Meta has sold Giphy.
Meta will be releasing a Twitter competitor âThreadsâ on July 6th.
News Article:
iOS :
Android :
Iâm not touching that thing.
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The thing to be aware of with this Threads is not as simple as not using it. Itâs that they say they are going to support ActivityPub. They donât have that ready for launch, but they say they will have it eventually.
You might say thatâs great. And it kind of is. It means that someone using Mastodon, or even some hand-crafted platform, will be able to communicate and interact with Threads users, and vice versa. And it means that Threads users will have a means to escape with their data. And so on.
However, it is also very dangerous. The lesson was learned when Google Chat/Hangout supported XMPP. It was initially great for all those reasons. The Google users could message in and out of Google, and it was so nice.
But the people who managed the XMPP protocol were put in a very tough spot. Because most of the XMPP user base were Google users, it effectively put Google in control of the protocol. If the Google server did something non-standard, everyone else had to adapt to that, or their XMPP server wouldnât communicate properly with the majority of the XMPP world.
And, as all companies do, they followed the strategy of being open when behind and closed when ahead. When a product doesnât have market dominance (yet) companies are perfectly happy to make it free and adopt all sorts of open protocols and interfaces. This helps them grow. Then once they have the most users, they close the door to seal in the user base and extract rent.
Make no mistake, if Threads adopts ActivityPub, this is the path they will take. Theyâll get lots and lots of people to use it. Youâll be able to communicate with the other users and also those nerds who are on Mastodon also! And for you weirdos sticking with Mastodon, we got the media to switch from Twitter to Threads, so now you can follow them!
Threads will become the #1 ActivityPub platform. And then Meta will take control of ActivityPub. Every other ActivityPub platform will have to conform not to the standard as written, but to ensure compatability with Threads.
And then one day, theyâll just say, yeah, thatâs enough of that, and cut everyone off. Oh, you Mastodon user who was following all your favorite journalists on Threads? Guess youâll have to make a Threads account now. Now that weâre #1 we give up on this ActivityPub biz.
The solution is to hold firm. Do not change your ActivityPub software to be compatible with Threads. If they want the benefits of openness, they have to conform to match everyone else. And if they want to grow and then cut everyone off, nothing to be done about that. But if we hold firm, then all the ActivityPub implementations can remain on part with each other, and users will have real choice. If Threads becomes the gold standard implementation, and the rest are second rate, then weâre in trouble.
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Personally I canât wait for there to be a text version of Instagram. Thatâs the social media app/network where I have the most fun, and where all my friends are, and where I have the most followers. If I could have all the benefits of Instagram but in the medium of tweets/toots, I think Iâd leave Mastodon almost immediately.
But really, itâs probably not as simple as that. I imagine thereâll be some negatives to the experience, just like there are (many) negative sides to Mastodon and (many more) to Twitter.
As for the google swallowing the chat protocol, Iâd like to hope that the correct analogy is more like Apple and Whatsapp and other services making a FAR superior messaging service compared to the chat clients. Like, it only worked by sending messages between currently-open-and-logged-in clients, rather than messaging apps that make sure someone gets the message even if they arenât currently online or have an app open.
We donât know what benefits might come with a single company (with all the resources they would ever need) pushing the ActivityPub standard forward. Like quote tweets? Would be a good start.
Letâs see how it all balances out.
I agree with all of this, but XMPP isnât the best example.
XMPP delivered AIM-like active-user-to-active-user communication, and that was already dying when Google started using it. Turned out, what most users really wanted was robust, anytime messaging with a message queue when the recipient isnât aroundâperhaps with a side of simple group chat.
Trust in Google running anything is, personally, at an all-time low. Iâm debating whether to ditch gmail.
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I would also ditch gmail at this point, but Iâm too locked in, and I made the mistake long ago of having other people on board with me.
I know a ton of Mastodon instances will be blocking interaction with Threads but am wondering if thatâll stick if Threads actually catches on.
Gmail has been bulletproof since the beginning, but lately Iâve been getting spams in my inbox. Always the most obvious junk too, âYouâve Been Selected, Redeem your yeti coolerâ
Probably 5 a week hit my inbox. What are they doing over there?
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Yes, same! Iâve been meaning to post here to see if I was the only one experiencing this. Really obvious spam that Iâve never seen on Gmail since the beginning. I wonder what is happening.
I donât even trust Google to host my static web page anymoreâŚ
Where would we all realistically go if Gmail became truly bad? I havenât even entertained the question in decades.
Protonmail and nextcloud.
I honestly didnât expect the âsome negativesâ to include NOT AVAILABLE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION.
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If only the United States had privacy laws that were that good, then I would actually be willing to use it, and we would all be on there.
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