i love how excited adam mosseri is about activitypub; it’s a win win for the protocol.
being able to follow the mainstream people on threads as well as the niche people on mastodon through a foss client like megalodon and the move from threads to another instance if i get sick of it will be fantastic and will help both mastodon and threads grow in the implosion of twitter.
A lot of clueless users will get on Threads and attract attention to it. Then governments, public institutions and other organizations will join it too due to the attention. Open fediverse users will protest against their choice of Threads, but will be pushed back, citing the federated nature of threads. Finally without any recourse, open fediverse users will start following these Threads accounts for important updates. And then fine morning, meta will announce that they’re cutting the federation due to ‘spam from the open fediverse’. And the open fediverse users will be left high and dry without updates from these important accounts. Many will resist it and stay on the fediverse. But a huge population without such strong moral stances, will abandon the fediverse and move to Threads to retain their access to the important updates. And the fediverse will become a shadow of its former self. The end!
I have no interest in interacting with Threads myself, but I suppose it's good news for people who want to be on the fediverse but just can't manage going without being able to follow @burgerking or whatever.
I think this will beneficial for the fediverse overall. Thereads will eventually have to advertise. At which point hopefully other Platforms on the fediverse will become more attractive to some threads users.
The wrong kind of users though… The people on Facebook likely to use Threads, are the ones who I’d hate to federate with. Discussions would quickly change to low effort karma grabs and inside jokes.
You’re also likely to get a lot more people doing stealth/viral marketing, more bots, etc
That’s why I use Beehaw honestly… It actually feels like I’m talking to people
Absolutely not, federating with Threads is the first step in the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish process that businesses have used in the past to kill things like the fediverse. This is a win for businesses that want to see the fediverse dead and buried
Not sure what part you don’t understand, but I’ll try and help: Snopes (a fact checking website) shows that the way links are displayed nowadays (the new link presentation or new way links are presented) on X (formerly Twitter) lacks any sense -> snopes shows the folly of it.
Thanks! My previous interpretation: Snopes Shows™ - company related to film industry Folly™ - name of another company, surprisingly there is no comma or “and” between them X’s - unknown high number or Twitter New Link Presentation™ - Proprietary feature made by big tech company I have never heard about
So it looks like Clickbaity Capitalisation Of Every Word fooled me. IMO title should look like: “Snopes shows the folly of new link presentation on X”
TIL English capitalisation rules in titles. I tought they are same as in Polish. Quick search for Polish rules:
Question:
I would like to kindly ask you to clarify whether the name of the “Polish Biographical Dictionary” should be written in lowercase letters, like other multi-volume compact publications. Wikipedia editors stubbornly insist on spelling the dictionary in capital letters, guided by, among other things, prefer authors (PBD editors) who use capital letters of all title elements on the title page.
Answer:
In single-word and multi-word titles of books, scientific dissertations, films, laws or declarations, we write only the first word with a capital letter, e.g. Zarys grammar of Polish, [translator capitalized non-first words] The Little Princess, Orthographic Dictionary of the Polish Language, etc. (exceptions are: Old Testament, New Testament, Holy Scripture and Magna Charta Libertatum). It is also allowed to write entire words of the title in capital letters on the covers and title pages of books, in the titles of films, plays, advertisements or sporting events (e.g.: THE LITTLE PRINCESS). Please do not be influenced by what Wikipedia suggests. Regards Anna Sokół-Klein
The negativity was pretty asinine though. Nothing he said, I think, was wrong. I remember Mastodon people (rightfully) reacting quite annoyed at similar reports on how usage had peaked and was dropping again, just because not all the new users stuck around.
Apollo is the most used apps across my iPhone/iPad. While I don’t really seem to be missing Reddit, I absolutely miss Apollo. It is jarring to go from using Apollo to Mlem, but I understand that Mlem will only get better with time.
The Wig punched himself through a couple of African backwaters and felt like a shark cruising a swimming pool thick with caviar. Not that any one of those tasty tiny eggs amounted to much, but you could just open wide and scoop, and it was easy and filling and it added up. The Wig worked the Africans for a week, incidentally bringing about the collapse of at least three governments and causing untold human suffering. At the end of his week, fat with the cream of several million laughably tiny bank accounts, he retired. As he was going out, the locusts were coming in; other people had gotten the African idea.
Count Zero - William Gibson
They just need the data. It’s available, all they need to do is open wide and scoop.
Maybe I’m not getting something here, but neither Mastodon nor Lemmy are private, you can find everything open for everyone already, so how would federation change something there? Federation doesn’t mean everyone would use their app, so they wouldn’t gain any app usage analytics.
Also I don’t get how your metaphor make sense. The amount of fediverse users is a rounding error next to threads, instagram, WhatsApp and facebook. So there’s not a “lot a tiny things that can add up”, only a small amount of tiny things which don’t really add up to anything.
