@daringfireball Openness isn’t merely a protocol thing. It’s a delicate power balance.
When an entity larger than all other combined joins, it may become "too big to fail" and start dictating terms.
Gmail unilaterally dictates who can use SMTP. GitHub became the center of decentralised git. Systems tend to centralise.
@kornel @daringfireball Yes, and the way to fight with GMail isn’t to “block” gmail from other email services. That hurts the other email services, not Gmail.
Meta’s threads doesn’t *need* ActivityPub. It has Instagram’s far larger network. Blocking them from your mastodon instance only hurts you, not them. It resigns Mastodon to forever being that weird niche rather than part of the mainstream.
Integrate and use it to make yourself mainstream!
@kornel @ocdtrekkie @daringfireball Yeah. But by being exclusive and locking out companies and “normal” users you’re not building communities.
No one is asking Mastodon to spend millions in marketing and “customer acquisition” and shit. We’re simply asking to remain an open platform. If your first reaction to a company building on the protocol is to “ban them”, you’re no better than the Twitters and Reddits of the world.
@kornel @ocdtrekkie @daringfireball If Meta’s threads really becomes a burden and brings negativity overall, instances can block it then on a case by case basis.
Deciding what’s best for their own communities. Doing that preemptively and running campaigns asking other communities to do the same is what’s wrong with this whole thing.
@nmn @kornel @daringfireball 💯
Shutting out normal users is the "I got mine, \*\*\*\* you" mentality at its best.
@Oozenet @kornel @daringfireball That argument is no different from saying that Mastodon support the Alt-right because Gab, Truth Social etc are built on Mastodon.
Just because a product, due to incompetence, was used by fascists to commit genocide, it doesn’t mean that the project owners “support genocide”.
@Oozenet @kornel @daringfireball You can again say the same about Mastodon. All of Truth Social exists today and is actively causing damage.
Talking about Facebook, it was basically the only non-government controlled media platform in all of Myanmar. A large percentage of the content on it was propaganda. But 100% of the content elsewhere was propaganda.
It’s not so simple.
@nmn @kornel @daringfireball It is super simple. FB knew what was happening and chose to do nothing about it because $.
I am not federating with Truth social either.
@Oozenet @kornel @daringfireball “It’s simple, Mastodon (the company) knows what’s happening using its code on Truth Social and is choosing to do nothing.”
How smart does that sound?
@nmn
You seem to be miss the “open source” part of this conversation.
@nmn
Yes, it's stupid, because Mastodon, by open-sourcing the code, gave up some control over the software.
Meta is a vertically integrated platform, which doesn't want to give up any control. And has a profit motive for not moderating content.
And finally: technology does not solve social problems by itself.
Gab and “Truth” social, exist not because of Mastodon, but because of people wanting to be despicable. See 4*han derivatives and K*wi F*rms.
@Andres @kornel @daringfireball Did you read what I wrote? I never said that Gmail makes a protocol mainstream. I said that if a big actor becomes a threat to a protocol, cutting them off is counter productive.
You have to build better experiences. Convince people to switch and use the fact that your compatible with said big service to help your arguments.
If you cut them off, you lose, because they have the money and marketing.
@Andres @kornel @daringfireball Threads won’t have 2.36 Billion people when it launches. It’ll ramp up like any other service.
You may think that you can prevent them from taking off if you de-federate early, but they don’t need ActivityPub to succeed.
The Fediverse on the other hand can use the integration to lure people away from Meta and to Mastodon, Pixelfed etc.
If they’re a bad actor after launch, by all means, take action.
@jimgar I have never made the argument that Meta won’t try to engulf the fediverse. I’m saying that defederating is counter productive and will only help them destroy the Fediverse.
Meta is a big opponent. Let them integrate and then fight to get users to switch to Mastodon and build awesome experiences to keep them here.
De-federate and you immediately lose since you’re then competing on social graph and not user experience.
I’ve written all this before…
@nmn @Andres @kornel @daringfireball
I think the fear here stems from the fact that facebook can do the same. When they integrate activity-pub, and then build something truly good, that might even move people away from the original fediverse. I dont thing that the fediverse has the resources to fight such a fight long term. Then we are back to a company destroying communities in the name of profit.
However, i agree that premature action is unwarranted.
Lets wait and see what actually happens
@ojrask @nmn @kornel @daringfireball For ActivityPub to achieve the goal of a federated, decentralized web, it has to be mainstream.
That's literally the definition of success: Lots of peer-instances talking over AP being the norm, not the exception. That is what "mainstream" means.
@Crell @nmn @kornel @daringfireball
OK now I'm not sure if we're talking about Mastodon the app, fediverse the concept, or AP the protocol?
I'm all in for making AP mainstream and to make fediverse an easier default for new websites to participate in, but Mastodon and other individual apps in my opinion should not become too big on their own, let alone singular servers. :)
@ojrask @nmn @kornel @daringfireball Mastodon being too big is a separate question, and the best answer there is kbin. :-)
But there will be big servers. That is unavoidable. It *will* happen, alongside the smaller ones. We need to prepare for that.
@oblomov @kornel @daringfireball Let’s say that’s true. It’s plausible that Meta wants to do the whole “embrace, extend, extinguish” thing.
Defederating them early won’t fix anything. Meta has a huge user base. Threads doesn’t need AP to “bootstrap” content.
It will either steal users from Mastodon, or it won’t. De-federating will incentive more users to switch away from Mastodon. Integrating will let them stay because of the integration.
