Oh boy, ever since the big wigs at W3C gave their thumbs up to
#ActivityPub in 2018, I just knew decentralized social media was about to take over the world! At first, it was like watching a leak in a garden hose, just a slow trickle. But lately, it's looking more like we're about to see a Niagara Falls-sized gush!
Let me tell you, ActivityPub has got some neat tricks up its sleeves for both the everyday netizen and the techie developers. It's an open protocol, not locked down by any big corporation. It's like a communal garden - everyone's got a share, but no one person gets to call the shots. If
#Twitter or
#Facebook gets grouchy and kicks you out, no worries! Set up your own server, and bam! You're back on social media, living life on your own terms.
Now, the big guys at Big Social, they see it from another angle. Take for example Twitter, who initially funded
#Bluesky, and the development of
#ATprotocol, a cousin to ActivityPub. And don't forget
#Meta, who's been busy adding
#ActivityPub functionality to
#Threads. Now, I'm no lawyer, just a social media enthusiast who's chatted with a few lawyer buddies and media industry folks.
In a nutshell: they're looking to be more like postmen, not newspaper editors.
If you're running the post office, you can say to the government, "Hey, we just deliver the letters, we don't write them!" But if you're the editor of a newspaper, you're handpicking the content. And then, if you publish something iffy, you could find yourself in hot water.
You see, newspaper editors can't go around stoking violence or spreading bald-faced lies. And if you've had your eyes open for the last decade, you'd see this issue getting more and more tangled in social media.
Here's the catch, though. In many places, the law doesn't differentiate between a social platform or a newspaper editor. Meta can't just wash their hands and say, "We're not responsible for content published on
#Facebook -- we're just the stage!" If they're dictating what posts get to see the light of day, they've got to bear the responsibility.
This is why Meta might want to avoid stepping into the content game. If they can convince the powers-that-be they're
not a social network, but merely a service for one, they might dodge some bullets. If some offensive post from the Fediverse pops up on Threads, they can just point the finger at the original server.
Sure, Meta still has to keep Threads clean. But they can always tell their users: "Don't like our rules? Fine, you're free to go explore the rest of the Fediverse."
In this way, Meta can just shrug and say they're not the town center, just the path that leads there. The real public square is the Fediverse, and Threads is just a popular mailman, carrying some (but not all) letters to and from this square.
Think about it this way, if some jerk mails you a mean letter, do you blame the postman? Probably not. They're just delivering mail, which is exactly the argument Big Social wants to make: "Don't shoot the messenger, we're just delivering messages!"
The beauty of the Fediverse for Big Social is that it reduces their responsibility. They can wave their hands and tell the regulators, "Look, we're not newspaper editors! We're just here helping people send and receive messages on a social network -- a social network we don't even own!"
@fediversenews@venera.social
