up with something new, would it be better or worse for the decentralized social web?

Show threadEugen RochkoDec 13, 2019
One commonly mentioned danger of a large corporate player like Twitter coming into the decentralized social world is the Embrace-Extend-Extinguish tactic, wherein one entity adopts a common protocol, and once it acquires a large marketshare then makes itself incompatible through custom changes, locking its users in and leaving the common protocol for dead.
Show threadEugen RochkoDec 13, 2019
Something like this happened to another federated/decentralized technology, XMPP. XMPP was used by Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Google Talk to power instant messaging, then one by one those platforms disabled federation features and now barely anybody still uses XMPP. People fear something similar is going to happen to e-mail through GMail.
Show threadEugen RochkoDec 13, 2019
However, I think that in our case such a scenario is highly unlikely. First of all, the order of events is reversed--ActivityPub and Mastodon have been built after Twitter, as improvements over Twitter, and the current, not insignificant userbase has specifically left Twitter over bad features, management, or misaligned incentives, so there is essentially no risk of losing that userbase back to Twitter even if it joined the space.
Show threadEugen RochkoDec 13, 2019
A lot of what makes Mastodon's model attractive depends on smaller nodes being better, so it would not have an edge in attracting new users either. So, I think we only have something to gain.
Show threadEugen RochkoDec 13, 2019
I think Twitter adopting ActivityPub would be a good thing and a victory for the web. Twitter's current lock-in on its users is its strength, and weaking that lock-in by embracing decentralization would remove essentially all network effects-based obstacles to people moving away from it and spreading out in the fediverse.
Show threadEugen Rochko
It would make non-Twitter social media providers like Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed and others more competetive, since they offer a better experience not motivated by corporate interests and can explore more sustainable and ethical business models. Twitter adopting ActivityPub would also be incredible validation of everything we've been working towards and lead to more platforms joining the decentralized social web and more exciting and innovative projects being created in this space.
Dec 13, 2019 at 2:25amWeb
Show threadJo/JyothiDec 13, 2019

@Gargron

"Twitter adopting ActivityPub would also be incredible validation of everything we've been working towards "...

Used exactly this argument to someone who was mocking the move of some of us to Mastodon.

Show threadmoving to blogold.xyz/users/blakeDec 18, 2019
@KnottedBow
Twitter complains because of the Gab thing.
@Gargron
Show threadpranitDec 13, 2019
@Gargron I really doubt it. At the end of the day, users want simplicity. ActivityPub is too complicated for most people to understand. Hell, it took me some googling to figure out how to use mastodon! The average user doesn't put in so much effort.
Facebook, twitter, tiktok succeeded because they are very simple to use. It will be hard for a decentralised network to provide ease of use.
Show threadmoving to blogold.xyz/users/blakeDec 18, 2019
@pranit
Also why certain instances get a lot of members.
@Gargron