[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.