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   Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 04-Dec-2023 12:35:29 JST Evan Prodromou

   I just turned down an invitation to attend a weekend workshop about decentralised social media that included people from the BS project and Nostr. My presence would have made it seem like ActivityPub and BS and Nostr are equivalent choices; they're not. One is a standard; the other are ad-hoc protocols by people who refuse to use or contribute to standards. I don't want to lend legitimacy to their projects.

   • Embed this notice
     Sean Bala (seanbala@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 04-Dec-2023 12:39:16 JST Sean Bala

     in reply to

     @evan If you don't mind me asking, what do you think is the logic behind their development of a new, decentralized platform? I mean, beyond that they want to have control over it and keep it closed - what is the argument being made in favor of their "protocols" over Activity Pub? I haven't seen anything that sounds convincing.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 04-Dec-2023 12:41:20 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Sean Bala

     @seanbala you answered your own question. I don't have anything more to add. The fact that an eccentric billionaire has poured millions of dollars into both projects helps a lot, too.

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     Sean Bala (seanbala@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 04-Dec-2023 12:45:30 JST Sean Bala

     in reply to

     @evan Well, eccentric billionaires usually think they are correct in most matters. A pretty iron law of economics and society.

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     GNU Too (gnu2@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 04-Dec-2023 13:03:35 JST GNU Too

     in reply to

     • Sean Bala
     @seanbala it may seem pedenatic, but I think it is important to to note that activity pub based platforms, like Mastodon, are not actually decentralized, but poly-centric, unlike say scuttlebutt P2P solution that is Decentralized (no server needed). I don't how enough about Nostr to comment on it. I like poly-centric better, but I do have a manyverse account.
   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Monday, 04-Dec-2023 13:35:15 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Fifi Lamoura

     @fifilamoura the organizers have their heart in the right place, and seem nice, but I just couldn't figure out how I could be a useful part of the event.

   • Embed this notice
     Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Monday, 04-Dec-2023 13:35:16 JST Fifi Lamoura

     in reply to

     @evan 💚 Refusing to be coopted is perhaps one of the most important things we can do these days.

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     Sean Bala (seanbala@mas.to)'s status on Thursday, 07-Dec-2023 01:36:19 JST Sean Bala

     in reply to

     • Andy Nortrup

     @andy @evan

     Interesting follow up to this thread. I was looking over the AT Protocol FAQs about why they don't use Activity Pub.

     It basically boils down two things. The first is perceived security problems of migration from one server to another. The logic sounds very rooted in a block-chain conception of security. The second are aesthetics. They don't like how usernames work in Activity Pub and problems around search. Basically, it felt like grasping for straws.

     https://atproto.com/guides/faq#why-not-use-activitypub

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     Andy Nortrup (andy@nortrup.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Dec-2023 01:36:21 JST Andy Nortrup

     in reply to

     • Sean Bala

     @evan@cosocial.ca @seanbala@mas.to I read a completely unrelated article that pointed out that silicon valley culture and VCs by extension assume that anything that already exists is inferior. Silicon Valley has done a lot of things in its innovation history. Early on, it did tremendous work with electronics and physical computers. More recently, it has exploited the internet mercilessly to both destroy and create value chains where data of any form was moving around or persisting. Quite a lot of what the Valley has done is destroy capital, but it has created some amazing firms and attracted a lot of talent. Some of the firms are even good things for humanity and many of the people try to have their hearts in the right places. And in the Valley, if something already exists there’s a strong tendency to think it’s obsolete and that novel things are by definition better.https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/30/what-drives-this-madness-on-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 07-Dec-2023 08:07:07 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Sean Bala
     • Andy Nortrup

     @andy @seanbala I think they're great things for the AP community to concentrate on.

   • Embed this notice
     Andy Nortrup (andy@nortrup.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Dec-2023 08:07:08 JST Andy Nortrup

     in reply to

     • Sean Bala

     @seanbala@mas.to @evan@cosocial.ca they also seem like things that we could have found solutions for.