10 ms·

Flipboard Begins to Federate

reqo 3y ago
Unrelated. How hard is it to create another “internet” which is completely detached from the current internet?
- riidom 3y ago
  Sounds like an "Ask HN" to me.
- nearlyepic 3y ago
  The answer ranges from "basically impossible" to "trivial" depending on what layer of the OSI model you think the "current internet" exists on.
  - aorloff 3y ago
    Another answer might be - you do this every time your local network disconnects from the big internet. How do you like your little internet ?
- capableweb 3y ago
  How long is a rope? There is already a bunch of "completely detached" networks out there, organized via wifi links. Freifunk, Guifi and NYC Mesh are three examples of such networks, where you can basically avoid the current internet infrastructure as long as you get hooked up to the mesh network. Lots of interesting services deployed on these networks too :)
  - none_to_remain 3y ago
    I've read about the NYC mesh in the past, I don't remember it being disconnected from the wider internet?
    - capableweb 3y ago
      Usually the meshes have parts of the network that is connected to the internet, and you either automatically get access to those nodes so you can route via them, or you can request access to be able to reach the wider network. Really depends on the mesh, I don't know the specific answer for NYC mesh.
- jaywcarman 3y ago
  I think Project Gemini fits this description: https://geminiprotocol.net/ https://geminiprotocol.net/
- kpandit 3y ago
  > How hard is it to create another “internet” which is completely detached from the current internet? Seems like a good way to explain the meaning "network effect".
- rchaud 3y ago
  Well FB has lost $20bn and counting on Horizon Worlds and other "new internet" projects. Before building anew, it's important to consider how many people want to leave the current one.
riidom 3y ago
In case one has no clue what flipboard is, like me, have a shortened first paragraph from wikipedia: Flipboard aggregates content from social media, news feeds, photo sharing sites, and other websites and presents it in magazine format.
AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
Completely forgot it even existed. I remember I loved the app initially on iPad. Looked so nice. Then it started getting flooded with ads and turned to peepoo. The layout was awesome though. It was kinda like a RSS reader you could follow a bunch of topics, twitter feeds, blogs...
- brandall10 3y ago
  Same here. It was one of those things I loaded on the 1st gen iPad and considered a possible killer app for a new and innovative way to get news content. Glad to see it's still around and doing something like this. Will be checking it out again.
simonw 3y ago
I'm excited about this - and about Threads too. I've been on Mastodon for just over a year now. It works really surprisingly well, especially considering it's stitched together from so many independent, non-profit open source instances. But... it's still not easy enough for non-nerds to get onboard. I'd love to see efforts from organizations like Flipboard, and Threads, and Automattic make an impact here. I want to be able to follow interesting content from the kind of people who are put off by language like "first, select your federated instance". Also noteworthy: in the Verge article about this at https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24006062/flipboard-fediverse-mastodon-activitypub-profiles-social https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24006062/flipboard-fediv... there's this quote: “Basically, we’re in the process of replacing our whole social back-end with ActivityPub,” says Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. “I think Flipboard is going to be the first mainstream consumer service that existed in a walled garden that switches over to ActivityPub.” You can now follow the Flipboard account for The Verge on Mastodon/other-Fediverse-things by following @theverge@flipboard.com - or pasting in the URL https://flipboard.com/@theverge https://flipboard.com/@theverge
- phreeza 3y ago
  I think it is definitely easy enough, but it's just not as intrinsically addictive.
- tedunangst 3y ago
  https://flipboard.com/@theverge https://flipboard.com/@theverge doesn't work for me. I have to change it to https://flipboard.com/users/theverge https://flipboard.com/users/theverge.
- kazinator 3y ago
  > I want to be able to follow interesting content from the kind of people who are put off by language like "first, select your federated instance". But not put off by language like, first select Threads, Flipboard or Automattic? Can these people fog a mirror?
- esperent 3y ago
  > But... it's still not easy enough for non-nerds to get onboard. I made several attempts to get onboard with Mastodon about a year ago when I stopped using Twitter. I used a tool to copy over as many people I follow on Twitter to Mastodon. Technically, it's fine. The issue I have is that it felt exactly the same as Twitter, and I always disliked Twitter. However, Twitter had reached a network effect threshold where most of the news in my industry was shared exclusively there, so I was... well not quite forced, but strongly compelled to use it. Mastodon doesn't have this. It's just noise and thoughtless hot takes, much like Twitter, but without most of the news I used to use Twitter for. I hope it doesn't become another Twitter where I feel compelled to wade through the mess to get my industry news. To sum up: for me the reason I don't use Mastodon is not technical. It's because it feels useless and I dislike it. I had hoped for a more thoughtful arena of public discourse, but Mastodon is not it. All the interesting tech aside, it's just a Twitter clone using different technology.
leotravis10 3y ago
If you can't get past the Medium loginwall, here's a mirrored link: https://archive.ph/uFFy4 https://archive.ph/uFFy4
- tonystubblebine 3y ago
