crystalcorvid

I don’t have a problem with admins having discussions with Meta. I have a problem with those discussions being off the record or under NDA. We thrive on transparency. The secrecy is the problem.

They don’t have to modify Activity Pub directly to cause chaos. The likely order of events that everyone is worried about it the 3E’s.

From wikipedia’s entry:

1. Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard.
2. Extend: Addition and promotion of features not supported by the competing product or part of the standard, creating interoperability problems for customers who try to use the “simple” standard.
3. Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions.

No. Meta is a known bad actor. They have a history of not being good for protocols and communities. They are already guilty. Just not here yet. Preemptive banning is appropriate. There is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

After they roll out their project, then it can be assessed to see how much harm, if any, it will bring. At that point let them in or not, as evidence dictates. It is entirely possible that they will be a good fedi citizen, if the reason for doing this isn’t profit. And that is actually possible in this case. Because having some services that use Activity Pub is a way to get get certain regulators off their backs. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but it is possible.