John Gruber Doesn't Know What He's Talking About
John Gruber Doesn't Know What He's Talking About
A legendary blogger weighs in on reactions from a user-run social network towards a big corporation diving into the space.
A response to Daring Fireball's recent thinkpieces about Fediverse admins wanting to block Meta's new ActivityPub platform.
I think that the objection "is it about openness or about anti-corporate" is interesting, but ultimately it's a bad question.
For me, it is actually about being anti-corporate, because I am aware that corporate internet platform are structurally incapable of building a system which includes the set of properties that are the key values of the fediverse. Ultimately, this means that openness is the goal, but anti-corporate stance is the mean (or one of) to achieve it.
We have seen this over and over again, the big corporates that serve VCs first or shareholders later simply participate in a system that does not have the economic incentive to maintain the system open, or ad-free, or not monetize the users or their content, or to interoperate with other platforms, etc.. There might be cases where some of these are possible, but not all of them.
So, at the end, I would say that the answer to that question is 'both', and I am not afraid of an explicit anti-corporate stance, because this is not grounded on prejudice, it's grounded on an (subjective and ideological, of course) analysis of the history and the current state of the cyberspace.
I think the problem about the discussion is that there is a false dichotomy being pushed that if you don't like Facebook, you are "anti-corporate", thus you are a socialist, thus you are a Stalin-sucking tankie.
I'm not "anti-corporate". Corporations are a great tool when used correctly. The problem is that Wall Street owns Big Tech, and it's a great tool in their hands. Ask yourself the question why Wall Street might be interested in getting an "in" to the Fediverse.
And to be honest, it's not hard to be specifically anti-Facebook when they have enabled multiple genocides and have served as weapons in an information war against most of the democratic world.
if you don’t like Facebook, you are “anti-corporate”, thus you are a socialist, thus you are a Stalin-sucking tankie.
Ahah, yeah, this might probably be the underlying narrative. However, I don't concern much with this, as if someone has this opinion, I already know there is no point in having this debate.
I’m not “anti-corporate”.
I am, generally speaking, but definitely I am when talking about the cyberspace. The reason is quite simple: the economic interests that big corporations have, where billions of dollars are at stake are straight up against my interests. Essentially everything they need, damages me. The need to foster controversy (which is proven to increase engagement), the need to create addiction, to commodify every single thing possible (data, actions, preferences, etc.), to lock-in users into their platforms. All these are not decisions based on the corporations being "evil" but it's the only business model that the Silicon Valley (home of the "disruptors" and cradle of innovation) came up with in the last 20 years. The sole fact that the business model relies on advertising, causes all of this. This is why I think that corporations are inherently incompatible with the way I think the cyberspace should be, which is "not commodified". Unfortunately this is by nature conflicting with what the corporations have to do to survive in this system (I don't even want to attribute malice to them).
This said, I am not against for-profit by definition. In fact, I would be extremely happy if a bunch of people around the world make co-ops or even small or individual businesses to run, maintain and develop Fediverse software. I would be very happy if these people can make this their full time job (hence, earning a profit). However, it is clear that the business model cannot be the one that the corporations use.
Technically, even a corporation could change the business model, and I would even accept that, I just think it's really, really, really, really unlikely in my opinion.
And to be honest, it’s not hard to be specifically anti-Facebook when they have enabled multiple genocides and have served as weapons in an information war against most of the democratic world.
I think the list would be so long that I would need to open a PR to bump the character limits for comments.
I mean he's not wrong.
The Fediverse is made by altruistic people, or at least people whose primary motivation is not to make as much money as possible on their creations. Facebook is not that, and is incapable of not being that, so a lot of caution is warranted.
I agree caution is warranted, absolutely. I agree with Gruber that the "fuck off irrespective or what your plans are" is perhaps not the best way to proceed.
@deadsuperhero Why the ad hominem in the title? Completely unnecessary, and actually proving his point about pettiness.
You don't know what you're talking about.
/s
Probably true.
@NettoHikari Says a person who does unpaid work for Condé Nast? In order to prove the same point again? Cool.
No, if I wanted to be petty, I would've called him an idiot. This is an opinion piece focused on the idea that he's uninformed on the nuance of the situation.
I promise, this is in good faith.
@deadsuperhero Just because you disagree with some things, and you've been here from the start, doesn't mean someone doesn't know what they're talking about. And even if that would be the case, it's an unnecessary insult that makes the recipients of the counterarguments less receptive to whatever is being laid out below.
So if it's in good faith, then I think that's just a poor choice of title. Only wanted to point that out. Feel free to ignore it.
The self delusion and confusion demonstrated in this so-called response piece is so insurmountable that I truly feel pity for you. Mixing a bunch of related yet independent concepts and ideas does not help make a strong argument. You may gather more support if you just outright admit you are being anti-corporate. Btw in case you are unaware ActivityPub is a standard from W3C of which Meta is a member lol
This entire comment made me laugh out loud, thank you. You have a beautiful way with words.
Look, I've been on this network pretty much since it began 15 years ago. I did community management for Diaspora back in the day, regularly kept in contact with many people who ended up starting their own platforms, and have had a pretty good finger on the pulse of the network's discourse during all that time.
The general attitude of people who have come here has largely been one of these:
- Hey neat, an open source thing I can tinker with! And it federates!
- Fuck the place I'm coming from, I never want to have to deal with it ever again.
There are a myriad of motivations behind how and why different parts of this space was built. For a lot of people, it's a place to build their own communities, hang out with a bunch of people into niche stuff, and generally just chill out and have fun. For others, it's a lifeline for their own marginalized groups, a way to find kindred spirits and support each other.
But, I guarantee that it sure as hell wasn't to build pipelines back to centralized corporate silos run by people trying to maximize profits.
Blocking at the instance level at least lets communities keep that crap out of our streams, and that's a feature of the network. Meta can implement AP all they want, and they'll probably connect to a decent amount of servers - but a lot of people can say "Fuck this." and choose never to connect to them in the first place.
They can go right on doing what they're doing, and their experience will be exactly like it was before Meta showed up. Being able to see and interact with who you want to, and filter out who you want to, is a fundamental feature of the network.
Indeed as you said defederating is a built-in feature of most if not all fediverse networks. I have no opinion against that. Your server your rule. You can do whatever you want with it. Just like what Reddit does to it's APIs.
But I suppose you are supporting a manifesto, aren't you? I believe you want to be heard and to persuade others to follow suit. If that is really the case, you and your comrades are doing a real poor job.
The Thread thing is not out yet and we don't know whether it will really be out or not. There is literally zero detail to discuss. And your arguments revolving Facebook aka Meta's "bloody" history have demonstrated exactly that.
I think the story he's telling is mostly coherent.
The whole point is that Facebook's business model is fundamentally incompatible with the current vision for the Fediverse, it's like Steam announcing they will be seeding torrents from now on. They have an ulterior motive, and a track record including enabling genocide for example, so they are not to be trusted, they are doing it so that they can take value away from the Fediverse, not to add to it.
I see it the other way. These giants joining and thus enabling the mess joining alone is value added to the fediverse already. We have to admit most people do not give a shit to the fediverse, selfhosting, open source, bla bla bla. For them they just want it to work despite the latent costs. That's why selfhosted blogs gave way to blogspot.com and eventually Facebook and friends.
I think the issue here is that I don't think you can assume that "the fediverse" is an entity with a "current vision" in fact it is specifically architected to have a plurality of visions