(1) #Twitter has millions of users. There is no #ActivityPub nor #OStatus implementation in which an instance hosted on a $5/mo #DigitalOcean / #Linode / #Vultr #VPS could handle the volume of a seamless connection with #Twitter. If they adopted AP OStatus, #Diaspora, or any other current open federation protocol, instances that didn't use firewall blocking would topple once the two userbases had sufficient interconnections (within a few hours or a few days after they started federating).
(2) Twitter's business model is to push ads disguised as tweets. If their users could escape those and still interact with all the same contacts, they would. I'm certain that Twitter's management know this. They also turn all links into tracking links, and sell access to media (images, video, audio) uploads of important news events to news organizations.
(3) Most Fediverse instances are financed out of the admin's pocket. Some have financial contributors, but nothing like Twitter's revenue. As the largest and best-financed instance, they would immediately have to start implementing modifications to make AP or other existing federation protocols useful to them, and those modifications would (as Mastodon's currently do) become unofficially mandatory in order to be compatible.
(4) This isn't the first time that Twitter has considered federation, though this may be the first time they openly discussed it. Back when Identica was still a happening place (during Twitter's fail-whale days), Twitter considered federating. They didn't do it then, and I honestly do not believe they will do it now.
(5) I'd say that Twitter's #BlueSky initiative is more meant to try to get bidirectional connections across #Facebook's moat and wall than it is to surround Twitter with a cloud of #Fediverse instances.
#Facebook bans Ron Paul for criticizing censorship, then pretends it was a mistake when the media noticed.
Make no mistake. This isn't about the idiots that stormed the Capitol or even those who protested but stayed outside.
We don't have to like what people are saying to recognize the threat this wave of expulsions poses to all of us.
For one thing, the axe that crushes opponents' skulls today will be just as damaging to former allies tomorrow.
For another, political ascendancy swings back and forth. When it swings again, people who've been disconnected from online life may decide that Trump was right about Section 230, which protects even the smallest multiuser instances.
I'd argue that given their duopoly on mobile operating systems, the power to arbitrarily kick someone out is scary (regardless of how deserving Parler might be; I'm not even sure I've seen a screenshot of the site). I'd argue that this is evidence that the mobile OS and app store groups of both companies need to be split up, so that competition can come ... including strong competition for mobile app stores on each platform.
Again, Parler may deserve it, especially if their users used the socnet to organize their insurrection attempt. (Though I suspect many of them probably used odious #corpocentric sites like #Twitter or #Facebook, which are not being punished.)
The biggest question on everyone's minds should be where is #USDOJ? They should have sued back when Facebook bought #WhatsApp and #Instagram ... or at the least, been actively involved in prosecuting this lawsuit. It really does seem like DOJ's beef with #Google is that the bribes ^W political contributions weren't large enough or didn't reach the right person.
@vegos I agree. To most organizations, their primary concern is reach. So they congregate on big #corpocentric #socnets, even when the central corporation running things is actively hostile to their point of view.
Then they're butthurt when their accounts are shadowbanned.
Years ago, I tried to persuade some local Black churches and ethic-focused organizations to join !GNUsocial and #Diaspora, but was unsuccessful. I think they all joined #Facebook, where their posts are hidden by the algorithms.
Their comment is important enough that everyone should be exposed to it: 'And yes, Apple is all about "nobody violates our users' privacy except us!" '
I wanted #ADN to succeed, because I felt that many of #Twitter’s user-hostile anti-features were meant as ways to increase advertising revenue (and often copied from #Facebook, where said user-hostile anti-features frequently did increase ad revenue).
But, I thought, how many people will pay for App Dot Net, when they can grit their teeth and use Twitter without paying? My answer was “not enough to make it profitable”, and that turned out to be true.
Yes, this is a good trend, but if it stops with Google, it is an absolute failure at protecting privacy. Instead of “De-Google” it needs to be DecentraLife (including giving up #Google, #Facebook, #Amazon, #Microsoft, and other large corporations that spy on users) ... avoiding the concentration of users and resources that enables these companies to abuse users in the first place.
@sean Evan was hugely focused on #Pump.io (instead of us), until his resources ran out and he got involved with a new start up. This is also when some of his Pump-related domains were lost. . It isn't surprising that he's active on #Twitter and #Facebook, just that Pump is still not compatible with anything else. (And that his personal Pump instance, E14N.com is gone.)