  FWIW, Medium doesn’t have login walls and hasn’t for a long time. Stories are either paywalled or they aren’t (author’s choice). This link is not paywalled and doesn’t require login.
  - crackercrews 3y ago
    Last I checked (not super recently) there was a login wall that popped up after you’ve seen X articles that the authors have chosen to put behind the login wall. Also, if an author wants an article to be eligible for inclusion in aggregated publications, they have to put it behind the login wall. It’s quite possible my info is outdated; happy to learn what the current state of affairs is if things have changed.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Medium absolutely has login walls. Scroll past a couple of paragraphs and there it is.
    - tonystubblebine 3y ago
      That’s a paywall, which is what I said above.
      - rchaud 3y ago
        It's not a paywall, it's a "member-only" story, hence a login wall.
        tonystubblebine 3y ago
        I'm not sure where the disconnect is. What do you think the difference is? I don't see one. Membership requires payment, hence it is a paywall. Also, there is no paywall or membership wall on this story that I submitted.
thekevan 3y ago
Flipboard used to be great, but as expected, it got diluted with recycled FB and reddit content, ads and "the top 5 things you shouldn't do, number 3 shocked me" type of posts.
- jwmoz 3y ago
  Exactly what I was just thinking, had no idea it was still alive. Twitter took its place for me but now even that has been ruined.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    I don't go on Twitter often, but it seems fine? I quite like community notes.
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  uh, isn't it an rss client? Can't you just add what you want to it?
  - pndy 3y ago
    Pretty sure it had always predefined sources
- AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
  Happens everywhere, even on my Google News Feed. I can tell Google I don't want to see specific articles, authors, topics, etc., but there's no way for me to tell Google that I don't want to see Clickbait article titles...
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Try Ground News. https://ground.news/ https://ground.news/ (no affiliation)
    - lucasban 3y ago
leotravis10 3y ago
I'm very stoked about this as I trust Flipboard to get major social federation right more than Meta/Facebook plus they're more ethical in all sense. As a long time user, it's a great that they're put their eggs in the ActivityPub basket and I'm looking forward to see what they truly got in the coming months.
jwmoz 3y ago
I thought this app was dead. I used to use it years ago when it first came out-it was a great way to consume your news. Then the advertisers and paywalls came in and ruined it.
filterfiber 3y ago
Fun monetization strategy for federated apps - federate with your own instance dedicated to ads. But more seriously what is the monetization strategy for federated apps? Up front pay or subscription for using the app?
- crowcroft 3y ago
  I suppose you could have an 'Apollo' style app providing a nice UI for power users with a subscription cost. I could see it being a solid revenue stream for small teams/indie makers. Difficult to get to the kind of scale needed for advertising to be particularly profitable unless we get some kind of federated facebook ads platform...
- indymike 3y ago
  You can look at how email is monetized for some ideas. Everything from ad infested free client to pay service to freebie with the purchase of your internet connection.
BillSaysThis 3y ago
Strange for me to see the negative comments on Flipboard (though I'm not of course criticizing anyone's personal opinion) since I've been a user pretty much from the beginning and still use it daily. Ads are definitely visible but not obnoxious or in the way of how I read it. I agree with Brent's take on Fediverse in read apps (https://inessential.com/2023/12/17/on_mastodon_support_in_netnewswire https://inessential.com/2023/12/17/on_mastodon_support_in_ne...) and Flipboard seems to match with this thinking.
- rchaud 3y ago
  The Fediverse is a breath of fresh air because it's not crawling with ads and low quality writing. Flipboard is basically announcing that they're going to put an end to that. Their list of partner publications is like a who's who of blogspam.
ixwt 3y ago
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... I'm always a bit leery of things like this when massive companies begin adopting open source things such as this. Google Chat embracing XMPP, only to end up abandoning it (as Google does). Slack having an IRC gateway, only to end up abandoning it. There are probably other examples, but these are the ones off the top of my head. These technologies still exist, but in their own bubble. I doubt that Flipboard adopting and dropping ActivityPub support would have a significant impact in the long run. But I'm hesitantly happy about this.
- apitman 3y ago
  As someone who never really used XMPP, was it worse off after Google compared to before? I mean sure a ton of users lost access to XMPP after they ended support, but surely most of them never would have used XMPP in the first place.
  - indymike 3y ago
    > but surely most of them never would have used XMPP in the first place. There was a time that Facebook messenger was XMPP and Google chat was XMPP, so there was a time it was gaining a lot of traction. Most people just think their email is email. They don't see it as using SMTP/IMAP/POP3.
    - RF_Savage 3y ago
      WhatsApp was also XMPP and I had friends using it with 3rd pary clients.
    - apitman 3y ago
      I guess what I'm asking is was adoption by big tech a net negative? If you add 50 million users then take away 50 million users, then maybe no harm done. Unless there were other effects as well.
      - webmaven 3y ago
