How does this instance feel about this growing pact against federating with Meta?
How does this instance feel about this growing pact against federating with Meta?
Meta/Instagram launched a new product called Threads today (working title project92). It adds a new interface for creating text posts and replying to them, using your Instagram account. Of note, Meta has stated that Threads plans to support ActivityPub in the future, and allow federation with ActivityPub services. If you actually look at your Threads profile page in the app your username has a threads.net tag next to it - presumably to support future federation.
Per the link, a number of fediverse communities are pledging to block any Meta-directed instances that should exist in the future. Thus instance content would not be federated to Meta instances, and Meta users would not be able to interact with instance content.
I'm curious what the opinions on this here are. I personally feel like Meta has shown time and time again that they are not very good citizens of the Internet; beyond concerns of an Eternal September triggered by federated Instagram, I worry that bringing their massive userbase to the fediverse would allow them to influence it to negative effect.
I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place, and I'm eager to hear more opinions. What do you think?
Meta has repeatedly introduced features intended to scrape larger amounts of data about our lives and tie it all into one big profile that they can sell. This area of the internet feels like one of the few remaining areas that they haven't reached, and I'd bet everything I have that's why they're introducing this. I couldn't be more strongly against allowing them a way to link my data here with the data they have from my usage of their existing products. While I understand the idea of open federation to allow disparate communities to interact, one of the lines I'll draw is letting a massive corporation in like that.
They'll still be able to scrape the fediverse and all instances without threads federating with them. Defederating doesn't stop their access to your PUBLIC data on the fediverse.
I'm curious, are there policies for usage of data on a service like this? If you federate Meta (or any instance, or this instance), is that granting them the right to use your data as they wish? Assuming the answer is yes, could the Fediverse at large implement a broad, let's call it "Terms & Conditions", that must be acknowledged upon federation, regarding how the data is used? Or, if the answer is no, what are the limitations to how data in the Fediverse is used?
Also, how useful is my data to them anyway, if they can't target me with ads? Certainly there are uses, but isn't the primary end-game just selling me something? If I'm on an independent instance, I'm not sure how much I care about them having access to my data.
Edit: Mastodon founder Eugen touches on some these questions here. This is specific to Mastodon, I have no idea how much of this carries over for Lemmy.
Will Meta get my data or be able to track me? A server you are not signed up with and logged into cannot get your private data or track you across the web. What it can get are your public profile and public posts, which are publicly accessible.
The day this instance federates with Meta is the day I leave. They, and any other big corporations, can fuck all the way off. We have seen where that path leads time and time again.
I'm sick of Meta
I think the majority are against federating with meta so we're probably safe but same.
Well said, and same.
Please for the love of Internet connectivity as a whole: block anything remotely attached to Facebook, not just the instance, but in general Internet daily life.
Zuck should die forgotten.
It does not go against the point of the fediverse to do so, either. Why would the ability to do this be baked into the code if it was not the intent to use it in certain situations? This would be a perfect use.
I can see maybe certain instances wanting it for whatever reason, but I'll be packing up and moving to one that blocks it if this one allows it.
Agreed. With the nature of the Fediverse, defederating with anything from Meta doesn't really restrict access for those who actually wish to interact with them. They can simply join their next nefarious venture.
The drawbacks to interacting with a company that so obviously only chases profit above all else far outweigh any "benefits " of their content.
Ser Robin had the right idea: bravely run away.
Brave, brave sir Robin.
Playing devil's advocate a bit here:
Considering that I rate Facebook as evil as Google, would you support "defederating" Google Mail from other mail services?
In my opinion, the fediverse/ActivityHub is just the underlying protocol to enable people to connect to each other just like SMTP and whether I want to contact someone using a service provider that I don't like is my choice and should not be the choice of my service provider...
My understanding is that the main problem is allowing them to get any foot in the door in the first place. They are not in it to be nice, they are in it to beat out and absorb the competition for their gain. The fediverse is about giving users a place to go that's not full of ads and algorithms. They only see us as untapped revenue streams.
Adding on to the pile here:
I know many have said, but embrace, extend, extinguish is also a legitimate threat to the fediverse I feel. I think the scenario you've described is already happening, but it's natural compliment: Unless you pay the google/godaddy/squarespace/whomever racket, good luck getting any traffic from your personal, self-hosted email server. Even if it's fully signed from industry standard certificate providers, you still need to effectively pay the big email servers to have your traffic be not marked as defacto spam/malicious. If you run the show, you get to point the protocol and standard operating procedures. Meta has every capability to eat the fediverse more or less, and frankly I don't doubt they will if it is a profitable endeavor. I'm sure y'all have read this by Ploum, but it really articulates the genuine concern that is just as existential as implosion.
Sure, if you hate it so much. Join a service that's excluded.
The people here now largely don't care about content from Meta. I don't even care personally if people don't want to switch from Meta to the fediverse.
I get being able to keep access to friends and their content, but a big draw of having this account is not being tied to me at all beyond my content and comments being semi publicly known to be from the same person.
The idea of federating to me seems to be being able to have one account with access to everything. That's not necessarily a benefit.
If the fediverse gets big enough it won't matter if they're able to access Meta content. The grass gets too green here to feel like you're missing out.
