Microsoft’s official @dotnet sent its first Mastodon post today.
Pay attention to the domain: dotnet.social.
Which means Microsoft is operating their own Mastodon community server.
@dotnet account was registered in November, but it became active today.
Clearly, Microsoft sees the Fediverse as core to marketing to developers. I wonder what other brands they’ll bring to the Fediverse as well.
Other people are noting that dotnet.social is not “officially” affiliated with Microsoft.
By why would Microsoft put the official @dotnet at dotnet.social if there’s no relationship?
Who are they trying to kid?
We see you, Microsoft 😉
@atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews Why would they not? They can migrate any time if they need to, but this makes it easier for their marketing crew. Most brand accounts are just accounts, not whole servers.
@LouisIngenthron @dotnet @fediversenews Look at when the account was created. Look at when the first message was sent.
Clearly, there’s been affiliation for a long time.
@atomicpoet @dotnet @fediversenews What does the account being created months ago have to do with whether or not they're affiliated? I don't see where you're making that leap. It makes sense they'd want to claim the name they'd eventually use early, even if they weren't prepared to commit to engaging yet. That doesn't mean they're affiliated with the server.
And that's on top of the fact that they've now expressly said they are not affiliated with it. 🤦♂️
@LouisIngenthron @dotnet @fediversenews Well, I don’t believe them.
You don’t think Microsoft’s lawyers will send a cease and desist if their intellectual property weren’t violated?
You think Microsoft wouldn’t park their official account there for 5 months if there weren’t some sort of relationship?
The reason it’s probably not “official” is because Microsoft likely doesn’t want blowback.
@atomicpoet Microsoft's developer network is extremely community-focused. This is absolutely inline with their past actions. There are hundreds of software packages available that use the .NET name as part of their branding, and Microsoft's lawyers have a history of going after none of them. Moreover, running an account instead of a server is the exact same way their marketing department works on every other social media, so why complicate things here unnecessarily?
Also, "blowback" from who or what?
I really think you're grasping at straws here.
@LouisIngenthron Surely you’re not unaware of how much of the Fediverse community views Microsoft, right?
@atomicpoet Not all of it apparently. I regularly interact with developers on here and haven't heard a hint of anti-Microsoft sentiment.
There are plenty of us .NET developers on Mastodon.
And anyone who hates Microsoft is free to defederate from dotnet.social.
@LouisIngenthron Maybe not all, but if I were Microsoft, I’d be worried about Fediblock.
@atomicpoet Mostly because Fediblock is an easily-manipulated relic that needs to go the way of the dinosaurs. Mastodon has outgrown it.
@LouisIngenthron I mean, that’s what someone from QOTO would say.
But marketers, especially of big companies, tend to be very paranoid of blowback and exercise caution.
I’m not saying that Microsoft owns dotnet.social.
But non-affiliation? I don’t buy that.
And clearly whoever owns dotnet.social works in lockstep with Microsoft’s marketing department—otherwise they wouldn’t put the account on that server.
@atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron I'm not a developer nor super familiar with how feature updates to Mastodon happen. Is it possible for one instance to offer some feature not available on another? For the sake of an easy analogy let's say the panting dog Snapchat filter is only available on one instance. Everyone loves it, people on other servers envy it and so migrate. Embrace extend extinguish. Would this technically be feasible, or is there something built into Masto/activitypub as a safeguard?
🇵🇸
@highvizghilliesuit @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron it's entirely possible to use different software and add features, just on mastodon there's hometown and glitch-soc forks that add features (some I really like and miss). There's also many other apps like calckey and friendica that have entirely different feature sets. However, if Microsoft were to make a fork of mastodon, they have to make it Open source and I believe also gpl compliant.
@highvizghilliesuit @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron however, if they're activitypub compliant, you'll still see the posts on mastodon and the features you have. There's already @pixelfed that could easily add those filters in the future
@timelordiroh @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron @pixelfed so likely if the userbase grows large enough, someone will at least attempt what I'm proposing, am I wrong? This is more like the difference between Signal or Whatsapp than Ethereum or Monero.
@highvizghilliesuit @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron @pixelfed I would say it's already happened. Funkwhale allows you to listen to a shared library on the instance. Bookwyrm has book metadata. Calckey and some others have discord like post reactions. We all have our own feature sets, but can still talk a common language of activitypub. If you're on calckey, you could react to this mastodon post using an emote instead of replying to it.
@timelordiroh @atomicpoet @LouisIngenthron @pixelfed I guess what I meant was could one dominant instance capture enough of the userbase to effectively centralize the whole kit and kaboodle, (yes that's the correct spelling). Further research needed on my end though, it looks like.
@highvizghilliesuit @timelordiroh @atomicpoet @pixelfed You mean, could a company do to Mastodon what Google did to email?
Yes, it's possible. But private email servers/masto instances will still exist.
@LouisIngenthron @timelordiroh @atomicpoet @pixelfed I imagined it would happen maybe more like iMessage but yeah basically. Just thinking out loud about things I don't fully understand, as is the point of social media I believe.