back to article Meta confirms decentralized Twitter rival in the works

Not content to sit on the sidelines while Twitter falters, Facebook parent Meta is working on a text-focused competitor, based on the decentralized bones of fediverse favorite Mastodon. Reportedly dubbed "P92" internally, the app may well interoperate with Mastodon by supporting the ActivityPub protocol, and could be Instagram …

  1. jake Silver badge

    Oh, goody.

    "We're exploring a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates."

    Yet another group of "geniuses" is re-inventing IRC.

    I can't wait.

    1. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

      Re: Oh, goody.

      "Yet another group of "geniuses" is re-inventing IRC"

      Combine it with Usenet and they could be on to a winner:)

  2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Twitter still has around 450 monthly active users

    To be fair, how many of those 450 million users know of the man-child's actions? Sure, it's heavily reported in the tech press, but in the mainstream press? Nowhere near as much.

    1. Dinanziame Silver badge
      Happy

      I had to check the article, but you copy pasted correctly:

      Twitter still has around 450 monthly active users

      1. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

        "Twitter still has around 450 monthly active users"

        And they're probably bots

    2. Spanners
      Devil

      How many users know of the man-child's actions?

      The only non-IT people I have heard talking about using it were griping about the ever rising number of Boris Johnston fans on it.

      I later talked about Mastodon to one but suspect that they were both going to drop it.

      1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: How many users know of the man-child's actions?

        ever rising number of Boris Johnston fans on it.

        He does have a lot of offspring

  3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    The more that this story unfolds...

    The more I am of the opinion that since he took over Twatter, Elon has been trying to out do Gerald Ratner for the title of 'King of destroying your business'.

    Keep going Elon. The sooner you are in hock for all that dosh that you borrowed from the banks the better.

    You might do well to remember... 'A fool and his money are soon parted'.

    If you could turn the clock back a year, so that you could avoid this costly mistake, would you?

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Re: The more that this story unfolds...

      "I only wanted to be loved!!!" *throws phone at the mirror*

    2. iron

      Re: The more that this story unfolds...

      Oh its going to be far more amusing than that. His Muskiness owes much of the money to the Saudis who aren't known for leniency with people who piss them off.

    3. that one in the corner Silver badge

      Re: The more that this story unfolds...

      > Elon has been trying to out do Gerald Ratner

      Although I somehow can't see Elon making the same mistake that Ratner did, i.e. being honest, accurate and truthful about his products.

      1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: The more that this story unfolds...

        "Mr Ratner, how would you rate the self driving ability of your motor vehicles?"

        "total crap"

  4. Howard Sway Silver badge

    I'm sure Musk was overjoyed when he heard this news

    Hopefully the combination of rage and stupidity will make him announce that he's going to invest billions building a rival Metaverse.

  5. Slions

    With 450 users a month Twitter still has more employees than users. Expect more layoffs.

  6. Tron Silver badge

    Inevitable.

    Distributed social media is inevitable. You can do about 90% of Facebook by extending an e-mail client to include encryption and rich media. Because you are using the e-mail protocol, you lose the costs and the govt/activist aggro of paying for central servers, bandwidth, censorship and spying on users. You can still monetise your service, but with a user-friendly, consensual advertising model.

    I've been advocating this for ages now. I'm just disappointed that GAFA is doing it. It would have been a great opportunity for someone else to become part of GAFA 2.

  7. Groo The Wanderer Silver badge

    Funny how Musk never mentioned anything more about bots after the takeover, but decided to crow about membership and follower numbers instead.

    Which no doubt include millions of bots... :)

  8. DS999 Silver badge
    Facepalm

    The only thing worse than having Musk in charge of a social media platform

    Is having Zuck in charge of ALL of them!

  9. Peter Mount
    Pint

    The opensource world has already done a Failbook style frontend for the Fediverse https://friendi.ca/

    Stats about follower count and reach don't apply in the non-commercial world & yet the businesses seem to think they know best.

    For example, Mastodon and PeerTube is doing pretty well for me. In the past week I've had more interaction on Mastodon alone than I've had on the old bird site for the past year. That's with no algorithms pushing content to people.

    Shows how many don't want stuff pushed to them - oh no adverts, so they can't make money... a win for us

  10. Omnipresent Bronze badge

    The usual suspects

    With Peter Thiel and Putin right in the middle of it no doubt. It's more than likely a server housed in moscow.

  11. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Faceblock

    Why wouldn't they create a Facebook rival and call it a Faceblock?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Faceblock

      Faceblah

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nostr is the way forward!

    I'll never trust anything out of the Meta/Facebook stable.

  13. elregidente

    I may be wrong, but I think Facebook can't, and I won't.

    Facebook is a very large company.

    I think very large companies are unable to innovate, or produce quality products.

    Moreover, it's *Facebook*.

    No matter what they produce, I'm never going to use it.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Social Media

    A Cesspit

    What’s the difference?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Compared to...

      > What’s the difference?

      There's a degree of containment implied if there's a pit involved?

      (No offence to Mastodon, I'm warming to their concept and may jump ship)

  15. PK
    Thumb Down

    So if FB join ActivityPub...

    Won't it mean that they'll be getting everyone's feed to mine for advertising - and start trying to send adverts back the other way? Therefore everyone else in the fediverse would just block them?

  16. Captain Hogwash
    Meh

    Re: the app may well interoperate with Mastodon

    Yes, in the same way that WhatsApp interoperates with XMPP.

  17. Boozearmada

    no thanks Fuckerberg

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