I don't even think them being cut off from the 'verse completely is the intent either. I personally don't want to be attached to them, so like I said, if this instance decides to that's fine. I will move to one that's not for myself. It doesn't have to be that big of a thing.
Just like your example, of you personally don't want to connect with Gmail, you join a network that's not connected. Everybody's happy.
I don't want to touch their content, and I feel like I'm large part the people that have moved here already mostly agree in not seeing value in a connection to Meta.
This will not always be the case, and for them that's fine.
I'm starting to get rant-y here, so I'll cut it off.
But back to the original point- if you don't want Google stuff, then yes, join a place without it. That's ok, and kind of the design of this setup.
I really believe the content here will surpass anything they can possibly contribute, and then making an account over on this side shouldn't be an impossible hurdle.
A good read about that with an historical perpective : https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
An important reminder of the right play here. If we are to keep the fediverse out of the hands of enshitification, we need to stay away from letting corporates play the game. Don’t federate.
I've been having a few back-and-forths in this thread about how it'd kinda suck from a user's perspective if my instance defederated from Threads, but after reading those historical examples, I'm more amenable to instances defederating. I saw a bunch of people talking about how Meta was gonna "ruin" the fediverse, but not really elaborating past that. Your link explains that better than anyone else has.
I'll have to ruminate on that some more to see how I truly feel about it, but those examples are compelling.
Excellent article. I am completely against federating with Meta, and this does a great job of explaining why.
This should be higher. It's the playbook for companies like Meta.
Great article, very enlightening for those of us who are too young to remember the early internet.
I came to the fediverse to get away from Meta and Twitter and Google and the like.
So personally I'd prefer if they stayed out of here.
I just joined this place this week, fleeing reddit of course. So my vote may not be worth much. But if this place becomes meta-adjacent then I'll see myself out. I have no desire to interact with Mark "move fast and break adolescent girls' self esteem" Zuckerberg.
The beauty of the Fediverse is that your vote is exactly equal to everyone else's. I've only been here 3 weeks, but welcome fellow Lemming!!
“Move fast and shatter democracy”
I don't get how this is even a question. Most people are here because they want to get away from corporate social media. It's like asking a person who managed to leave a cult if it was okay for them if they build a church on their plot.
Are there any statistics about the usage in the network that allow to figure this out? I'd assume that your position might be correct for the fediverse users that have been around before the Reddit fallout, but certainly not for the majority that joined just for a Reddit alternative.
Remember when Facebook and Google both were using XMPP protocol? They just need fediverse users for now to get free content. They will always delink when they can. That's profit logic for you.
But if we dont defederate, we would get free content from their userbase, won't we? And people from thread would realize they get the same content here, without the ads ?
This is exactly why I don't believe they intend to federate openly anyway. Unlike email or XMPP, ActivityPub content is public, which means it is associated with your brand. They will likely only allow apps and instances which they approve, and which agree to tie into their monetization APIs. Just like reddit should have done with third party apps, if they weren't run by the stupidest fucking sentient creature on the planet.
I would prefer Facebook/Instagram/Meta to stay far away from the fediverse that I use. I do not like anything about the online communities they develop.
Do not federate with anything Meta
Excuse me for being crass, I sincerely apologize, but fuck Threads.
I think we should preemptively add them to the defederated list at least until we get more info on what exactly they are doing. We are already having enough sync issues in the fedverse. We can come back to the subject in like a month with an agora vote on refederation.
From a post on Mastodon comparing privacy policies. Meta gonna pillage the village.
https://mastodon.social/@llebrun/110664586216685040
Ok dear gods whyyyyyyyyyyyy does a social media app need access to all that. Burn it down. Burn it all to the ground
Don't federated with Meta
I strongly support basically firewalling the fediverse from anything Meta/Twitter/MS/Google/<insert Big Tech here> as a default behavior. They will 100%, without question make some sort of attempt to co-opt, corrupt, and monetize this ecosystem unless their interference is actively mitigated and corralled.
And sure, maybe there can be a collection of instances that do federate with Big Tech… but to be blunt, I’d look at those mostly as canaries in the coal mine.
Exactly this. It would be the height of stupidity to create this space/network that frees us from so much of the hyperconglomerate bullshit only to invite them in willingly.
Don't federate, they are a terrible company.
I feel like this question might be missing a bigger picture: What's going on with the Internet?
Facebook/Meta, Twitter, and Reddit are all owned by people in the US. We've seen in tbr past few election cycles that Twitter and Reddit in particular were vitally important to progressive movements in the US, while Facebook largely sat by unperturbed as their platform was used to plaster right-wing disinformation in every corner of the internet they could reach. Now, as another election cycle is gearing up, we see Twitter and Reddit doing things that make NO SENSE for a business, but make PERFECT SENSE if you were a MAGA nut trying to take over or dismantle a successful progressive platform, at the same time as you have Meta moving to infect and corrupt the one significant platform that offers a great alternative to both Twitter and Reddit.
I'm not usually a conspiracy minded person, but the more I think about it, the more I conclude that this is the only explanation that can make any sense of Elon and (fuck)u/Spez deliberately imploding their platforms. When you factor in that both of them seem to also be encouraging right-wing provocateurs to return to their platforms while wholesale silencing any progressive dissent... this is a coordinated assault meant explicitly to tamper with the US political system while also driving right-wing fascism abroad.
