Should a single company control the Social Web?

Khleedril

@evan There is nothing to learn from this; the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Evan Prodromou

@khleedril Not for me, actually. It's been really helpful to get some confirmation that I'm not an outlier on this one.

bryan newbold

@evan @hallenbeck
We have brought some of our work to the W3C community, including the recent TPAC meeting:
https://social.coop/@bnewbold/113199431948755006
I've had a Bluesky-affiliated W3C account for some time, and just joined the SocialCG just now (I thought I had done this previously, but apparently had only signed up for the mailing list)

bryan newbold

@hallenbeck @evan

other folks have raised similar concerns in the past. you can see an open and and collaborative conversation from October 2023, resulting in license changes in November 2023:
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto-website/issues/218

Evan Prodromou

@bnewbold @hallenbeck that shows some real proactive engagement, Bryan.

Evan Prodromou

@bnewbold @hallenbeck awesome!

Evan Prodromou

@bnewbold @hallenbeck one thing that we could do, if you wanted to, is publish the AT Protocol specs as a CG Report. That process is pretty lightweight, but includes granting licenses on trademark, copyright, patents, etc. It would be a quick way to make this move.

Bruce Elrick

@evan
The strong yeses are either hypocrites or trolls.

LVCTVS

@evan I'm curious what would be the expected result in the same poll in Twitter... (rhetorical question)

Evan Prodromou

@lvctvs I don't use X or Bluesky but if you do this poll lmk

Evan Prodromou

@virtuous_sloth or mistakes or VCs

Evan Prodromou

@hallenbeck I asked something close a few months ago, assuming people want the Social Web to be successful:

Evan Prodromou (@[email protected])

"There can be at most one successful protocol for a given use case." #EvanPoll #poll [ ] Strongly agree [ ] Somewhat agree [ ] Somewhat disagree [ ] Strongly disagree

CoSocial (cosocial.ca)

Evan Light (looking for work)

@evan Now let's hear from the other "yes" voters.

Dr. Matt Lee 🎃

@evan absolutely when are we creating this fictional company?

Evan Prodromou

@elight by other do you mean, other than you?

Evan Prodromou

This seems like a lot of Strong Nos.

I'm glad to hear it. I don't think Bluesky, Farcaster, or any other company should convince everyone to use the protocol they control. Their investors have bet that we will.

I like using and contributing to open standards developed in neutral standards bodies like IETF and W3C.

I will not stop saying that open standard protocols are better for the Internet than proprietary ones.

Evan Prodromou

I will, however, continue trying to learn how to say this in ways that are clear and comprehensible to listeners and don't push people away.

Evan Prodromou

I also think it's *great* when companies implement open standards. That puts them on an even playing field with individuals, families, coops, non-profits, universities, governments, and other parts of civil society. I hope the companies named above find better ways to engage with the wider Internet. I'm happy to help them however I can.

Evan Prodromou

I am sad that the ActivityPub network is still vulnerable to this kind of attack.

Protocols like HTTP and TCP/IP are ubiquitous enough that there aren't startups getting funded to create alternatives. ActivityPub is not yet that ubiquitous in its own problem space.

I am taking the news of the funding of Bluesky and others as a wake up call to help build the infrastructure and resources that ActivityPub needs to be the unquestioned default social networking protocol.

Khleedril

@wonderfox_dev @evan Those are lonely attention-seekers. Some even admit as much in the discussion, saying they only voted so others would notice them.