ActivityPub is a W3C Recommendation! Yes! At last! Finally!
Let your social networks be free! https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/6785 https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
@cwebber how long until we start filing "ActivituPub implementation lacking/broken" issues on webcompat/web-bugs for all the isolationist social media sites?
@datatitian @cwebber Seems tricky to convince Facebook & Twitter... But I soooo want them to implement this!
@alcinnz @datatitian I would *love* for Facebook and Twitter to adopt ActivityPub, but it seems they really *want* to have walled gardens, so it's hard for me to be optimistic there.
I think Google or Microsoft (!!) would be more likely to participate in ActivityPub stuff at this point, because they're more nervous about not having really a big inroads in the social networking scene these days afaict, and maybe AP could help them
@cwebber @alcinnz @datatitian Unless Facebook, Twitter, and Google change their core business models, their adoption of ActivityPub would be for one of two purposes: either (a) embrace and extend (with proprietary extensions. e.g., Google: AOSP and Google Play Services) or (b) PR.
What excites me about ActivityPub is the potential it holds for independent alternatives to Google, Facebook, and Twitter to emerge with completely different business models (including, eg., commons-funded & coop).
@dzuk @aral @cwebber @alcinnz
@rysiek
@jbond
Trying to loop everyone back in and be more clear post coffee.
My point is not that FB, burb, IG, et c. would actually change their ways, but that the availability of an open standard will, in time, expose them as not websites that help people connect outwards but websites that aim to trap people in. In a word: antisocial
For that, I am grateful for Christopher's incredible work
@datatitian @aral @cwebber @alcinnz @rysiek @jbond I understand that perspective, but I don't think so. Corporations (especially large ones) have a lot of resources invested in manipulating public opinion (in other words; PR) and any open protocol they use will simply be a functional or PR move to serve ulterior motives. It's like Android claiming to be open source.
@dzuk @jbond @rysiek @alcinnz @cwebber @aral @datatitian
One of the, tricky (?) bits, with ActivityStreams/ActivityPub, like a lot of "specifications" where there is room for opinion. Even if more people started implementing it, there would still likely be a lot of work translating between interpretations :3
@dzuk @datatitian @aral @cwebber @rysiek @jbond Yeah Android claiming to be "open" is a bit of funny PR. I can't make it square with any of the published ideologies.
I guess device manufacturers benefit by being able to customize it easier (which is a FOSS selling point), but Google now discourages them from going that route. And besides it was never fully opensource, which is what we want to achieve.
@Wolf480pl @datatitian @dzuk @aral @cwebber @rysiek @jbond To be clear I viciously agree with all of you, I have no love for Google, Facebook, et al. The whole reason I want them to implement AP is to make it easier to compete against them. But for those reasons they won't.
Also thank you @aral & @cwebber, your work is a great boon to humanity. And @Wolf480pl I'd love to have those images to share.
@alcinnz @dzuk @aral @cwebber @rysiek @jbond @aral
I was not making an offer to share such images (I don't have any), sorry if it sounded like that. I was just trying to rephrase what I think @datatitian meant. I would also love to have such screenshots, and if I had them, I'd post them all over the internet.
@alcinnz @aral @jbond @cwebber @aral @dzuk @datatitian @Wolf480pl yeah. I really do think the only way Facebook or Twitter implement open APIs is if they are forced.
We should really start calling them monopolies, and use anti-monopoly laws as intended.
@aral @cwebber @alcinnz @datatitian I would be greatly concerned about corporations' penchant for cooption as a tactic to eliminate any kind of existential threat. I think our desire for independence would be incompatible with their presence. Also from a standpoint of if Twitter say, made an ActivityPub instance, they would have no moral or ethical principles to run it well, and I wouldn't let my instance federate with it much like I don't let it federate with a fascist cesspool instance.