Do NOT allow Meta access. At this point, I'm not sure why the license doesn't explicitly blacklist specific bad actors like Meta from using the ActivityPub software in the first place.
What I do know is that ActivityPub was created by a lot of people in the queer community, who created moderation features like defederating specifically for the purpose of blocking discriminatory instances, so there's that
I'm learning a lot about that. I find it refreshing to be on a platform built around ensuring both the safety and visibility of queer voices. While parts of Reddit definitely felt that way, recent history has made it very clear that that's subject to change, and Reddit is swerving aggressively right.
I think that Spez and Musk believe that people who buy Trump NFTs are easier to monetize because they are stupid. At least compared to uppity liberals. This is definitely being sold as a purge to return to a smaller, but more profitable user base which can be built on.
Though with Musk, I do kind of think he's got Chinese or Saudi backing as well. He's taking a huge loss on this, and there's no way he hasn't shopped around shares of the company to private investors.
Meta's interests as a corporate entity are inherently incompatible with the goals behind the creation of a decentralized and federated service. I do not believe they are able or willing to act in good faith, and I don't think their presence should be tolerated. Personally, I did not jump ship from Reddit to be reconnected with the likes of Facebook or Instagram. The entire effort feels to me like a panic response to the notion that there are people like myself not being shown what Meta wants seen, and they can stay mad about it.
Addendum:
On the other hand, I think people should be the arbiters of the content they view. I don't get the notion of browsing /all and then being upset at what you find there, it's just a raw firehose of what people are up to on the internet. There is a value in letting people consume the content they want, where and how they want it. I'm sure someone would be happy to be linked in to this larger ecosystem. There's a lemmy instance dedicated to mirroring reddit content and I don't see the appeal of that, but more power to the people who get use from it.
The nature of the fediverse and activitypub is that we can't stop Meta from making use of this platform. We're going to have to handle this situation by proving that we have something different and perhaps better than anything Meta can offer. But I won't stay in a space where their size and influence is permitted to dominate all conversation, it's already slightly jarring to hear people talk as if lemmy.world were the de-facto center of the lemmyverse.
Well thought out comment and I wholeheartedly agree.
And it's not just Meta. It's any for-profit organization. If we pay nothing to use it, we are the product.
As the greed develops, we're becoming the product even in places where we do pay to spend our time.As others have said: The day the mega corporations are allowed inside this sphere is the day I look for yet another alternative way to spend my time.
I would say it is alright if for profit organizations want to run their own instance if it is just with some communities about their products or services, like a game or some hardware device perhaps or a local public transport organization and some users who are their employees.
Defederate and preferably also defenestrate.
Lol debridging! Nice
Well said 😂
While I'm generally opposed to defederation as a general rule, I'm also old enough to have suffered through Microsoft's Embrace Extend Extinguish paradigm. Never again. Absolutely no federation with megacorp instances.
I think it's more like the enshittification process.
- Try to lock in as many users as possible
- Try to lock in as many businesses as possible
- When both 1 and 2 are of sufficient size, squeeze them both for profits by ruining the platform altogether
At least, that's how I read it. We're currently at step 1 and I'm sure Meta is creative and greedy enough to make it all the way to step 3.
I guess the E.E.E. process will also be part of this, most likely after step 1 has been completed?Yep, kerberos being a perfect example.
I am reposting my answer from another thread : Nothing good will come from meta ( or any other Gafa Microsoft included), ever. They will alway look for a way to corrupt any social media to their favor in order try to dominate the Web. At this point of the internet history anyone giving a speck of trust to them is dream walking into a disaster waiting to happen. There are already trying to bring Insta and activityPub service lol , and they didn't haven't started yet.
In the 1990s, Microsoft had an internal strategy called Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Microsoft saw the emerging Internet as a threat to their business, so they wanted to kill it. The basic idea was:
- Embrace: Develop software compatible with an existing standard
- Extend: Add features that are not part of the standard, creating interoperability issues
- Extinguish: Using their dominant market share, snuff out competitors who don't or can't support the non-standard protocol
It was working for Microsoft, and was a contributing factor in their killing off Netscape. For those too young to remember, Mozilla is the open-source "liferaft" that Netscape created before their business was destroyed by Microsoft. But, these days it's effectively controlled by Google, who provides 85% of their funding, as long as they keep Google as the default Firefox search engine and don't rock the boat.
The only thing that stopped Microsoft from destroying the open Internet was the antitrust case brought against them by the US Department of Justice. Antitrust action is the only thing that has kept innovation happening in tech. The antitrust case against IBM from 1969 to 1982 allowed for the rise of Microsoft. The antitrust case against Microsoft allowed for the rise of Google. Many people think we're overdue for strong antitrust actions against Google and Facebook/Meta.
Facebook bought out every social competitor they could: Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. They can't buy out the Fediverse, but they have to see it as an existential threat. Because of that, they're undoubtedly going to try to use their near-monopoly status to kill off the Fediverse.
The "Embrace" stage will likely be just implementing ActivityPub. That will convince a lot of people that Meta is really on their side, and are working hard to be a good Fediverse citizen. They'll probably even hire people who are current developers working on the ActivityPub standard, or who have developed key ActivityPub apps.
