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/kbin meta @kbin.social
Roundcat @kbin.social

Could we get official word on what Kbin's stance is towards federating with Meta?

I would like to know if I can feel safe here, or if I should pack it up and start looking elsewhere sooner rather than later.

If the kbin staff have already made there intentions clear, please let me know.

205 comments

  • @Roundcat

    Meta is facebook who engaged Cambridge Analytica to purchase our lives.

    Not from us, but from them. Facebook literally sold out the world

    Facebook nearly destroyed this country for a buck.

    Fuck facebook. I don't want to avoid federating because I dont want them around; I want to avoid federating because anything I can do to starve them of every resource for growth that I possibly can is the best thing I can do about facebook.

    • Not only did Facebook allow incitement to genocide to be circulated on it for years while people begged it to stop, but after the genocide Facebook also actively impeded the international investigation into that genocide.

      That's pretty much as low as you can go.

  • Meta cannot harm you by federating. If they want your data that you posted on kbin then they already have it. They run curl and they can swallow all your posts and metadata associated. Whatever you post is given for free to everyone with an internet connection.

    Also Meta probably will never federate since it involves a huge risk that they will end up hosting illegal data against their will.

    edit: also think in legal terms, meta will never publish content on their site if a federated server hasn't signed a mountain of legal documents beforehand. It's simply not happening. I'm only speaking on a user level. If our admin adopts a pro-facebook stance then of course it's a different story.

    edit: The more I read about this the more doubt I have about this story. It seems that kbin still hasn't signed the fedipact? It's becoming a big deal and it will affect kbin even if we adopt a neutral stance. There is in fact no more neutral stance. We should sign.

  • I would like to know if I can feel safe here

    If you have privacy concerns, you should probably not post here for time being.

    It is prototype software. Doesn't remove EXIF geotags from photos, for example and posts here are public (and indexed by webcrawlers). Treat this as "open Internet" for your safety/privacy purposes.

    • It's not much of privacy I'm concerned about as much as community and visibility.

      Meta is infamous for fostering insufferable users, meanwhile from what I have seen from kbin and lemmy, there is a lot more nuance and maturity in the communities here (for the most part) that I would hate to see overun by Thread users.

      Secondly, it's one thing to be visible to the internet in general, but to have anything tied to Meta that they can scrape and sell is a concern to me. The fact that the fediverse is a prototype with vulnerabilities makes the likelihood of a company like Meta, who intentionally exploits vulnerabilities to harvest data, all the more likely.

      Finally, almost every example of a large company joining a federation always ends with said company cannibalizing the federated networks, and I have no reason to believe Facebook won't do this. If I'm going to invest time and effort into making a community grow, I would rather not waste my time on a platform that is doomed to be consumed.

      • Meta is infamous for fostering insufferable users

        With this I agree. 1.2bn users is way more noise than I want to experience and I will, personally block the domain. As a kbin user, you'll have the tools available for that as well.

        Secondly, it's one thing to be visible to the internet in general, but to have anything tied to Meta that they can scrape and sell is a concern to me.

        To think that the big companies that base their business models solely on datamining users already haven't been mining the shit out of our data is a bit naive, I think. They don't have to exploit vulnerabilities, make their presence known or launch huge products for it. All they (or anyone!) need is a $20/month linux VPS and a Mastodon installation. The fediverse does not have data privacy controls for content (beyond masking account e-mails/originator IPs).

        Finally, almost every example of a large company joining a federation always ends with said company cannibalizing the federated networks

        I agree. Threads got 10M signups yesterday and they haven't even launched officially yet. They're already larger than the entire fediverse.
        Many people will switch to their app. And at some point, they will most likely make interoperability hard (so we have to adapt to their "bugs" instead of it being the other way around).

        I just want to make clear that I'm in the "Defederate the shit out of them"-camp, but I also don't think the fediverse is a place that puts privacy first - if privacy is your concern, then my advice is to stay away from fedi. For now.

      • So. In 1 day, Threads has gotten more users than all of Mastodon combined. My friends are on Threads. They're not coming to Mastodon. I've tried. I couldn't even convince my fiance to join me on Mastodon for longer than a day, and we live together.

        How would you suppose I talk to my friends? By joining Meta? Or by staying with FOSS on the fediverse? Because when you say "everywhere needs to defederate from Meta" you're also saying "You shouldn't talk to your friends here, nor should your friends be able to talk to you."

        Quite frankly - I really enjoy that I can both be here and still be in contact with my friends. Meta can't track me here (as much, I'm aware they can still siphon data but they could do that regardless). I'd much rather stay here if I can. But if given the chance to choose, I'm going to move to somewhere that federates with Threads. Not because I like Meta - I hate Zuck almost as much as I do Elon, which is quite a lot - but because I'd rather see and talk to my friends than be locked in with a bunch of rando control freaks jumping at shadows.

