[HN Gopher] Flipboard Begins to Federate ___________________________________________________________________ Flipboard Begins to Federate Author : tonystubblebine Score : 119 points Date : 2023-12-18 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (flipboard.medium.com) (TXT) w3m dump (flipboard.medium.com) | reqo wrote: | Unrelated. How hard is it to create another "internet" which is | completely detached from the current internet? | riidom wrote: | Sounds like an "Ask HN" to me. | nearlyepic wrote: | The answer ranges from "basically impossible" to "trivial" | depending on what layer of the OSI model you think the "current | internet" exists on. | aorloff wrote: | Another answer might be - you do this every time your local | network disconnects from the big internet. How do you like | your little internet ? | capableweb wrote: | How long is a rope? | | There is already a bunch of "completely detached" networks out | there, organized via wifi links. Freifunk, Guifi and NYC Mesh | are three examples of such networks, where you can basically | avoid the current internet infrastructure as long as you get | hooked up to the mesh network. Lots of interesting services | deployed on these networks too :) | jaywcarman wrote: | I think Project Gemini fits this description: | https://geminiprotocol.net/ | kpandit wrote: | > How hard is it to create another "internet" which is | completely detached from the current internet? | | Seems like a good way to explain the meaning "network effect". | riidom wrote: | In case one has no clue what flipboard is, like me, have a | shortened first paragraph from wikipedia: | | Flipboard aggregates content from social media, news feeds, photo | sharing sites, and other websites and presents it in magazine | format. | AltruisticGapHN wrote: | Completely forgot it even existed. I remember I loved the app | initially on iPad. Looked so nice. Then it started getting | flooded with ads and turned to peepoo. | | The layout was awesome though. It was kinda like a RSS reader you | could follow a bunch of topics, twitter feeds, blogs... | brandall10 wrote: | Same here. It was one of those things I loaded on the 1st gen | iPad and considered a possible killer app for a new and | innovative way to get news content. | | Glad to see it's still around and doing something like this. | Will be checking it out again. | simonw wrote: | I'm excited about this - and about Threads too. | | I've been on Mastodon for just over a year now. It works really | surprisingly well, especially considering it's stitched together | from so many independent, non-profit open source instances. | | But... it's still not easy enough for non-nerds to get onboard. | | I'd love to see efforts from organizations like Flipboard, and | Threads, and Automattic make an impact here. I want to be able to | follow interesting content from the kind of people who are put | off by language like "first, select your federated instance". | | Also noteworthy: in the Verge article about this at | https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24006062/flipboard-fediv... | there's this quote: "Basically, we're in the | process of replacing our whole social back-end with | ActivityPub," says Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. "I think | Flipboard is going to be the first mainstream consumer | service that existed in a walled garden that switches | over to ActivityPub." | | You can now follow the Flipboard account for The Verge on | Mastodon/other-Fediverse-things by following | @theverge@flipboard.com - or pasting in the URL | https://flipboard.com/@theverge | phreeza wrote: | I think it is definitely easy enough, but it's just not as | intrinsically addictive. | tedunangst wrote: | https://flipboard.com/@theverge doesn't work for me. I have to | change it to https://flipboard.com/users/theverge. | leotravis10 wrote: | If you can't get past the Medium loginwall, here's a mirrored | link: https://archive.ph/uFFy4 | thekevan wrote: | Flipboard used to be great, but as expected, it got diluted with | recycled FB and reddit content, ads and "the top 5 things you | shouldn't do, number 3 shocked me" type of posts. | jwmoz wrote: | Exactly what I was just thinking, had no idea it was still | alive. Twitter took its place for me but now even that has been | ruined. | jabroni_salad wrote: | uh, isn't it an rss client? Can't you just add what you want to | it? | pndy wrote: | Pretty sure it had always predefined sources | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | Happens everywhere, even on my Google News Feed. I can tell | Google I don't want to see specific articles, authors, topics, | etc., but there's no way for me to tell Google that I don't | want to see Clickbait article titles... | toomuchtodo wrote: | Try Ground News. | | https://ground.news/ | | (no affiliation) | leotravis10 wrote: | I'm very stoked about this as I trust Flipboard to get major | social federation right more than Meta/Facebook plus they're more | ethical in all sense. | | As a long time user, it's a great that they're put their eggs in | the ActivityPub basket and I'm looking forward to see what they | truly got in the coming months. | jwmoz wrote: | I thought this app was dead. I used to use it years ago when it | first came out-it was a great way to consume your news. Then the | advertisers and paywalls came in and ruined it. | filterfiber wrote: | Fun monetization strategy for federated apps - federate with your | own instance dedicated to ads. | | But more seriously what is the monetization strategy for | federated apps? Up front pay or subscription for using the app? | crowcroft wrote: | I suppose you could have an 'Apollo' style app providing a nice | UI for power users with a subscription cost. I could see it | being a solid revenue stream for small teams/indie makers. | Difficult to get to the kind of scale needed for advertising to | be