How long until Google and Microsoft launch their own Fediverse instances and give people one-click opt-in to a Mastodon-like experience?
If ActivityPub is basically an email-like protocol, then hosting someone's Fediverse identity is pretty similar to giving them an email account, right?
Any reason to think this is a bad idea for them (other than the moderation problem)?
@cbyrd01 I don't know if it would be a good thing or not for the Fediverse, but I can see how both companies might see it being in their interests, in the same way as hosting email.
@acjay Moderation and legal problems are not small, but I think the likes of Google could handle them.
Their bigger problem might be how much of the Fediverse would react immediately or eventually to defederate them. Maybe they won't care, so long as their own users can talk to each other, but they won't be able to offer "access to the Fediverse" as simple as that.
@acjay That is an interesting question. It likely depends on how popular this gets with the general, non-tech savvy public, and the media. Also whether they see business use cases for it. A possibly even better question than whether it is bad idea for them, is whether it would be bad (or good) for the #fediverse community to have large companies "moving in"?