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Exactly. I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization? Are there genui

Exactly. I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization? Are there genuine technical shortcomings in the ActivityPub standard that Twitter's engineering team has identified? Why not talk about that and contribute improvements to the standard? Are there shortcomings to being part of the standardization process in the W3C? Then talk about that and make the processes better. Is it that he needs his name stamped on a new protocol? I'm not sure we can do much about the terminal egotism of the ultra wealthy and its pernicious effects on our society. Solving this will take a tremendous amount of collective effort.

kick 7y ago
ActivityPub is a horrible protocol, and not decentralized. Neither of you know what you're talking about, and not even the people working on AP like AP!
- pferde 7y ago
  Please elaborate.
  - kick 7y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21763323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21763323
    - pferde 7y ago
      Thanks! This, and a few your other posts on this topic gave me some interesting things to think about and links to read.
- RX14 7y ago
  It's certainly decentralized, just federated instead of distributed. And yeah, it sucks as a protocol (but not that badly, the standard is just weak like everything else the w3c produces) but it's better than reinventing the wheel. Or letting twitter unilaterally dictate a standard. And please stop spamming the same message down the page.
  - kick 7y ago
    It's not better at all than reinventing the wheel. The wheel should be reinvented until someone makes one that isn't square.
- mactavish88 7y ago
  First of all, I literally read the spec (and related specs) last week in detail. Secondly, there's a massive difference between decentralized and distributed systems (I build distributed systems for a living). Perhaps you're confused about that difference? Thirdly, if you're going to knock a collective effort like ActivityPub by calling it a "horrible protocol" without genuine technical substantiation, you're effectively just trolling. Show us that you know what you're talking about by doing some in-depth analysis of the protocol and where its shortcomings are in terms of being decentralized.
  - kick 7y ago
    Webber's trashed it (the initial author), the biggest piece of software claiming to implement it doesn't even implement it (Mastodon), the only piece of software that stays semi-faithful is full of devs who hate it (look on their Pleroma profiles, there's a _bunch_ of bitching about AP). You're frankly uninformed on many levels, and while I'd normally refrain from replying to someone so obviously delusional, let's give a tiny peek at the problems: AP is completely broken for anything but publicly-scoped content, relying on a lot of trust for every party involved. This gets broken frequently, and has had consequences so far on networks implementing it. The specification itself is far too ambiguous. If you've got a lick of sense, you'd know this. But here's a post by a maintainer of Diaspora explaining this part further: https://schub.io/blog/2018/02/01/activitypub-one-protocol-to-rule-them-all.html https://schub.io/blog/2018/02/01/activitypub-one-protocol-to... So let's assume you can get Twitter to implement ActivityPub perfectly to-spec. Great! It doesn't work with literally any pre-existing ActivityPub software, and users' DMs and are more or less public, with users' private accounts literally being public.
    - thosakwe 7y ago
      I hate AP as a protocol, but also I'd still rather use it than try to invent a new one that wouldn't get a lot of traction (though I guess if you're a big corp, there will always be traction).
      - kick 7y ago
- eitland 7y ago
  From my viewpoint the problem with ActivityPub and Mastodon is that they copied twitters flaws: public by default. There's a reason why people stick with Facebook, go to WhatsApp, Telegram and what not: most of us don't want to communicate publicly all the time.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    Facebook Messenger, you mean ? I guess that most Facebook groups are public ?
phoe-krk 7y ago
> I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization? He doesn't care about decentralization. ActivityPub is impossible to directly control and it has no innate analytics, advertising or monetization layers. This makes it impossible for Twitter to utilize such a protocol. If anything, Dorsey wants to embrace, extend, and extinguish AP by making an incompatible protocol that he can then pump VC money into in order to have it gain traction on Twitter's terms - with all the ads, spyware and analytics that Twitter desires. The protocol wars begin anew.
M2Ys4U 7y ago
> Exactly. I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization? Dorsey follows the Mastodon twitter account - he knows about it.
- capableweb 7y ago
  Although knowing Mastodon doesn't mean you know ActivityPub. If I recall correctly, Mastodon didn't implement ActivityPub in the beginning but started recently (within last couple of years)
  - gargron 7y ago
    Mastodon launched in November 2016 and fully switched to ActivityPub in October 2017.
tyrust 7y ago
>I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub Your doubts are correct. From the thread: >@halcy: So, ActivityPub? >@jack: Team will have charge to choose whatever is best, be that what exists today or start from scratch. https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204807357294727168 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204807357294727168

kick 7y ago

ActivityPub is a horrible protocol, and not decentralized. Neither of you know what you're talking about, and not even the people working on AP like AP!

