Kev Quirk, one of the admins of Fosstodon (a Mastodon instance), destroys Meta in an email exchange.

a true person of culture!

Unfortunately at this time we can't discuss what measures we've put in place....

Because we have none, as it's counteractive to our revenue models.

Freezing would actually probably be better, in this case I think its fawn.

They did with the last one. That's why there's so much distrust about it.

That statement is refreshingly sane. Really sick of the amount of heat over this situation and the lack of light.

Seriously, if you want to see them squirm, hit them with a wall of silence. They clearly feel they need something and, for Meta, negative feedback is better than no feedback at all.

4. As others have pointed out, how does shutting them out completely stay in keeping with fediverse principles? This is legitimate question since, to me, it seems like despite the risks, it's antithetical to the spirit of the fediverse until they demonstrate bad behavior here.

how much bad behavior do you want to see before accepting that MetaZuck is evil and has no go intentions?

There's a literal trail of dead startups and bodies.

We should bake it into the software (Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc.) as a first line of defense. If you want to federate, you'd have to fork the server first.

Can you give any reasonable by means in which they could do this and succeed?

Read up on what they did to XMPP, an earlier federated protocol.

Spoiler: embrace, extend, extinguish.

Because it’s what we’ve come to expect from large corporations suddenly joining the table of any FOSS project that is adjacent to their financial stakes. Coexistence is possible if they can profit from the software without assimilating it, but it also stands to reason that they will be pushing for new interoperability standards that benefit their own business model at the expense of users in some way.

The lowest hanging fruit would be something that allows them to associate Fediverse accounts with users whose marketing data already exists in their database, or providing a service to third parties that helps them tie their own databases back to Fediverse users. This would require some sort of hook that encourages the users to either associate their Fediverse accounts to an existing Meta service, or otherwise volunteer common PII such as email address that can be cross referenced. Maybe some kind of tracking cookie that accomplishes the same.

Keep in mind that this is just an example, it is not necessarily the exact angle they are pursuing. I’m not in the automatically defederate camp, but a healthy amount of skepticism is definitely warranted.

——

Edit: Also worth a read: https://kbin.social/m/fediverse@lemmy.ml/t/83284/How-to-Kill-a-Decentralised-Network-such-as-the-Fediverse

Imagining Meta wants to expand into another platform isn't a conspiracy theory. For one, Meta could paste ads into more online spaces. They could also replace twitter without having to develop their own platform or pulling a Musk. Both of these would, yes, allow them to be more profitable.

Let me give a hypothetical: Meta makes their own nice, QoL-rich instance that could integrate with Facebook/Instagram. They could also add in analytics and ads and allow that to federate with other instances. They could allow other people to host their own version of this Metadon. If it gets adopted (because it "just works" or otherwise), they could cut support for the instances not running Metadon, taking a large portion of the userbase with them. They would have their own twitter clone (complete with users), they hardly spent time developing it beyond loading Mastodon with their crap, and they would have other people also hosting Metadon (and their ads) without Meta paying a dime.

If Meta does get a sizable userbase then they can absolutely leverage that to force other instances to play their game or defederate.

I mean, look at EEE like Microsoft did in the 90s.

Personally, I'm also scared about Linux after Linus dies. They are on a lot of the board as well

So they can overwhelm it, when they become the majority of the users they become in charge with the loudest voice. Then they steer it their way or make sure it dies.

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

Someone else just posted this explanation. TLDR is essentially, one of these giant corporations can destroy a network by joining and then later walling off their own part of it. And it's been done before.

Also: why would you want to discuss confidential information in the presence of Meta of all companies? Their reputation precedes them.

The only confidential information about the fediverse that I can see is account information. And maybe metrics. But most metrics can be gathered by polling APIs of servers anyway. It's an open system, unless they defederate with you.

Yes. Keep those manipulative crooks away from the fediverse!

'Member when the Zuck assured everyone that Facebook cared deeply about their privacy, and then immediately turned around and quietly implemented features where people had to opt-out of sharing all their shit (when opting out was even an option at all), and those users didn't even know it? And we're not even getting into how it sells your data behind the scenes to advertisers, government entities, and anyone else with a little cash to offer.

