While I probably wouldn’t use a propitiatory client I have no real issues with it. You can always switch off if you feel that it isn’t respecting you, even if it is harder to verify what it is doing under the hood.

Basically having a federated and open protocol greatly mitigates the downsides of a proprietary client.

I’ve been using Wayland every day for years with no issue (GNOME 3 on AMD graphics).

And the best part is that my OS isn’t actively hostile towards me (Windows) or at least want to control what I do with my computer (macOS).

Wow, the general public is smarted than I thought they were.

Internet-connected smart appliances are almost universally a bad idea. In some cases it is just extra features (like remote phone notifications when a laundry cycle ends) but it almost always involves tracking and vulnerabilities that you don’t way.

If there was a good local protocol I would be much more eager, but until Thread catches on it doesn’t really seem like there are great options.

Actually writing code 🙃

That seems like just a few empty repos? I don’t see any info there.

as they having a crawling bot

That is cool. Do you have any more info about that? I can’t see it mentioned on their website.

So you own your own blog and content. You can host your blog in a Wordpress site, GitHub pages, Ghost, or wherever you want.

Sounds like it just pulls feeds from anywhere. Nothing specific about GitHub at all.

This is like saying that Google is a search engine for GitHub blogs 🤷 I mean it is, but it is also a much more general tool.

What does diff.blog have to do with GitHub?

According to https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1395 Lemmy sends WebMentions.

That sounds like it could be a recipe for disaster if they as the owner decide to fuck you over. The nice thing about actually owning the domains is that even if your registrar goes rogue you can still transfer it out (although it may be painful).

Regarding the edit:

what I should have said was providing a product in the same market. So the fact that’s its free might not be relevant and a free, instance of a decentralized social network could be considered in the same market as a commercial, centralized social network.

Again, I don’t think the exact product matters too much. Being in different markets can help, for example a Twitter Whistle would have a better argument than a Twitter Social Network. But for huge brands that are well known everywhere (like Twitter) the market difference tends to matter less.

I still don’t see twitter going after this single instance

Yes, it is unlikely. But definitely not impossible with things that Twitter has already done to try and push out Mastodon (like banning links). And if it does happen it will be devastating to the instance as changing domains is painful. So I’m just suggesting that it may be best to play it safe here to avoid possible problems down the road.

I am not a lawyer. But…

I don’t think selling matters at all. The problem is if someone could confuse it. “Is Twitter Down” is arguably very hard to confuse as it is clearly something about Twitter (telling if it is down), and it doesn’t seem to present itself as being made/run by Twitter. This is further supported by the “by ryan king” in the corner.

However if people often talk about #BlackTwitter as some subset of content on Twitter it seems entirely possible that people could think that blacktwitter.io could think that it is run by Twitter. If it was called something like thenewblacktwitter or blacktwitteralternative it would be less likely to cause this confusion.

Another angle that they may argue is that they have an official product called “Twitter Blue” and they could argue that people would believe that “Black Twitter” is also an official Twitter product.

The most important think to remember about Trademark law is that it is very much about consumer protection. It doesn’t give you exclusive rights to use your trademark, it just prevents people from using your trademark to make something seem to be from you.

On top of all of that being legally right isn’t the only thing that matters. If Twitter accuses you of Trademark infringement unless you want to hire a bunch of lawyers you are probably just going to do what they say.

This is the same. You trust the recipient but don’t wan the messages to be stored for a long time.

You probably don’t want to use “twitter” in your name/domain like that. You are probably infringing their trademark.

WordPress is always a good option. They have a freeium hosted option at wordpress.com or you can run your own. You can also always move to another provider or host it yourself.

Tumblr is also big and popular and there are tons of smaller hosts like https://bearblog.dev/.

This is like telling someone to stay in an abusive relationship because other people like your partner. No, find something that works well for you. Your true friends will adapt.

my feeling is that it is reasonable to have the sender of the message set the terms here

This is fundamentally impossible thanks to the analog loophole. The receiver can always copy down the message to a notepad, or just remember it. Exposing this mutual agreement is staying honest and make sure that it is understood by everyone involved.

It is important to remember that disappearing messages (in any application) are only helpful for people who you trust currently. (And until the messages are deleted.)

Do you mean on mobile? Unfortunately few mobile operating systems let you change the emoji font.

❓

Remember when Google Talk was federated XMPP? Maybe we’ll have a second chance.