@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
@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 @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?
Daring Fireball
Kornel
Naman
Oblomov
Craig Grannell