1y ago

A clear victory for the free fediverse: Meta now says integrating with ActivityPub is "a long way out"

privacy.thenexus.today /clear-victory-for-the-free-fediverse/

When Meta launched their new Twitter competitor Threads on July 5, they said that it would be compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon, and all the other decentralized social networks in the fediverse "soon".

But on July 14, @alexeheath of the Verge reported that Meta's saying ActivityPub integration's "a long way out". Hey wait a second. Make up your mind already!

From the perspective of the "free fediverse" that's not welcoming Meta, the new positioning that ActivityPub integration is "a long way out" is encouraging. OK, it's not as good as "when hell freezes over," but it's a heckuva lot better than "soon." In fact, I'd go so far as to say "a long way out" is a clear victory for the free fediverse's cause.

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217 comments

I haven't heard a single valid reason why federating with Meta is bad. Only people misunderstanding how technology works.
edit: remember pretty much all objections can be solved by personally blocking the domain, rather then forcing it to be blocked for everyone. Also that all the information Meta could possibly get, they can already get regardless because all of our content is public.
- The user base on a platform like Threads is probably quite different from that of Lemmy (or reddit) Federating with them means their content is starting to also flood to our platform and in a big way due to their huge number of users meaning that we're getting our faces stuffed with facebook quality content that many specifically is trying to escape here.
  
  from my experience there are some decent communities and people on FB, it's just that you have to find them hidden under heaps of bullshit. No different from Reddit, Twitter or YouTube in that sense imo
  With something like Lemmy though, both the users and community moderators have way, way more agency over what they're interacting with, so I don't think federating with mainstream social media would necessarily be that bad
  I think, at least?
  
  Then block their domain. Problem solved. Any other objections that can't just be resolved by personally blocking the domain? Don't ban it by default, give users the choice to ban themselves or not. There's no downside.
  
  There is a downside: Because many people don't see the negative long-term effects, Facebook will have enough time to influence and dominate the Fediverse in a negative way. The masses don't see what Facebook is doing in the long run.
  There's also not much reason to federate with Facebook. Sign up there if you like that network.
  
  I say not federating is influencing the Fediverse in a negative way. Since I obviously don't agree with that, it's more content. I don't like gatekeeping and this sense of toxic superiority that fedi users are above average Meta users. I want to talk to my family. Same can be said with your influence argument, they can sign up there already and use the fedi, which means they're being influenced already.
  I'm extremely against this gatekeeping and want these users. That's the whole point of social media, to communicate with people. More people is more content, which is the whole point. I don't want to only communicate with smug users who think they're superior to a normal person.
  
  I’m very suspicious of Meta and its intentions. I also don’t think I’m better than a Meta user except in my choice of social media platforms, which is only even possible because I haven’t gotten myself into social groups that primarily communicate there. Not everyone is so lucky. If my social group were slightly different I might be a resentful Meta user holding my nose because I would value having a social life over avoiding a company that’s got pretty much everyone entangled anyways. I’d probably try to get people to move platforms, and probably complain about Facebook and Meta as often as I could without annoying everyone, but it’s very likely that they wouldn’t all move off the platform just because one person in the group hates it.
  Meta users are welcome to come here. I want everyone to have a non-enshittified, non-corporate social media and that includes people who are currently on an enshittified corporate social media. But Meta itself is not welcome. That means no Threads, no touching us with Meta, go make a non-Meta Fediverse account first. Even if defederating them might not be the most effective, even though they can scrape all our stuff regardless of their federation status, I want to send the message that Meta is very unwelcome here. But its users are welcome. We shouldn’t try to hoard the non-enshittified place all to ourselves. Only gatekeep the place from people who will try to enshittify it—and Grandma from Facebook is not going to try to squeeze us for cash.
  
