Tbh I'm not enthusiastic about a #Mastodon#hardfork. Not necessarily because of the #techdebt or even because it's technically inferior to other #ActivityPub implementations (which are both true), but because I cannot be sure if that new fork is going to adopt the same attitude as Mastodon in choking the rest of the #fediverse with its proprietary extensions and #EmbraceExtendExtinguish / #EEE.
I'd rather not have the uncertainty. Either start from scratch like #GoToSocial is doing or help the other two mainstream AP families which are #Misskey and #Pleroma. That's the only way we can ensure no implementation overwhelmingly dominates the fedi. :seija_coffee:
PSA: Since Threads apparently will be federating replies soon, I thought I should post this again, because there's still a lot of people that don't know.
When a normal user uses "block this domain" it's LITERALLY just a MUTE. The blocked server can still see, interact, and reply to your posts, you just won't be able to see them.
It's kinda like sitting in a room with hungry bears while wearing a blindfold. If you're scared of hungry bears, your best bet is to get out of the room, not put a blindfold on. And by this, I simply mean to migrate to an instance where the blocks are up to your standard on the "instance" level.
Stay informed and make informed decisions, no matter what you choose to do with your Fediverse presence.
The main reason other AP implementations have added it (or in the case of #Misskey, made signing objects enabled by default which was a reluctant decision) as well despite Authorized Fetch / #SecureMode not being documented in the spec is that plenty of big #MastoAdmins have enabled it for their instances thinking it will prevent harassment from instances they've blocked (despite the fact that AF is purely #securitytheater), forcing the rest of the #fediverse to adopt it to remain compatible. Even at the cost of performance (no more caching).
This is plain ol' #EmbraceExtendExtinguish or #EEE for short against AP and the fedi by the Mastodon monopoly, and nobody wants to talk about it because it undermines the narrative a lot of Mastodon admins are putting out to justify their fediblocking of #Threads. Would've been fine if they focused on the (real) harms #Facebook did to Burma for example, that's a totally fine reason to block FB. But screaming EEE just makes me roll my eyes on their #hypocrisy. :seija_coffee:
#Threads user with dotted username (an impossibility in vanilla #Mastodon) spotted in the wild federating with a #Misskey instance (namely, Voskey)! So, does this mean Misskey can handle dotted usernames & thus can further do what #Mastodont?
So, this (the dotted usernames that can federate with other #ActivityPub instances but can't yet be @ pinged from such instances) is a clear example of #EEE being exercised by #Threads upon the #Fediverse. @youronlyone Your thoughts on this again, as we previously discussed it on #Bluesky?
but can't yet be @ pinged from such instances) is a clear example of #EEE being exercised by #Threads upon the #Fediverse
Is, well, not a fair example because dotted usernames have been in used years before Threads and the Twitter Migration. As I mentioned, site plugins have been using @-domain.tld@domain.tld format.
If dotted usernames are going to be used to build a case of EEE by Meta, then the same argument can be used to accuse all other “plugins” using the same format, like Automattic's AP plugin and Brid.gy fed. ^_~
To clarify, I'm not defending Threads. I just find the issue of dotted usernames being linked to EEE, to build a case against Threads, as inaccurate. ^_^
If you think that treads is an existential threat to the fediverse because of EEE and yet you think a mass-blocking campaign will do anything to move the needle there, I have some shares of a bridge to sell you.
Lovely bridge, overlooks the ocean, located in Colorado.
This isn't to say that you should federate with threads. I don't care and you may have very good reasons to defederate from them or even encourage a mass-block campaign.
Let's just not kid ourselves that it will slow down EEE.
With a corporate takeover and corporate "values" they shed like fleas, the #EEE will come in form of #Fediverse losing original intent and meaning.
No longer a place of refuge where people build things to the delight of others and in natural interaction foster cultures where humanity can be freely expressed.
Fediverse will be a category name, just like Web and Internet. A place of marketeers and commerce.
And yes, somewhere there.. #fedi still around. That neat hidden place, only to be found!
So according to Eugen, he's been using XMPP during a time when people let their desktop PCs run all the time, which is ideal for XMPP's requirement to maintain an active connection from sender to recipient in order to actually deliver messages.
But when the world transitioned from desktop PCs to mobile phones, XMPP's requirement to stay always on was just not practical, and the world moved on from XMPP and onto other platforms.
The only way people used XMPP was through Facebook and Google Talk, but the mainstream really didn't have a strong appreciation for XMPP.
According to Eugen, Email is still going strong because everyone knows how to work with it
Effectively, embracing, extending, extinguishing is just not a thing for email yet.
L’urlo di Threads fa cagare addosso il Fediverso? EEE… basta
«Noi siamo #Threads, l'esistenza come voi la conoscete è terminata, assimileremo le vostre peculiarità biologiche e tecnologiche alle nostre. La resistenza è inutile.»
In quali modi il Fediverso può reagire all'irruzione di Threads?
