Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by KSPAtlas 1083 days ago
On the fediverse, there's already a huge number of instances planning to block this app when possible as it isn't really in the spirit of the fediverse - it's proprietary, owned by a large company and centralized
6 comments

It kinda doesn't matter? I would wager this will likely eclipse the fediverse's total userbase in a day or two. They simply post a banner for logged-in IG users, "Tap here to get the new twitter-murdering app, no signup needed", and they have an instant eight-figure userbase.
Yep. Assuming this [1] site's count of 10m fediverse's total users is accurate, Instagram would only need 2% of their ~500 DAU to sign up to surpass it; only 0.5% of their MAU.

[1] https://the-federation.info/

My knee-jerk reaction to this is that it's immature posturing. The internet is a decentralized protocol with centralized entities. Email is a decentralized protocol with centralized entities. But for this decentralized protocol (Mastodon/ActivityPub), centralized entities are a bridge too far?
>. The internet is a decentralized protocol with centralized entities

Maybe they're mature enough not to want that?

Sign up to protonmail.com for some privacy, to have your emails not read by Proton Inc., and quickly realize that most – if not all – your contacts are receiving your messages @gmail.com. All your emails will still be exploited by Google Inc.

There are good reasons to want the Fediverse to remain… diverse. Blocking isn't posturing, it's acting.

Hi! Please note that you can send password-protected emails to your non-Proton recipients: https://proton.me/support/open-password-protected-emails.
>it's proprietary

but uses an open standard

>owned by a large company

This doesn't contradict with the fediverse. Getting large companies on board is important for ActivityPub's adoption.

>and centralized

So is almost every other fediverse instance.

> by one of the most toxic and damaging tech companies

I mean, this bits not great.

Facebook didn’t write a fediverse compatible app because of warm fuzzy good feelings and wanting to contribute back to the community, they wrote one so they could capitalise and absorb the existing user base. They’ll do exactly the same thing they did with fb messenger at the beginning: massive interoperability with existing protocols and communities, followed by later deliberately breaking compat.

it stopped bridging XMPP so it already did the EEE strategy once

fool me once, shame on me

fool me twice, you can't fool me again

lol good thing they don't matter is the least. Most of them will reverse trend instantly once they start losing users over this issue.
Most don't have a profit incentive, in fact I'd guess that some would be happy to have the users who'd leave over this leave
I thing privacy is bigger concern.