That said, I don’t mind Post adding ActivityPub integration.

Just acknowledging Mastodon means that their walled garden is compromised. And actually adding compatibility with the Fediverse means they need us to survive.

Make no bones about it.

As the Fediverse grows, it will be harder and harder for social media startups to build their network effect from scratch. Why do it when ~12 million people already use an ActivityPub compatible app?

This is the audience that Post is missing out on.

Post is already implying that their monthly active users (MAUs) are at near parity with Mastodon’s.

However:

1. Due to decentralization, any report of Mastodon’s MAUs is speculative whereas due to centralization, Post’s are not

2. Whatever the stats on MAUs, there’s more conversation happening on the Fediverse than on Post

Post’s MAUs are not comparable to Mastodon’s MAUs.

So from a functional perspective, what does it matter how many people have a Post account?

Most people on Post don’t say anything. Mass media conglomerates might like this about Post—since they generally don’t like it when the “riff raff” have opinions—but I don’t like so-called social media focused on consumption.

Personally, I write to converse—not to feed “content” to a hypothetical lurker.

Let’s call a spade a spade. If Post could exist without the Fediverse, their VC backers would be over the moon.

It would mean that Post could subsist as a walled garden.

But just in the last week, Mastodon added 300,000 new accounts. Momentum for ActivityPub isn’t slowing down, it’s picking up.

At what point does the Fediverse become impossible to ignore?

It amuses me how the likes of Post acknowledge that decentralization is the future of social media but they’re not going to adopt it yet because they don’t know which protocol will “win”.

It doesn’t matter which protocol wins. It makes no difference if it’s ActivityPub or AT Protocol (Bluesky) or IMAP/SMTP.

What matters is that a social media message gets treated as a message.

Hence, interoperability.

ActivityPub isn’t perfect but it offers interoperability right now.

@atomicpoet :lol: at the idea of a single winning protocol in federated social.

We can't even get one of POP or IMAP to die and it's been 50 years.