Paul Sutton @zleap@social.cleverlibre.org

@zleap

@primonatura

You need to start somewhere. Also, no one is going to solve climate change by 2030. Almost certainly, none of the 2050 goals will happen either. Reality is what it is.

Many people are asking me, "How will #ActivityPub ultimately be #Meta's own undoing?"

Meta's current business model is not built for an open protocol like ActivityPub. It's very much dependent on them owning and controlling the network effect of services like Facebook and Instagram.

Not only does Meta want to collect all your personal data -- they want to control it too. They enforce this control through proprietary APIs. In this sense, they're not different from Twitter and Reddit.

The point of ActivityPub is that services, such as #Mastodon, #Kbin, and #Calckey, can depend on an open protocol instead of a proprietary API.

What if I, the admin of calckey.social, don't like what a dev is doing? Well, too bad. The protocol is open. I might be able to twiddle with my own server, but I can't do jack with anyone else's.

And what if I'm a greedy asshole who wants to monetize the user data on my server? Too bad for me, everyone on my server can migrate elsewhere.

This is not how Meta does business. In almost all ways, ActivityPub is counter to their business. Yet, here they are -- wanting to join the Fediverse.

The tech industry is awash in stories of big corporations that own proprietary tech that become undone by open standards.

Remember IBM's dominance of PCs? It was undone by the IESA standard.

Remember Novell's dominance of networking? It was undone by the bundling of TCP/IP in operating systems.

Remember AOL's dominance of online services? It was undone by the World Wide Web.

ActivityPub is yet another standard that pierces the opaque walled gardens that largely depend on proprietary technology owned by one company. And Meta happens to be one company that owns an opaque walled garden.

If history is to be repeated -- and usually it's worth learning from history -- then Meta opening the door to ActivityPub is company suicide. It's the first domino to fall before everything else in their catalogue of walled gardens also falls. Contrary to popular opinion, creating an ActivityPub enabled social network does not "kill" ActivityPub -- it validates it.

As it happens, I've known quite a few people who work at Meta. I have a little insight into what they're thinking.

Most folks at Meta know very well that Facebook will eventually die. But not just Facebook, Instagram too. Social networks, by their nature, are generational and transient. They have a shelf life.

Meta very much wants to build the app that kills Facebook and Instagram.

They have to build it because they can't acquire competition. That will raise the ire of regulators.

Likewise, Meta have already tried to leverage their own proprietary APIs to build compelling platforms. We've already seen this with the likes of Portal and Oculus.

What's apparent is that, even for a Big Social company like Meta, it is extremely hard to build a network effect from scratch. Sure, billions of people use Facebook and Instagram, but it was a whole lot of work for Meta to do that themselves.

And what was the end result of building Facebook and Instagram's network effect? More regulation by governments.

Thus, ActivityPub gives Meta two things it craves: the ability to piggyback on the network effect of an open protocol, and the ability to head off regulators by saying, "Hey, we don't own this protocol -- we're no different from Mastodon and Calckey."

Again, open protocols usually mean the demise of big corporations who leverage success through proprietary APIs. And ActivityPub will be no different.

Meta joining the Fediverse means that Automattic was right to build ActivityPub plugin for WordPress. It also means competitors, such as Apple and Microsoft, should probably start investing in ActivityPub.

What else does it mean? That small developers should start building apps that appeal to people who use Meta services. They should build these apps based on garden-variety ActivityPub -- because Meta can't own or control ActivityPub.

The first domino has dropped 😉

"But I don’t get it, dude. Elon is the world’s richest man, with a net worth of some $233 billion, according to Bloomberg, up an astounding $100 billion so far in 2023. Why is he not paying the people he owes money to? Why is he risking an involuntary bankruptcy filing?"

I'm afraid this misunderstands how Musk made his money, and what his wealth actually constitutes

https://puck.news/will-elon-lose-control-of-twitter/

I know people have elucidated greatly on why Zucc is bad, but I want to hone onto one specific event.

Facebook entered then then-newly-opened country of Myanmar under their “Free Basics” programme. Zucc would underwrite the data costs of the mobile networks. In exchange? Well, Facebook would be ‘free’ for everyone to use in the country.

This had the (un)intended effect that everyone in Myanmar associated Facebook with the Internet.

Facebook, at this point, did not have a Burmese-speaking moderation team. They would not for a while. This is important to note. The Facebook algorithm started amplifying anti-Muslim content. Because that’s what people wanted to see in Myanmar. The military-backed civilian government even spread this content on Facebook. Because of this, such content spread far and wide.

It spread so fast that it catalysed a racial and ethnic genocide in Myanmar of this Muslim minority group. It took Zucc three years into the conflict to appoint a Burmese-speaking moderation team; by which point it was too late.

Facebook willingly, knowingly, and with only their bottom line at the forefront, accelerated one of the most devastating genocides in the world.

We should not give the “benefit of a doubt” to a war criminal.

Let’s stop interviewing celebs with uninformed opinions & no healthcare training about vaccines.

The state of our federation is strong.

Last week the #Fediverse opened our arms to half a million new users. Many of them migrants from another enshitified corporate dumpsterfire. Together we are building out incredible new applications that realize our amazing collaborative federated infrastructure. We are now engaged in open animated exchange about how to safeguard our precious platform while allowing it to grow to its full potential. These are good and vital discussions. We got this.

Pi pico Larson Scanner https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/pi-pico-larson-scanner

NEW RESEARCH: More and more EU countries phase out fossil fuel heating.

This is the first peer-reviewed systematic analysis of phase-out regulations for fossil fuel boilers in the EU.

Our new paper here:
https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1hGae_V0xP0-0B

Are you using @libreoffice alongside Thunderbird? Let's make them work better together! 💪

Here are some ideas (from YOU), and ways to implement them: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/06/community-voice-5-ways-to-make-thunderbird-and-libreoffice-better-together/

STEM Group 8/7/2022 https://personaljournal.ca/paigntonlibrarystemgroup/stem-group-8-7-2022

🚨Great Breaking News
Just a quick reminder of just how unprecedented & “unpresidented” Trump’s crimes are in US History
Truly the Worst POTUS Ever
https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1670792703259320321
#TrumpForPrison

Binance is hiring Blockchain Security Audit Engineer

🔧 #cplusplus #golang #rust #node #blockchain #aws #securityengineer
🌎 Remote; Asia
⏰ Full-time
💰 $100k - $220k (Estimate)
🏢 Binance

Job details https://jobsfordevelopers.com/jobs/blockchain-security-audit-engineer-at-binance-dec-1-2021-b6cc9d?utm_source=mastodon.world&ref=mastodon.world
#jobalert #jobsearch #hiring

One thing about modern times that is really beginning to tire me is the absence of physicality.
Now yeah yeah it’s on me to change that, but news, books, comics, everything I consume is digital. My ipad is an extension of me at this point.
Hell, my cat must think it’s a part of me.
Dreadful.

But I have been priced out of physical objects a long time ago.

#digitallife