this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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When they do go that route, I propose the community fork the standard and continue work that way. We already do this with code.
If one instance gets too big they could just ignore the standard and start adding random tweaks to it. And all the others would eventually have to adapt to that or risk becoming irrelevant by being incompatible with the big instance.
Federation allows for choice. Indeed, many AP implementations already add to the base AP stuff. Peertube already does this itself.
For this to really be a problem, the server software would need to be maintained by the same person running the instance, and they have to have the manpower already to either a) Build an implementation or b) Run a fork of existing software. Both take effort and quite frankly is juice that isn't worth the squeeze to risk cutting yourself off from the network like that.
the standard is made by the World Wide Web Consortium, which I trust to not let facebook take control of their standard. They also manage standards like HTML, CSS and SVG
No, they re-publish the work of WHATWG in standards form, the vendors literally made a pact not to deal with them. Then sometime in the last decade they standardized EME, even after the technology activists told them fucking not to. Defective By Design said this shit for years, decades, and W3C ignored everyone. I have more reason not to trust Berners-Lee at this point than put any stock in his leadership skills.
That's the same problem as with Chrome. If internet for most people goes through Google Chrome (which it currently does: Android, smart devices, Electron Apps, Android apps, Edge, Brave, etc.) then the controlling entity can redefine the meaning of that protocol. In the above example it would be Google redefining the meaning of the web, see DRM, manifest v3, and similar efforts. Small players wouldn't be able to play catch-up or disagree (it wouldn't matter) and risk bring irrelevant.
The admins of defederating instances fear the same could happen to ActivityPub and fediverse.
Yes, sounds like there should be Meta's fake, desecrated version of "ActivityPub", and the actual Fediverse version of ActivityPub that does not budge to any of Meta's interests.
I agree in theory, but in practice, when Google dropped RSS and XMPP support it took most of my friends with it, which is what started this mess in the first place. I'm actually not a fan of mastodon; feels too ambitious to start a new protocol without a killer app. RSS and XMPP are extensible protocols and I really just want modern support for those.
ActivityPub wasn't built with the purpose of having a "killer app" in mind. That's centralization logic. The point is for all apps to be able to talk to each other regardless of where on the network and maintaining the ability to do so seamelessly without the user having to think too much about it.
Mastodon should be able to talk to Lemmy. Lemmy should be able to talk to Pixelfed. Et cetera. I don't believe XMPP had the same purpose, matter of fact I remember it just being a subpar IM protocol iirc, and I don't see social media going by the wayside the way IM clients of the past did.