        If the fedipact had it their way, anywhere that federated with Threads would in turn become defederated. This will create 2 separate fediverses. People will have to choose which one they spend time on - even if they have accounts on both sides, one will always be the "primary" account.

        I posit that for many people, the "primary" account is going to be the one with their friends and interests. It's going to be the side with the influencers they follow. Simply, it's going to be the one that federates with Threads. The other side will slowly wither and die, as all the content dries up and people move to where the network effect is strongest.

        You can argue that we need to defederate because of "embrace, extend, extinguish". Tell me: what is the end result of EEE? A diminished fediverse, where most people use the single app that has all the people and all the content. How is that different than the splintered fediverse caused by the fedipact?

        It's really not much different at all. If Meta goes for EEE, there is no stopping them. If the fedipact takes hold and rabidly defederated anywhere that glances at Meta, then the fediverse's network effect will shatter. The fedipact will simply backfire and shoot themselves in the foot as people choose the side with the larger network effect. It's ridiculous that the idea has gotten as much traction as it has; the fedipact's best-case scenario is worse than the worst-case of EEE.

        If a bunch of people want to live in small segmented communities, that's on them. Beehaw is right there if you want it; that's what Beehaw aspires for. But large, general-purpose instances shouldn't bow to the whims of a loud minority that don't even realize the repercussions of their agitations.

        The fediverse is at its strongest when we federate. That's what makes this place special. We've agreed that walled gardens are bad, and the one time that we have a chance to get a bunch of "normal" users on the fediverse everyone panics because they're afraid of EEE.

        The fedipact isn't going to stop EEE. If Meta wants to do EEE, they're going to do it with or without the fedipact. We don't even know for sure that EEE will happen - it's true that Meta is a business, but there are plenty of open protocols you use every day that never got hit by EEE. L

        All the fedipact will do is hurt people who want to use free software to see their friends so this loud minority can exercise their control over everyone.

        You have the power to block the domain here if that's what you want to do. Please don't let your personal fears ruin the experience of others.

  • A lot of the FUD regarding #Threads joining the #Fediverse has been put to sleep by #Mastodon on this blog post:
    https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

    "The fact that large platforms are adopting ActivityPub is not only validation of the movement towards decentralized social media, but a path forward for people locked into these platforms to switch to better providers."

    Also @daringfireball made this blog post that I agree with:
    https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/06/19/not-that-kind-of-open

    "the idea that administrators of Mastodon/Fediverse instances should pledge to preemptively block Facebook’s imminent Twitter-like ActivityPub service (purportedly named Threads) strikes me as petty and deliberately insular. I don’t like Facebook, the company, and I’ve never seen the appeal of Facebook, the product (a.k.a. “the blue app”). But there are literally billions of good people who use their services. Why cut them off from the open ActivityPub social world?"

    • There are a lot of good reasons to not let corporate media join the fediverse: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

      • I understand, and I do remember the XMPP debacle, but I also remember that back then people trusted Google and their do-no-harm motto, and they really wanted them to lead in the real-time voice/video chat arena, and in order to make it Google made some protocol desitions that broke away from XMPP.

        This time around we don’t trust Big Tech and will not try to adjust to their ways, if they want to they can embrace ActivityPub or not. The rest of the Fediverse will not try to apply their tactics or monetization to the protocol. Either they adhere to the stardard, or their users will have no compatibilty with the rest of the Fediverse.

        I am not suggesting we all embrace them and try to make them feel welcome, but let's not close our instances alltogether to them, let each person decide for themself if they want to follow people from their instance or not.

  • Meta federating would be the best thing to ever happen to the Fediverse. Face it, Fediverse is not by its own in a billion years going to somehow kill off Meta. The vast, vast majority of users are going to stay with traditional social media, there’s nothing we can do about that.

    However, Meta et al actually joining the Fediverse means we won. The vast majority will still stay with Meta’s services, but no one here has to. This is the closest we will ever get to a truly open standard for social media.

    I don’t want to have an account with Meta or Twitter or whatever, but I, like most people, want to be able to communicate with the people who do.

    As I see it, there are only two ways forward for the Fediverse:

    1. Traditional SoMe stays closed and inaccessible for anyone who doesn’t want to sell their soul to Meta. The vast majority of people still use traditional SoMe and the Fediverse stays a minuscule hobby project at best. Even here, most people will probably also have accounts on the traditional platforms in order to not cut oneself off from the world.
    2. Traditional SoMe embraces open standards and anyone who cares can choose to use whatever service they want. The vast majority of people still use traditional SoMe, but the Fediverse now has access to billions of people (or not, you can choose yourself) without having to become a commodity that Meta can sell to advertisers.

    Ideally, instead of having to register a Meta account, I can just stay with Kbin.social without losing access to the content.

  • Why would KBin be unsafe?