Lo scossone per il #Fediverso sarà enorme: guardando alla sproporzione di risorse tra #Meta e l’universo federato, sembra chiaro che tutto ciò porterà a una distruzione del Fediverso per come lo conoscevamo.
I, personally, use no less than 5 email providers that aren’t Google: Zoho, Proton, Outlook, Mailgun, and Mailchimp.
Clearly, there’s a lot of email being sent without Google being involved. But don’t take my word for it. According to this report, Google only accounts for 18% of email sent.
Now is it hard to set up your own mailserver? Yes, it’s rough. It always has been rough—though it’s probably worse nowadays.
But that has nothing to do with Google. That has to do with a 50-year-old protocol with a whole lot of legacy that needs lots and lots of maintenance—all the more compounded by spam.
And yeah, Google is overzealous regarding spam. But so is Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft is worse.
No one doubts email has problems, but by no means did Google kill email. I still use email every day. And it’s probably the most popular social media tech on the planet even now.
Some people accuse me of putting "embrace, extend, and extinguish" (#EEE) to a standard that is unfalsifiable.
First off, it doesn't matter whether or not EEE is unfalsifiable -- this was still a monopolistic strategy that Microsoft tried to employ to kill competition.
But as it happens, EEE actually did work on a few occasions. Most prominently with OS/2 Warp.
What many people don't realize is that IBM didn't merely make OS/2. It was a collaboration with Microsoft.
But Microsoft stabbed IBM in the back and made a competitive product called Windows. Perhaps you might have heard of it.
Much of Windows was based off OS/2. Windows even had a similar UI to OS/2.
Every part of EEE happened to OS/2. Microsoft embraced it. They extended it. And OS/2 was extinguished in 2001.
Why was this possible? I suspect a big reason is that OS/2 was proprietary, not open source.
People actually think “embrace, extend, and extinguish” (#EEE) was a fun slogan created by open source advocates, and was never meant to be taken literally.
That’s not the case.
Microsoft made that phrase up, not open source advocates. And they meant it literally, not figuratively. When they said “extinguish”, this wasn’t an exaggeration. They really did mean it.
It's funny, whenever spreaders of "embrace extend extinguish" (#EEE) FUD come into my inbox, I tell them that the "extinguish" part of EEE has never worked against open source.
And they almost always reply, "Oh, we don't actually mean 'extinguish'. We mean something else."
Then don't use the word "extinguish" -- because extinguish means extinguish.
If you don't mean "extinguish", then you're clearly moving goal posts. Or worse, you're re-defining a word ("I don't really mean extinguish") to imply something happened when it actually didn't. Don't use the word "extinguish" if that's not what you actually mean.
You're not helping open source by spreading false EEE narratives. You're hurting it.
If you want a better example of #Google trying to “embrace, extend, extinguish” (#EEE) the open web, it’s not Chromium. It’s #AMP.
With AMP, Google promised to load mobile webpages faster.
How did this work? By hosting those pages themselves. That’s right, Google made it “faster” by telling content creators that, if only they would give up their content, everything would perform better.
So what was the catch?
As it turns out, Google decided to privilege AMP articles over others. And when you wanted to show up to a website from search, you wouldn’t receive content from the original source, but instead AMP.
After awhile, people began to see AMP for what it was: a ruse to take over more of the web.
Twitter stopped supporting AMP. DuckDuckGo and Brave Browser bypassed AMP. Seeing the writing on the wall, Google stopped privileging AMP over other webpages.
Looking at AMP right now, it’s clearly dying. AMP has clearly damaged Google’s reputation as a guardian of the open web, and less people trust them.
Once again, #EEE has failed. The open web lives another day.
Actually, Internet Explorer 6 was once 97% of the browser market. That’s right, 97%—they had the browser market locked down!
If ever there was a situation where “embrace, extend, extinguish” (EEE) should have worked, it was with the open web.
Yet Microsoft failed. Why is that?
First, while Microsoft initially was installed by default on every Mac, they had neglected the Mac version of Internet Explorer. So Apple took action and made their own browser—Safari. They shipped this in 2003.
But also, Microsoft refused to build a version of Internet Explorer for Linux. This forced Linux advocates to build their own web browser engines, most prominently KHTML. Apple forked KHTML into WebKit, which was then used as Safari’s browser engine.
Thereafter Netscape rose from the ashes as Mozilla, released Firefox. And Firefox not only caused tabs to go mainstream, but also extensions too.
And where was Microsoft while all this was happening? Resting on their laurels, content with the belief that EEE would work. They never improved IE6. As all the other browsers came out, IE6 looked more and more worse.
But still, they had the corporations using it, so there was no fire in Microsoft to improve IE6.
The final nail in the coffin was Chrome. Corporations were willing to make the leap to Chrome because Google built backwards compatibility for IE6 with Chrome.
Microsoft tried to recover with subsequent versions of Internet Explorer. But they eventually discontinued it and released a new browser called Edge.
Nevertheless, Microsoft never achieved browser dominance again even with installing edge as the default browser on Windows.
Microsoft failed to #EEE the open web. It wasn’t the open web that was extinguished. It was Internet Explorer.
