@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!
@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*.
@craiggrannell @oblomov @kornel @daringfireball This is also how you get more “normal” people to come over to Mastodon. They see all your posts coming from “mastodon.social” and they instantly get how federation works!
If they get annoyed by something that Meta does, they’ll try out Mastodon themselves. You could even tell them how nice Ice Cubes is!
@nmn @craiggrannell @kornel @daringfireball
Wishful thinking. Most people on larger Mastodon instances aren't even aware of the larger Fediverse. Even your insistence of talking about Mastodon is a strong indicator of that. What exactly make you think that it will be any different on Meta's server?
@nmn @craiggrannell @kornel @daringfireball
There's less than 2M of active users now. They won't influence any meaningful portion of the Meta users.
@oblomov @craiggrannell @kornel @daringfireball When federated, users can be influenced in either directions. But if you can communicate across the two platforms, the main reason for switching will be user experience, features etc.
If you defederate, you add the social graph to that calculus, and then Mastodon is at a clear disadvantage.
@nmn @craiggrannell @kornel @daringfireball
Federation will do absolutely nothing to bring people from Meta to the greater Fediverse regardless of experience and features. We see it even now with people sticking to Mastodon despite their long-requested features being available on other Fediverse platforms already.
Preemptive blocking prevents Meta's rug pull.
@oblomov @craiggrannell @kornel @daringfireball Preemptive blocking just does a preemptive self-rug pull.
People stick to Mastodon because this is where the people. People go where the people they care about are.
—-
All these other platforms that have features that Mastodon is missing? There’s no awesome apps for them. Mastodon has the superior user experience today.
@craiggrannell @nmn @kornel @daringfireball
So what happens when (not if, when) Meta itself pulls the plug, defederating from the rest of the network a few years down the line?
@oblomov @nmn @kornel @daringfireball
1. Who’s to say it would?
2. If it did defederate, Mastodon would… still exist. As would Tumblr, Flickr, Clipboard, etc.
It’s not like the EU stopped existing when the UK was stupid enough to remove itself.
@craiggrannell @nmn @kornel @daringfireball
1. History, that some are apparently unable to learn from.
2. Oh yeah, like XMPP still exists.
@oblomov @craiggrannell @kornel @daringfireball I will accept that Meta would defederate if it got all the users. So prevent that from happening. Build a great user experience and a welcoming community so that people choose Mastodon over their thing.
You defederate and you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
@nmn @craiggrannell @kornel @daringfireball
You cannot prevent Meta from defederating, and the welcoming community is already here. Not federating a with known bad actors such as genocidal corporation is what makes it a welcoming community. Are you pissed off that Gab is defederated too?
@modulusshift @oblomov @kornel @daringfireball I understand how it works. You missed the rest of point. Defederating jumps you directly to the “you only get any experience on their instance” step. So yeah, it’s counter-productive.
Many apps are being built on AP that are “extending” in all sorts of different ways already. These other apps will just have to compete with Meta.
@nmn inasmuch as this instance is part of the fediverse, sure. I doubt it will be in practice, so much as a parasitic blob that incidentally connects to the fediverse just enough to suck it dry.
in short: I don't think it's going to make using the broader fediverse any better, and I suspect it's going to eventually attempt to kill it like any centralized-brain company would.
Daring Fireball
Kornel
Naman
Oblomov
Georgimus Prime
(car '(potato lisper))
Craig Grannell
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