The "Extend" stage will probably involve adding features to "ActivityPub Alpha" which Threads uses but nothing else uses. It might involve some Meta-specific things, like embedding Instagram in an unusual way. It might involve something that is really expensive for an independent server, but affordable if you're a multi-billion dollar company, like some kind of copyright check, or flagging if something is AI-generated. The features they're likely to add won't be offensive, they'll probably be good ideas. It's just that they'll add them before going through the standards process, and so standards-compliant ActivityPub implementations will seem old and outdated. That will convince many people to move their accounts to Threads, or will at the least reduce the growth for non-Threads ActivityPub.
The "Extinguish" phase will be like when Google shut down Google Reader. Why bother having a standards-compliant way of doing things when usage is so low?
So... yeah, block Meta.
I am 100% OK with defederating everything run by Meta: They are a blight on the Internet.
I know I’m late to the conversation, but I stopped using Facebook 10 years ago. I left Reddit after Apollo stopped working, and now that Twitter is heading the same way I would prefer to not associate with them. I agree it stinks that it’s yet another platform that splits people up deciding how and whom they interact with, but I do not want meta to mess with something that works the way it should without corporate’s fingers in the cookie jar.
For me, being on the fediverse is an escape from big social. That’s the whole reason I’m here. Conversations are more organic, less restrictive, and generally better. Plus, it has an awesome DIY feel to it.
I don’t want to lose that to Meta’s insatiable hunger for data.
I'm all for it. Ive heard arguments for and against interacting with meta instances in this way, and I won't pretend to fully understand all the details.
Still, Meta has proven that they aren't trustworthy time and time again. I'd really just prefer to remove myself from them as much as possible.
No meta for me. They ruin everything that they touch. The Fediverse is the antithesis of all things meta; keep that shit outta here.
I seriously doubt meta is going to have an open federation policy anyway. It's definitely going to be a tiered white list of Meta-approved Activitypub apps and instances. With built-in monetization for devs in the Activitypub "market."
Honestly it's what reddit should have done if they were smart. Figure out a way to monetize through the API by pulling third party apps into a walled garden.
I hate Facebook as much as the next guy but I think this whole defederation business just stinks. I left Reddit because they were forcing me to use their app, but now I'm in a community that chooses what I see?
I'm hoping lemmy sets up a way to ban instances because this should 100% be up to the user.
There's also the fact that this place is starving for content, this really feels like a shoot yourself in the foot kind of moment. The userbase is going to completely stall if there's an alternative with 100x more content that can't be accessed from our endpoint.
Its definitely a complicated situation, I know it's an unpopular opinion so I'll accept the downvotes.
In this case I kind of agreed that content is content. But I'm pretty sure Threads has no intention of directly federating with anything other than Meta approved ActivityPub apps anyway. At least as far as participation goes. Meta might publish Meta content over like a dedicated read-only bridge instance, but there's no way in hell they are going to let users from chrisHandomeSexOffender.sk directly interact with branded content by default.
I have a lot of feelings about this matter. But my main concern is that I value the idea of privacy, anonimity and the right to reveal as much of yourself online as you are willing to do so. And Meta has shown time and time again that they are actively against the very concept of letting people be.
Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but they will find a way to ruin this for everyone if it helps their bottom line.On top of that, it's opening the floodgates to a stream of content that will most likely drown out the individuality of our communities. We're still growing and building, I would love for us to have our own place before the Meta masses join.
edited: spelling
The privacy factor indeed needs to be looked at more. I sought refuge in the Fediverse to prevent FB from getting enough data points to profile me down to the soul. I'm pretty sure a huge margin of users here came for the same. Federating with such a cancerous entity defeats the purpose of migrating to here to quite an extent.
I dont think anyone should be federating with threads.meta. They dont have good intentions and are either just using the activitypub protocol because it was there and they needed something fast to take advantage of twitter quickly or because they actively are trying to take over and destroy the activitypub protocol. Either way the fediverse gains nothing from federating with them.
I use Facebook and Instagram to post pictures and to stay in contact with friends and family. That being said, I don’t trust Zuck and I believe his intentions will always be to take-over and monetize. When I come to the Fediverse, I expect to see fresh, new, progressive, interesting ideas from the communities I join. And although I am older age-wise, I can see that Meta is tired and out of the loop. I would vote for not federating with Meta.
I'll put it this way:
- on the one hand, there's React.
- on the other hand, there's React.
Or, to translate for those of us who don't speak "asshole":
- Facebook has contributed to open source, they've created one of the most popular javascript frameworks around: React, or ReactJS. This is software made by Facebook, possibly even still maintained by Facebook, which you can use in your site today for free (and no, it doesn't make your site look like facebook).
- On the other hand, React became its own monster, with some people misunderstanding it as the end-all-be-all framework. Also, it's nice but it's a lot and arguably better frameworks now exist. My point was that the company carried more weight on this project than maybe it should have.
There are good arguments for blocking Facebook as a whole on the web, such as cookie tracking. I don't like Facebook, but I guess I would consider any people who have made the jump to federated platforms as potentially missing out on interacting with their forever-facebooked-friends. Seriously, why can't people just try another thing alongside Facebook? Why do they have to be ride or die facebook-fiends? I digress..
I don't think the comparison to react makes a ton of sense - Facebook created react as an open source project, but once you download react, you have a copy of it for yourself and you don't need to check in with Facebook any further. They don't own your react app or its data.