I feel like I’ve thoroughly debunked the “Google killed Usenet” narrative.
The problem with these “embrace, extend, extinguish” (EEE) narratives is that, facts be damned, the myth is too compelling.
Never mind that #EEE has never worked against open source. Never mind that open source projects like Linux, Git, and the Web itself continue to thrive. Never mind that the entire world is populated by open projects that killed their proprietary equivalents—rather than vice versa.
If a story sounds good, people won’t just believe it, they’ll double down even when you show them facts.
The problem is that it’s the supposed “fans” of open source—in this case, the #Fediverse—that believe in the EEE narrative the most. They’re the architects of their own fear, uncertainty, and doubt. They’re the ones trumpeting doom and gloom, telling all newcomers that they should cower in fear. Again, facts be damned, the narrative of EEE is too compelling for them.
Microsoft, Google, and Meta don’t have to say anything to make people scared for the future of the Fediverse. Fans of the Fediverse do that for them.
Folks who believe #EEE narratives often say that #Google killed #Usenet. This is not the case. In fact, Google had little to do with the so-called "death" of Usenet. Let me explain exactly what happened.
The most important thing to know about Usenet is that it uses a protocol called Network News Transfer Protocol (#NNTP). This is not a web protocol. In fact, Usenet itself predates the Web.
Why is this important? Because NNTP uses a different TCP port than the Web's protocol, HTTP. While NNTP uses port 119, HTTP uses port 80.
By the mid-90s, overzealous security policies at many corporations (and some ISPs) blocked all TCP ports except port 80. Which forced most people to only access Internet services through web browsers.
This meant that most people could only access Usenet through the web instead of a dedicated newsreader.
(Sidenote: blocking all TCP ports except port 80 is also why webmail became popular.)
Well, what website did most people gravitate to in order to access Usenet? A site called DejaNews. From DejaNews, not only could you read and post to Usenet, it also had a powerful search engine that most newsreaders didn't have.
So DejaNews became the default source of Usenet.
Thing is that DejaNews also had a problem. They had difficulty monetizing their service. They tried to offer private Internet forums, not connected to Usenet, to businesses. This didn't work out.
DejaNews (now named Deja) decided to pivot. So in 1999, they stopped focusing on Usenet. Instead, they did what so many Web 1.0 ventures did and decided to become... a shopping site.
This obviously failed. One year later, Deja sold itself to eBay. And in 2001, Deja's search service shut down permanently.
But that wasn't the end.
After Deja shuttered, Google acquired Deja's Usenet archive. They integrated it into Google Groups. And to this day, you can search Usenet through Google Groups.
Through all this, it's important to understand that Usenet is not dead. It's still very much active. If your ISP allows it, you can use a mail client like Thunderbird to read recent messages posted to Usenet. Even now, Usenet has proven persistent, and it has outlived many proprietary competitors.
Even so, the failure of DejaNews isn't the sole reason Usenet is no longer as relatively popular as it once was.
Remember when I said that most TCP ports except for port 80 were blocked by corporations and ISPs?
Well, that meant that web forums such as phpBB began to overtake Usenet in terms of popularity. Web forums meant that if you had a certain niche interest that wasn't covered by Usenet, you could be up and running much faster than it would take to request a newsgroup devoted to the topic. They also tended to be better moderated than Usenet, and consequently, less overwhelmed by spam.
To be sure, better moderation and less spam was a very big reason so many people opted for web forums over Usenet.
Of course, just because web forums overtook Usenet in terms of conversation doesn't mean Usenet's popular usage was done. Between the late 2000s and early 2010s, Usenet became a popular destination for piracy. In many ways, it was competitive with BitTorrent and Gnutella.
Unfortunately, Usenet being a destination for piracy may have also been the reason that the remaining ISPs that still supported it finally pulled the plug on access. Nowadays, the only way most people can access Usenet is through specific providers like Easynews.
Google didn't kill Usenet. It's still very much alive, though not as popular anymore. Nevertheless, don't blame Google for its loss in popularity.
Blame overzealous security policies, ISPs, DejaNews, web forums, and piracy.
All this conversation about #Meta on #Fedi feels like the worst parts of geek culture. So technical, without understanding context or what strikes can actually do. My thoughts:
Meta will make a great app for Fedi because it has more money to throw at the task. People will start using that because it's better. It will have QTs and an algorithm. People they want to follow will be there.
A #strike / #FediPact doesn't let them do this. It prevents #Meta from entering the existing conversation with interesting content and dynamic developments. It makes it harder and more expensive for them to develop their own ActivityPub software, makes #EEE slightly more expensive.
Whoever thinks that we have somehow "won" by having them adopt #ActivityPub is deeply ignoring reality and history. We have opposing interests. They are capitalists, we are a commons. They want to eat us.
Can those of you that are tenured here in the #Fediverse tell me where this alarmist #EEE views have come from? Either this people are grossly misinformed/uninformed or they are disingenuous and that would bother me more. Like how if you believe in the #fediverse do you believe some corp can come and take it all over?