Gregory's ServerOther people are noting that dotnet.social is not “officially” affiliated with Microsoft.
But why would Microsoft put the official @dotnet at dotnet.social if there’s no relationship?
Who are they trying to kid?
We see you, Microsoft 😉
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61 comments
 @LouisIngenthron @dotnet @fediversenews Look at when the account was created. Look at when the first message was sent. Clearly, there’s been affiliation for a long time.  @atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews What does the account being created months ago have to do with whether or not they're affiliated? I don't see where you're making that leap. It makes sense they'd want to claim the name they'd eventually use early, even if they weren't prepared to commit to engaging yet. That doesn't mean they're affiliated with the server. And that's on top of the fact that they've now expressly said they are not affiliated with it. 🤦♂️ @LouisIngenthron @dotnet @fediversenews Well, I don’t believe them. You don’t think Microsoft’s lawyers will send a cease and desist if their intellectual property weren’t violated? You think Microsoft would park their official account there for 5 months if there weren’t some sort of relationship? The reason it’s probably not “official” is because Microsoft likely doesn’t want blowback. @LouisIngenthron Surely you’re not unaware of how much of the Fediverse community views Microsoft, right? @atomicpoet Not all of it apparently. I regularly interact with developers on here and haven't heard a hint of anti-Microsoft sentiment. There are plenty of us .NET developers on Mastodon. And anyone who hates Microsoft is free to defederate from dotnet.social. @LouisIngenthron Maybe not all, but if I were Microsoft, I’d be worried about Fediblock. @atomicpoet Mostly because Fediblock is an easily-manipulated relic that needs to go the way of the dinosaurs. Mastodon has outgrown it. @LouisIngenthron I mean, that’s what someone from QOTO would say. But marketers, especially of big companies, tend to be very paranoid of blowback and exercise caution. I’m not saying that Microsoft owns dotnet.social. But non-affiliation? I don’t buy that. And clearly whoever owns dotnet.social works in lockstep with Microsoft’s marketing department—otherwise they wouldn’t put the account on that server. @LouisIngenthron And lawyers were not involved? No higher ups signed off? @atomicpoet What do either of those things have to do with your attempt to establish a relationship between the server and the company? @LouisIngenthron That’s my point. A lawyer probably signed off, and someone with authority gave it a stamp of approval. @atomicpoet *What* is your point? Lawyers probably signed off on creating Twitter accounts (because Twitter actually has an EULA, unlike dotnet.social). Does that mean that Microsoft is in cahoots with Twitter too? @LouisIngenthron Does a Microsoft employee own Twitter? Is Twitter a Microsoft product? @atomicpoet Which has what exactly to do with lawyers signing off on the account? You're bouncing all over the place here. @LouisIngenthron If you believe a $1T just improvises its social media presence—and doesn’t get a lawyer to sign off on something that establishes ground rules with the host—I don’t know what to tell you. @atomicpoet If you want to continue this conversation, try replying to what I actually wrote instead of this nonsense argument you imagined me saying. @LouisIngenthron I don’t think there’s much more to talk about, and this insistence that Microsoft just happened to arrive at dotnet.social is odd. Have a great night 👋 @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron I'm not a developer nor super familiar with how feature updates to Mastodon happen. Is it possible for one instance to offer some feature not available on another? For the sake of an easy analogy let's say the panting dog Snapchat filter is only available on one instance. Everyone loves it, people on other servers envy it and so migrate. Embrace extend extinguish. Would this technically be feasible, or is there something built into Masto/activitypub as a safeguard?  @highvizghilliesuit @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron it's entirely possible to use different software and add features, just on mastodon there's hometown and glitch-soc forks that add features (some I really like and miss). There's also many other apps like calckey and friendica that have entirely different feature sets. However, if Microsoft were to make a fork of mastodon, they have to make it Open source and I believe also gpl compliant. @highvizghilliesuit @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron however, if they're activitypub compliant, you'll still see the posts on mastodon and the features you have. There's already @pixelfed that could easily add those filters in the future @timelordiroh @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron @pixelfed so likely if the userbase grows large enough, someone will at least attempt what I'm proposing, am I wrong? This is more like the difference between Signal or Whatsapp than Ethereum or Monero. @highvizghilliesuit @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron @pixelfed I would say it's already happened. Funkwhale allows you to listen to a shared library on the instance. Bookwyrm has book metadata. Calckey and some others have discord like post reactions. We all have our own feature sets, but can still talk a common language of activitypub. If you're on calckey, you could react to this mastodon post using an emote instead of replying to it. @highvizghilliesuit as long as this hypothetical app is compliant with activitypub, it can federate with mastodon, funkwhale, bookwyrm, calckey, pixelfed, gotosocial, bonfire, write.as, and many more apps that all have their own features. @timelordiroh in my hypothetical, this interoperability is