        Gaining then losing 50m users is a net negative in a world where "line goes up and to the right" (ie. momentum) is the most basic heuristic for assessing the viability of a platform (and especially so for social platforms where the users create the content). The only way that negative effect is muted is if the 50m users is only a small fraction of the platform's reach. Say, under 2%.
apitman 3y ago
Lot of Fediverse news this week. Elon buying Twitter might be the single best thing that's ever happened to social media. 5 years ago I was excited about ActivityPub but I'm not sure I really believed decentralized social media could ever get a foothold. Now I believe it's possible. There's a hundred ways it can go wrong, but dang it I'm excited about the possibilities if we help it go right.
57FkMytWjyFu 3y ago
Awesome! One small step to admitting you actually are bloatware! https://medium.com/@kaikoenig/samsungs-bloatware-disgrace-c7d14a298ad7 https://medium.com/@kaikoenig/samsungs-bloatware-disgrace-c7...
- yaomtc 3y ago
  What does Flipboard have to do with Samsung?
  - 57FkMytWjyFu 3y ago
    Perhaps you assumed that I just threw that link in there, and it had nothing to do with my comment. Here is a sample of text from it. "Unwanted 3rd party apps from Microsoft or Flipboard."
    - tedunangst 3y ago
      You'll have to explain how adding activitypub support is related to that, because I'm not clever enough to follow.
      - 57FkMytWjyFu 3y ago
        No, I don't.
  - mkl 3y ago
    IME Flipboard is one of the few bundled crapware apps on Samsung phones. I got rid of it immediately.
    - rchaud 3y ago
      So is Facebook.
iteratethis 3y ago
Threads is also testing federation, it supposedly is close to being enabled. Interesting dynamic is that Mastodon's community is such a sour bunch that likely most instance owners will block federation with Threads at the domain level. Because "Meta evil". This takes away choice at the user level. Normal people that just want to connect with people and content no matter where it is hosted, which is the very purpose of ActivityPub, have no choice but to move to instances that do federate. ...which will be the large instances, like mastodon.social. It's already the default instance and by far the largest. For maximum connectivity and the biggest chance that it doesn't go under, it is the primary choice for most users. So this dynamic of too much instance-level moderation effectively undermines the idea of the fediverse. There will always be tiny for-purpose instances, but the idea that many small instances will grow the fediverse to Big Tech scale is invalidated. Come to think of it, one might as well create a Threads account. It's a community almost a 100 times larger than all of Mastodon combined. So if you just want to connect to people and find content, Mastodon offers few tangible benefits to normies.
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  What do you mean it "takes away choice"? Did you mean "imposes annoying bureaucracy"? Because I have a hard time seeing how forcing people to make a choice is taking away choice. Also, the people who have accounts away from the big instances have actively declined to use them, so they are clearly more likely to move to some other mid scale instance if they need to migrate than to head for the big ones.
  - iteratethis 3y ago
    When your instance moderator makes the choice to block Threads at domain level, you're fully blocked from seeing any Threads content or interacting with any Threads user. It could be that as an instance user you like this decision, but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself.
    - rchaud 3y ago
      > but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself. Or you just create a different account on any one of the several Mastodon instances out there. Mastodon doesn't have the ability to ban you from all of the fediverse. It doesn't take away choice, it simply gives an additional option to the instance admin. Don't like it? Start your own instance.
Podgajski 3y ago
This corporate infestation of the Fed verse is not going to end well.
watersb 3y ago
Today I realized that Mike McCue is Flipboard's (co-?) founder. I worked on Netscape NetCaster in 1997, so Mike was my grand-boss. Months later, he provided key testimony in the US Federal anti-trust case against Microsoft. I didn't interact with him, didn't get to know many people at Netscape; we were head-down on development. But I keep bumping into names that are familiar... (I started using Flipboard when Google's RSS aggregator was shut down. I collect stories there; collection are called "magazines". I have one about space up there that some people follow. https://flipboard.com/@watersb/out-there-is-here-f6c9vfnez https://flipboard.com/@watersb/out-there-is-here-f6c9vfnez No warranty :-) )
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kazinator 3y ago
I have a distant memory of a crapplication by this name that was preinstalled on Samsung phones and couldn't be removed from a non-rooted phone.
pentagrama 3y ago
> If you’re a publisher, creator or brand on Flipboard, you’ll start to see new visitors and engagement as people discover and share your content across the growing Fediverse. I think it should be opt-in. Users should be asked if their content will be distributed on new places. This is a deceptive UX pattern to push a new feature [1]. [1] https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/automatic-opt-in https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/automat...
- simbolit 3y ago
  "By posting it, you give us permission to use your content to do what we reasonably believe necessary to improve and provide our service both now and in the future. For example, this may include storing, displaying, reproducing and distributing your content on Flipboard’s website, mobile application, our social web integrations, and any future offerings. This might also include providing or promoting your content with partner companies or services for broader broadcast, redistribution or publication via Flipboard." https://about.flipboard.com/terms-of-service/ https://about.flipboard.com/terms-of-service/

