This is a really good one by @ben : https://werd.io/2023/how-i-think-about-technology-leadership Got asked whether we are going to do another #FediForum #fediverse unconference. Oh, yes: September 20 and 21. Registration will open shortly. In the meantime, leave your contact info at https://fediforum.org/ Privacy company: "Before I interact with you in any way, you must provide your business e-mail address and your full name." Me: "Thanks, that's all I wanted to know. Bye." Many of the heated debates about the future of the #fediverse can be summarized as: "We have something special here. Let's work hard to preserve it". vs. "We have great opportunities here. Let's charge forward and change the world." A form of conservative (from latin: conservare) vs progressive (from latin: pro-gredi) I suppose. @J12t I tend to have progressive leanings, but I understand both perspectives. My conservative side would be concerned about motivations to "change the world" without qualifying it as "positive change" or identifying who may lose or gain from the change. I feel like progressives could do better with evaluating possible unintended negative consequences of major changes. I'd guess that there was more than one "change the world" motivational speech in the early days of Twitter and Facebook. When you really, really, should go to sleep, but browse the interwebs instead, and find yourself quoted in an article by Richard McManus in The New Stack on #meta, #threads and #activitypub. Gave me a whole paragraph. Wow! So does this mean I will sleep well tonight, or what kinds of dreams that this make??? https://thenewstack.io/threads-adopting-activitypub-makes-sense-but-wont-be-easy/ @J12t you dreamt that you were on an island . From recent conversations, it appears the faction who wants to block #meta #threads from the get-go is much more outspoken, but also much smaller than the faction who does not (at least not from the get-go). I don't have any numbers, and my sample size is too small to have any predictive value, but I thought to post about this, in case somebody else has corroborating anecdotes.
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Meta-provided Facebook chats led a woman to plead guilty to abortion-related charges / An investigating officer served a warrant to Meta, which provided unencrypted chat sessions showing the woman and her daughter discussing abortion pills. Things are definitely heating up in the #fediverse. As soon as you wait for a couple of ... well, maybe it is going into decades ... but, whatever, as soon as you wait for a couple of those, it already is happening overnight! Which site has the best, most accurate #fediverse user numbers? Preferably for several years. One of the reasons I’ve been running accounting and tax related software as a local install (and not on some website) for as long as possible. It almost sounds like if an abuse is possible, it will have already occurred. https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/tech/tax-prep-companies-taxpayer-data-google-meta/ @J12t “An IRS report this year found that 72% of Americans would be interested in using a free, electronic tax filing service if it were provided by the agency as an alternative to private online filing services. The IRS plans to launch a pilot version of that service to a limited number of taxpayers in the 2024 tax filing season.” Good. California Highway 120 is still “closed for the winter”. That’s the last winter for all of you who didn’t quite realize just how much snow we got last season. (120 is the one that crosses the Sierra Nevada in Yosemite at almost 10,000 ft altitude. Usually this time of year it’s balmy up there.) The initial #meta #threads user surge seems to be more or less stalling now at just over 100m accounts. Given how easy they made it for #instagram users to try out Threads, it also means many of those new users will have checked it out once or twice, but won’t use it on an ongoing basis. What’s your guess how many of those new users will turn into recurring users? Wild guess: 20%. What do you think?
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@J12t It could be there are 100 million journalists who wanted to write an article about it. #threads #threadbare Because if they get in the neighborhood of 20m active users, at 10x of the existing fediverse, that's a bit different than if it were 50 or 100x. So a #meta rep has shown up in the #w3c #swicg that works on #activitypub. That’s a good sign in my book … it indicates Meta is serious implementing it, and it wants to be standards compliant in doing so. Of course, no guarantees, but we take all steps in the right direction as a form of progress. @J12t perhaps. It could also mean attempted standards capture, i.e. where companies try to influence standards development for their own benefit. (I wasn't at the meeting so for all I know the person is fine and well-intentioned; I'm just pointing out the phenomenon which does sometimes happen.) @J12t So let's say Meta would open its new site for ActivityPub/the Fediverse. How many servers would block them, introducing artificial splits/schisms? How does a huge Fediverse instance having - let's say - 90% of all users - and the remaining 10% on 40,000 instances - work out? In case they adopt the Microsoft "embrace and extend"-mantra that could cause huge side effects... Running is good for your body and soul. What’s less commonly known is that it can also be quite good for your business plan. In other news, there should be a law against race conditions. A law of physics, that is, not one made by people. https://abcnews.go.com/US/happy-pi-day-indiana-define-pi-32-bill/story?id=61644614 It also would help if the developer (me) diagnosed the problem correctly. Maybe we need another law of physics for that. We are going to do a #Fediverse developer network call Thursday morning California time. The main agenda item is discussion of what #threads might mean for us as developers shipping #activitypub code as part of our projects. If you are a developer, feel free to participate, details are posted to Matrix (go to https://fedidevs.org/ and sign up) @J12t Hopefully the result of the meeting will be "to protect us from Threads, we have to address the main UX pain points of Mastodon/the broader Fediverse, hence (1) migrate posts/nomadic identity/OIDC login to achieve true instance/node mobility, (2) "fetch replies" (manually or automagically) to truly participate in conversations we care about, and (3) be able to *search my own posts* to avoid alienating power users" (totally selfish list of feature requests of course) In the US 2024 presidential #election is coming up. It seems safe to say that the #news -- and in particular social media -- will be full of realistic fake news that is likely to even drown out legitimate news. Beyond text, it will now also include "photos", "voice" and "video". Twitter now has a point of view due to its owner (which is partisan) and the Threads guys have said they don't want to focus on news in general. Does the #fediverse have a constructive role to play? If so, how? @J12t too few people (yet!), not much impact - unless Fediverse can set the tone on Threads, once federated |