21–30 of 123 posts
Unrelated. How hard is it to create another “internet” which is completely detached from the current internet?
There is already a bunch of "completely detached" networks out there, organized via wifi links. Freifunk, Guifi and NYC Mesh are three examples of such networks, where you can basically avoid the current internet infrastructure as long as you get hooked up to the mesh network. Lots of interesting services deployed on these networks too :)
I'm always a bit leery of things like this when massive companies begin adopting open source things such as this. Google Chat embracing XMPP, only to end up abandoning it (as Google does). Slack having an IRC gateway, only to end up abandoning it. There are probably other examples, but these are the ones off the top of my head.
These technologies still exist, but in their own bubble. I doubt that Flipboard adopting and dropping ActivityPub support would have a significant impact in the long run. But I'm hesitantly happy about this.
Now I believe it's possible. There's a hundred ways it can go wrong, but dang it I'm excited about the possibilities if we help it go right.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... I'm always a bit leery of things like this when massive companies begin adopting open source things such as this. Google Chat embracing XMPP, only to end up abandoning it (as Google does). Slack having an IRC gateway, only to end up abandoning it. There are probably other examples, but these are the ones off the top of my head. These technologies still exist, but in their own bubble. I…
https://medium.com/@kaikoenig/samsungs-bloatware-disgrace-c7...
Flipboard used to be great, but as expected, it got diluted with recycled FB and reddit content, ads and "the top 5 things you shouldn't do, number 3 shocked me" type of posts.
Happens everywhere, even on my Google News Feed. I can tell Google I don't want to see specific articles, authors, topics, etc., but there's no way for me to tell Google that I don't want to see Clickbait article titles...
(no affiliation)
I'm excited about this - and about Threads too. I've been on Mastodon for just over a year now. It works really surprisingly well, especially considering it's stitched together from so many independent, non-profit open source instances. But... it's still not easy enough for non-nerds to get onboard. I'd love to see efforts from organizations like Flipboard, and Threads, and Automattic make an impact here. I want to b…
Awesome! One small step to admitting you actually are bloatware! https://medium.com/@kaikoenig/samsungs-bloatware-disgrace-c7...
Interesting dynamic is that Mastodon's community is such a sour bunch that likely most instance owners will block federation with Threads at the domain level. Because "Meta evil".
This takes away choice at the user level. Normal people that just want to connect with people and content no matter where it is hosted, which is the very purpose of ActivityPub, have no choice but to move to instances that do federate.
...which will be the large instances, like mastodon.social. It's already the default instance and by far the largest. For maximum connectivity and the biggest chance that it doesn't go under, it is the primary choice for most users. So this dynamic of too much instance-level moderation effectively undermines the idea of the fediverse. There will always be tiny for-purpose instances, but the idea that many small instances will grow the fediverse to Big Tech scale is invalidated.
Come to think of it, one might as well create a Threads account. It's a community almost a 100 times larger than all of Mastodon combined. So if you just want to connect to people and find content, Mastodon offers few tangible benefits to normies.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... I'm always a bit leery of things like this when massive companies begin adopting open source things such as this. Google Chat embracing XMPP, only to end up abandoning it (as Google does). Slack having an IRC gateway, only to end up abandoning it. There are probably other examples, but these are the ones off the top of my head. These technologies still exist, but in their own bubble. I…
As someone who never really used XMPP, was it worse off after Google compared to before? I mean sure a ton of users lost access to XMPP after they ended support, but surely most of them never would have used XMPP in the first place.
There was a time that Facebook messenger was XMPP and Google chat was XMPP, so there was a time it was gaining a lot of traction. Most people just think their email is email. They don't see it as using SMTP/IMAP/POP3.