@oblomov @kornel @daringfireball On the other hand. Meta could bring a HUGE amount of awareness about AP and Mastodon and it could lead to a large number of people joining, if only to check things out.
Some users might even like the experience on Mastodon better. Ivory, Mona, Ice Cubes, Elk are all great apps which are likely much nicer to use than whatever Threads will be.
Integration will mean they’ll still be able to connect with their friends
@oblomov @kornel @daringfireball If nobody federates with them then users will have to go and create an account with them to connect with all the people there. Mastodon will become a separate silo and it’ll be competing on its social graph.
If it integrates, it can compete on user experience as Meta will have no social graph advantage.
I think mastodon has a much better chance of winning on user experience than social graph.
@nmn @kornel @daringfireball people will have to go and create n account with them anyway when Meta itself goes for the rug pull like they did with XMPP. You seem to forget we've been through this already. We know how it goes.
Also: keeping *known bad actors* away does not make a network of federated servers a silo: it makes it a healthy network. It's how Gab was kept at bay.
@oblomov @kornel @daringfireball Mobile killed xmpp not Google or Facebook.
If anything Gmail and Facebook kelp Xmpp alive a few extra years.
Bullshit. XMPP has developed extensions to make it mobile-ready, extensions that Google and Facebook *refused to implement*. Also XMPP is still “alive” in products like WhatsApp (is that mobile-ready enough for you?). But not as a federation protocol allowing people to connect across networks. Do you see the pattern here?
@oblomov @nmn @kornel @daringfireball Yes, there were definitely multiprotocol chat clients on Microsoft's PocketPC and Nokia's Symbian at the time, and lots of Java clients. XMPP Servers were also easy to set up and host compared to Mastodon & co.
I didn't understand why they fizzled out until I made sense of the "kiss of death" adoption by Google.
EDIT: a tpyo :)
EDIT: a tpyo :)
@georgeeyong @nmn @kornel @daringfireball
Google *and Facebook*. What's ridiculous about this whole thing is that the rhetoric being used now is *exactly the same* used at the time, and *the same frigging company* is trying to pull the *the same frigging trick*, and these guys actually believe it's going to go differently this time.
@oblomov @kornel @daringfireball It’s not about the technicality. XMPP died when the mobile-first chat apps like WhatsApp and iMessage came on the scene.
And you’re proving my point here. Being technically feasible doesn’t keep the protocol alive. When major products “implement” the open standard, that’s how it stays alive.
Meta is now choosing to implement the standard, and you’d rather AP die instead.
No, XMPP died when FB and Google decided to defederate instead of making it mobile-ready.
Meta is going to kill AP by “choosing” it now and then dropping it a few years down the line, if we let them into the Federation.
@oblomov @kornel @daringfireball “Hey the big company cut off the open protocol making the protocol irrelevant.”
“Let’s cut them off preemptively, and preemptively make our protocol irrelevant”
That's the thing you're missing: cutting them off preemptively does not make the protocol irrelevant, it bolsters the Fediverse as a network without genocidal corporations in it. And yes, I'm aware you don't actually care about that.
@oblomov @kornel @daringfireball How does it bolster the Fediverse? It cuts off this community from the much larger community. Turning this community into a weird niche. This in turn means people will be incentivized to join Threads just to be connected to the people there.
This makes the Fediverse meaningless over time. Like MySpace.
As things stand now, the Fediverse is characterized by not having genocidal corporations in it. Keeping it this way does not cut it off from anything because there is nothing to cut off.
And yes, people who are fine with genocidal corporations will stick to Meta services, that's their prerogative, but anybody leaving the private silos will find their place here. This is how it grew so much from the Twitter and Reddit migrations.
You're missing the point again: what killed XMPP was the Google and Facebook rug pull, which is exactly what Meta will do with ActivityPub if we let it federate.
No, they *became* XMPP the moment they were let into the federation, completely controlling the discourse about it by sheer size, which allowed them to kill it by simply dropping it.
Meta is aiming to do the same with ActivityPub. Currently the protocol is dominated by Mastodon, to the point that everybody talks about Mastodon rather than AP or the Fediverse. Meta federating means AP will be dominated by *them*, giving them the power to kill it by dropping it.
@oblomov @kornel @daringfireball We’re talking in circles. I’m tired of repeating the same arguments. I see your fears. I don’t deny them. I disagree with your solution. De-federating now is no different from the so called “rug pull”.
The only situation where your argument holds is for new corporate platforms built on AP where they’re dependent on AP for success today. But in those cases, you can predict who will be a bad actor in the future.
The thing is, you don't actually have any arguments. You just keep trying to deny processes that are well established in an attempt to downplay a very concrete risk, because ultimately you don't actually care about the protocol and are fine with giving power and control to genocidal corporations. That's your prerogative, but at least stop pretending that this is to ActivityPub's beneft.
@nmn @potato_lisper @kornel @daringfireball
Is this some kind of joke? Google and Facebook (the company, aka Meta now) killed XMPP by refusing to adopt the extensions that would have allowed its usage on mobile while keeping the federation, and you think *that* didn't kill the protocol?
@nmn @potato_lisper @kornel @daringfireball
I mean, you literally just said «they didn't kill the protocol, they killed the protocol».
@nmn @oblomov @kornel @daringfireball “Integration means they’ll still be able to connect with their friends”
Bingo. That’s what most people care about. Heck, that’s what a great many in the tech sphere care about. I’d love it if I could use Ice Cubes to chat with more people from my bow quite dispersed social graph and for Mastodon to be the sole place where I post. And if Meta’s thing became hideous, I could choose to block it *myself*.
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