1y ago

Meta will kill small instances! Please read.

I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.

Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.

As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:

Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won't care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won't care. They will use Threads because its faster.

This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.

Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That's not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.

My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.

I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.

We couldn't get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.

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473 comments

I guess this will already have been said, but nonetheless:
I like the feeling of community as it is right now in the Fediverse very much.
Most of me hopes that it will not successfully federate with Meta, ever; or if it "must", in a way that will be mostly irrelevant to me (communities I wouldn't subscribe to in the first place, anyway).
I don't see how that, in turn, would give Meta any control over the parts of the Fediverse that I care about. If they want to join and contribute in good faith, fine. If not, also fine. Why should it change anything for Fediverse "centered" communities?
I never cared about size or majority, but about quality of content and discourse. And I find that in those points, the current Fediverse much outshines anything else I've seen (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, ...) in the last decade or so.
- That was my first thought too, until I found this:
  Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
  Blog post explainer
  Wikipedia page
  
  From my (admittedly, deliberately naive and provocative) perspective, what is the (possible) "added value" of Threads' ad-infested feed over the community experience straight on Lemmy?
- I share your priorities, but I don't think you understand the depth and breath of how they can ruin this for us... The only guarantee is that, at some point (maybe tomorrow, maybe in 5 years), they'll ask "how can we extract value from this investment?". That's what a corporation is, it can't help it anymore than fire can choose how hot to burn
  But even before then, we have misaligned goals. At best, their priority is to generate an endless stream of advertiser friendly content, extract information about users, and grow endlessly. At worst, they want to use us to help kill Twitter while ensuring federation of individuals does not become a viable model for social media
  
  That’s what a corporation is, it can’t help it anymore than fire can choose how hot to burn
  This is an excellent line.
  
  How would they ensure this latter thing?
  In my current understanding, it's readily possible today (on Lemmy and related software), what could Meta do to keep this from continuing to work?
  
  Convince the population at large it doesn't work, or even that it's dangerous.
  Like community run utilities, universal healthcare, or any number of things that so obviously work better without a profit motive
  Make the populace at large see the fediverse as a failed experiment, a hive of criminal activity, or a bunch of tiny toxic echo chambers
  Hell, they could even push legislation that makes running social media out in the open impossible for individuals
  
  As for the first points, yes, that may happen, but is it a problem for users who already are part of a 'better' experience here than on the for-profit platforms?
  I, for one, find much better discourse here than anywhere on reddit, let alone Meta or Twitter.
  Also exemplified by me engaging much more here than ever on the others. I do prefer quality over quantity - everyone is invited to join the table, but I don't see much benefit in luring people there who would ultimately only dilute or be disruptive - ie, not really into the thing that's happening here.
  For the last point, well, legislators can certainly try. While telling people it's all for their benefit and upholding freedom and democracy and equal opportunity and whatnot. And even keep a straight face.
  
  By convincing people at large that social media run by individuals or groups isn't viable.
  Personally, I'd do it by attacking the credibility of the admins. Sow doubt. "they only run servers so they can steal your data", "look at this guy! He pretends he cares about free speech, but he's abusing his power to censor and radicalize people!" "The only reason you'd use these private instances is if you have something to hide. That place is for criminals"
  They might even be able to get legislation passed to make it legally risky to run the servers in the US if they control the narrative
  Only early adopters, technical people, and the privacy minded care about how this actually works, and we've been telling our friends and family how bad Facebook is for years (for good reason). At first they didn't care, but now I get push back
  Next, make it unreliable. If it goes down frequently, gets flooded by bots, or just starts to suck in general, most of the people here now will leave, no matter how important federated social networks are. Maybe they'll go to servers that bend over backwards to become offshoots of threads, maybe they'll look for Reddit clones elsewhere, personally I'd start up a private federation for friends and family if this goes south
  Regardless, this place will become an empty mall - if it's not a healthy form of social media I'm not going to spend much time here, and I'm extremely passionate about it
  And the last option is just ads and incentives. Make it tempting and play to fomo.
  They'll probably do all of this to some degree, especially if we explode in numbers and present actual competition.
  We're ready to handle it, but we also need to make sure the battle lines are as far away as possible

473 comments