In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway. They didn’t care about respecting a protocol they were not 100% in control. So they pulled the plug and announced they would not be federated anymore.
Basically keep people from using all the other platforms. Then stop supporting them. Similar like .docx never quite works in the open document editors. At least i refuse to believe that OSS devs are less skilled and motivated.
I’ve seen people bringing this up, but while they talk of EEE and XMPP, it seems like the analogy here is not being quite finished and formulated.
If we apply that to this, it seems like people are saying “if Meta changed the ActivityPub protocol to favor them and become incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse, Fediverse users would choose to return to Meta-owned platforms.”
And that’s what I’m questioning. Would you? Would you think others here would? I wouldn’t. I’d rather go to whatever fork Fediverse devs favor instead. If anything, all the fear being expressed every time Threads integration is brought up only emphasizes that this is not how it would play out
And that’s what I’m questioning. Would you? Would you think others here would? I wouldn’t. I’d rather go to whatever fork Fediverse devs favor instead. If anything, all the fear being expressed every time Threads integration is brought up only emphasizes that this is not how it would play out
The network effect can be strong. Say you’re now able to contact all your friends via your favourite Activitypub instance, you had to previously use Facebook.com or Threads or whatever but now they’re all here. You delete your Facebook and keep your Activitypub account to speak to all your friends who are on Threads.
Now Meta pulls the federation plug, or adds some feature that makes your Activitypub server not able to fully cooperate (Maybe you can talk, but you can’t video call anymore, or you can’t post GIF/images, whatever). Now what? All your friends are over there and getting annoyed with you. So… you eventually succumb and fire up a Threads account.
That’s no worse than you started. The fact remains nobody is going to get 100% coverage of their contact list on the fediverse without Meta, so trading a Facebook account for a threads account is no different, and it ignores the benefits of that time when you maybe able to live without either.
Right? I don’t know how to express any more clearly for the people who already are here that being here right now is the proof that there are people will choose a better platform over the most popular one. Unless they are admitting they are personally one temptation away from returning to Facebook.
I agree with you, I’m totally fine federating with them. If they choose to become incompatible with me, THEIR users will lose access to the content on the rest of the fediverse. They have an obligation to get ad revenue. If they can have someone else host the content, then use their interface to put ads and collect data on their users, it sounds like a win, as those users can still interact with me. If they really wanted to EEE and create incompatibilities, the rest of the ActivityPub instances just carry on as normal without supporting those extensions. The ecosystem already exists without the integration, so it’ll just go back to being separate again, exactly as it is now.
They don’t need to kill “every” lemmy/masto instance to kill the ecosystem. You just need to absorb enough of it that the only people left outside of your perversion of the ecosystem are certified weirdos.
E-Mail was (and still is) an open standard anyone could use. But after decades of getting EEE’d, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone using an E-Mail Not provided by the corporate giants, even like, other enterprises have rolled their e-mails into the Google/Microsoft ecosystems, and ALSO if you have an e-mail address that is outside those domains, normies who are inside the corporate ecosystem will have trouble communicating with you as your address will get autoflagged as spam more often than not.
…we already are all certified weirdoes. The average internet user doesn’t have a single clue what Lemmy or Mastodon is. There isn’t an Established Fediverse Institution that is household name for regular people on social media.
Meta could buy up lemmy.world and mastodon.social and they’d end up… exactly in the same place because most people who got into those got there to avoid big social media companies to begin with, and they’d jump ship immediately. This is the alternative social media movement. The people who are on established protocols are the ones who are already on Facebook and Twitter, and many don’t even like those. They only stick around on those because everything else sounds too complicated for them.
Facebook and Twitter are today’s social media GMail and Outlook equivalents. Lemmy and Mastodon are not.
People throw EEE around full of fear but it just sounds like it just became a sort of boogeyman mantra. It doesn’t apply. There isn’t some magic that can make Meta dominate a whole decentralized ecosystem like this. The only possible way for it to happen is if everyone decided to jump back there (which is what happened to GMail and Outlook) but paradoxically because Fediverse users are so paranoid of even vaguely coexisting in an interconnected vicinity, the odds of that happening are zero.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
How would they even extinguish a whole ecosystem of independent instances? What does that even look like?