reqo 3y ago

Unrelated. How hard is it to create another “internet” which is completely detached from the current internet?

riidom 3y ago
Sounds like an "Ask HN" to me.
nearlyepic 3y ago
The answer ranges from "basically impossible" to "trivial" depending on what layer of the OSI model you think the "current internet" exists on.
- aorloff 3y ago
  Another answer might be - you do this every time your local network disconnects from the big internet. How do you like your little internet ?
capableweb 3y ago
How long is a rope? There is already a bunch of "completely detached" networks out there, organized via wifi links. Freifunk, Guifi and NYC Mesh are three examples of such networks, where you can basically avoid the current internet infrastructure as long as you get hooked up to the mesh network. Lots of interesting services deployed on these networks too :)
- none_to_remain 3y ago
  I've read about the NYC mesh in the past, I don't remember it being disconnected from the wider internet?
  - capableweb 3y ago
    Usually the meshes have parts of the network that is connected to the internet, and you either automatically get access to those nodes so you can route via them, or you can request access to be able to reach the wider network. Really depends on the mesh, I don't know the specific answer for NYC mesh.
jaywcarman 3y ago
I think Project Gemini fits this description: https://geminiprotocol.net/ https://geminiprotocol.net/
kpandit 3y ago
> How hard is it to create another “internet” which is completely detached from the current internet? Seems like a good way to explain the meaning "network effect".
rchaud 3y ago
Well FB has lost $20bn and counting on Horizon Worlds and other "new internet" projects. Before building anew, it's important to consider how many people want to leave the current one.

In case one has no clue what flipboard is, like me, have a shortened first paragraph from wikipedia: Flipboard aggregates content from social media, news feeds, photo sharing sites, and other websites and presents it in magazine format.

