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Flipboard Begins to Federate

flipboard.medium.com

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Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#51

Post by iteratethis »

egypturnash wrote: post #42
iteratethis wrote: post #29

Threads is also testing federation, it supposedly is close to being enabled. 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 o…

Once upon a time you could follow someone's public Facebook posts from any RSS reader you liked, whether or not you had an account. Now the only way to follow someone's Facebook posts is to have an account there. And Facebook will probably only show you a small fraction of the posts by the people you actually follow, sorted by what Meta thinks is most likely to make Meta money. If you trust Meta to not follow a simil…

I remember the RSS times. But let's be honest. Even then it was only tech enthusiasts using an RSS reader. Probably the same people now experimenting with the Fediverse.

Do I trust Meta regarding federation? No. But I'm thinking it's an afterthought for them. The Fediverse isn't a threat to them at all, just like RSS never was.

I totally understand that some instances have strong opinions about this and self-isolate to a degree. And that will cement what Mastodon is: a set of small for-purpose communities.

It will not compete with the scale of Big Tech and maybe it shouldn't. Mastodon is to stay in their marginal role, a niche network. For sure exactly those strong-willed instances will agree to that.

I'm fine with that as well. I'm just pointing out that an anti-growth mindset produces a small network.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#52

Post by threeseed »

egypturnash wrote: post #42
iteratethis wrote: post #29

Threads is also testing federation, it supposedly is close to being enabled. 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 o…

Once upon a time you could follow someone's public Facebook posts from any RSS reader you liked, whether or not you had an account. Now the only way to follow someone's Facebook posts is to have an account there. And Facebook will probably only show you a small fraction of the posts by the people you actually follow, sorted by what Meta thinks is most likely to make Meta money. If you trust Meta to not follow a simil…

You can't blame Meta for shutting down RSS given how many companies e.g. Cambridge Analytica abused open data access features for nefarious purposes.

It is still possible to access the data just via the official Graph API.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#53

Post by iteratethis »

threeseed wrote: post #52
egypturnash wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time you could follow someone's public Facebook posts from any RSS reader you liked, whether or not you had an account. Now the only way to follow someone's Facebook posts is to have an account there. And Facebook will probably only show you a small fraction of the posts by the people you actually follow, sorted by what Meta thinks is most likely to make Meta money. If you trust Meta to not follow a simil…

You can't blame Meta for shutting down RSS given how many companies e.g. Cambridge Analytica abused open data access features for nefarious purposes. It is still possible to access the data just via the official Graph API.

Open data is actually very interesting as it comes to ActivityPub. A naive implementations means any motivated actor can suck up the entire Fediverse, using it for AI, ad profile building.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#54

Post by watersb »

Today I realized that Mike McCue is Flipboard's (co-?) founder.

I worked on Netscape NetCaster in 1997, so Mike was my grand-boss. Months later, he provided key testimony in the US Federal anti-trust case against Microsoft.

I didn't interact with him, didn't get to know many people at Netscape; we were head-down on development. But I keep bumping into names that are familiar...

(I started using Flipboard when Google's RSS aggregator was shut down.

I collect stories there; collection are called "magazines". I have one about space up there that some people follow.

https://flipboard.com/@watersb/out-there-is-here-f6c9vfnez

No warranty :-)

)

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#55

Post by [deleted] »

watersb wrote: post #54

Today I realized that Mike McCue is Flipboard's (co-?) founder. I worked on Netscape NetCaster in 1997, so Mike was my grand-boss. Months later, he provided key testimony in the US Federal anti-trust case against Microsoft. I didn't interact with him, didn't get to know many people at Netscape; we were head-down on development. But I keep bumping into names that are familiar... (I started using Flipboard when Google'…

[deleted]

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#56

Post by zhivota »

apitman wrote: post #24
ixwt wrote: post #22

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.

Personally those days were the easiest to connect with people. Now I have some people who only use Messenger, others who only use WhatsApp, others who only use Signal, etc. Back then I just fired up Trillium and to me it was all the same.

Really the XMPP part didn't matter so much as open APIs and third party clients. XMPP was just a natural rationalization of that status quo.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#57

Post by webmaven »

iteratethis wrote: post #51
egypturnash wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time you could follow someone's public Facebook posts from any RSS reader you liked, whether or not you had an account. Now the only way to follow someone's Facebook posts is to have an account there. And Facebook will probably only show you a small fraction of the posts by the people you actually follow, sorted by what Meta thinks is most likely to make Meta money. If you trust Meta to not follow a simil…

I remember the RSS times. But let's be honest. Even then it was only tech enthusiasts using an RSS reader. Probably the same people now experimenting with the Fediverse. Do I trust Meta regarding federation? No. But I'm thinking it's an afterthought for them. The Fediverse isn't a threat to them at all, just like RSS never was. I totally understand that some instances have strong opinions about this and self-isolate…

It wasn't just "tech enthusiasts", there were a couple of other large and active groups. One was centered on podcasts as a medium (both listeners and creators), and another can be loosely characterized as "information junkies" (such as journalists and obsessive news consumers).

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#58

Post by rchaud »

thekevan wrote: post #9

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.

Happened to Pocket as well. I guess with every worthwhile site putting up paywalls, that's the kind of content we get for free.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#59

Post by tonystubblebine »

leotravis10 wrote: post #7

If you can't get past the Medium loginwall, here's a mirrored link: https://archive.ph/uFFy4

FWIW, Medium doesn’t have login walls and hasn’t for a long time. Stories are either paywalled or they aren’t (author’s choice). This link is not paywalled and doesn’t require login.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#60

Post by robertlagrant »

jwmoz wrote: post #12
thekevan wrote: post #9

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.

Exactly what I was just thinking, had no idea it was still alive. Twitter took its place for me but now even that has been ruined.

I don't go on Twitter often, but it seems fine? I quite like community notes.
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