They could very well make some feature or requirement and demand that every single ActivityPub instance uses their version to remain compatible…
…and instance hosts can just say no, fork it and keep going unbothered.
Even buying up some big Lemmies and Mastodons is not going to get them the whole Fediverse.
from https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html :
Basically keep people from using all the other platforms. Then stop supporting them. Similar like .docx never quite works in the open document editors. At least i refuse to believe that OSS devs are less skilled and motivated.
I’ve seen people bringing this up, but while they talk of EEE and XMPP, it seems like the analogy here is not being quite finished and formulated.
If we apply that to this, it seems like people are saying “if Meta changed the ActivityPub protocol to favor them and become incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse, Fediverse users would choose to return to Meta-owned platforms.”
And that’s what I’m questioning. Would you? Would you think others here would? I wouldn’t. I’d rather go to whatever fork Fediverse devs favor instead. If anything, all the fear being expressed every time Threads integration is brought up only emphasizes that this is not how it would play out
The network effect can be strong. Say you’re now able to contact all your friends via your favourite Activitypub instance, you had to previously use Facebook.com or Threads or whatever but now they’re all here. You delete your Facebook and keep your Activitypub account to speak to all your friends who are on Threads.
Now Meta pulls the federation plug, or adds some feature that makes your Activitypub server not able to fully cooperate (Maybe you can talk, but you can’t video call anymore, or you can’t post GIF/images, whatever). Now what? All your friends are over there and getting annoyed with you. So… you eventually succumb and fire up a Threads account.
That’s no worse than you started. The fact remains nobody is going to get 100% coverage of their contact list on the fediverse without Meta, so trading a Facebook account for a threads account is no different, and it ignores the benefits of that time when you maybe able to live without either.
Right? I don’t know how to express any more clearly for the people who already are here that being here right now is the proof that there are people will choose a better platform over the most popular one. Unless they are admitting they are personally one temptation away from returning to Facebook.
I agree with you, I’m totally fine federating with them. If they choose to become incompatible with me, THEIR users will lose access to the content on the rest of the fediverse. They have an obligation to get ad revenue. If they can have someone else host the content, then use their interface to put ads and collect data on their users, it sounds like a win, as those users can still interact with me. If they really wanted to EEE and create incompatibilities, the rest of the ActivityPub instances just carry on as normal without supporting those extensions. The ecosystem already exists without the integration, so it’ll just go back to being separate again, exactly as it is now.
They don’t need to kill “every” lemmy/masto instance to kill the ecosystem. You just need to absorb enough of it that the only people left outside of your perversion of the ecosystem are certified weirdos.
E-Mail was (and still is) an open standard anyone could use. But after decades of getting EEE’d, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone using an E-Mail Not provided by the corporate giants, even like, other enterprises have rolled their e-mails into the Google/Microsoft ecosystems, and ALSO if you have an e-mail address that is outside those domains, normies who are inside the corporate ecosystem will have trouble communicating with you as your address will get autoflagged as spam more often than not.
…we already are all certified weirdoes. The average internet user doesn’t have a single clue what Lemmy or Mastodon is. There isn’t an Established Fediverse Institution that is household name for regular people on social media.
Meta could buy up lemmy.world and mastodon.social and they’d end up… exactly in the same place because most people who got into those got there to avoid big social media companies to begin with, and they’d jump ship immediately. This is the alternative social media movement. The people who are on established protocols are the ones who are already on Facebook and Twitter, and many don’t even like those. They only stick around on those because everything else sounds too complicated for them.
Facebook and Twitter are today’s social media GMail and Outlook equivalents. Lemmy and Mastodon are not.
People throw EEE around full of fear but it just sounds like it just became a sort of boogeyman mantra. It doesn’t apply. There isn’t some magic that can make Meta dominate a whole decentralized ecosystem like this. The only possible way for it to happen is if everyone decided to jump back there (which is what happened to GMail and Outlook) but paradoxically because Fediverse users are so paranoid of even vaguely coexisting in an interconnected vicinity, the odds of that happening are zero.