AltruisticGapHN 3y ago

Completely forgot it even existed. I remember I loved the app initially on iPad. Looked so nice. Then it started getting flooded with ads and turned to peepoo. The layout was awesome though. It was kinda like a RSS reader you could follow a bunch of topics, twitter feeds, blogs...

brandall10 3y ago
Same here. It was one of those things I loaded on the 1st gen iPad and considered a possible killer app for a new and innovative way to get news content. Glad to see it's still around and doing something like this. Will be checking it out again.

simonw 3y ago

I'm excited about this - and about Threads too. I've been on Mastodon for just over a year now. It works really surprisingly well, especially considering it's stitched together from so many independent, non-profit open source instances. But... it's still not easy enough for non-nerds to get onboard. I'd love to see efforts from organizations like Flipboard, and Threads, and Automattic make an impact here. I want to be able to follow interesting content from the kind of people who are put off by language like "first, select your federated instance". Also noteworthy: in the Verge article about this at https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24006062/flipboard-fediverse-mastodon-activitypub-profiles-social https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24006062/flipboard-fediv... there's this quote: “Basically, we’re in the process of replacing our whole social back-end with ActivityPub,” says Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. “I think Flipboard is going to be the first mainstream consumer service that existed in a walled garden that switches over to ActivityPub.” You can now follow the Flipboard account for The Verge on Mastodon/other-Fediverse-things by following @theverge@flipboard.com - or pasting in the URL https://flipboard.com/@theverge https://flipboard.com/@theverge

phreeza 3y ago
I think it is definitely easy enough, but it's just not as intrinsically addictive.
tedunangst 3y ago
https://flipboard.com/@theverge https://flipboard.com/@theverge doesn't work for me. I have to change it to https://flipboard.com/users/theverge https://flipboard.com/users/theverge.
kazinator 3y ago
> I want to be able to follow interesting content from the kind of people who are put off by language like "first, select your federated instance". But not put off by language like, first select Threads, Flipboard or Automattic? Can these people fog a mirror?
esperent 3y ago
> But... it's still not easy enough for non-nerds to get onboard. I made several attempts to get onboard with Mastodon about a year ago when I stopped using Twitter. I used a tool to copy over as many people I follow on Twitter to Mastodon. Technically, it's fine. The issue I have is that it felt exactly the same as Twitter, and I always disliked Twitter. However, Twitter had reached a network effect threshold where most of the news in my industry was shared exclusively there, so I was... well not quite forced, but strongly compelled to use it. Mastodon doesn't have this. It's just noise and thoughtless hot takes, much like Twitter, but without most of the news I used to use Twitter for. I hope it doesn't become another Twitter where I feel compelled to wade through the mess to get my industry news. To sum up: for me the reason I don't use Mastodon is not technical. It's because it feels useless and I dislike it. I had hoped for a more thoughtful arena of public discourse, but Mastodon is not it. All the interesting tech aside, it's just a Twitter clone using different technology.

leotravis10 3y ago

If you can't get past the Medium loginwall, here's a mirrored link: https://archive.ph/uFFy4 https://archive.ph/uFFy4

tonystubblebine 3y ago
FWIW, Medium doesn’t have login walls and hasn’t for a long time. Stories are either paywalled or they aren’t (author’s choice). This link is not paywalled and doesn’t require login.
- crackercrews 3y ago
  Last I checked (not super recently) there was a login wall that popped up after you’ve seen X articles that the authors have chosen to put behind the login wall. Also, if an author wants an article to be eligible for inclusion in aggregated publications, they have to put it behind the login wall. It’s quite possible my info is outdated; happy to learn what the current state of affairs is if things have changed.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Medium absolutely has login walls. Scroll past a couple of paragraphs and there it is.
  - tonystubblebine 3y ago
    That’s a paywall, which is what I said above.
    - rchaud 3y ago
      It's not a paywall, it's a "member-only" story, hence a login wall.
      - tonystubblebine 3y ago
        I'm not sure where the disconnect is. What do you think the difference is? I don't see one. Membership requires payment, hence it is a paywall. Also, there is no paywall or membership wall on this story that I submitted.

thekevan 3y ago

Flipboard used to be great, but as expected, it got diluted with recycled FB and reddit content, ads and "the top 5 things you shouldn't do, number 3 shocked me" type of posts.