We’re pretty much agreeing here. I don’t think them federating out makes much of a difference. They get the data from the reverse for free. They only have to scoop, and it’s worth almost noting individually.
But that’s their current game. Has been for a long time. Serving one ad is a tiny thing. But they add up.
However, them wanting to federate indicates they see the fediverse as something worth noting and paying attention to, possibly even joining. That’s not nothing.
They either think:
The fediverse will grow with or without them, and without them it’s a potential threat, due to loss of control
The fediverse has potential that they want to water and help grow so they can prune it and shape it to become something valuable to them
They can “try genuinely” to join the fediverse, and elicit a response that maims it
That response can come in many forms.
If they provoke a backlash of defederation (done), that causes devision and argument. They win by shattering the potential threat before it can grow.
If they are allowed to join and become a large voice and eventually be like gmail to email, big enough to have control and provide the filtering people are already (quietly, carefully) asking for. All they need to do is to offer “spam filters” and a “personal feed” and we have Facebook 2.0 and they don’t even have to foot most of the server bills.
I’m not sure how to win this, but there’s a lot of ways to lose it.
If they are allowed to join and become a large voice and eventually be like gmail to email, big enough to have control and provide the filtering people are already (quietly, carefully) asking for. All they need to do is to offer “spam filters” and a “personal feed” and we have Facebook 2.0 and they don’t even have to foot most of the server bills.
I think this is inevitable, in part because serving is expensive, and now that we might get significant spammer activity, complicated. Carrying the analogy on, though, I have a Proton account and I can give it out in real life just the way I would a Gmail account. There is no such possibility with Twitter. They could try and put up a hard wall once they have enough buy-in, but that didn’t work so well for Yahoo mail, and hopefully it wouldn’t for Threads.
So yeah, I expect I’ll be on a little instance somewhere, and I’ll still be able to participate in the equivalent of the Obama AMA hosted on one of the big ones.
Sry, I‘m still not following. I don’t understand your argument, are you saying they want to federate to gain additional users to grab data from? Because I don’t think that’s going to be a significant amount of people.
Most people don’t care about what makes the fediverse desirable to its current users, all it does is add friction to them and therefore I don’t see it growing much either.
I think the reason why meta wants to federate is this:
it helps with anticompetitive arguments, because it’s “open” and not controlled by meta alone
some will refuse to use anything from meta, and threads users being able to communicate with them adds value
it won’t hurt meta, because the majority will be using their app anyways
it helps their image
I don’t think they’re doing it to “get more data” or to “take over the fediverse”. There’s nothing worth taking over and they can probably get the data anyways, it’s all openly available. So it’s basically all upside and no downside for them.
If they thought the fediverse was insignificant they wouldn’t even bother. Them spending publicly visible time and energy on it means there’s something for them to gain.
But yeah, I’m not entirely sure what yet. Like you said, reading data is freely available, so it’s not just that.
What happens if you merge the user base of a small network and a huge network? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effectWill the small network gain from the huge one or the other way round? Also there is a lot to gain. The users base of the fediverse and it’s infrastructure grew by 5x in the last two years: fedidb.orgMeta has a big interest in extinguishing a competitor before it profits from the bandwagon effect.
Okay probably not, but you never know with that petty sociopath. Regardless I ditched Twitter the day Musky took over. It’s not like I used it much anyway, and I ditched FB during the aftermath of T***p’s election before he even took office. I don’t miss either one.
The obvious benefit is that they can at least access potential extra views. Without implementing some kind of ad system though, it’s just eyes…so is this just PR for threads?
Apollo is definitely my favorite app, and Reddit (was) my favorite site. Lemmy seems like it’ll be able to scratch that itch, so here’s hoping it takes off.
Also greatly looking forward to what Christian does next.
Lemmy is rough around the edges but much better than I expected once I learned how to subscribe, sort how I wanted. Using it definitely makes me realize how amazing Apollo was. I miss simple things like being able to hide what I’ve already viewed.
Apollo is a great app; I think people like it so much because Christian has always been so engaged with the user community and has (mostly) been responsive to people. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it a work of art, and I don’t necessarily agree with all of the monetization limitations that were built in to it, but it is unquestionably one of the apps I’ve used the most over the years and it will be sorely missed.
The news industry falling for completely made-up metrics about social media engagement is the most Charlie-Brown-kicking-a-football ass thing I can think of.
Europe is trying to pull the same thing to build backdoors in encrypted apps. All while relying very much on encrypted apps themselves.
They are doing so under the title “ laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse “
Any citizen with 3 brain cells to rub together can see how much of a trojan horse this is. But it seems actually reading and understanding the text body is above the politicians their skill level.
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