  So you want the users, but not them to enshittify it, but you also want them magically to come without federating because you think you have a superior sense of social media. Which reality are you in, and how do you intend for the fedi to magically become mainstream with this zero compromise dream scenario you're coming up with? I don't even agree with gatekeeping people you think are shitty, because there's already a terrible fedi population out there like creepy anime instances, truth social, and kiwifarms, etc. Those are all much worse then what you'll find on Facebook and are already on fedi. Has it ruined the network?
  This is just completely idealistic hoping that wants a situation that will never happen, has already failed to happen, and is ignoring the reality of the situation. For the fedi to grow, it means also shitty people coming. That's where the proper moderation tools become important.
  
  So you want the users, but not them to enshittify it
  What I meant by “enshittification” is this:
  This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit.
  The linked article explains it a lot better with a specific example in my opinion, but the example is pretty long, so I just provided the quick definition from the article.
  I am very much not talking about “oh no the normies are coming, polluting our beautiful pure place with memes and innocent questions about how things work that we superior people already understand.” I am also not talking about people I think are shitty, you handle that by defederating instances with a high volume of shitty people and blocking and reporting the shitty people you still come across. I really shouldn’t have said
  Only gatekeep the place from people who will try to enshittify it
  because what I actually meant here was gatekeeping it from corporations who will try to enshittify it. Like Meta. I misspoke and I apologize for that.
  
  Lemmy doesn't currently give the option for users to block individual instances. If it did then that would indeed be a better solution
  
  Lemmy will surely add such basic feature at some point.
  
  It'll definitely add that feature in the near future. I'm confident it'll land before/if Meta goes ActivityPub.
- Because the long-term influence of such a powerful yet detrimental network like Facebook is bad, and when the negative effects for the Fediverse show up, or even later, when enough people realize it, the Fediverse will have been influenced in a way that it can't go back to a healthy state.
  
  So who determines what's healthy, and why do you feel the need to take away the choice from others?
  
  "healthy" here means "healthy for the Fediverse", which means "being nice to each other" and supporting diversity, both values being contrary to the Facebook network, which is predatory to other networks, as having proven in the past.
  The need is to prevent the predatory network from accessing the weaker one that promotes diversity and freedom of choice.
  
  It's that way because of moderation. Trust me when I say, there are some extremely vile servers out there that are significantly worse then anything you'll find on Facebook. Also I just read this as gatekeeping, assuming that the current users are somehow better to each other then the average person. Also the fedi is one of the least diverse communities I've ever seen.
  
  It's not about the users, but Facebook as a company that has its own agenda against its users in order to make as much money as possible.
  It's also about Facebook seeing other networks not as friendly co-spaces, but as competitors that it tries to crush.
  If you talk about users though, the "worse servers than Facebook" are by far less powerful than Facebook, and they impose no danger to the Fediverse.
- @mojo @nexusofprivacy I don't want Facebook content in my mastodon feed. Period. If they federate here I'm leaving.
  
  You realize you can just personally block the domain lol. Problem solved. This is what I mean by people don't understand the technology.
  
  It's not only about ignoring Facebook users. Imagine in real life a bully comes to your group and you could block him, so you don't see him, but he still influences the people around you in a negative way, changing the environment you used to love. You better make sure he stays out of your circle. Facebook has a long record of destroying other social networks.
  
  So you want to take away the choice from others? What's stopping those same influenced users from being influenced already? They can simply download the app right now, it doesn't need to appear on their Mastodon or whatever feed.
  
  Nobody's talking about taking the choice away from others. Some instances are saying they'll federate with Threads, you're free to move your account there. Or as you say, people who want to hang out with the bully can download the Threads app right now!
  
  @mojo @beastieboyofthenet@tech.lgbt
  Please read the following and then revise your statements.
  The Deadline by Tom DeMarco. A Novel About Project Management.
  
  No
- Should the Fediverse welcome its new surveillance-capitalism overlords? Opinions differ! has plenty of perspectives from both sides.
  
  They don't need to. There's not any more information they'd get that they can't already get. You realize all our comments are public and scrapable, right? Regardless if they're federated or not, our content is public for anyone to scrape.
  
