@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.
Daring Fireball
Kornel
Naman
ocdtrekkie