Mastodawn

ʎllnɔs Jun 19, 2023

@daringfireball it’s not the people/users I am concerned about. I don’t trust Meta to be good neighbors. They have proven themselves untrustworthy so many times.

Also weren’t you also in the wait and see about Twitter after the Musk purchase?

Mark Gardner Jun 19, 2023

@daringfireball @gruber “Is the goal of the #Fediverse to be #AntiCorporate?”

A lot of instances are set up explicitly so, and there are many vocal users both on those instances and elsewhere.

Dip into posts on #politics or #economics (or even as an undercurrent to a lot of other posts) and you’ll find some very extreme #lefitist and #AntiCapitalist rhetoric. It can seem like the fediverse skews far-#left the same way “#AltTech” platforms skew far-#right.

Colman Reilly Jun 19, 2023

@mjgardner @daringfireball @gruber it’s not American dominated, if that’s what you mean.

Mark Gardner Jun 19, 2023

@Colman @daringfireball @gruber America doesn’t have a monopoly on far-right extremism

sgo Jun 20, 2023

@mjgardner @Colman @daringfireball @gruber In the western hemisphere you kinda do. There are a couple authoritarian ruled countries that are quite bad (Turkey, Hungary, some Latin American countries), but in the US a great percentage basically freely supports far right agendas. So by scale, you do have the biggest share.

eobet Jun 20, 2023

@mjgardner @daringfireball @gruber I’m hoping the answer is a resounding “yes”! At least, that’s why I’m here. Corporations are cancer.

Kornel Jun 19, 2023

@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.

Vile Lasagna Jun 19, 2023

@kornel @daringfireball This.

Companies aren't interested in "joining" these types of spaces, they want to colonise them which, historically, does not end well for the colonised

Craig Grannell Jun 20, 2023

@VileLasagna @kornel @daringfireball So the option is one join, Mastodon never really gains fully popular support, and maybe a Meta product takes over but is a fully walled garden. I’m not sure how that benefits the world. (Also, where do we draw the line? Is Tumblr OK? Flickr? Flipboard? Etc.)

Adrian Häußler-Möhring Jun 19, 2023

@kornel What do you mean by Gmail dictating who can use SMTP?
Also, did Gmail make SMTP worse? Did GitHub make git worse?

Kornel Jun 19, 2023

@adrianhaus a mail server that can't deliver emails to gmail users is not very useful. SMTP sucks on its own, so not really Google's fault, but operating a server requires enormous effort to maintain "reputation", "deliverabiliy", and keep Gmail happy. If Gmail shuns you, it's game over. No support. No recourse. You may as well shut it down.

Adrian Häußler-Möhring Jun 20, 2023

@kornel So are you saying that ActivityPub sucks as well, especially at fighting spam, and you’re worried that a big player like Meta might implement a similar “reputation” system? Or are they just gonna do so because they are evil? I understand your sentiment, but the Gmail comparison doesn’t make sense to me

Naman Jun 19, 2023

@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!

ocdtrekkie Jun 19, 2023

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball The issue is that the people fighting this *want* to remain niche and special and apart from everyone else on their small superior network.

Naman Jun 19, 2023

@ocdtrekkie @kornel @daringfireball Why are they even on a platform like Mastodon then? They should just use a private group chat and remain cut off from the larger world.

ocdtrekkie Jun 19, 2023

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball Some of the servers have done that! I used to follow someone on weirder.earth but they have defederated from basically ALL larger servers entirely. Every server with over 10,000 users is on their block list.

Kornel Jun 19, 2023

@nmn @ocdtrekkie @daringfireball To me Mastodon is about focusing on building communities, rather than chasing the startup game of hockey stick growth. That's why defederation happens.
More users is not automatically better if they're not users sharing your values and adding to your community. They can just be a liability for moderation and scaling traffic without infrastructure expenditure on Facebook's scale.

@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.

ocdtrekkie Jun 20, 2023

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball 💯

Shutting out normal users is the "I got mine, \*\*\*\* you" mentality at its best.

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball When the mainstream supports genocide I want to remain weird.

@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”.

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball If the product owner knew their actions were doing damage and did nothing to stop it then they support genocide. This is exactly what FB did.

@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 @kornel @daringfireball Seriously? These circumstances are not the same.

@Oozenet @kornel @daringfireball

Dźwiedziu Jun 20, 2023

@nmn
You seem to be miss the “open source” part of this conversation.

@dzwiedziu @Oozenet @kornel @daringfireball You seem to missing the context around this statement. It’s a purposely stupid statement.

@Oozenet @kornel @daringfireball

Dźwiedziu Jun 20, 2023

@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.

Austin (=> @[email protected])Jun 20, 2023

@nmn @Oozenet @kornel @daringfireball They did not “choose to do nothing": there’s nothing they can do. The software is already licensed FOSS, so they can’t prevent Truth Social from using it. Truth Social wasn’t federating, so blocking it is pointless.

Andres Jalinton Jun 20, 2023

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball
It's funny you bring Gmail as an example of how a service makes a protocol "mainstream", while normal email servers get blocked every minute by them and people doesn't know what SMTP is or how to have their own domain for their email without paying to Google monthly for the service.
The result is users getting the notification "you are still using a legacy insecure connection, switch to the better web experience" aka ditch SMTP.

@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 Jalinton Jun 20, 2023

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball
Sorry, english is not my first language and I misread part of it.
My preoccupation comes from the fact that Meta is already a hostile network and allowing it to federate will hurt users that come here looking for a safe place.
Federating with 2.36 Billion people will only cause more stress to moderators.

@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.

Andres Jalinton Jun 20, 2023

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball
Personally I don't care if they become the next Facebook with 7 Billion users, I only care about moderators here and the people that are here because they feel secure.

Jim Gardner Jun 20, 2023

@nmn I looked at your timeline, Naman, to get a bit more context about who you are. I’m a bit confused. Do you really believe people should be waiting to see if Meta is a “bad actor” when you yourself have posted that “All corporations will try to own everything and only chase money”? Do you really not consider their past behaviour as a strong enough warning? They also bought instagram because it was too much of a threat. What kind of tactics do you think they will use here?

@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…

Jim Gardner Jun 20, 2023

@nmn How does defederating help them destroy the fediverse?

@nmn @Andres @kornel @daringfireball

Felix Jun 20, 2023

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

Otto Rask Jun 20, 2023

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball why does Mastodon have to go mainstream?

Larry Garfield Jun 20, 2023

@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

Otto Rask Jun 20, 2023

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. :)

Larry Garfield Jun 20, 2023

@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.

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball Meta needs AP because the whole point of it is busting the protocol after taking on Twitter and BlueSky.

@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

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball that's the same rhetoric that was used to welcome Facebook and Google federating their instant messaging platforms with XMPP. And we know how that ended. Are you looking for the same thing happening to ActivityPub?

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball preemptive blocking *is* the correct defense here, because of nobody federates with them, their use of AP is irrelevant and they can't rug pull to bust it.

@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.

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball

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?

Georgimus Prime Jun 20, 2023

@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.

@nmn @kornel @daringfireball

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 In that case XMPP was already dead. If FB and Google were the only ones keeping it alive.