I may be misunderstanding, but it sounds like threads will not be like that: they will be using an open standard that they did not create for a social network that will track you and gather your data every time you use it.
(I am for defederation)
They would need to make some big changes to ActivityPub to allow the kind of third party tracking they do with facebook. One thing to consider is that defederating just means you can't interact with facebook users and they can't interact with you. If privacy is your concern, you should get off public forums like lemmy. Facebook can and may already be data mining from the fediverse, and you would never know it. Even after defederating, your data can and will still be mined.
The only way to prevent facebook or any company from doing that is to block the IP addresses of every server and proxy they could ever use. That isn't going to happen, that info isn't even completely public.
As far as react goes, facebook uses react, as do other developers. ActivityPub usage would work similarly. Keep in mind Facebook has already implemented other standards on the web already, such as http, tls/ssl, email, xmpp and lots more.
I just don't want people thinking that defederating will somehow protect people from the prying eyes of facebook.. it will not. Facebook was the company who decided to track everywhere you go by way of you having a login to facebook a simply visiting sites which request the "like on facebook" button from facebook's servers.
I think we would be safer being on the fediverse in an app like lemmy and consuming facebook content via ActivityPub than we would be the other way around: to use facebook as a gateway to access the fediverse. When we interact with facebook via lemmy, we do so more or less on our (or rather the admin's) terms. Facebook gets the same data as other instances would. But, if we were to decide that facebook is dope as hell and we should consume lemmy content on facebook via ActivityPub, we would be subjecting ourselves to viewing the fediverse the way facebook wants us to. Ultimately, we trust the maker of the app, not unlike how email clients work with the open standard of email.
I don't care about federating or defederating. If the entire fediverse wants to defederate and make facebook look like the shit fediverse client, I like the sound of that. If some people want to connect with their forever facebook friends via federation, I like the sound of that too. At least in that case the forever facebook friends might learn there is more to the net than facebook (but that may not be relevant if facebook brings that part of the internet to you).
In my experience people do try things alongside Facebook. People actually actively use things alongside Facebook, but FB kind of became like a first point of contact for people. Like me and my closest circle of friends use a different messaging platform. The last time we messaged each other on Messenger was yeeears ago. And we're pretty active, text each other everyday. But if I meet someone new or just an acquaintance? I'm not inviting them that level of access to me. They can just be on messenger, which I check less frequently and I don't allow notifications from on my phone. Same goes for family, I have my parents on another messaging platform, but my cousins and other extended family? Nah... The tough part is when people transition from acquaintance to really good friend. Can't really change messaging platforms that easily. Happens less often with age, though...
If we could ensure 100% compliance with a meta-blockade then I'd be for it.
However, that isn't going to happen and any instances that do federate with Meta will be the part of the Fediverse that exists to billions of people. Those instances will become the dominate instances on the Fediverse for people who want to get away from Meta but still access the Fediverse services. Lemmy, as it stands now, is only a few million people at most. We simply do not have the weight to throw around on this issue.
It is inevitable that commercial interests join the Fediverse and the conversation should be around how we deal with that inevitability rather than attempting to use de-federation as a tool to 'fix' every issue.
Defederation can go as far as including any instance that federates with Meta, even if they don't do this directly.
It still doesn't change the very basic math of Meta having billions of users and the existing Fediverse, across all services, still numbers in the millions.
A social network is only as strong as the size of a network. If you're trying to get an average person to join an instance are they going to want to join an instance with access to a few million people or an instance that can contact most of the planet?
Cutting an instance off from the largest userbase of any service on the Internet is suicide for an instance.
There are guaranteed to be instances that do not de-federate with Meta and so users looking to escape Meta will move to those independently owned instances as it allows them to get off of Meta services without losing contact with users and groups that they were previously using.
It is disheartening to see how often de-federation is offered as a solution to any given problem or grievance. This mindset ensures that the network will be an ideologically fragmented mess instead of a single open social network.
de-federation as a tool to 'fix' every issue
Completely agree. It should be reserved for extreme cases only: illegal content, bot instances, and calls to violence/hate speech friendly instances. That should be it.
The tactic of EEE only really works if people are willing to go for the "extend" part of it. If we don't make concessions for the sake of interoperability, I think we'll be fine.
any instances that do federate with Meta will be the part of the Fediverse that exists to billions of people. Those instances will become the dominate instances on the Fediverse for people who want to get away from Meta
This makes no sense at all. People who want to get away from Meta will drop those instances and move to the rest of the fediverse.
Agreed, defederation seems to currently be used for any instance that doesn't follow the allowed values that all instances must have. This is absurd and directly counter to the whole point of the fediverse in the first place. It's supposed to be linked to everything, and every instance can have wildly different rules and styles. At the end of the day all that should be largely transparent to a user who can sub to anything across the fediverse with a single account.
Defederation needs to be reserved for actively harmful instances, which isn't just memes you don't like or hosted by a "big" company.
Big companies are actively harmful. Just read the example of xmpp and Google that is posted everywhere.
If I want Facebook, I'll go to Facebook. You're not going to guilt me or anyone else for not wanting this to also be connected to Facebook.
How many websites is enough? Why does every community HAVE to be connected with Facebook? Meta is absolutely not a victim. They don't need defending.
