Taggart Dec 13, 2023
There are basically two irreconcilable camps in the Threads debate here.

- Camp 1, understandably, wants nothing to do with Meta and view them as an existential threat to the Fediverse for plenty of well-precedented reasons.

- Camp 2, also understandably, sees potential in connecting a managed platform that appeals to entities like news outlets and other services to the Fediverse, enabling us to access that information without requiring an account on a Meta-owned platform.

Camp 1 will not cede ground because they view the issue as existential.

Camp 2 will, I dunno, deal with it or move to a server where they can see what they want to see?

But given the scale of Threads already, widespread blocking of it will create a pretty noticeably weird gap in the federation graph, and make onboarding for new potential Fedi users even more confusing. That part, by itself, kinda sucks.
Show threadDemocracy Dies in DumbassDec 13, 2023
@mttaggart My worry is that once Meta gets it's feelers into ActivityPub, they'll user their size and power to start demanding/coercing incremental changes in the way ActivityPub works to fit their needs...And their needs are, and always will be, directly related to the acquisition of money/wealth.
Show threadTaggart Dec 13, 2023
@ShredderFeeder I do not believe size and power have a lot of impact on ActivityPub's governance, but I can't speak with authority on that.
Show threadRaptor Dec 13, 2023
@mttaggart @ShredderFeeder as we've seen before though if you're a large enough majority of some piece of tech (web browsers, etc) you become de-facto standard even if you're not playing nice. We could very well see the situation a year or two in where threads starts adding their own extensions and the choice for other servers is comply or defed, pissing off their users who won't understand why they suddenly lost 3/4 their friends list.
Show threadTaggart Dec 13, 2023
@raptor85 @ShredderFeeder Is it the case now that Fedi servers must implement every aspect of ActivityPub?
Show threadRaptor Dec 14, 2023
@mttaggart @ShredderFeeder not exactly, the problem is breaking changes, and there's often monetary incentive to make breaking changes. Say at some point all threads posts require a new field they want to use for tracking/etc on all posts, and their service rejects if it's not there or incorrect. It's not "required" but you effectively can't communicate with threads without it, so any servers not wanting to defed will HAVE to include it. Basically the ActiveX strategy.
Show threadTaggart 
@raptor85 @ShredderFeeder Again, I am not part of ActivityPub governance, so I can't speak with any authority. It may be a risk, but I also think it is simply too early to know how exactly Meta intends to make use of ActivityPub. For all we know, it's entirely a move to avoid antitrust litigation in the EU.
Dec 14, 2023 at 1:13amWeb
Show threadBinary Large OctopusDec 14, 2023
@mttaggart
You might want to read up an insiders view on this: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
I think there is good reason to keep them away with a stick.
@raptor85 @ShredderFeeder
How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.

Show threadRaptor Dec 14, 2023
@bloc @mttaggart @ShredderFeeder yep, this has been a common tactic in the proprietary software world forever, every time a big proprietary software giant "Embraces" an open source protocol it's generally pretty quickly followed by the next two steps, "Extend" and "Extinguish". Microsoft even coined it as a strategy, embrace than extend open standards with proprietary extensions in order to phase out competition.
Show threadTaggart Dec 14, 2023
@raptor85 @bloc @ShredderFeeder I would really, really, really like it if someone using EEE could find an example that wasn't XMPP.

It's the only one I ever see, and a single event does not a pattern make.
Show threadRaptor Dec 14, 2023

@mttaggart @bloc @ShredderFeeder
1. Web Browsers (IE/NetScape, IE had HTML extensions that when used broke pages in other browsers, and extensions like activex that could only run in IE that they pushed hard). They killed SO many browsers and held de-facto monopoly of the internet for a LONG time

2. Java was almost entirely killed by MS's extensions that made java applications ONLY compatible with windows, ironically google more or less saved it with android

1/X

Show threadRaptor Dec 15, 2023

@mttaggart @bloc @ShredderFeeder 3. Messenger apps, mostl used to use the same protocol, microsoft as well, they started including msn messenger with windows, extended the protocol, then cut off AOL and all the other third parties.

4. Office Docs/XML, extended to rely on windows components to render correctly

5. RSS, google reader gained super-majority of the market, killed off all competition, pushed integration to their other products, then killed it off, nearly killing RSS entirely.

2/X

Show threadTaggart Dec 15, 2023
@raptor85 @bloc @ShredderFeeder Thank you! I really appreciate the time you took to respond; I learned a lot.
Show threadRaptor Dec 15, 2023

@mttaggart @bloc @ShredderFeeder 6. IRC, Slack integrated IRC, gave it multimedia extensions, became an EXTREMELY popular client for it, then killed IRC support migrating to their own proprietary protocol.

7. kerberos, microsoft extended the protocol to break support of standards compliant implementations on linux/unix systems.

and the list goes on and on, obviously microsoft has long been the biggest user of the strategy, all the way back to lotus notes :/