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Yeah, as troubling as Facebook is, are you literally suggesting the W3C could do a better job running a social network via a federated protocol than Facebook wi
by wdewind 12y ago
Yeah, as troubling as Facebook is, are you literally suggesting the W3C could do a better job running a social network via a federated protocol than Facebook with a centralized one?
That SMTP and XMPP exist are just more proof for the value of Facebook (and to be clear: I hate FB and don't have an account, but I still see that it has value). SMTP has massive amounts of users, likely more than FB, and yet FB still exists because SMTP . XMPP is a good protocol, and yet no one is using it because federation makes it too hard for these things to work in the market.
- pgeorgi 12y agoIETF maintains the SMTP specs, yet their mail server operation is one tiny (set of) server(s) among many. The idea with federated systems is that the standard body isn't _running_ the network. So no, I wouldn't expect W3C to run a social network, federated or not. Their own node, maybe.
- wdewind 12y agoThat's kind of a matter of semantics, I wasn't sure how to say it properly. "Directing" a social network? I understand they aren't literally paying for the nodes, but defining the protocol gives you quite a lot of power and centralization.
- pgeorgi 12y agoIt's a multi-stakeholder model. In the end a "social networking protocols working group" would primarily consist of delegates from all social network operators that implement the standards.