this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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So after they build good will in the community and get a large userbase on their platform you think they will then pull the rug right out from under their own feet? Why would they cripple AP if their app is running on it?
They replace AP with something else internally and abandon AP. If anyone wants to keep talking to them, they've got to hop onboard whatever they've replaced AP with. This effectively kills AP (theoretically).
Why would it kill AP if there is a set of users that don't care about those features but just their privacy?
Just don't use Meta's app or switch. I just don't understand personally how this removed every other server instance using AP out of the equation if FB would just be closing themselves off even if they did build something better or useful.
We need to remember that ActivityPub and this entire fediverse is only to allow small, individual communities to live without a major corporation able to pull the plug. It's not privacy centric at all. In fact, quite far from it.
I don't understand that either? I thought the Fediverse was privacy first driven? I don't really understand how it couldn't be when you can wall off Threads if you choose to do so?
It's not that they would necessarily cripple it, but they would "enhance" their instance of AP (the "extend" in EEE), "accidentally" making it incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse and thus creating an excuse to suddenly drop support for the Fediverse. At this point users in, say, Mastodon will have created some degree of dependency on users in Threads, and at that point people in there would be forced to move to Threads if they want to maintain a similar experience as before.
Sounds like people should be more concerned about just not using Threads.
Actually, apps don't "run on" AP. AP is a federation/communication protocol, it's only used to communicate objects, or things about objects, to other servers. Every app that uses AP can basically still work without it, since it has its own data structures and UI.
ActivityPub is a communication protocol. There's nothing stopping anyone from implementing it and then adding their own 'features'.
Just look at how different companies have implemented the HTML 'standard'. You end up with websites that require specific browsers to run properly. It's gotten better over the past few years, but god damn anyone old enough to remember what a pain it was designing websites in the 90's and working around all of Internet Explorer's shenanigans will tell you it's not a good time.