Some of us don't want our family to see every single thing that we do online, and that should be ok. Anyone who would insist on knowing that information about me is someone who I would stay very far away from.
I think a lot of the issue is the actual term. Defederation sounds like a lofty thing that we're inflicting on a server. It's just a block. Like you block a person or community on this instance, they still can type messages and they're still on the instance but you can't see them.
If I'm running an instance then defederation is basically me choosing inserting a user onto your personal block list. You may like a certain type of humor and I think it's annoying. You may like Popping videos but I find them gross. I can choose, on my own to block those things and my blocking Popping videos or dead baby joke communities is my personal choice.
But if I chose to add those items to YOUR block list then suddenly I'm in the wrong. It isn't up to me to say you can't like Popping videos (even if I find them gross) and I can't tell you that you can't read those dead baby jokes that you really laugh at (even if I think they're offensive).
So why even allow a feature like defederation? Because there is some content that we ALL wouldn't mind having blocked. It's unanimous that nobody wants spam in their feed no matter their position on Popping videos or dead baby jokes. People don't want to see CSAM in their feed. Nobody wants to see random private data about people being posted in their feed. In THOSE, very limited, cases then the ability of the instance admin to add an item to your block list is a positive feature. You only need a small group of people (moderators and admins) to detect and block abusive material and their work is shared by every single person on the instance.
Instead we have people who are advocating that we use defederation to impose their personal (or their group's) viewpoint on every other person on the same instance. This would be like me using my power to block spam instances in order to decide that you can't watch those Popping videos that you love so much. Suddenly this formerly useful tool is now being by others to curate what you're allowed to see on social media.
As far as Facebook, I imagine a lot of people would want to see content on Facebook via Lemmy. There will be instances that don't de-federate and those instances will see most of the user growth because they offer users both Fediverse and Facebook content... any instances that block Facebook will simply have a slightly different Fediverse with less people and less content.
The average user simply doesn't care about joining the battle against the corporate overlords, they're looking for the app that lets them see funny videos the easiest. Having all of the motivated ideological users in their own isolated bubble will ensure that Meta's section of the Fediverse can more easily be taken over by EEE. Meta will be the only developer developing features for the version of ActivityPub that is used in their network and so it will likely be adopted faster. Not having people developing FOSS-versions of ActivityPub extensions, apps and tools that are directly competing with Meta will create friction for people who want to transition away from Meta services and ensure their continued market dominance.
Federate with them, develop better tools and features, and then take their users away. Providing a better social media is how you beat Meta.
TL;DR
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Federation isn't the tool for this kind of ideological splintering and;
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Not federating with Meta services will ensure that they get all of the benefit of having an open source protocol without any competition for their userbase.
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Politics aside (I'm strongly against federating with corps for reasons already expressed here), can the instance even support federation with a multimillion user federation? Just look at the fedilags recently.
Meta can and will pay for it. They have enough funds to run their own instance.
can the instance even support federation with a multimillion user federation? Just look at the fedilags recently.
"The instance" from the question isn't Meta's, it's sh.itjust.works, or any other "small" instance. Federation mostly works by mirroring a lot of data from instance A (i.e. Meta) into instance B (i.e. sh.itjust.works). If instance A broadcasts a lot of data, instance B might get overloaded.
The zucc better keep his sticky fingers away
If any community of the fediverse willing accepts getting into bed with a major, for-profit corporation, then it does not deserve to be a part of the fediverse. There is zero chance that Facebook (they don't get to simply rebrand) is doing this to be a supportive part of the fediverse. They are doing this because we are a threat to their profits and the best way to kill us is from the inside.
I won't maintain a membership on any platform that is federated with Meta in any way. That's an absolute, 100% dealbreaker. Same with Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Apple. Anything they touch turns to assgarbage.
Personally I'll support instances that choose to tell Zuckybags to fuck right off, and I think the fediverse is pretty well set up to be able to do that.
But I guess the bigger question how is how we protect our information, since it seems like everything that happens here is pretty wide open.
The big companies will all come for places like this and trawl for "genuine human input" to feed their AI cashbabies, and what we create has value. Maybe even the shitposts. So how do we protect that?
There's no way to protect against that. They can still have a scraper set up to crawl the fediverse without threads ever federating with any of the instances.
Yeah, I get that, and I don't think the solution is a walled garden. But I do think it will become more of an issue as these companies get more aggressive about going after any data they can find.
I don't see why they would bother with the fediverse as it exists to be honest. To me it seems like a liability from their point of view. Not sure if they've spoken more about this but Facebook getting in more shit by having their users exposed to stuff that they don't explicitly control doesn't seem like something they'd want.
That being said, I feel like defederating with them if needed is a solid idea but their sheer size may make that decision difficult for instances that are looking to grow given that they've already amassed twice the accounts of the Lemmy fediverse in a few hours. Now not all growth is good growth like you've mentioned but there's no partial defederation so either you leech on some of their userbase or you don't.
I see some places going for growth if that's an option which may not necessarily be a bad choice (unless they impose strict rules to follow if you want to federate with them) given that facebook has the capital to bury us with if they choose to so our compliance probably won't have a very big impact on how things play out in the long run.
It's because companies like Meta want all the power they can get. As you said, there's no reason for them to join the fediverse, other than to control it or kill it off, that is.