particularly profitable unless we get some kind of federated | facebook ads platform... | indymike wrote: | You can look at how email is monetized for some ideas. | Everything from ad infested free client to pay service to | freebie with the purchase of your internet connection. | BillSaysThis wrote: | Strange for me to see the negative comments on Flipboard (though | I'm not of course criticizing anyone's personal opinion) since | I've been a user pretty much from the beginning and still use it | daily. Ads are definitely visible but not obnoxious or in the way | of how I read it. I agree with Brent's take on Fediverse in read | apps | (https://inessential.com/2023/12/17/on_mastodon_support_in_ne...) | and Flipboard seems to match with this thinking. | ixwt wrote: | Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... | | I'm always a bit leery of things like this when massive companies | begin adopting open source things such as this. Google Chat | embracing XMPP, only to end up abandoning it (as Google does). | Slack having an IRC gateway, only to end up abandoning it. There | are probably other examples, but these are the ones off the top | of my head. | | These technologies still exist, but in their own bubble. I doubt | that Flipboard adopting and dropping ActivityPub support would | have a significant impact in the long run. But I'm hesitantly | happy about this. | apitman wrote: | As someone who never really used XMPP, was it worse off after | Google compared to before? I mean sure a ton of users lost | access to XMPP after they ended support, but surely most of | them never would have used XMPP in the first place. | indymike wrote: | > but surely most of them never would have used XMPP in the | first place. | | There was a time that Facebook messenger was XMPP and Google | chat was XMPP, so there was a time it was gaining a lot of | traction. Most people just think their email is email. They | don't see it as using SMTP/IMAP/POP3. | apitman wrote: | I guess what I'm asking is was adoption by big tech a net | negative? If you add 50 million users then take away 50 | million users, then maybe no harm done. Unless there were | other effects as well. | apitman wrote: | Lot of Fediverse news this week. Elon buying Twitter might be the | single best thing that's ever happened to social media. 5 years | ago I was excited about ActivityPub but I'm not sure I really | believed decentralized social media could ever get a foothold. | | Now I believe it's possible. There's a hundred ways it can go | wrong, but dang it I'm excited about the possibilities if we help | it go right. | 57FkMytWjyFu wrote: | Awesome! One small step to admitting you actually are bloatware! | | https://medium.com/@kaikoenig/samsungs-bloatware-disgrace-c7... | yaomtc wrote: | What does Flipboard have to do with Samsung? | 57FkMytWjyFu wrote: | Perhaps you assumed that I just threw that link in there, and | it had nothing to do with my comment. | | Here is a sample of text from it. | | "Unwanted 3rd party apps from Microsoft or Flipboard." | tedunangst wrote: | You'll have to explain how adding activitypub support is | related to that, because I'm not clever enough to follow. | 57FkMytWjyFu wrote: | No, I don't. | mkl wrote: | IME Flipboard is one of the few bundled crapware apps on | Samsung phones. I got rid of it immediately. | iteratethis wrote: | Threads is also testing federation, it supposedly is close to | being enabled. | | Interesting dynamic is that Mastodon's community is such a sour | bunch that likely most instance owners will block federation with | Threads at the domain level. Because "Meta evil". | | This takes away choice at the user level. Normal people that just | want to connect with people and content no matter where it is | hosted, which is the very purpose of ActivityPub, have no choice | but to move to instances that do federate. | | ...which will be the large instances, like mastodon.social. It's | already the default instance and by far the largest. For maximum | connectivity and the biggest chance that it doesn't go under, it | is the primary choice for most users. So this dynamic of too much | instance-level moderation effectively undermines the idea of the | fediverse. There will always be tiny for-purpose instances, but | the idea that many small instances will grow the fediverse to Big | Tech scale is invalidated. | | Come to think of it, one might as well create a Threads account. | It's a community almost a 100 times larger than all of Mastodon | combined. So if you just want to connect to people and find | content, Mastodon offers few tangible benefits to normies. | SiempreViernes wrote: | What do you mean it "takes away choice"? Did you mean "imposes | annoying bureaucracy"? Because I have a hard time seeing how | forcing people to make a choice is taking away choice. | | Also, the people who have accounts away from the big instances | have actively declined to use them, so they are clearly more | likely to move to some other mid scale instance if they need to | migrate than to head for the big ones. | iteratethis wrote: | When your instance moderator makes the choice to block | Threads at domain level, you're fully blocked from seeing any | Threads content or interacting with any Threads user. | | It could be that as an instance user you like this decision, | but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users | and content yourself. | Zak wrote: | Threads has (as of late last week) enabled federation for a | small set of employee accounts. Here's a federated post; it | doesn't look like comments and likes are federating: | https://mastodon.world/@mosseri@threads.net/1115866154367492... | | I don't think _most_ instance owners will block them. The | larger servers I 've paid attention to don't plan to at this | time, though many people have expressed concerns about it being | an attempt by Meta to