[wombatmobile]

TBL and W3C could enable competition to de facto monopolies such as FB by providing web standards that enable competitors to overcome FB's inherent walled garden first mover silo advantage.

How?

Extend HTML to include a Like button and a Share button, and implement a new standard that defines an open access comment platform.

I'm not suggesting W3C should set up servers to compete with service providers. Rather, it could define protocols for those capabilities as web standards which are designed to enable arbitrary 3rd party implementers to federate interactions. That way, service providers could attract niche social groups, whilst pooling interactions, thereby overcoming the dilemma of all being too small to compete with FB.

[mxuribe]

I believe ActivityPub does allow for "Like button"-like functionality: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#liked

And, ActivityPub is already a W3C published standard...Of course, having an existing standard doesn't mean that the Facebooks's of the world will choose to adopt it.

[tester756]

So what exactly would they have to add to HTML?

[wombatmobile]

They don't really have to add anything to HTML. I just put it that way to express the idea of the "Like" button being a page element available anywhere on the web, rather than only inside a walled garden.

What is really required is a database protocol for tracking Likes, or "a client/server API for creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server API for delivering notifications and content."

But they have that! I didn't know about ActivityPub until I read mxuribe's comment above. That's a good start.

As mxuribe says, "having an existing standard doesn't mean that the Facebooks's of the world will choose to adopt it." I would expect FB to resist it. But if the backlash and dissatisfaction with FB grows, a protocol like ActivityPub is a necessary enabler for something new to happen. By allowing multiple providers to share content in a federated model, the protocol could grow organically without requiring one big new player to migrate all the FB users to a new monopoly.

Once it starts to happen, FB customers could be bridged into the new federated universe with translators that mirror content from FB into the new ecosystem.

[theamk]

> FB customers could be bridged into the new federated universe with translators that mirror content from FB into the new ecosystem.

I cannot imagine FB agreeing to such translators voluntarily.

[wombatmobile]

Right. It would take some act of compulsion to make them comply, or some clever hack to automate scraping and mirroring. While most of the customers accept FB's legitimacy, they still rule, and the effort to hack or legislate might not obviously pay dividends.

Will this last forever, or go the way of MySpace?

FB appears to be more robust than MySpace because of the inertial qualities of its comprehensive membership, but that may be changing.

2020 is the year "surveillance capitalism" entered the popular lexicon, and 2021 has kicked off with an ugliness that could well be transformative. If there is a revolution, new tools, infrastructure, and rules are required to establish new social media platform that avoids the pitfalls of the old.

[cxr]

LDN (Linked Data Notifications) and the work that Hypothes.is is doing on annotations/commenting should also not be overlooked.