<
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/10/protocol-based-social-media-is-having-a-moment-as-meta-medium-flipboard-and-mozilla-all-get-on-board/>
"Over the last couple of weeks there have been a number of interesting
developments regarding protocol-based, decentralized social media, and each
time I plot out an article about it, something else pops up to add to the
story, including Thursday evening as I finally started writing this and news
broke that Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) is at least in the
early stages of creating an ActivityPub-compatible social media protocol and
app, that it considers to be something of a Twitter competitor.
Meta, the parent firm of Facebook and Instagram, is hashing out a plan to
build a standalone text-based content app that will support ActivityPub, the
decentralised social networking protocol powering Twitter rival Mastodon and
other federated apps, people familiar with the matter told Moneycontrol.
The app will be Instagram-branded and will allow users to register/login to
the app through their Instagram credentials, they said. Moneycontrol has
seen a copy of an internal product brief that elaborates on the functioning
and various product features of the app.
The program is apparently codenamed P92, and conceptually it makes sense.
Platformer got the company on the record confirming the effort:
“We’re exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text
updates,” the company told Platformer exclusively in an email. “We believe
there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public
figures can share timely updates about their interests.”
I’m at least a little amused, because I’ve had multiple conversations with
Meta/Facebook execs over the years regarding my “Protocols, Not Platforms”
paper, explaining to them why it would make sense for the company to explore
the space, and was told repeatedly why they didn’t think it would ever make
sense for a company like Meta.
How times change."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
