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1. Embed this notice
   IFTAS (iftas@mastodon.iftas.org)'s status on Saturday, 23-May-2026 02:45:43 JST IFTAS

   A quick scan of "Study of interoperability tools in the digital single market" (https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/7ed3fe8e-42a7-11f1-8095-01aa75ed71a1) seems to exhibit some misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Mastodon and the broader fediverse/open social web.

   "study examines whether horizontal interoperability obligations similar to those already in place for number-independent interpersonal communications services under the Digital Markets Act could be extended to online social networks and, if so, under what conditions"

   cont'd

   • Tim Chambers and Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     IFTAS (iftas@mastodon.iftas.org)'s status on Saturday, 23-May-2026 02:45:54 JST IFTAS

     in reply to

     1.(p23) "The largest Mastodon instance, mastodon.social, reported 289K registered users as of June 2025"

     This cites a conservative monthly active users metric, not total accounts, which was 2.6M at the time and has grown to over 10M today.

     cont'd

     Tim Chambers repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     IFTAS (iftas@mastodon.iftas.org)'s status on Saturday, 23-May-2026 02:46:06 JST IFTAS

     in reply to

     2. (p23) "while the majority of other Mastodon servers serve only tens of users"

     This (a) links to a non-existent source and (b) ignores that there's 10,000 such servers, which IMO specifically demonstrates the intent of consumers to use interoperable OSNs themselves (self-hosting their own network node).

     Further - as the attached image shows, while there is a long tail of smaller OSNs operating on ActivityPub, a broad range of community sizes exists and is thriving.

     cont'd

     Tim Chambers repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     IFTAS (iftas@mastodon.iftas.org)'s status on Saturday, 23-May-2026 02:46:17 JST IFTAS

     in reply to

     (The section completely ignores the fact that as of April 2025 there were roughly 17M registered accounts on the Fediverse.)

     cont'd

     Tim Chambers repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     IFTAS (iftas@mastodon.iftas.org)'s status on Saturday, 23-May-2026 02:46:23 JST IFTAS

     in reply to

     • A New Social

     3. (p36) "The only known attempt to realise such interoperability relies on the latter approach (i.e. bridge attempts between the Nostr decentralised OSN and the ActivityPub Fediverse)"

     The Bridgy Fed bridge that interoperates ActivityPub and AT Protocol operated by A New Social @anewsocial currently serves 150k users.

     cont'd

   • Embed this notice
     IFTAS (iftas@mastodon.iftas.org)'s status on Saturday, 23-May-2026 02:46:35 JST IFTAS

     in reply to

     4. (p36) "From an organisational perspective, establishing interoperability with a P2P
     network for Facebook would involve either: ● Establishing trust relationship with as many users as there are servers. ● Establishing trust relationship with a gateway provider"

     cont'd

     Tim Chambers repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     IFTAS (iftas@mastodon.iftas.org)'s status on Saturday, 23-May-2026 02:46:35 JST IFTAS

     in reply to

     Meta in fact already interoperates with ActivityPub via its Threads product, and as such has classified content from thousands of interoperating ActivityPub-based OSNs, and reflected their findings (and therefore, trust) in the form of a list of servers they choose not to interoperate with based on the OSNs' content (https://www.threads.com/moderated_servers).

     cont'd

     Tim Chambers repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     IFTAS (iftas@mastodon.iftas.org)'s status on Saturday, 23-May-2026 02:47:08 JST IFTAS

     in reply to

     5. (p63) "A comment by B1 on A1’s post will be visible by all B users, and A users but not by C users."

     This references a 2023 web page, and was significantly ameliorated by version 4.4 of Mastodon as of July 2025.

     Even prior to that, the correct statement would have been "A comment by B1 on A1’s post will be visible by all B users, and A users but IN SOME CASES (emphasis mine) not by C users."

     cont'd