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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

#61
post #43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not better at all than reinventing the wheel. The wheel should be reinvented until someone makes one that isn't square.

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

#62
post #41
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21763323

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

#63
post #13

How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation? It mostly makes moderation (or censorship) impossible.

> It mostly makes moderation (or censorship) impossible.

Making total censorship impossible is mostly congruent with the goals of society in my opinion. Censorship has done immense damage, e.g. Lysenkoism in the USSR (to pick a particular example).

However there is still the option for users to voluntarily opt in to certain kinds of filters. Most likely most people would voluntarily opt in to a filter that rejects child porn, for example. It's an open question whether a decentralized system with filters would lead to better overall environment, but I think it's worth trying.

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

#64
I wonder if he realizes how terrible Twitter is for long form writing and publishing like this when he does it. It’s always baffled me why they haven’t removed the character limit entirely and instantly become the largest networked publishing platform that’s ever existed over night.

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

#66
post #56

Honestly... I've never wanted to embed an image in HN more than now. Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown says what 1000 words cannot. https://giphy.com/gifs/football-prank-Ou18ZgE49Fss0

Could you elaborate? I checked the gif and don't understand what you mean.

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

#67
Jack is building his own Fediverse.

I think Twitter should whitelabel its application and sell 'instances' to media, publishers, government agencies, and other organizations who would benefit over control of their namespace. G Suite seems to be a good model to follow.

What I'd really like to see would be a focus on nonprofits and grassroots political candidates, such as a NationBuilder for the Fediverse.

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

#68
post #7

Why not ActivityPub?

It doesn't sound like he's ruling it out explicitly; presumably, it will be something for the team to evaluate.

Of course, plenty of reasons to be sceptical about them either going with ActivityPub, or not.

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

#69
post #13

How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation? It mostly makes moderation (or censorship) impossible.

I m surprised every time i see people here asking for the evil that is censorship.

Dorsey wants a decentralized system exactly because he won't be held liable for not censoring people. It makes sense business-wise and it's a win-win for humanity.

Twitter has become a trigger-happy-people-fest because each group knows they can weaponize censorship against each other. With systems that are uncensored , nobody complaints, e.g. people don't make a fuss that email is not censorious enough

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

#70
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I literally read the spec (and related specs) last week in detail. Secondly, there's a massive difference between decentralized and distributed systems (I build distributed systems for a living). Perhaps you're confused about that difference? Thirdly, if you're going to knock a collective effort like ActivityPub by calling it a "horrible protocol" without genuine technical substantiation, you're effecti…

Webber's trashed it (the initial author), the biggest piece of software claiming to implement it doesn't even implement it (Mastodon), the only piece of software that stays semi-faithful is full of devs who hate it (look on their Pleroma profiles, there's a _bunch_ of bitching about AP). You're frankly uninformed on many levels, and while I'd normally refrain from replying to someone so obviously delusional, let's gi…

I hate AP as a protocol, but also I'd still rather use it than try to invent a new one that wouldn't get a lot of traction (though I guess if you're a big corp, there will always be traction).
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