Re:Sure, it didn't work for Email, XMPP, Diaspora, but maybe...
by smoldesu on Friday November 18, 2022 @10:05AM
(#33655729)
> the illustrious technical aim of a purely federated world being the dominant form of social network just seems a little naive at the best of times
Who's technical aim is that, though? You're conflating the desires of Twitter users with the goals Mastodon maintainers. Mastodon's goal isn't to eat the world, and that's reflected in a lot of places - the current fediverse topology, the distinction between local and federated timelines, a lack of algorithmic content discovery... none of it seems to indicate an appetite for dominance. Instead, recent releases[0] seem to be adding in user-requested features instead of optimizing for retention and profitability.
ActivityPub does not live or die based on who uses it, much as you conceded with IRC. And maybe Twitter 2 will arrive someday, with mind-reading functionality and magic hologram projection. There are always faux "distruptors" who use stickers/custom emojis/pointless crap to justify rebuilding a protocol from the ground-up. The people who like ActivityPub will continue to like it, and the people who feel dissatisfied with Twitter will likely continue to project it's problems onto alternative software that isn't beholden to fixing centralized issues or getting Kanye West to post another time.
Who's technical aim is that, though? You're conflating the desires of Twitter users with the goals Mastodon maintainers. Mastodon's goal isn't to eat the world, and that's reflected in a lot of places - the current fediverse topology, the distinction between local and federated timelines, a lack of algorithmic content discovery... none of it seems to indicate an appetite for dominance. Instead, recent releases[0] seem to be adding in user-requested features instead of optimizing for retention and profitability.
ActivityPub does not live or die based on who uses it, much as you conceded with IRC. And maybe Twitter 2 will arrive someday, with mind-reading functionality and magic hologram projection. There are always faux "distruptors" who use stickers/custom emojis/pointless crap to justify rebuilding a protocol from the ground-up. The people who like ActivityPub will continue to like it, and the people who feel dissatisfied with Twitter will likely continue to project it's problems onto alternative software that isn't beholden to fixing centralized issues or getting Kanye West to post another time.
[0] https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.0.0