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A comment on Why Tim Berners-Lee is no friend of Facebook. Parent comment

Re:Why Tim Berners-Lee is no friend of Facebook by jpalomaki on Sunday August 28, 2016 @06:33PM (#12378860)
I can't come up with a good definition for "open site", but open protocols come to my mind. Things like NNTP, SMTP, XMPP and building the services on top of those.

It might be that I'm required to login to a specific site in order to access my email account that is hosted there, but since everything is based on the "open" SMTP protocol, I'm not dependent on that specific site if I want to exchange messages with my friends.

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Re:Why Tim Berners-Lee is no friend of Facebook by bluejekyll on Sunday August 28, 2016 @07:31PM (#12379064)
It's not just standard protocols, though is it? It's also the ability to freely use those protocols with Facebook.

An example: SMTP, to prevent spam many SMTP hosting companies activity block anyone they deem to be spammers, or those who don't properly use things like SPF.

So even SMTP is t really open any more. There's a general agreement from most SMTP providers that they will accept and deliver emails for those that play by the rules.

(I don't disagree with this, just pointing out that it's not quite as simple as just standards, etc)

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