@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!

@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. :)