Ah, the good ol' days. And I don't even resent it due to being personally affected. I've never had a FB account, and I just watched from the sidelines as it affected people I know and love and the broader online community as a whole.

Of course just blocking them is an option for the fediverse, but doing that blindly seems like a missed opportunity for both sides.
More freely available content would be great, wouldn’t it?

The issue is once you open these floodgates you're not going to be able to close them, at least not without alienating a vast majority of users on both sides. Furthermore, once meta gains the majority of users and content on its instances (and this is really more of a "when", not "if" situation), they can start making changes to AP and overall infrastructure and forcing other instances to either adapt to that, or get left behind one by one, similar to what google does regardless of W3C and other browsers have to adapt even though it goes against the agreed standard.

If meta gains a foothold in the fediverse and eventually start isolating the smaller instances, it's going to be the email situation all over again, we'll have just a few large trusted providers and the rest will be a seemingly unsafe niche that most people avoid. Giving them the benefit of the doubt is just foolish, meta will not let a few fediverse admins dictate their policy (even assuming they have the backbone to stand up to them, and considering the recent meeting/NDA/"shareholder" drama most of them definitely don't).

This is super naive. Facebook/Meta has zero interest in "playing nice" with competitors in any field. Their intentions with the fediverse are not pure, and you're a fool if you think otherwise.

This is capitalism, and this is one of the most profitable corporations that has ever existed on the planet. A corporation who has made those profits almost entirely from the private data of its users (and even some users that aren't subscribed to their service. That's how much data they have).

They don't "work together" with competitors "for the good of everyone." That's a pipe dream.

Respectful post, but respectfully disagree. The longer the fediverse can stay free of monetary-driven communities, the longer it will last. Wait until the proposals for blue check marks and karma hit the ActivityPup "plus" standard and it's too late for the platform.

That's nice and all, but before we get to any of this there's a fundamental incentive schism to overcome first. People flock to the fediverse because they are tired of being treated like cattle. If you are not the paying customer, you are the product. And you will never--NEVER--be catered to. That's the bottom line here.

If that's the case then there's no need for it to be off-record. Unless the conversation of what you pointed out is open to scrutiny it shouldn't happen.

tl;dr: when you tell people what you’d like them to do, it increases the chances of them doing that.

In my experience when you tell huge corporations what you'd like them to do, it has no bearing on whether or not they will do that.

Facebook/Meta wouln't even moderate out incitements to genocide when multiple people asked that of them for years, so it seems naive to assume they care at all about the people in the fediverse.

They are profit driven with a laser focus, and this is a really obvious attempt at co opting, not collaborating.

A more important topic is, what federated data will be kept on Meta, and most importantly HOW that data will be processed/used/sold by Meta.

An interesting and nuanced response - thank you. I'm not quite sure I agree, as it rather assumed good faith - but food for thought.

I get your argument, but fundamentally

more freely available content would be great, right?

doesn't hold true. For example I don't need a flood of Instragram thots on my Mastodon or Lemmy pages, even if I got it for free. Quality is more important than quantity, I am here for in-depth discussions on current events and issues we face, with individuals capable of empathy and critical thinking. Considering the types of interactions that come from Facebook and related sites, I need better public reassurance that Meta's involvement won't tank the platform and it's vibe.

We've handled the Reddit migration about as well as we could have hoped, but the folks on Meta are a whole different beast. Many will be fine but there will also be a chunk of people completely blind to forum Nettiquite.

Lastly Meta acting behind closed doors is antithetical to FOSS development ethos. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I would refuse closed door discussions but be open to public ones. NDAs are rich corporations' tools to silence people.

More freely available content would be great, wouldn’t it?

I doubt most people moved to the fediverse simple because of better content. Personally I didn't. And quantity doesn't mean quality.

And certainly they are likely to be data-hungry greedy shit, but there is a chance that they are actually good ideas - there are actual people working at meta after all.

Contributions are open for these people. But the moment the contributions are facilitated through Meta, they represent Metas business interests.

What are the downsides?

