> standards they write themselves that everyone ignores
CSS, WAI-ARIA, SVG, WebGPU, WebAuthn...and a large number of APIs that are referenced as part of the HTML spec but developed and standardized by different W3C groups.
I think the RDF standards have produced many useful tools for those that work with graph data. And the W3C is a useful coordination place for new standards like Verifiable Credentials[0] and Decentralized identifiers[1] and JSON Linked Data[2], which are all being used in ActivityPub, Bluesky, and a lot of other decentralizing projects.
The CSS and specs are maintained by W3C and are widely implemented by browsers. Likewise for the WAI-ARIA, WCAG, MathML, and SVG specs.
The XML and related specs are implemented by various applications and libraries even if web browsers dislike these specs. -- They are used a lot in document publishing workflows that use formats like JATS, and are supported by various tools and libraries.
SVG is widely supported in vector graphics applications and rendering tools.
And WHATWG hasn't just co-opted W3C specs -- it's also co-opted encoding, URIs and others from places like the RFCs.
An incompatible attempt at reformulating Mastodon Protocol. If you've ever actually tried to work with the protocol, you'll know the standard only loosely describes it. If you attempt to implement it by following the standard, you won't be compatible with anything else, because everything else implements Mastodon Protocol instead (and calls it ActivityPub).
Touché. Mastodon is the Internet Explorer of ActivityPub. There are other, non-Mastodon extensions, and some ActivityPub-spec functionality that Mastodon eschews but other implementations support, but overall this is an accurate summary. Especially regarding the C2S protocol: most apps just use the Mastodon API instead (see https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/10520).
- standards they write themselves that everyone ignores - standards they copy from the WHATWG