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Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

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Re: Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

#41

Post by pferde »

kick wrote: post #33
mactavish88 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization? Are there genuine technical shortcomings in the ActivityPub standard that Twitter's engineering team has identified? Why not talk about that and contribute improvements to the standard? Are there shortcomings to being part of the standardization process in the W3C? Then talk…

ActivityPub is a horrible protocol, and not decentralized. Neither of you know what you're talking about, and not even the people working on AP like AP!

Please elaborate.

Re: Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

#43

Post by RX14 »

kick wrote: post #33
mactavish88 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization? Are there genuine technical shortcomings in the ActivityPub standard that Twitter's engineering team has identified? Why not talk about that and contribute improvements to the standard? Are there shortcomings to being part of the standardization process in the W3C? Then talk…

ActivityPub is a horrible protocol, and not decentralized. Neither of you know what you're talking about, and not even the people working on AP like AP!

It's certainly decentralized, just federated instead of distributed.

And yeah, it sucks as a protocol (but not that badly, the standard is just weak like everything else the w3c produces) but it's better than reinventing the wheel. Or letting twitter unilaterally dictate a standard.

And please stop spamming the same message down the page.

Re: Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

#44

Post by phoe-krk »

mactavish88 wrote: post #30
phoe-krk wrote: post #21

Isn't this called ActivityPub and hasn't this been working well for the last couple of years?

Exactly. I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization? Are there genuine technical shortcomings in the ActivityPub standard that Twitter's engineering team has identified? Why not talk about that and contribute improvements to the standard? Are there shortcomings to being part of the standardization process in the W3C? Then talk…

> I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization?

He doesn't care about decentralization. ActivityPub is impossible to directly control and it has no innate analytics, advertising or monetization layers. This makes it impossible for Twitter to utilize such a protocol.

If anything, Dorsey wants to embrace, extend, and extinguish AP by making an incompatible protocol that he can then pump VC money into in order to have it gain traction on Twitter's terms - with all the ads, spyware and analytics that Twitter desires.

The protocol wars begin anew.

Re: Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

#45

Post by Angostura »

kick wrote: post #34
rvense wrote: post #22

Why build anything? Just[0] make Twitter a Mastodon instance. [0] Haha

Mastodon isn't decentralized, it's federated, and ActivityPub is a terrible protocol (that Mastodon frequently disobeys).

It’s not clear to me what ‘decentralized’ means her, if not federated.

Perhaps you could explain?

Re: Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

#46

Post by bjt2n3904 »

I'm cautiously optimistic. Twitter has been been making some bad decisions with content moderation, and has abandoned the idea of being the "Free Speech Wing of the Free Speech Party". Decentralization should restore that...

...should. That notion could disappear really fast if Twitter gets to decide who can run an instance based on their belief systems.

In the mean time, it's an interesting case study of what happened to Wil Wheaton when he tried to join a Mastodon instance. Already, even in these comments, people are expressing concerns about how Twitter will be able to maintain control over "misinformation and abuse".

That's the whole point of decentralization guys. It's impossible to moderate Twitter without being authoritarian and creepy. Bail on the concept of controlling others, and delegate that power to the end user by means of improved blocking tools.

If decentralization is going to work, we have to abandon our desire to control others with a centralized authority, and accept that responsibility as our own.

Re: Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

#47

Post by [deleted] »

mathnmusic wrote: post #28

They should at the very least evaluate ActivityPub. It's a W3C standard that reached "Recommended" status almost two years ago, is flexible enough for future use-cases, and already has multiple implementations like Mastodon. In fact, any app can be made to act as a source, sink or both of ActivityPub events. I recently added ActivityPub support to learnawesome.org so that reviews can be consumed in any ActivityPub cl…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

#48

Post by sonofgod »

yay, blockchain. :(

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766085037248512

"Finally, new technologies have emerged to make a decentralized approach more viable. Blockchain points to a series of decentralized solutions for open and durable hosting, governance, and even monetization. Much work to be done, but the fundamentals are there."

Re: Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

#49

Post by EGreg »

Angostura wrote: post #45
kick wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon isn't decentralized, it's federated, and ActivityPub is a terrible protocol (that Mastodon frequently disobeys).

It’s not clear to me what ‘decentralized’ means her, if not federated. Perhaps you could explain?

Federated means you’re part of a giant tree with some authority on the top (like DNS has with ICANN).

Decentralized means there is no center

I would add that Distributed to me seems there are no inherent “domains” you need to belong to, like for example email is federated but with scuttlebutt you’re identified by your public key and a hub is just a dumb relay and you can have many.

Non-federated routing alternatives include Kademlia (used in BitTorrent) and simple flooding/gossipping (like in Kazaa) or ad-hoc networks

Re: Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media

#50

Post by akhilcacharya »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #46

I'm cautiously optimistic. Twitter has been been making some bad decisions with content moderation, and has abandoned the idea of being the "Free Speech Wing of the Free Speech Party". Decentralization should restore that... ...should. That notion could disappear really fast if Twitter gets to decide who can run an instance based on their belief systems. In the mean time, it's an interesting case study of what happen…

“Free speech” twitter alternatives exist, and invariably turn into cesspools (see gab.ai).
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