First off, @evan@cosocial.ca sees this from the perspective of someone who's co-authored #ActivityPub. It's his job to spur and enable adoption -- and that's something he's done exceptionally well for 20 years. Of course he wants to help Meta abide by open standards. Which, even if you dislike Meta, you would hope they would do.
My perspective is as one who is building products that compete with Meta. Ideally, I would like people who use Meta to migrate away from there and instead use #Calckey, #GreatApe, and the numerous options available on #SpaceHost.
But even from the perspective of a competitor, I want interoperability with #Barcelona. And even more, I want interoperability based on open standards.
Yes, yes, yes -- "embrace, extend, extinguish". At this point, that phrase is a broken record.
But every time that phrase comes up, I keep asking folks: when has the "extinguish" part of "embrace, extend, extinguish" ever worked?
People say #RSS, but RSS is still here and I use every day. Hell, Calckey even has an RSS widget and it works like a charm. RSS is not extinguished.
People also say #XMPP, but I can run an XMPP server right now -- no problems. People say XMPP "died" because it's no longer as popular now, but is it because Meta and Google dropped support, or is it because Slack, Discord, Signal, WhatsApp, and even Matrix have come along to eclipse it in popularity? Regardless, even if XMPP is no longer so popular, it's not extinguished.
The most ludicrous example of "extinguish" people bring up is Gmail's dominance of email. But email is the most popular communications technology we have today, even though it's 50 years old. What's more, look at the raw stats. Gmail is only 18% of the email server market -- that's no monopoly. Go have a look at the stats for yourselves:
The pessimistic notion that we will "lose" by allowing Meta to interoperate with ActivityPub -- again, an open standard -- just doesn't convince me. In fact, if Meta is adopting standard ActivityPub, I think "losing" is impossible.
With Meta adopting ActivityPub, we're not losing. We're winning. We're not conceding to Meta by adopting their proprietary APIs for interoperability. They're conceding to us by adopting ActivityPub.
Again, I'm not saying you should all federate with #Barcelona. I'm saying that Meta adopting an open standard that allows for interoperability is a win because, remember, they're adopting our standard. We're not adopting theirs.
Some also ask, "But what if Meta does a bait-and-switch and drops ActivityPub support?"
Well, there's kind of precedence for that.
Not enough people realize this, but Google once adopted the predecessor of ActivityPub. Specifically, they used OStatus for Google Buzz. Certainly, like many Google products, Google Buzz shuttered.
But the development for an open social media protocol lived on, and we all use what was developed right now.
No doubt, if Barcelona becomes Meta's Google Buzz, ActivityPub will live on. It will still be developed. We'll keep using it.
In the meantime, I'll consider ways to help Meta users migrate to platforms that I believe are better.
@oblomov@sociale.network@evan@cosocial.ca To a certain extent, Meta’s concern is interoperability. The concern is selfish, and they’re not exactly in it for the good feels. But if they weren’t looking for interoperability, why bother with ActivityPub? They would do just as fine without it.
But that’s neither here nor there. Going back to my earlier points, what’s the alternative here?
It’s not Fediblock. You know why that’s not likely, so it’s silly to discuss that.
It’s not wagging our fingers at Meta and tell them to stop using ActivityPub because we don’t have control over that.
And it’s not migrating to AT protocol because that’s a different can of worms in and of itself.
The only practical option I see is to leverage interoperability to offer alternatives to Meta.
Meta isn’t our friend. But just because they’re not a friend doesn’t mean we abandon interoperability.
@atomicpoet@evan I'd expect someone interested like you in bringing as many people as possible to the Fediverse to be wary of that. It should be obvious that Meta's aim isn't interoperability: if they cared about that at all these plenty they could do even now, even without AP. But that's not what they're after. They're after Twitter, BlueSky and the Fediverse, and they can sink all of them at the same time with this bait-and-switch. 4/4
@atomicpoet@evan good or bad as it may be, Mastodon and the Fediverse currently have a “mindspace”. Average users get to hear about it. And this is what Meta is going after: remove it from the mindspace with the same bait-and-switch they pulled on RSS and XMPP. When they're done, ActivityPub will go back to being stuff for nerds only. Sure, some of us will keep using it, but it will be gone from the global consciousness. 3/
@atomicpoet@evan and the are major sites that either don't advertise them or don't even produce them anyone —notably, in this context, the Meta silos. RSS may still exists, but it's now relegated to stuff for nerds. It's even worse for XMPP. (Compare and contrast with email, still widely used by a significant portion of Internet users.) 2/
@atomicpoet@evan “killed” in this context doesn't mean “removed from existence”, it means “wiped out from the collective consciousness of Internet users”. There used to be a time when every website proudly sported clearly visible links to their RSS feeds. Today you'll be lucky to find it mentioned at all in the visible part of the page, and often the links to feed won't even be included in the HTML head when though the site still supports them 1/
@jdp23 I feel you’re being disingenuous here. I never said anything about “working with Meta”. Quite the opposite.
I spoke about Meta interoperating with us. That’s not “working with Meta”. That’s something Meta is doing on their own regardless of whether anyone likes it or not.
Interoperability will happen because ActivityPub is an open protocol, and you can’t control who uses it.
