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Evan Prodromou

"Proprietary software services should support ActivityPub."

#EvanPoll #Poll

Anonymous poll

Poll

Strongly agree
223
44.6%
Somewhat agree
205
41%
Somewhat disagree
43
8.6%
Strongly disagree
29
5.8%
500 people voted.
Voting ended 10 Jul 2023 at 17:16.
27 comments
Dale Hagglund

@evan If by "proprietary software services" you mean big social media, then I can't imagine they'll do so whole heatedly since they're very business model depends on lock in, to which any open protocol is a fundamental threat.

Dale Hagglund

@evan Agreed, which is how come my vote was strongly in favour. I just believe that it will take some force I can't currently picture to drag them kicking and screaming in that direction.

🏰Christophe S.❄IceEnchanter🦢

@evan Really difficult question.

When we were in 2012, my main concern was that they erected walls preventing us to interoperate with our friends from our platforms (Friendica allowed this).

Nowadays, we not only need to have our own platform with our software to communicate with fellows there, we need our interactions to be preserved.

So, I am not for pushing them to support ActivityPub, so I can’t say "they should". We now have a strong core and appeal, slow & constant, that’s our strength.

🏰Christophe S.❄IceEnchanter🦢

@evan However, they now will come and are coming. Also, besides them, that we know what makes their agenda up to today (I see no change upcoming eventhough, in the absolute I want to keep space towards sthg better, that’s not what drives them now) there is nothing that prevents any other instance to have bad practice and behavior.

So, corporations, or not, we should find ways to improve the robustness of our interactions. I think Hubzilla had quite a strong model, I don’t know to which extent.

Gregory

@evan IMO any support helps. The more people on the fediverse, regardless of what exactly hosts their account, the better for the humanity as a whole.

Incognito ergo sum ⚔️

@grishka @evan it would be great as you say, but they always can gain more people than fediverse and create proprietary implementation that would not respect open source version of ActiviyPub, something like Google did with XMPP

Gregory

@brennschluss @evan it was different with XMPP because without Google, XMPP didn't have any significant user base. ActivityPub already has 10 million users according to some estimates and is steadily growing.

Meta won't be able to EEE ActivityPub with Threads for the same reason Google wasn't able to EEE e-mail with Gmail.

Incognito ergo sum ⚔️

@grishka @evan I thought about this and I think you are both right. Maybe in some case it adds some struggles to fediverse, but it is already in good shape and Mastodon for example gives great experience in some things already better than this new Threads app, for example I tried using it from browser and it's nightmare

Lyle, a walking haunted house

@evan I feel like I haven't thought through the implications of this enough to feel "strongly" in either direction, so defaulting to "agree", because on the surface, more things using AP *seems* like a good idea

ZIMA!!!🔪

@evan My concern is how these proprietary services will use the data from federated instances. An upcoming proprietary service, Threads, worries me. When they receive activity from ActivityPub, do the received data become their own, thus becoming applicable to their Privacy Policy and data processing?

I’m in no way against it, but I am skeptical how some of the bigger players will handle data and respect what data are not their own.

Evan Prodromou

@LMAOYEEN so, when you publish a web page, people can link to it on Facebook. That doesn't mean Facebook owns your website, and it doesn't mean they have carte blanche to do what they want with it.

When you let someone on another server follow you, that means you're giving their server permission to deliver your posts to that person. That's it. No other permission is granted or implied.

Evan Prodromou

@LMAOYEEN If you don't want your stuff to end up on Threads ever, you can refuse subscriptions from Threads, or block the threads.net domain.

Manu

@evan If it had been "may" instead of "should", I would have voted Somewhat agree, but I voted Somewhat disagree.

Anton 🏳️‍🌈 🇬🇷Pappas (he/him)

@evan I don't understand this question. Proprietary services are going to do whatever they want. They aren't bound to anybody in matters like this.

Evan Prodromou

@antnisp if you don't understand, feel free to go do something else with your time!

Anton 🏳️‍🌈 🇬🇷Pappas (he/him)

@evan I don't understand this response either. The poll question remains inscrutable to me without a second clause suggesting why they should adopt activitypub.

And you apparently have time to be rude.

Have fun!

Evan Prodromou

@antnisp I did not intend to be rude!

People tell me all the time that they don't want to answer the questions I ask. That is 100% fine! My polls are not mandatory.

It sounds like maybe you *want* to answer, but you don't understand it. (People sometimes say "I don't understand" when they mean "I don't agree".)

Is it clear that the poll is non-binding? It's an opinion survey, and not a definitive vote.

G_Host

@evan

*You* know the developer's explicitly chosen license dictates this.

My opinion doesn't matter, the developer's license does, except to the uninformed.

Evan Prodromou

@Gary_Host right, but it's ok to talk about what they should and shouldn't do, even if it won't change their plans.

G_Host

@evan Oh I know. You're cool as shit. I should have said I'm giving you a hard time for fun. I'm sorry. I really appreciate your work.

Sam
@evan Ooooo I'm still not sure about how I feel about this yet. On the one hand I like the idea of being able to follow everyone from Mastodon or something (basically like an RSS feed for socials) but idk if I would want to see Threads content on here lol, it's kinda cringey.
kel

@evan

I am a strong no but only because I am sick the the back teeth of being had over by proprietary software services and they all need to shut down and do nothing, never mind start interfering with even more stuff.

Consent is applicable in more ways than one and they have been taking far too many liberties for far too long.

It's time we started 'fingering' them for a change - figuratively speaking!

Evan Prodromou

Wow, this is a lot higher than I expected.

I'm a strongly agree. When proprietary software services implement open standards, it gives people a choice on what services to use.

In the case of ActivityPub, I want people in walled gardens to have access to the entire social web. I want them to see what's here, and I want them to know they can be here, too.

Thanks to everyone who replied.

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