Re: Meta implementing ActivityPub as intended? Not so fast IMHO.

Quoting Daniel Smith (2023-05-23 09:02:41)
> Well my main question would be about this topic, and I'm just following
> this list, would be what about the actions of organizations like the old
> Cambridge analytica, and the ability of meta to interact with the fediverse
> and capture and amass users identities or profiles or general information
> about them for use in political operations or whatever?

Seems to me that you are essentially asking if it is techically possible
to act as an unfair player in the Fediverse - specifically if it is
possible to benefit from openly shared data without "giving back".

Sure it is.  At multiple levels.

My criticism here is that, as I understand it, unfair actions are
*aided* by core design choices of the Meta protocols, and consequently
b) there is a real danger in embracing those protocols - regards if
possible to not abuse those core powers of the protocols.

With RDF and SPARQL you can optionally track as a custom addon.

With OpenGraph and GraphQL you can optionally not track.

Personally I think it is counterproductive to try construct technical
tools that cannot be abused.  I do think, however, that it is important
for developers to be aware of the potential for abuse and not embrace
tracking-by-default tools when not-tracking-by-default tools exist.

Because essentially, a well-behaving community is a *social* challenge,
not a technical challenge - where the technical *support* for that
challenge is to make use versus abuse easy recognizable for the
community to deal with socially.  Big players will actively try to
distort the language of conversation, e.g. by calling a tracking-enabled
competitor "Open" when that is fundamentally not the core feature of
that new thing.


 - Jonas

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