I'm not against Threads existing, especially with the way Twitter is going. People need an alternative and I don't believe that Mastodon is the answer for many.
But Threads and the fediverse can absolutely exist separately, and is why I support defederation.
I know people will hate this but I think zuck is just a nerd with the money to do anything he likes but he's not really very social and not really into sports or anything so like many of us he spends his focus on tech stuff and science fiction.
He obviously kinda loves the idea of the metaverse, and yeah Facebook is riddled with problems but they've never really done any of the really immoral and anti competitive things bill gates Microsoft did so I think it's jumping the gun a bit to instantly jump to EEE - it's possible he just genuinely believes the future is going to be a federation of open source protocols and he simply wants to live in that future.
That said there's a lot of problems inherent in letting any big company gain any form of dominance over open social networks especially one as frequently socially problematic as meta
Defederate unequivocally.
We should only federate with entities acting in good faith, and we cannot trust an entity such as facebook to act in good faith.
I vote to defederate. If I want to see meta shit I can sign up there but I'd delete this account and go find some other instance that chose not to federate with them. I want to choose when/if I interact with meta, not end up in yet another place where they dominate everything else
(Realized I posted from the wrong account. My opinion stays the same for both my accounts on sh.itjust works and reddthat and any others I may join)
Isn't one of the points of fediverse is to get away from big tech shit?
This is just like centralised crypto exchanges. Same thing
the whole reason im on fedi is to get away from megacorp social media and seeing them starting to creep into the space is kinda sad. I will drop any server that would federate with them, but hoping that is still a viable option and not just me turning off my router forever.
It's so insane, Twitter gets destroyed, reddit is fucked, and now just as I moved away from all that these cucks want to move here? Fuck off.
The design on that "pact" is... wow. Really putting our best feet forward there. Just needs a geocities logo and a visitor counter.
Don't like it personally you can't trust these companies to do anything but be malicious actors, it might drive more users to the rest of the fedverse but there are huge risks and these companies have already broken laws time and time again.
I only use Facebook messenger and Instagram to keep in touch with family, otherwise I want nothing to do with them.
i too want nothing to do with your family. i don't even use facebook to keep in touch with them
Hahah i should've specified I want nothing to do with Meta.
Honestly, this would be a non-issue if we could block instances at the user level. Since they’re not federated yet, and User-level instance blocking should be coming, I say we wait and see.
I wish there was a way to grey-list an instance, to where a user has to seek out and subscribe to content that admins don‘t want spamming users by default, so it doesn‘t get added to the „ALL“ feed for everyone else.
Just give users more control.
The point of federated social media is about choosing who you federate with. North America for example contains 3 countries and they don't all need to be federated with each other.
Federation is as much about drawing borders as it is deciding who you ally with while still keeping your own autonomy. It is entirely within the point of federation to not federate with everyone.
Defederate with anything that remotely has to do with zuck
fuck the zuck and all his instances. block the fecesbook and its nine other names
"I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place…"
Federating with Meta is different from federating with individuals. It's like letting corporations be treated the same as natural persons for the purposes of voting in political elections and exercising other civic participation rights.
Natural persons may have a variety of motivations for federating. Corporations have only one: to increase profit.
And please don't say "federate now, revisit later if needed." Recall the fable about the scorpion and the rabbit facing a raging flood. Said the scorpion, "oh please, rabbit, let me ride on your back as you swim across." Rabbit said "no, you'll sting me and I'll die." Scorpion said "no I won't; we're both in danger; I have children at home; we both want to live." Rabbit said "okay, if you promise not to sting me." So scorpion climbed onto rabbit's back, and halfway across the flood, scorpion gave rabbit a lethal sting. Rabbit asked why, and scorpion shrugged; "you knew what I was when you let me onto your back."
I'm wondering if it really matters? I don't know how exactly defederation looks from other side but I imagine that a company like meta can easily run a stealth "proxy" instance that isn't advertised as being owned by them and use that to siphon content and present it to their users. It really wouldnt matter if the rest of the fediverse see the commends from threads users because more than likely threads users will outnumber the entire fediverse within a month and can happily exist within that walled garden.
Sadly as much as I agree with the sentiment, I don't think federating will have much effect at all.
Can Meta scrape the data off other apps like mastodon from federated communities? I don't exactly know how that works. I'm assuming mastodon and other not profit based apps don't track any data so how would meta joining the fediverse change it?
I think it's all but given that meta would have the largest number of users using its apps in the fediverse. Threads already has 2 million sign-ups in hours so it would be a miss to just defederate from it and lock down millions of users from interacting with meta users. Let's see how it goes.
Edit: 5 million sign-ups in 4 hours according to zuck
They can scrape without federation. Scrapers are just scripts that will go to websites, collect the html data, keep what has been deemed valuable, collect all of the links to other pages on that page, stick them onto a stack and pick one off that stack to continue to the next page and keep going.
yeah, so it really does not matter whether they are federated or not as far as our info goes. The only difference is how much content we see and how many people come in and out.
Companies invading the fediverse was always going to happen, it's not necessarily a bad thing. You get more users, a rock solid instance, possibly more support in coding, and maybe more. There's no reason to have bots essentially copying content from a place that offers federation
There's also definite downsides, federating could be expensive for smaller instances to handle all that content, potential pressure for more tracking/less porn/more ad friendly code built into the system, making communities better through proprietary extensions to slowly cannibalize the rest of the instances.