embrace, extend, and extinguish the | Fediverse. A few people are _very_ loud about not wanting a | Meta presence and are trying to convince others to block them. | | I think the opportunity outweighs the threat. There's a chance | for Mastodon and others to show their software to a mainstream | audience which has already shown a willingness to try out new | social software by joining threads. Ideally, some projects will | have a better pitch than just "we're not corporate". | iteratethis wrote: | I agree that it's a loud minority complaining about Threads | but that loud minority is quite powerful in the Mastodon | community. | | I think the "embrace, extend, and extinguish" fear is | hilarious. The Fediverse is tiny and useless to Meta. Threads | as a really crappy Twitter clone is just launched and many | times the size of the Fediverse. By federating, they're | losing algorithmic control and monetization possibilities. | Honestly, I think it's just a "do good" afterthought for the | sake of PR. | kelseyfrog wrote: | It's less "Meta evil" and more, "We've been burned by 3E | countless times." This just looks like the first E. | | The problem is that the incentives to engage in the two | remaining Es still exist, and given the same incentives, we can | predict the same behavior. It's Econ101. | iteratethis wrote: | As soon as Meta turns on federation for Threads, they are the | largest Activitypub server, about 10 times larger than all of | Mastodon combined. | | At the same time, Meta cannot stop non-Threads instances from | organizing as they already do. | | So I don't see the threat, really. | nocoolnametom wrote: | The problem comes with "Extend." | | "We've got this new awesome feature, and we asked nicely if | it could be put into the ActivityPub docs but they turned | us down/didn't act fast enough. So we're proud to announce | MetaPub, a superset of ActivityPub that will still | communicate with regular ActivityPub, but to get the best | and latest features you'll have to implement MetaPub in | your clients. Or just use Threads, where it's already | present for all users!" Repeat until you gain enough | influence that ActivityPub is seen as inferior. | | Then comes "Extinguish." Breaking changes to MetaPub | reducing federation to only MetaPub clients or give up | entirely and turn off federation anyways. | threeseed wrote: | This ignores the role of regulators e.g. EU. | | ActivityPub is the first glimpse at a future where social | media networks are interoperable over a common standard | similar to mail. And from recent history the period we | are in is one in where governments are looking for open | standards as a hedge against big tech. | | The idea that Meta would deliberately harm a standard, | shut down competition and invite anti-competition | investigations is far-fetched. | kelseyfrog wrote: | Can I ask how many 3E-ed products you've used in your | lifetime? | egypturnash wrote: | Once upon a time you could follow someone's public Facebook | posts from any RSS reader you liked, whether or not you had an | account. Now the only way to follow someone's Facebook posts is | to have an account there. And Facebook will probably only show | you a small fraction of the posts by the people you actually | follow, sorted by what Meta thinks is most likely to make Meta | money. | | If you trust Meta to not follow a similar playbook with | Threads, you are much more optimistic than I am. | | I run a small Mastodon instance, and have preemptively | defederated from Threads because _I do not want Meta to suck in | my posts for free and use them as something to spread apart | Meta ad views_. I 've informed my users of this and so far | everyone with a reply has praised this decision. They have made | choices. | | In fact lately there have been waves of spam from the big open- | registration instances. I and a lot of other small instance | admins I know have responded by limiting our federation with | these instances. This creates a slightly worse experience for | our users, in that they're likely to stop seeing media from | big-instance accounts they follow. And it creates choice - do | they talk to their friends on the big instances and say "hey | can I persuade you to move to an instance that isn't a spam | gateway?" Does the friend say "yes" and acquire an invitation | to a closed-registration instance that's well-federated to | their friend network? Eventually we end up with multiple | networks all on ActivityPub that have very few connections. | _And this is fine_. Because people can also do things like | choose to have multiple accounts on these multiple networks. | iteratethis wrote: | I remember the RSS times. But let's be honest. Even then it | was only tech enthusiasts using an RSS reader. Probably the | same people now experimenting with the Fediverse. | | Do I trust Meta regarding federation? No. But I'm thinking | it's an afterthought for them. The Fediverse isn't a threat | to them at all, just like RSS never was. | | I totally understand that some instances have strong opinions | about this and self-isolate to a degree. And that will cement | what Mastodon is: a set of small for-purpose communities. | | It will not compete with the scale of Big Tech and maybe it | shouldn't. Mastodon is to stay in their marginal role, a | niche network. For sure exactly those strong-willed instances | will agree to that. | | I'm fine with that as well. I'm just pointing out that an | anti-growth mindset produces a small network. | threeseed wrote: | You can't blame Meta for shutting down RSS given how many | companies e.g. Cambridge Analytica abused open data access | features for nefarious purposes. | | It is still possible to access the data just via the official | Graph API. | Podgajski wrote: | This corporate infestation of the Fed verse is not going to end | well. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-18 23:00 UTC)