Control. Meta could swamp the fediverse and just because its open source the current platforms wouldnt necessarily continue to exist in the same way they currently do. We could see even bigger fragmentation or breaks, some Admins might feel forced to federate with Metas service, leading to the currently existing community breaking up.

But maybe, just maybe, goals align here, and Meta can make money and improve the Fediverse and the Internet with it.

Imo the last years has proven, without a doubt, that those things simply do not align.

To conclude: We have seen these things before and they havent ended well. People here seem to undererstimate the power Meta has and the impact that this power has. Even if all current instances were to defederate from Meta, simple association, user demand caused by an influx of Meta users and hard to guess power dynamics would make the fediverse a far different place than it currently is. To make a comparison: you cant drop the gravity well of a black hole into a small, complex planetary system and expect it to be unaffected.

@TheYang @steb They want to use an open protocol? That's great.
But then they should be open about their intentions, and not send invitations to a few select individuals to a confidential "off the record" "roundtable". This seems just too fishy to me.

I agree with you, and I appreciate that Facebook at least tries to reach out, but after all that happened I also understand that there is a certain aversion against Facebook.

Yeah large EEE on ActivityPub feels like almost a given if they start to use it.

But maybe, just maybe, goals align here

If you think that, then you haven't read up on Facebook and XMPP.

Meta's motives are simple: destroy the Fediverse.

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

I can imagine all sorts of technical points like how the firehose will be load-balanced so as to not overwhelm any instance, or what metadata they should include in their feeds. Meta also has a lot of AI and moderation expertise that could be of benefit to the Fediverse once it grows into an attractive enough target for the troll farms and spambots.

Quite frankly, the sooner that festering cesspool that is Twitter is killed off, the better off the planet will be. If it takes Meta to wean the talking heads like Oprah from Twitter, so be it. It would be better if Oprah set up her own instance, but that's unlikely to happen, media businesses still haven't understood they need to take control over their distribution rather than the easy way of going through big social networks that will stab them in the back when expedient like Facebook deprioritizing media outlets from users' feeds.

yeah i mean i... don't know why you'd "wait and see". it's literally Facebook. they're going to negatively impact your community, if not in features (lol) then in sheer size and volume.

i haven’t seen any hard confirmation, but i believe one of these mastodon admin meetings has already happened (the one attended by the universeodon admin) and an nda was involved. this would be the second meeting.

And our "standard practice" should be to say "fuck off" to that BS.

Exactly. I know it's a bit elitist, but I just don't care what meta users have to say about anything. If you're dumb enough to participate in their little data extraction operations then I don't want to know you.

This doesn't surprise me. The idea then might be to allow for people outside of their walled garden to follow (likely for big name accounts, celebrities, athletes, important people) etc, but not really be a true federated instance. In which case, I think defederating is even more pointless. Just let users on an instance follow who they want to follow.

Indeed, what is the point? It may be as simple as them trying to coopt the movement to get ahead of it and steal mindshare. Think Hitler and the intentional naming of "National Socialism".

"Oh, ActivityPub is the hot new thing, let's check it out," says clueless user #39,728 as they click on the first link in their Google search, which coincidentally now happens to be Facebook.

I mean worst case you'll see @meta.com accounts in your Federated feed in Mastodon (which for pretty much every instance is already a complete mess), I don't even really see how it'll affect Lemmy or Kbin, as they're community driven rather than user driven. I follow users with Mastodon, I follow communities with Kbin.

I dunno, maybe I'm being necessarily optimistic, but I do have friends and family who are posting on Insta/FB, and I basically maintain an account there to keep up with them. I'd love to be able to keep that connection without having to actually be locked into Meta's platforms. And I do think at least a few of my tech savvy friends would be willing to give a client like Ivory a go if they're able to do the same.

I don't understand why people think the end goal should be one network of Fediverse instances connected to each other. We already don't have that and never will.

Meta adding "more users than the entirety of the Fediverse" is irrelevant. They already have more users and content from Facebook, Instagram or whatever else Meta owns is not showing up on my Lemmy or Kbin front page. How would I notice any difference if the tech behind Meta's services is different?

If Meta wants a platform that's larger than anything else they already have Facebook.

The one and only reason Meta's looking at the fediverse is to scrape it for content. It's social content they risk being left out of and they want in. It's as simple as that.

