A federated internet is forming. It's built on open protocols like ActivityPub & connects services like Mastodon, Threads, Pixelfed, Tumblr, Wordpress and more into a connected network known as the fediverse. And everyone from tech enthusiasts to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey seem to want in.
meta hasnt declared or made any intention of overtaking the fediverse, but that hasnt stopped a metric fuckton of people freakin the fuck out or generating fud blog post after fud blog post
its like claiming meta is going to overtake and own email because they stood up an email server.
As I said, I agree with the literal facts. The implications in your phrasing I disagree with.
Instead of unfounded, I would call it unproven.
Instead of scaremongering I would say warning.
And generally I avoid using absolute terms like "all", since only it takes one counter example, to make such a statement factually wrong.
Facebook is literally arguing to the US federal government that regulations about social media usage by children, and the data they sell from it, aren't their problem but are the responsibility of Google and Apple.
This is a distinction with little difference, which is convenient for them, because they can say well ackchyually we’re not stopping you from self-hosting when in practical terms they are.
It's not just convenient for them to do it; it's how they are able to evade anti-trust action (not that the U.S. is great at it anyway but still). I also run my own mail server. It's not impossible, and I wouldn't even say it's even hard. It's just time consuming to set up (if it's the first time), and there are a lot of hurdles to make it so impractical that it's virtually impossible to the average person. Only the most patient or those who have a real desire to run their own mail server will even attempt it. Anyone can set up their own mail server, but most won't because it's not worth it compared to using something that just works from Google.
do you any actual information regarding meta controlling the AP protocol with their single instance and no seat at the protocol table, or is this all just a huge premature, knee-jerk reaction to a big scary corporation?
It is about power. If they have more than 50% of the users, then all other instances should comply with their changes and obey them. If they don’t, then they’ll be blocked by more than half of the users. No instance owner will take this risk.
I’m trying to explain you that you don’t really need to own something to own it. If you have enough power, you have it already.