Don’t know about Android but on iOS health information is something that an app can request on OS level.

There are valid uses for this, for example hearing level measurements from third party app can be added to Health app and then used for adjusting equalizer for AirPods via accessibility options. Or your menstrual cycle (although that probably won’t make your AirPods sound better) or many other data points. This is what Threads is trying to access.

It’s not about what you post but what data will Threads/Twitter/FB apps will trick you into sharing on system level (location etc).

I like author bio:

Lev Golinkin (…) His writing on the Ukraine crisis, Russia, the far right, and immigrant and refugee identity has appeared in (…)

What’s Ukraine crisis? Do they mean genocidal war that russian nazis wage against Ukraine?

Alternative source: Freed Ukrainian prisoners of war call for support against Russia (Stanford Daily, Oct. 3, 2022)

I don’t think Mastodon allows user blocking instance either but I don’t see why that can not change in the future.

I’m not sure forcing open source on other instances is the right way to go. I imagine that in the future there could be instances that offer more polished experience, maybe a really nice proprietary app, that are commercially funded. As long as we have open alternatives and interoperability then we should be fine. In terms of privacy it’s a matter of regulations.

I also fully respect choice of some instances to defederate from commercial platforms but in a rational environment it would be akin to subset of Linux users opting to use free software only with no binary blobs and things like that. Perfectly reasonable thing to do if that’s what your ethics / philosophy dictates. Just don’t think it’s something that is a net benefit to average person.

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

Embrace an open standard by using it yourself, start extending it at a pace competitors can’t (preferably obfuscating how it works), leave everyone behind.

A good example is Microsoft Internet Explorer back in the day. Web technologies like HTML and CSS are open standards and at the time fairly straightforward. Once Microsoft hit critical mass by bundling IE with Windows they took leadership from Netscape and started adding more and more proprietary crap like ActiveX which some sites opted to use because everyone was using IE anyway and people using other browsers were forced to use IE. This was also a major issue for Linux users at the time.

It took years of regulatory / antitrust pressure, tremendous effort from Mozilla and their browsers, as well as big players like Google and Apple embracing KHTML (later forked into WebKit and then Blink engines) to unscrew humanity from that depressing era of internet history.

Web browsers working slightly differently is still an issue without anyone breaking compatibility on purpose. It was just so much worse when someone did it maliciously.

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en

Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:

• allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations

Example of the “don’ts” - Gatekeeper platforms may no longer:

• treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper’s platform

• prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms

• track end users outside of the gatekeepers’ core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising, without effective consent having been granted

So many knee-jerk reactions.

This is an open protocol with complete freedom to create apps and scripts. If this becomes an issue users could block certain interactions in a granular manner, for example block replies from certain instances.

XMPP being thrown around as an example makes me think people who do it weren’t there to witness it. XMPP by itself wasn’t really used by many but there were also many more popular messaging platforms at the time. XMPP wasn’t killed because it wasn’t ever alive other than short golden era when it was mostly a way to open itself to third party clients (Gaim, Trillian, Adium etc) which was very nice.

Next year EU is going to make all tech giants open in this way again. Mastodon can EEE Threads too by being a better implementation. It has no commercial pressure and Activity Pub and formatting tweets is not as complex as a web browser engine or a word processor document format which are way better examples of successful EEE.

If you defederate you’ll end up exactly where XMPP is.

It looks like it was removed by a mod. If a user deleted it it would have <deleted> in place of comment text rather than <removed>. This user also deleted his account but that wouldn’t delete his posts/comments.

The Verge peeps are rather enthusiastic about Activity Pub based platforms, I wouldn’t attribute bad intent there.

Linux is used by most of the world but it’s either backend where techies take care of things or super streamlined experiences like Android etc.

I knew this part would ruffle some feathers since whomever is reading it here is probably on board with Lemmy/Kbin.

I do think that for many it’s too early but there’s now significant interest into making everything a bit more stable and streamlined. I think Mastodon is already there but it is suffering from bad rep from their own waves of migration. I’m a bit worried it’ll be the same for Lemmy.