Federate with their instances and they will scrape the shit out of yours, build shadow profiles around your users, feed all your posts and comments into their LLM, cross reference them with their Facebook data to figure out everybody's real identity, and so on and so forth.

That's the thing though, it's still around and getting marketed by them as one of their major products. So they're beating a dead horse that they shot to death themself really.

That's exactly it and there's no reason to pretend otherwise. Meta is a financial instrument to turn money into more money. The only reason Meta would engage with any third party is to make their commercial products more attractive to advertisers. Play with Meta and before you know if they'll be writing all the rules about how you're allowed to run your instance.

I found this article interesting and relevant: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

In other words they're trying a new way to turn the fediverse into the metaverse.

That makes about the most sense It possibly can.

they could make their own custom version of the fediverse

I mean, they already did and it's called "Facebook" (and "Instagram")? Are people forgetting that Fediverse apps are being developed as an alternative to the existing commercial "social media"? Meta is already heavily invested in keeping users on their platforms and killing alternatives. This is 100% an attempt to do that. They just added a pair of Groucho glasses to it and think people won't see through the flimsy disguise.

You don't have to use it though?

Thank you, it was a good read

Its a really immature and niave response from Kev. Information is power, he's chosen to operate without knowledge for internet points.

Meta think there is potential to enlarge their market and make money, Kev's response won't impact their business making decisions.

Kev should have gone to the meeting to understand what Meta are planning. That would help him figure out how to deal with Meta entering the space.

I don't expect he could shape their approach but knowing they want to do X, Y or Z might make certain features/fixes a priority so it doesn't impact everyone else

It doesn't need to be said that Meta is purely driven by profit - that is any corporation. But Meta is incompetent and failing - yet still a behemoth. If they want to pour millions of dollars into the fediverse, then we don't we let them? They would presumably just be another site on the fediverse.

I totally support them joining on assuming it doesn't change the fundamental structure of the system.

You would still know what Meta is thinking of doing on the Fediverse, and adjust course accordingly. Now we 1) know nothing, and 2) have closed off an avenue to gain information.

It‘s not just about the data—which is bad enough but as you said they could just write a crawler to get at it. The question is why would they want to federate and why now? Meta being Meta the most likely reasons are terrible for the fediverse and it reminds me very much of Google and xmpp. I saw a really good writeup on this yesterday: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

Our exchange here is public, a gift to humanity and all aliens that might stumble upon it. If meta can make money from it, so be it. But anyone else can just as well.

they may be able to read certain data from another instance but their current platform allows complete surveillance of what you looked at, how long, every click and scroll, etc while also being able to feed that in to manipulating what you see.

imo it will be basically impossible to have that kind of impact on people from instances not controlled by them, particularly if the other instance defederates so they don't see meta instance content.

I don't think that's true. Obviously we all think like that which is why we're here, but most people are still on reddit/twitter because they don't care about any of that, they only care about the content/experience

I agree with what you're saying, but remember that open source software cannot happen without individual contributions and donations. If you have some money to spare, even just $1 dollar, please consider donating it to the Lemmy developers. It's obviously not a requirement, but it helps keep the project going!

The flipside is that a standard's not really open and a network founded on one isn't really resilient if certain groups or corporates arbitrarily aren't seen as "allowed" to use it, or if conversely a big corporate joining it is so toxic to the entire endeavour that it must be blocked on sight.

Chris Trottier, someone who I disagree with quite a lot and is a far bigger advocate for decentralisation as a public good than I am, is quite sanguine about P92 on those grounds.

Personally, I have no plans on my instances to submit P92 to any more stringent rules than I would with any other server blocks, that is I will give them exactly enough rope to hang themselves with.

The FOSS community is wary due to “embrace, extend, extinguish” approach by various tech giants in the past.

Including this one.

May the disdain never fade until monopolies are destroyed.

Thanks for sharing, that article is fresh out of the oven!

Having been interested in Open Source software for a few years, I always give big companies the side-eye when they suddenly take great interest into FOSS projects.

I am not against talk and federation, but Meta needs to make clear their motivations if they want the Fediverse's trust at all.