pferde 7y ago
Please elaborate.
- kick 7y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21763323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21763323
  - pferde 7y ago
    Thanks! This, and a few your other posts on this topic gave me some interesting things to think about and links to read.
RX14 7y ago
It's certainly decentralized, just federated instead of distributed. And yeah, it sucks as a protocol (but not that badly, the standard is just weak like everything else the w3c produces) but it's better than reinventing the wheel. Or letting twitter unilaterally dictate a standard. And please stop spamming the same message down the page.
- kick 7y ago
  It's not better at all than reinventing the wheel. The wheel should be reinvented until someone makes one that isn't square.
mactavish88 7y ago
First of all, I literally read the spec (and related specs) last week in detail. Secondly, there's a massive difference between decentralized and distributed systems (I build distributed systems for a living). Perhaps you're confused about that difference? Thirdly, if you're going to knock a collective effort like ActivityPub by calling it a "horrible protocol" without genuine technical substantiation, you're effectively just trolling. Show us that you know what you're talking about by doing some in-depth analysis of the protocol and where its shortcomings are in terms of being decentralized.
- kick 7y ago
  Webber's trashed it (the initial author), the biggest piece of software claiming to implement it doesn't even implement it (Mastodon), the only piece of software that stays semi-faithful is full of devs who hate it (look on their Pleroma profiles, there's a _bunch_ of bitching about AP). You're frankly uninformed on many levels, and while I'd normally refrain from replying to someone so obviously delusional, let's give a tiny peek at the problems: AP is completely broken for anything but publicly-scoped content, relying on a lot of trust for every party involved. This gets broken frequently, and has had consequences so far on networks implementing it. The specification itself is far too ambiguous. If you've got a lick of sense, you'd know this. But here's a post by a maintainer of Diaspora explaining this part further: https://schub.io/blog/2018/02/01/activitypub-one-protocol-to-rule-them-all.html https://schub.io/blog/2018/02/01/activitypub-one-protocol-to... So let's assume you can get Twitter to implement ActivityPub perfectly to-spec. Great! It doesn't work with literally any pre-existing ActivityPub software, and users' DMs and are more or less public, with users' private accounts literally being public.
  - thosakwe 7y ago
    I hate AP as a protocol, but also I'd still rather use it than try to invent a new one that wouldn't get a lot of traction (though I guess if you're a big corp, there will always be traction).
    - kick 7y ago
eitland 7y ago
From my viewpoint the problem with ActivityPub and Mastodon is that they copied twitters flaws: public by default. There's a reason why people stick with Facebook, go to WhatsApp, Telegram and what not: most of us don't want to communicate publicly all the time.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Facebook Messenger, you mean ? I guess that most Facebook groups are public ?

phoe-krk 7y ago

> I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization? He doesn't care about decentralization. ActivityPub is impossible to directly control and it has no innate analytics, advertising or monetization layers. This makes it impossible for Twitter to utilize such a protocol. If anything, Dorsey wants to embrace, extend, and extinguish AP by making an incompatible protocol that he can then pump VC money into in order to have it gain traction on Twitter's terms - with all the ads, spyware and analytics that Twitter desires. The protocol wars begin anew.

M2Ys4U 7y ago

> Exactly. I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub - why not just endorse it publicly if he genuinely cared about decentralization? Dorsey follows the Mastodon twitter account - he knows about it.

capableweb 7y ago
Although knowing Mastodon doesn't mean you know ActivityPub. If I recall correctly, Mastodon didn't implement ActivityPub in the beginning but started recently (within last couple of years)
- gargron 7y ago
  Mastodon launched in November 2016 and fully switched to ActivityPub in October 2017.

tyrust 7y ago

>I somehow doubt Dorsey doesn't know about ActivityPub Your doubts are correct. From the thread: >@halcy: So, ActivityPub? >@jack: Team will have charge to choose whatever is best, be that what exists today or start from scratch. https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204807357294727168 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204807357294727168