 💫 Tumblr x Fediverse The reason I think an instance as large as Tumblr is detrimental to the fediverse is due to federation. It only takes one interaction with tumblr for it to send Delete activities to every instance it knows, regardless of size. You may not realize how often posts are deleted & federated at Mastodon scale, Tumblr would be 50-100x that. This is just Delete activities, ingesting new tumblr posts + media at this scale is a whole other ball game #fediverse 24 comments
This leads me to think that most instances will block tumblr once they realize how detrimental it is @dansup The problem with that is that the people who tend to be on #Tumblr are also the ones who would be drawn to #Mastodon and the #Fediverse. This means that a high percentages of admins and mods will have an emotional attachment to Tumblr, because of their experiences there, so there are going to be instances that will resist blocking it, no matter how detrimental it is.  @dansup ooof yeah. I've heard similar issues at smaller scale with mastodon.social sending a constant stream of delete activities. Is this... something AP can fix at the protocol level in a future revision? @aphyr Not likely. You'd have to either assume the followers of the deleted post are the only ones who have a copy (ignoring other servers who can search/store the post without following) or send a delete activity to all known servers to ensure its deleted to the best of your ability. Not ideal, but neither is tracking remote instances that *could* have interacted with said post Also Tumblr isn't a charity, they are a for-profit company. Do you want them to steward the fediverse, maybe include a few ads here and there for the privilege of their participation? I think they will soon realize the cost-benefit analysis doesn't correlate to their bottom line. People over profits, don't settle.  @dansup Tumblr users sure think it's a charity. They riot whenever the company tries to do anything to staunch the millions of dollars it loses every month. @dansup Hey Dan, wanted to ask you when will the android version of pixelfed is releasing  @dansup Personally, I don't care about things being for-profit. Hell, I'm a for-profit enterprise! I do think that overwhelming scale and the potential for monopolies matter, and I hope that doesn't happen (I don't think it will, Tumblr's too weird). The Fediverse is currently too small. Even small-time creators are going to find it hard to find an audience big enough to sustain them. Gaining access to Tumblr's users is really quick win in this regard.  @dansup Yes? As much as I welcome the downfall of capitalism it needs to be done one step a time. Having large companies be motivated to participate in open eco systems is a huge win over them being better funded and more successful silos. There isnt any point in building something technologically pure that nobody uses.  @dansup it'd be fine though, you can always [[fork]] -- take the good of federating with them, leave the bad. @dansup  @dansup at this scale, doesn't WordPress represent the same risk? I run 2 or 3 WordPress #activitypub that people can follow, while I can use them to talk to AP compatible implementation, it's not like WordPress invaded the #fediverse, even though getting a WP setup with a single user is a matter of minutes. So if #Tumblr implement #activitypub in a way that turns each blog an actor of the Fediverse, it would just make something like @userblog@tumblr.com Right?  @dansup could you please explain why this is happening and what exactly are the implications? Like, say, Tumblr joins AP tomorrow: what happens to smaller instances that federate with Tumblr? @dansup If the tumblr users were divided among many other instances, then instead of having one instance sending all of those delete activities to every instance you'd have many instances sending all of those delete activities to every instance. ActivityPub has some serious scaling issues.  @dansup maybe they can split users into a bunch of basket servers and make it opt-in for their blogs to federate? E.g. @brawuru@ibex.tumblr.com @dansup with this being the case, is the fediverse capable of becoming mainstream? If so, what must be in place for it to maintain a huge user base? @dansup I say: [[fork]] the [[Federation]], then try to [[merge]] it back, with good intent and loving kindness |
Gregory's Server
@dansup this assumes tumblr will follow mastodon's naive implementation instead of being more conservative