I also spoke about why Fediblock is not feasible, and why addressing Meta requires a different strategy.
I also didn’t point to RSS, XMPP, or email as successes (though they are) but as examples of why the “extinguish” part of “embrace, extend, and extinguish” doesn’t work.
More to the point, nobody is offering any alternative solutions here other than Fediblock. However, Fediblock is not a migration path, and the it’s unlikely that’s ever going to happen.
So no, this doesn’t clarify “anything” except that you either didn’t read what I wrote, or imagined me saying something else entirely.
@atomicpoet I askedWhat are the other examples where #Meta has "conceded" like this and it's worked out well for the communities they've "conceded" to?... and you discussed RSS, XMPP, email, and Google Buzz.
Which really clarifies why we see things differently. If your standard for success for the products and communities you're building is "just as successful as RSS, XMPP, and Google Buzz", then you may well be right that working with #meta is the best way to get there.
@oblomov@atomicpoet@evan Right - my immediate thought was to double check on MySpace - because, as it turns out, it's still "Not extinguished" officially...but the public consciousness doesn't think to usually go to ( https://myspace.com/discover/featured ) specifically for non-niche use cases, beyond checking if it *does* exist, or (Presumably, never had an actual account for it - by the time I would've, Facebook became the big go-to social network) as an musician
@atomicpoet@oblomov@evan The enemy isn't Meta, and it's not Blue Sky, the enemy is ourselves. Admins are walking out and shuttering instances, gatekeepers are chasing away new users, and inter instance disputes are starting. IMHO These are far more threatening developments than anything going on externally.
I hope I get credit for this rebuttle to "embrace, extend, extinguish" one day. Not that it matter. Its more important that people stop thinking it. I should have just made an english article to point to.
> Of course he wants to help Meta abide by open standards. Which, even if you dislike Meta, you would hope they would do.
I mentioned it before, this is the disconnect between the #1stGen (2008–2015) and #2ndGen (2016–Present) #Fediverse users.
Us, 1st Gen, our concern is to bring the down the walls and enable a decentralised and federated #SocialWeb. The idea itself is older than the fediverse, there were many names involved and who pioneered the pushed for it and are now forgotten.
Even me, to this day, I do welcome them federating even if they already did something EEE-like before (for example, FB Messenger federating and then defederating from #xmpp).
While I do want people to migrate over to a fediverse service made for it by developers who believes in it, the main goal is still to bring down the walls, and get them to federate … permanently.
It's why I also I welcome #Flickr and #Tumblr into the fold (and waiting for them to do so).
And for someone like me who was banned from #Instagram for no reason at all other than because I am #Autistic (I rarely use my Instagram, and when I do, it was to upload a work of mine, so clearly there were no violations), having them federate would enable me to communicate with Instagram users once again.
Barcelona is the acid test we've always known would come. If we're resilient, other corps/groups will come, presumably lessening meta's influence. With the larger hope that government systems will see the value of running their own instead of a shoddy meta account
@oblomov@sociale.network@evan@cosocial.ca Where you and I disagree is on this point: I don’t think Meta is trying to kill ActivityPub. They’re trying to exploit it. Here’s why this matters.
Okay Fediblock happens, and we’ve become Diaspora. We know how that goes.
Or here’s, the other option. Some servers block to preserve the culture they have. And other servers provide a migration path from Meta.
Not everyone talks to Meta. And those who do provide a migration path, and set terms on what is allowable for federation. In this way, decentralization wins.
@atomicpoet@evan And yes, we can and should make extra-P92 platforms palatable to Meta users, but that's the paper straw equivalent of stopping climate change. It may give us a good feeling and maybe help keep our local environment in better conditions, but it'll be completely ineffective at stopping what's coming (out of metaphor, the Fediverse being wiped out of the general consciousness).
@atomicpoet@evan If you will, it's like with the environmental crisis: we know what should be done, but it won't be done because some of the people in power prefer a short term illusion of gain over the longer-term resilience of the whole. But if we don't even take our time to discuss what the best approach would be, we're done for.
@atomicpoet@evan They're bothering with ActivityPub because that's what they need to do to kill its momentum. It's a temporary measure so that the disgruntled users that still pine for what they remember as old Twitter will jump in, before they close the door and defederated for good.
Fediblock WOULD be the right answer, even if it probably won't be given especially by the some larger generalist instances like m.s 1/
If it’s about persistence, nothing beats open protocols.
If it’s raw numbers, tech goes in and out of fashion. Nevertheless, something like email is still the most popular communications tool we have, and that won’t change.
What we’re trying to change here is to focus on protocols, not platforms.
@atomicpoet Sorry, I don't mean to be disingenuous. I had asked What are the other examples where #Meta has "conceded" like this and it's worked out well for the communities they've "conceded" to?and I thought you were answering. If not, yeah, I did misread your post; apologies for the confusion on my part.
@youronlyone@c.im@atomicpoet@evan@youronlyone@calckey.social The thing us ancient open web folks also know is that even if Meta gets defederated at first, it will likely federate with the likes of Medium, Tumblr, Flickr etc. And either the protocol will fork, or we’ll get multiple networks. But we don’t have a flat namespace like IRC, so we can likely handle it with relays or individual server peering decisions.