jwmoz 3y ago
Exactly what I was just thinking, had no idea it was still alive. Twitter took its place for me but now even that has been ruined.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  I don't go on Twitter often, but it seems fine? I quite like community notes.
jabroni_salad 3y ago
uh, isn't it an rss client? Can't you just add what you want to it?
- pndy 3y ago
  Pretty sure it had always predefined sources
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
Happens everywhere, even on my Google News Feed. I can tell Google I don't want to see specific articles, authors, topics, etc., but there's no way for me to tell Google that I don't want to see Clickbait article titles...
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Try Ground News. https://ground.news/ https://ground.news/ (no affiliation)
  - lucasban 3y ago

leotravis10 3y ago

I'm very stoked about this as I trust Flipboard to get major social federation right more than Meta/Facebook plus they're more ethical in all sense. As a long time user, it's a great that they're put their eggs in the ActivityPub basket and I'm looking forward to see what they truly got in the coming months.

jwmoz 3y ago

I thought this app was dead. I used to use it years ago when it first came out-it was a great way to consume your news. Then the advertisers and paywalls came in and ruined it.

filterfiber 3y ago

Fun monetization strategy for federated apps - federate with your own instance dedicated to ads. But more seriously what is the monetization strategy for federated apps? Up front pay or subscription for using the app?

crowcroft 3y ago
I suppose you could have an 'Apollo' style app providing a nice UI for power users with a subscription cost. I could see it being a solid revenue stream for small teams/indie makers. Difficult to get to the kind of scale needed for advertising to be particularly profitable unless we get some kind of federated facebook ads platform...
indymike 3y ago
You can look at how email is monetized for some ideas. Everything from ad infested free client to pay service to freebie with the purchase of your internet connection.

BillSaysThis 3y ago

Strange for me to see the negative comments on Flipboard (though I'm not of course criticizing anyone's personal opinion) since I've been a user pretty much from the beginning and still use it daily. Ads are definitely visible but not obnoxious or in the way of how I read it. I agree with Brent's take on Fediverse in read apps (https://inessential.com/2023/12/17/on_mastodon_support_in_netnewswire https://inessential.com/2023/12/17/on_mastodon_support_in_ne...) and Flipboard seems to match with this thinking.

rchaud 3y ago
The Fediverse is a breath of fresh air because it's not crawling with ads and low quality writing. Flipboard is basically announcing that they're going to put an end to that. Their list of partner publications is like a who's who of blogspam.

ixwt 3y ago

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... I'm always a bit leery of things like this when massive companies begin adopting open source things such as this. Google Chat embracing XMPP, only to end up abandoning it (as Google does). Slack having an IRC gateway, only to end up abandoning it. There are probably other examples, but these are the ones off the top of my head. These technologies still exist, but in their own bubble. I doubt that Flipboard adopting and dropping ActivityPub support would have a significant impact in the long run. But I'm hesitantly happy about this.

apitman 3y ago
As someone who never really used XMPP, was it worse off after Google compared to before? I mean sure a ton of users lost access to XMPP after they ended support, but surely most of them never would have used XMPP in the first place.
- indymike 3y ago
  > but surely most of them never would have used XMPP in the first place. There was a time that Facebook messenger was XMPP and Google chat was XMPP, so there was a time it was gaining a lot of traction. Most people just think their email is email. They don't see it as using SMTP/IMAP/POP3.
  - RF_Savage 3y ago
    WhatsApp was also XMPP and I had friends using it with 3rd pary clients.
  - apitman 3y ago
    I guess what I'm asking is was adoption by big tech a net negative? If you add 50 million users then take away 50 million users, then maybe no harm done. Unless there were other effects as well.
    - webmaven 3y ago
      Gaining then losing 50m users is a net negative in a world where "line goes up and to the right" (ie. momentum) is the most basic heuristic for assessing the viability of a platform (and especially so for social platforms where the users create the content). The only way that negative effect is muted is if the 50m users is only a small fraction of the platform's reach. Say, under 2%.

apitman 3y ago

Lot of Fediverse news this week. Elon buying Twitter might be the single best thing that's ever happened to social media. 5 years ago I was excited about ActivityPub but I'm not sure I really believed decentralized social media could ever get a foothold. Now I believe it's possible. There's a hundred ways it can go wrong, but dang it I'm excited about the possibilities if we help it go right.

