Christina WarrenSo the new Instagram text thing is reported to have ActivityPub support and instead of being happy at all the new labor that could potentially be coming to the standard, Mastodon people are now actively encouraging instances to not federate with any of that stuff. K.
Look, instance admins can block whatever they want for any reason they want. It hurts your users but do you. And I'm not trying to argue that Facebook isn't a fucked up company. But actively working to discourage extremely skilled participants (and love them for hate them, FB engineers are VERY good) from contributing or associating with your open source protocol or community is just peak stupidity for people who claim in the same breath to want to remake and reset the social web.
Thom Holwerda@film_girl Facebook: *enables Trump, Rohingya genocide, etc.*
Mastodon admins: "Some of us would like to not associate with this company."
US tech media: "Won't someone think of the poor Facebook engineers!"
I fucking hate this timeline.
@thomholwerda so don't federate them if you want -- fine! But then don't bitch and moan that no one uses your protocol or services.
@film_girl I think the point that a lot of - especially Americans, for some reason - don't seem to get is that a lot of people would rather have a smaller social network but with fewer horrible people than a bigger social network but with way more horrible people.
We let the corporations try social media, and they all fucked up. Every single one of them. Why are so many of you so desperate to keep repeating the same mistakes?
@thomholwerda I think that is completely and totally fine. But then don't call it an open standard, one, if you're going to gatekeep and pitch fits over anyone who uses it (and this goes for all OSS btw, it's open or it isn’t, things. Things like the ethical source movement are not open and I wish they'd at least lean into that), and two, if you want it small, don't complain when it is small.
censored for “transphobia”@film_girl @thomholwerda Small is not the goal. It’s a side-effect of ethical infra free from #technoFeudalists. The side-effect can only be lessened by getting more ppl to prioritize the community over techno feudalism’s giant #walledGardens.
The masses will always be unethical. Poaching bits of the beast is our best move.
(pic below swiped from @riley¹)
① https://freeradical.zone/@riley@social.audiovalentine.com/110352758495629075
@riley @thomholwerda @film_girl #ActivityPub is an open standard b/c the protocol is transparent & everyone is welcome to use it. It does not mean /open borders/ of content intersecting all communities.
@koherecoWatchdog @riley @thomholwerda I never argued otherwise. I’ve seen a lot of commentary from people trying to figure out how to preemptively prevent companies they don’t like from using the protocol at all, however (and didn’t we already do this years ago?), and that that is absolutely antithetical to open source.
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog @riley It really isn't, though. The ability to control who your instance federates with is a core tenant of Mastodon and AP. That has nothing to do with open source. Hell, tons of open source software has the ability to limit who uses it, from forum software to blogging platforms. Are you going to argue that a blog blocking people from commenting is antithetical to open source?
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog @riley not in the slightest! That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying people who are actively trying to prevent people they don’t like from using the protocol at all (of course they don’t have to federate) is antithetical to license. There are two different things here. One is reasonable: choose who you want to federate with. One is not: dictate who is allowed to use the software at all.
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog @riley But they're not doing that? Anybody is free to express they don't want instances federating with Facebook. That's not preventing anyone from doing anything. Nobody has the power to stop Facebook from using AP.
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog @riley of course they don’t! That doesn’t stop people that should be smart enough to know better from bitching about it and trying to come up with Trojan horses anyway!
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog @riley I mean, Facebook employing a Trojan horse/EEE isn't exactly far-fetched. I think it is entirely reasonable to be wary and thus call for not cooperating with their servers?
@thomholwerda @koherecoWatchdog @riley I think it’s reasonable to look at what they do and be cautious. I think it is unreasonable to lobby for every server admin to defederate before we even see what this looks like. But honestly, this is so dumb b/c it is very unlikely Instatext or whatever will even gain traction. My problem is the instant knee-jerk reaction to any attempt of a non-ideologically driven entity joining the Fedi while also complaining about competing protocols stealing attention
@film_girl @koherecoWatchdog @riley Oh for sure! I personally haven't seen much complaining though - just a lot of puzzlement about why the short BlueSky flurry happened. It seemed... Staged and planned as hell, and that surely had people wonder.
Especially since nobody is talking about BlueSky anymore now and we're all on with our lives as if it didn't even happen.