Blanket decisions to block corporate instances is probably a bad move, though keeping a short leash is wise.
But think of the type of content meta/IG is going to be creating. It's going to be a ton of garbage self centered wanna be influencer posts. A never ending content generation machine. If the entire feed of IG was federated, the All view would be squashed with IG garbage.
You should never gatekeep though, it looks bad in my opinion
Of course you're gonna have "low quality influencers", but if you're attracting THOSE people, you've already attracted a massive audience of other people. Those low quality influencers wouldn't be coming over in the first place if there wasn't a massive audience to appeal to in the first place. And if there is a big audience on these platforms, then you're gonna have the higher quality creators come over.
I make YouTube videos, but I'm hesitant to fully dump Twitter because I'm losing out on a critical connection pathway with my (admittedly small) audience. If I could know that a majority of my audience was on mastodon AND that I could collaborate with other creators in my niche, I'd fully switch over and delete Twitter from my phone in a heartbeat.
But I can't do that because everyone uses Twitter.
Threads is letting people get their foot in the door for the Fediverse. And I think it's really sucky that, if I want to reach the biggest audience, I might just have to make an account on Threads, because practically all the instances out there are defederating from it.
If they cannot collect my personal info any more than any other Lemmy or KBin instance can, then honestly I don’t care. If they want to make it interoperable, ok good, I’m sure somebody will be happy. I will not be signing up for an account, and if I don’t go out looking for the content I may not ever even see it.
All instances can collect some level of info about you. Only one decided it's entitled to distribute it to third parties, use it to train its algorithms, and generally speaking make as much money as possible out of it.
Are you meaning it as they would just try to scrape all of the user info off all of the instances they can see or just for gather info from people that interact with their users?
If it’s the former, what would stop a company from setting up a private lemmy instance and start doing that for all other federated servers? Services like ChatGPT and Bard may already be doing that and we would not know.
If the latter, then I guess just don’t interact with those users?
I don't have any firm opinions yet. I definitely feel the knee-jerk temptation to not federate with them, but on the other hand I guess federated Facebook products is pretty much what I want from them.
I don't care about Threads very much (at least yet), but I know a lot of people where my only way to get in contact with them is Facebook Messenger. So if I could contact them without needing to have a facebook account myself, I'd be quite happy.
Facebook (meta) is going to try to buy market share into something that isn't monetizable. I don't see the point in defederating from them because they will just do it again and again secretly until one of their instances has some success. All you are really doing by defederating from them is setting up future scenarios where instances will start accusing each other of being meta shills, which would mostly just ruin the fediverse if everyone defederates from everyone. The existential threat to the fediverse is the fediverse itself. These companies are competing for eyeballs, and killing the fediverse would drive users to other monetized platforms. Sure you can defederate from the instances they admit they are running, but they and every other social media company are probably here already or will be soon. I wouldn't worry about it. Just keep meming and kicking out the Nazis.
To answer the question in post directly - I think it's a bit daft. I understand and support the intention. In fact, I've already blocked threads.net, assuming that's going to be the actual endpoint. But the pact itself I find useless and a tad childish.
I would generally think it should be the user's decision, but this is meta we're talking about. I don't know if I can consciencely be a part of an instance that is providing them with a free stream of quality content, thus making their platform more enticing and valuable. Even if I block threads, I am adding value to an instance where some percentage of the users will not block threads. I would be actively attracting more users to help meta. If we do not defederate, I will leave until that changes. Hopefully this makes it seem a little less childish to you.
I am completely against defederating
I think it's dumb to defederate just because there's a big company behind it. With something like Threads We've got a gateway for people to get into decentralisation and the fediverse.
I brought up threads to my significant other the other day and it's the first time she was like "oh that's neat" when trying to get her involved with such things. I really want this activitypub backed stuff to become the next internet and I think it's really dumb to gatekeep it by defederating.
I love Lemmy, but I'm more likely to get friends and family onto threads than I am this or mastadon so if we defederate I guess I'll have to find some place else or bite the bullet and host my own private server.
I logged back into Twitter for the first time in a couple days, and I just saw a TON of people I follow posting their Threads account. It kinda sucks that if the instance I'm on defederates from Threads, I just won't be able to follow all those people I know and WANT to follow.
I could try and find an instance that doesn't defederate from Threads, but that's probably not gonna be easy. And I definitely don't want to use the platform myself.
Meta is a garabge company in so many ways. But I think that we need to allow these giant companies experience full extent of the fediverse. That will hopefully bring more pople on the fediverse, populorize is and make it more widely known / used which is a good thing. But we need to be cautious.
It won't bring people, please read this: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
There are pros and cons on both sides of the argument. I just hope that the decision on each instance will be made in the most democratic way possible.
I think it's incredibly important to federate with Meta! If we want the benefits of this tech to increase we need larger platforms to join in on the action.
Federating will kill the tech though:
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
AOL is ruining the Internet!
I favor user choice. The more options people have, the better. If users want to use threads what do I care? That's their problem. It's not our job to police what other people want, nor to "punish" them for making decisions we don't like.
Federate with them so long as the service meets standards for quality (no spam, no bot farms, no harassment, etc.). Some of those users will switch to other fediverse servers once they learn more about it.