I have mixed feelings about the Tumblr ActivityPub thing. On one hand, that's a lot of users that will now be able to interact with our open community here, and I feel like that can be a good thing. I always felt like fedi culture and Tumblr culture were very similar too. However, a major company becoming part of the ecosystem is an entry point for companies to take over the ecosystem. I think the current owners of Tumblr are decent people, but if Automattic or Tumblr get acquired again we may end up in a situation where a company wants to take over fedi for the benefit of its shareholders.
@brainblasted Worth noting that Automattic itself does not have an entirely clean slate either; for many years, if you wanted to move your free blog away from Wordpress.com, they have been charging a *significant* recurring fee (currently $13/year) to set up a redirect.
It's definitely pretty shitty to lure people into a "free" service, and then basically hold their linked-to domain hostage by charging quite a bit of money for something that costs them virtually nothing to maintain (in fact, it would cost less than continuing to serve up the blog, which they *don't* charge you for).
Also makes any promises of long-term interoperability pretty suspect...
