Flipboard has recently begun federation, starting with 25 accounts. These accounts can be viewed from Kbin with their posts showing up as microblog posts.
What do you guys think about this? I don’t really know much about Flipboard or its implications for the fediverse, so I’m curious what others think about the matter.
If you’re interested, here are the accounts that have federated:
The Verge — @theverge
Fast Company — @FastCompany
Semafor — @semafor
SPIN — @SPINMag
News Literacy Project — @NewsLitProject
Medium — @Medium
Digiday — @Digiday
ScienceAlert — @ScienceAlert
Polygon — @polygon
Frommers — @FrommersMag
Kotaku — @Kotaku
The 74 — @The74
Pitchfork — @pitchfork
Refinery29 — @Refinery29
Mental Floss — @mental_floss
The Root — @TheRoot
Joysauce — @Joysauce
IndieWire — @IndieWire
LGBTQ Nation — @LGBTQNation
Smithsonian Magazine — @Smithsonianmag
AFAR Media — @AfarMedia
The Christian Science Monitor — @csmonitor
Erin Brockovich — @ErinBrockovich
Canada’s National Observer — @NatObserver
The Conversation (US) — @ConversationUS
@ThatOneKirbyMain2568 we have to preemptively defederate with any corporation! The fediverse must always stay small and never improve other companies. The vision is for open technology that few can use, right? I’m just worried that if Flipboard helps make the fediverse more appealing by providing more content for our users, that they can pull a fast one and defederate from us later, and then all of our users will leave and go to Flipboard instead! The only way to prevent that from happening is to make sure they never hear about Flipboard in the first place. Please reference any arguments used for defederating from Meta if you need more “sky is falling” arguments to whip you into a frenzy of senseless fear.
I respect your choice to defederate. That’s of course one of the first principles here.
Re: flipboard, we’re completely rewriting out backend around activitypub. There is no turning back. We, as they say, have burned the ships. We will now live or die based on how we conduct ourselves in the fediverse.
@Mmccue I was being sarcastic, I think the fediverse is about improving how people use social media- not driving all existing social media extinct. The idea that people would be unhappy that enormous companies are adopting the fediverse, which inherently loosens their grip on their audience and relinquished some of their power- it seems insane. Pre-emptive defederation seems insane.
Ah. I see. Thanks for the clarification. I agree with you. The fact that this is happening at all is really quite amazing. The ultimate irony is that if Elon didn’t destroy Twitter we wouldn’t be seeing the rise of the social web right now.