bignose
Commercial entities can operate on the #Fediverse, provided everyone is free to completely mute them and defederate from them.
But: it's highly unlikely I'll be interested enough to follow any account operating transactionally with its audience, or in a marketing capacity, or fake engagement, etc. So, if there's a significant number like me, commercial activity will have a much more difficult time on the Fediverse than on centralised platforms; and IMO that's as it should be.
Evan Prodromou
@bignose so, there aren't any businesses near you that you'd like to get status updates from, like the daily specials, opening hours, sales, nightly performers, things like that?
Evan Prodromou
@bobjonkman @WeirdWriter @bignose why do you think an RSS feed for a business is OK, but an ActivityPub feed is not? That seems like a very fine distinction.
Bob Jonkman
I don't think I want a business (large or small, independent or chain) to create an account on mastodon.sdf.org or cosocial.ca or mastodon.social with someone posting the latest price of chicken.
But it would be great to have an #ActivityPub standard way to deliver RSS/Atom feeds and .ics calendars so that I can subscribe to their price-of-chicken.rss feed or the radio station's schedule without it cluttering up my instance's timeline.
Robert Kingett
@evan @bignose I don’t consider small businesses to be giant corporations, but For me, Not from my social timeline, no. That’s what calendars and an RSS feed for their own website is for. I’d rather get updates like that from individual artists on here.
Evan Prodromou
tivasyk
Bob Jonkman
I don't mind an automated (or manual) feed for a business that advertises the daily special, the price of chicken, or the store hours. Could be RSS/Atom, could be ActivityPub. But it's something I have to explicitly subscribe to.
What I don't want is a business opening an account on a public instance advertising the daily special &c, especially if a bot is posting. That would just pollute the local timeline.
But if they want to set up their own instance that's OK.
Evan Prodromou
@bobjonkman @WeirdWriter @bignose so, I think we got to the point, which is that you expect to have some say in what appears in the local timeline. That is an interesting idea! I'm going to think more about that.
Bob Jonkman
Just to clarify, I mean corporations that would hire staff to do their ad posting. Not people who are using the Fediverse to sell their artwork or jewelry or music. To me, that's not so much an ad as "Look what I made today!", like I might post "Look where I biked today!"
Advertising on the Fediverse is a subtle thing. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.
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