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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

#71
post #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.

i like the character limit. Twitter is a telegraph office, not a magazine. he kinda has to use these threads himself, because it's his company. Hopefully his new system will suppport dual "excerpt/full text" publishing, because i 'd hate my feed to be full of 3 page articles instead of TL-DRs

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

#73

"the value of social media is shifting away from content hosting and removal, and towards recommendation algorithms directing one’s attention" I really wish I could hack on the youtube recommendation algorithm. It seems to be tuned for zombie viewing pleasure, and totally not for finding surprising new content. Even just having several "personas" would be a big help.

The problem is the revenue model. Zombie viewing is more profitable than surprising new content.

If you were asked to hack on YouTube's algorithm, any modifications you'd produce, no matter their merit, would be tested against the status quo for their ability to generate revenue.

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

#75
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

For two of the biggest uses of Twitter, privately-scoped posts and private messages, Twitter implementing ActivityPub would effectively make that information public. Not a good thing, and one that Twitter would get a lawsuit for. AP is broken for any use other than publicly-scoped posts, and given that Twitter is already a huge target, I think adding fuel to the fire would really be bad here.

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

#76
post #13

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

>How is decentralized twitter supposed to solve misinformation?

How is this not a laughable expectation? You may as well expect them to "solve evil".

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

#77
post #35

Mastodon, anyone? https://joinmastodon.org

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

The terminology I've most commonly seen used is this:

Centralized = One central system runs everything (i.e. Twitter, Facebook)

Decentralized = Multiple central systems run everything, but they talk to each other and you can build your own (i.e. email, Mastodon/ActivityPub)

Distributed = No central system at all (i.e. Bitcoin)

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

#78
post #65

So now instead of a focused team of experts detecting and removing disinformation campaigns, each user will have to figure it out on their own or hire a service to do it.

Good, then people will be more inclined towards independent critical thinking

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

#79
post #22

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

Would Mastodon be able to handle the load of Twitter?

I extremely doubt that. For a long time Twitter couldn't handle the load of Twitter...

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

#80
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've generally seen decentralized as a synonym for federated, not distributed.
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