not desired by the hypothetical entity running the instance. @timelordiroh @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron @pixelfed I guess what I meant was could one dominant instance capture enough of the userbase to effectively centralize the whole kit and kaboodle, (yes that's the correct spelling). Further research needed on my end though, it looks like. @highvizghilliesuit so they could be on their own and not be activitypub compliant, them they'd be just another social networking site and lose the distributed network effect of the fediverse. There's also other protocols like diaspora* & zot that most activitypub apps don't use. Could they update in the future to not federate, sure but that would lose the network effect of tying in to the fediverse. Could they have instance specific features? Sure, but popular ones will be copied @timelordiroh thank you, this is what I was trying to figure out. Is there any good idea lame assholes won't steal? Not that I've seen. Although I hope I'm being unduly cynical.  @atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews not the slickest registrar out there (the rest of the whois is privacy lockdown).  @atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews We just block them. Corps are going to try to monetize budding Fediverse so expect this. Btw they have all the $$$ in the world.  @atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews > By why would Microsoft put the official @dotnet at dotnet.social if there’s no relationship? Because they’d need some instance regardless, and that one is as good a fit as it gets? @chucker @dotnet @fediversenews While they said nothing for 5 months? Why all the quiet? As I said, I’m skeptical. Big multinational companies don’t do things without strategy.  @atomicpoet @chucker @dotnet @fediversenews Maybe the person who runs the server created the account as a placeholder for the .NET Foundation community team to use when they wanted it. @ramsey @chucker @dotnet @fediversenews Maybe. But zero affiliation when the official account lives there? @atomicpoet @ramsey @dotnet @fediversenews the affiliation probably goes as far as “person who runs the account works at MS and got the approval to use it ‘officially’” @atomicpoet @chucker @dotnet @fediversenews I think you’re over-sensationalizing something that’s not very sensational. @atomicpoet @ramsey @chucker @dotnet @fediversenews Maybe I missed this along the way, but do we know for sure that the person who registered the domain is any way affiliated with Microsoft? Lots of zero-Microsoft-affiliation companies use .NET Edit: Ah gotcha, the verified account being on that server @Robworks @atomicpoet @ramsey @chucker @dotnet @fediversenews considering it's now verified to a Microsoft.com page, if it's not Microsoft instance, they're still using it in an official capacity. The domain info is "redacted for privacy" so we don't know who owns the domain, but the account is being used by a Microsoft team. @chucker @atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews Yes, this is what happened. I'm on the team. We've been posting from personal accounts for a while and wanted to set up a team account, and joined on an established community server. We've had Twitter accounts for years (dotnet, aspnet, etc.) and don't own the Twitter server, either. Flattering to hear we're smart enough to plan that many months ahead, though! @jongalloway @chucker @dotnet @fediversenews No one’s ever claimed you owned Twitter. But how is there no affiliation with dotnet.social? Explain that. @atomicpoet The point was that we have team accounts on social networks we don't own. Other teammates have chatted with the dotnet.social admin (I think to ask if it was cool to join the server). You can read more about the server in its about link. If you're certain it's some kind of conspiracy, I'm not going to try to dissuade you, it sounds very exciting and I don't want to spoil the fun. In the history of rock and roll major labels were happy to colonize a new market with a "brand x" approach to distance themselves from potentially politically risky ventures. It's not like people haven't been watching big capitals playbook for a minute and seen a similar schtick elsewhere in industry. @jongalloway @atomicpoet Hey Jon, how is Bill Gates doing? Tell him I'm ready to spin up mastodon.microsoft.com for you guys 😄 @jongalloway to be honest, it's only a joke until it becomes true in the future due to improved federation protocols @atomicpoet has a good vision about what is coming because he sees the inherent value in the overall community, but those times are yet to come @ricardo @atomicpoet Hey, I'd love to see it. I'm cautiously optimistic about social media pivoting from perversely optimized content engagement farms to open protocols. I was a big fan of RSS, OpenID, open web, and protocols over platforms long before I worked for Microsoft. I don't have any info about any bigco strategies right now, I'm on a small team that wants to share blog post and stuff. But I'd love to see a resurgence of decentralized media. @ricardo @atomicpoet Obviously Microsoft brings some baggage into conversations about open source and open protocols. That's expected. But I'm hopeful that this can both be a positive step, including offering an alternative to those who want to stay connected but get off twitter and in helping show some momentum to other teams who want to get on Mastodon. @ricardo @atomicpoet Sorry if I was a bit snarky earlier. I honestly wish there was a big plan, but there's none that I know of. I'm trying to move things forward by getting people I work with to just get started sharing here more. |
@atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews Why would they not? They can migrate any time if they need to, but this makes it easier for their marketing crew. Most brand accounts are just accounts, not whole servers.