    Federation works by instances (e.g. kbin.social) registering an interest (subscribe/follow) in a specific magazine or person on other instances.

    That means content is only brought into an instance that members of that instance are interested in (its the same with lemmy instances, we don't see everything).

    Similarly on kbin users can block individuals, magazines or whole domains. So even if kbin.social does federate with meta you don't have to see/interact with it.

    For instance I respect kbin users might want content from lemmy.ml, as the people who run it are tankies I have no interest in anything from that instance and block the domain.

    I have no issues with part of the fediverse walling itself off from meta but remaining in contact with other instances. Similar to how beehaw defederated from lemmy.world but kbin could see beehaw and lemmy.world.

    I would treat meta like any other instance, if its a source of headache then deferate.

    The Embrace, Extend Extinguish argument makes no sense.

    Take C#, many years ago Microsoft wanted to build its own Java JDK. As part of that they added Microsoft specific extensions. Sun said that wasn't acceptable. Microsoft didn't just stop, the renamed it C# and launched the product.

    Everyone agreeing to defederate from meta won't mean they stop. It won't prevent EEE.

    The best way to prevent EEE is given in our example. Java had a huge userbase who simply weren't interested in migrating.

    So you need to encourage organisations to deploy KBin/Lemmy instances which integrate with the fediverse. That gives them reach and when Meta tries EEE they cut off content their users want. So it forces them to be a good citizen.

    • What OP did not mention is the fedipact. There are seemingly admins of the fediverse signing an NDA with facebook. The fedipact is about admins swearing that they will never federate with facebook.

      So of course if an admin signs an agreement with facebook and changes the conditions, the protocol, benefits from credits to improve the infra then it's a different threat and different debate.

      Federating with Meta without an agreement is a laughable science fiction scenario, but federating with an agreement is dangerous for the users.

      I would treat meta like any other instance, if its a source of headache then deferate.

      If we federate with meta then our instance will simply stop responding because of the workload alone.

      Everyone agreeing to defederate from meta won't mean they stop. It won't prevent EEE.

      No. If we are talking about the EEE side of things then we must defederate. If facebook federates with the intention of EEE then they will ALSO bribe the admins.

      • The code for mastodon, lemmy and kbin is open source and has been forked hundreds of times.

        Admins can do whatever they like and people can build and deploy their own instance and enforce their own rules.

        This is one of the key strengths of open source, people have forked projects took them in their own direction and had success.

        Similarly ActivityPub is documented as a W3 standard, having read the standard the biggest weakness is the number of instances, not the size of the instances.

        Also @mod I meant to hit reply and hit report and can't see how to revoke

  • If you're truly worried about federating with Meta, you should probably also avoid all the other products they have their fingers in.

    This includes all their web properties:

    • Instagram
    • WhatsApp
    • Onavo
    • Oculus VR
    • Beat Games
    • Kustomer
    • Lofelt

    But this also includes many web technologies that are ubiquitous around the web. Meta has either created or contributes code and resources to:

    • React.js
    • MySql
    • Memcached
    • HHVM
    • Cassandra
    • Scribe
    • Hadoop
    • Hive
    • Apache Thrift
    • Varnish

    I suspect you'll have a hard time finding any website on earth that doesn't use at least one of these technologies.

    • Ah, the "your objection is meaningless unless you throw out everything you use" argument.

      Of course it's difficult if not impossible to avoid every technology they have at some point contributed to. However, not using any of the services in your first list is easy. I've been doing it for years.

      I'd argue that meta's contributions to hadoop have a much smaller chance of enshittifying my life than allowing meta to become a dominant player (which they will immediately be) in the fediverse.

      What I find most annoying about the folks downplaying this is we are talking about Facebook/Meta - a company who has a proven track record of being as shitty with their handling of user data, user privacy, and general corporate citizenship as the law will allow (and then some.) They have at no time in their history demonstrated any capability to be anything other than an example of all the worst things that Stallman or any of the OG greybeards would ever have warned us about. They are corporate greed exemplified, nearly to the point of parody.

      • my point is that the OP is grandstanding and exaggerating by comparing possible enshittification with his very safety being at risk. so if it's a life and death matter, he should be taking extreme steps to avoid his bogeyman.

    • Sorry if tbis is dumb of me but why should we avoid ever using any web tech that has been associated with Meta, just because we are worried about E-E-E affecting Activity Pub?

      • Are you worried about EEE coming for those techs?

        It's the same thing. Why are people treating them differently?

        A more likely explanation for Meta's actions is that the Digital Markets Act is forcing them to adopt the fediverse: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-marketsen

        Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:

        • allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
        • allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
        • provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
        • allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform

        The interoperability is the big one. The fediverse gives a way for Meta to be in compliance. EEE that breaks the wider fediverse will cause the EU to come down on them.

205 comments