an incompatible protocol with less features and worse UX

And yet, they have the one thing that matters: the users.

It’s not a matter of opinion, look up the definition of the word, chief.

Okay, still not what “theme” means, tho. Maybe “skin” is the word you’re looking for?

I disagree with the use of “theme”. It evokes a visual for me.

That’s on you, because the word “theme” does not mean “visual” at all.

“The rule isn’t there!”

“Yes it is.”

“Okay, but now the rule should be something more that I just now decided on.”

Like, my guy… It’s a community for people who want to discuss a story about wizards and magic. What do they need to do to score with these shifting goalposts, take a blood pact denouncing Rowling? They already said no transphobic content is allowed. That already covers it.

Don’t bother, the person you’re replying to has a storied history of notoriously bad takes, such as “porn of petite women is the same thing as CSAM” (paraphrased), and deleting comments that call out their awful takes in communities/instances they run. They aren’t a sensible person.

Why lie about something that we all can easily verify for ourselves?

Rule 1: Before using the website, remember you will be interacting with actual, real people and communities. DiagonLemmy.Social is not a place for you to attack other groups of people. Every one of our users has a right to browse and interact with the website and all of its contents free of treatment such as harassment, bullying, racism, antisemitism, discrimination, transphobia, hate speech, violation of privacy or threats of violence.

https://diagonlemmy.social/post/108

deleted by creator

Man, the gatekeeping is wild these days.

You’re allowed to like a story you grew up with as a child and also dislike its bigot author, they’re not mutually exclusive. Talking about Harry Potter doesn’t give Rowling magical transphobe powers; Voldemort logic doesn’t work in real life. The rightsholders have already taken great strides to distance the HP property from Rowling and adopt it to be more inclusive in spite of her TERF bullremoved. It’s not a hate crime to like a story about child wizards anymore.

If people want to geek out about some books or movies they like, they should be allowed to do so without the insinuation that they’re by default enabling transphobia or something. But the beauty of the Fediverse is that your community has just as much right to exist as any other, so as long as you can maintain a healthy, hate-free community that isn’t posting a bunch of pro-Rowling bullremoved, I say go for it. Anyone who would block your instance for merely existing probably isn’t worth your time, anyway.

Cool, thanks for verifying that!

Is Micro.Blog actually federated with ActivityPub? The site says it supports cross-posting to Mastodon, which sounds like it’s more of a post mirroring service than an actually federated instance. I couldn’t find much more clarification on their About page.

explain to me why I should care what the designer thinks anyway

Because they’re the ones who ultimately control the future of the AP protocol. How it behaves today may not be how it behaves tomorrow. If their intent was to create communities that are isolated islands on the internet, they would’ve just made a new phpBB. So understanding their design philosophy is going to be important when it comes to running a community on that protocol.

I could see it as being part of Meta’s plan to make the Fediverse fracture itself to make it easier to manipulate.

Okay, but that’s a disingenuous argument to be making. Yes, AP is designed with the options to block instances, but that’s not the core function it’s built around. That’s a failsafe, not the selling feature that would make communities adopt it. Communities can already exist without federating with other platforms: by running their own, non-AP platform in the first place. The developers of AP didn’t say “I want to make a protocol built around blocking connections”.

Nobody buys a car for its brakes, but you still need to have them for safety purposes. Defederation is pumping said brakes. It’s a necessary feature, but not the main point of the car.

Pretty sure they’re on TikTok, and not Threads.

Right, but what this will end up doing is effectively creating two distinct Fediverses; one with Meta and all the users, and one that will sequester themselves off to an even smaller corner of the internet than before. That’s not a healthy outcome. And if all the EEE(E?) rants and ravings people have been posting lately are to be believed, that’ll only make these smaller communities even less able to resist Meta’s influence.

Okay, but what sort of material would you expect to actually see on your timeline in this scenario?

With ActivityPub, Meta is playing on our turf. They don’t have home field advantage here. ActivityPub isn’t a protocol that they control.

What sort of “Meta removed” would you possibly expect to appear on your timeline?

I’m not so sure that this sort of divisive policy is healthy for the Fediverse. ActivityPub is meant to connect communities, not split them apart. I feel like this is just going to cause even more fragmentation at a time when ActivityPub can really be showing off its capabilities.

I imagine this would dissuade further adoption by other communities.