  That's incorrect. Followers-only posts (and local-only posts on instances that have them) aren't public. Profiles that don't make public and unlisted posts aren't discoverable. And, as Threat modeling Meta, the fediverse, and privacy discusses, there are plenty of things that could be done to reduce the amount of data that's public.
  Also, that's only one of the many reasons people oppose federating with Meta.
- It's simple. Meta does not do this because they are nice. Their goal is to collect data, grow the Market and remove competitors. This also includes appeasing (mostly European) Regulators by appearing nice.
  Do. Not. Trust. Them.
  
  Don't know how many times this needs to be said. All your content on the fedi is public. There's nothing they can see by federating that they can't already see. Please understand how the technology and privacy works on fedi.
- I hope this can be a polite argument of different opinions.
  Like others said it could be bad for the fediverse in the long run. If meta joins activitypub they are the only ones that are really winning. We get access and engage their content, which promotes their network. They would be the largest node by far and it will give them power to influence activitypub. They can push "features" that only works within the threads network and when they don't work with the rest of the fediverse creating a disparity in the userbase. People on threads will think that we are the ones that are weird for not having them since all users on threads have them and will probably push, "just download threads". (Kind of how apple controls iMessage and how people get bullied into buying iphones just so they don't have a green bubble, the fediverse is the different one that will need to adapt to meta wishes) Or maybe they can suddenly decide to defederate, and now all the people that had connections with threads will be forced to download threads if they want to keep those connections. People that would otherwise never had downloaded threads in the first place. Regardless of the outcome, they join to stay or leave, they are the ones that will win in the end.
  This has been done in the past. Its Microsoft " embrace, extend, extinguish" philosophy. A recent example of an open standard is the XMPP being killed by Google. Ultimately meta is a for profit corporation and they have every incentive to monopolize this space.
  You brought up the point of people being able to block the domain. The vast majority of people don't change the default settings so the fediverse experience would include threads by default. Just like how ppl can block meta, and since the majority of fediverse don't really want the connection, if threads is so important for you why can't you sign up on their pratform?
  For me, other than my concerns with the future of the fediverse, i also consider is that meta is so bad that threads is not even available in Europe because of safety and privacy concerns and so I want nothing to do with it.
  One last thing, meta was supposed to join WhatsApp, FB messages and Instagram direct, meaning from each of those platforms you could message ppl on the other platforms. They haven't even been able to do that yet. They connected FB and Instagram but not WhatsApp yet bc ppl opinion of FB is low enough and the backlash was big enough.
  Hopefully I managed to convey my reasons why the federation with meta is bad.
  But also, what are the good reasons to federate, like you (just opposite) I haven't seen a valid reason to federate.
  
  We need multiple corporations joining activity pub
  
  As soon as they start pushing features, it's no longer ActivityPub, but a fork of ActivityPub. There's no reason why our fedi clients would be forced to adapt. We already have this weird display issue sometimes, like upvotes and threads on Lemmy not properly showing up on Mastodon for example. It's not a huge issue if it's not entirely interoperable.
  That just download threads mentality already exists. If you think it's an issue on the internet, it's 10x more powerful in person. It already exists, it won't suddenly appear when Meta federates. If you make a new best friend in threads from Mastodon and Threads defederates, surely that isn't your only point of contact? If it's that important to you that alternative means of communication isn't viable, then maybe just download Threads if they aren't willing to download Mastodon. That's more of a social issue which greatly varies per person.
  I think you're speaking for others when you say it's too hard to defederate for users. For the sake of Mastodon, you just press the three dots and block threads.net. That's very easy UX, no settings involved. Also I can say the same, if choosing to restrict everybody from threads instead of just yourself is so important, why can't you simply press that block instance button? That way you aren't taking choice away from others.
  The reasons to federate should be obvious. People. That's the whole point of social media. I don't want to be restricted to fedi users who think they're superior then the average person who uses Facebook. I'm not going to stop using Mastodon either just because I don't like these people. I want to talk to family and friends. I want to invite the people I actually like because decentralization and growing the fedi is good for all. More content the better. That's what social media is.
- Same here.

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