57FkMytWjyFu 3y ago

Awesome! One small step to admitting you actually are bloatware! https://medium.com/@kaikoenig/samsungs-bloatware-disgrace-c7d14a298ad7 https://medium.com/@kaikoenig/samsungs-bloatware-disgrace-c7...

yaomtc 3y ago
What does Flipboard have to do with Samsung?
- 57FkMytWjyFu 3y ago
  Perhaps you assumed that I just threw that link in there, and it had nothing to do with my comment. Here is a sample of text from it. "Unwanted 3rd party apps from Microsoft or Flipboard."
  - tedunangst 3y ago
    You'll have to explain how adding activitypub support is related to that, because I'm not clever enough to follow.
    - 57FkMytWjyFu 3y ago
      No, I don't.
- mkl 3y ago
  IME Flipboard is one of the few bundled crapware apps on Samsung phones. I got rid of it immediately.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    So is Facebook.

iteratethis 3y ago

Threads is also testing federation, it supposedly is close to being enabled. Interesting dynamic is that Mastodon's community is such a sour bunch that likely most instance owners will block federation with Threads at the domain level. Because "Meta evil". This takes away choice at the user level. Normal people that just want to connect with people and content no matter where it is hosted, which is the very purpose of ActivityPub, have no choice but to move to instances that do federate. ...which will be the large instances, like mastodon.social. It's already the default instance and by far the largest. For maximum connectivity and the biggest chance that it doesn't go under, it is the primary choice for most users. So this dynamic of too much instance-level moderation effectively undermines the idea of the fediverse. There will always be tiny for-purpose instances, but the idea that many small instances will grow the fediverse to Big Tech scale is invalidated. Come to think of it, one might as well create a Threads account. It's a community almost a 100 times larger than all of Mastodon combined. So if you just want to connect to people and find content, Mastodon offers few tangible benefits to normies.

SiempreViernes 3y ago
What do you mean it "takes away choice"? Did you mean "imposes annoying bureaucracy"? Because I have a hard time seeing how forcing people to make a choice is taking away choice. Also, the people who have accounts away from the big instances have actively declined to use them, so they are clearly more likely to move to some other mid scale instance if they need to migrate than to head for the big ones.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  When your instance moderator makes the choice to block Threads at domain level, you're fully blocked from seeing any Threads content or interacting with any Threads user. It could be that as an instance user you like this decision, but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    > but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself. Or you just create a different account on any one of the several Mastodon instances out there. Mastodon doesn't have the ability to ban you from all of the fediverse. It doesn't take away choice, it simply gives an additional option to the instance admin. Don't like it? Start your own instance.

Podgajski 3y ago

This corporate infestation of the Fed verse is not going to end well.

watersb 3y ago

Today I realized that Mike McCue is Flipboard's (co-?) founder. I worked on Netscape NetCaster in 1997, so Mike was my grand-boss. Months later, he provided key testimony in the US Federal anti-trust case against Microsoft. I didn't interact with him, didn't get to know many people at Netscape; we were head-down on development. But I keep bumping into names that are familiar... (I started using Flipboard when Google's RSS aggregator was shut down. I collect stories there; collection are called "magazines". I have one about space up there that some people follow. https://flipboard.com/@watersb/out-there-is-here-f6c9vfnez https://flipboard.com/@watersb/out-there-is-here-f6c9vfnez No warranty :-) )

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kazinator 3y ago

I have a distant memory of a crapplication by this name that was preinstalled on Samsung phones and couldn't be removed from a non-rooted phone.

pentagrama 3y ago

> If you’re a publisher, creator or brand on Flipboard, you’ll start to see new visitors and engagement as people discover and share your content across the growing Fediverse. I think it should be opt-in. Users should be asked if their content will be distributed on new places. This is a deceptive UX pattern to push a new feature [1]. [1] https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/automatic-opt-in https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/automat...

simbolit 3y ago
"By posting it, you give us permission to use your content to do what we reasonably believe necessary to improve and provide our service both now and in the future. For example, this may include storing, displaying, reproducing and distributing your content on Flipboard’s website, mobile application, our social web integrations, and any future offerings. This might also include providing or promoting your content with partner companies or services for broader broadcast, redistribution or publication via Flipboard." https://about.flipboard.com/terms-of-service/ https://about.flipboard.com/terms-of-service/