2y ago

non-stickied PSA: Beehaw has signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact

although this is unlikely to substantially and directly impact us and is a more immediate concern for Mastodon and similar fediverse software, we've signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact as a matter of principle. that pact pledges the following:

i am an instance admin/mod on the fediverse. by signing this pact, i hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse. project92 is a real and serious threat to the health and longevity of fedi and must be fought back against at every possible opportunity

the maintainer of the site is currently a little busy and seems to manually add signatures so we may not appear on there for several days but here's a quick receipt that we did indeed sign it.

176 comments

I guess I'm the odd one out when I say I fully support this decision. I do not trust Meta, I Do not trust their intentions, and they have given me no reason to trust them.
Thanks Beehaw.

Good call from the instance admins. Meta's been a known actor for over 10 years at this point, which is more than enough time to observe their behavior (including up to a few weeks ago when they got fined for violating the GDPR). They're not going to be participating in good faith and we don't need to give them a chance to shit up the Fediverse.

I’m disappointed.
“The fediverse is open and interoperable!”
“No, not them.”
- Well, we've defederated with other people in the past (and will continue to do so in the future most likely). Federated systems are not an all or nothing situation. IMO that's the biggest draw and improvement over a distributed system for social media.
  
  I agree, but why defederate before knowing any details? What is the harm in hearing them out
- Don’t pretend like Meta is going to be open and interoperable.
  You can’t look at their history and think letting the fox sleep in the hen house is a good idea. The house is for hens.
  
  🚫🦊
- there are instances in the past where big players acquire the small ones and while at first they seem to be cooperative, it ultimately destroys the small players, one such case is XMPP the open chat protocols long before we have Matrix, killed by Google
  https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,extend,andextinguish
  I guess this is a cautionary action, better to grow slower rather than be killed by Meta.
- Do you really think Meta wants to be "one of us", that they plan to be on equal ground as the rest of the already existing instances managed by individuals and not by corporations? Are you that naive?
- The thing is that this isn't really a marriage of equals; if Meta joins the Fediverse then Meta will swallow the Fediverse, simply by dint of having several orders of magnitude more users.
  It would be akin to India applying to become the 51st US state; if we let them in, they'd end up controlling 80% of the House and the Electoral College and the US wouldn't really be the US anymore.
  
  While I appreciate the analogy, the electoral college is a seriously broken system which hasn't protected proportional representation in a long, long time.
  
  Yeah the size is what I think is most worrying. I've only just got here so I'm pretty keen on the content (which seems to be the regular content that was here before + a fusion of stuff from Reddit)
  I'm really not keen on having an influx of low quality Facebook posts here.
  I'm not the one to be on my high horse, thinking that these platforms or Reddit are beacons of enlightenment, but the comments here are light-years above what I see on Facebook, so I want none of that.
  
  It’s basically what happened after the revolutionary war, and reparations were even paid: to slave owners.
- it's the paradox of tolerance. We (fediverse) cannot be tolerant of the intolerant (meta in this case), lest we be destroyed by them. And do not for one second ascribe any benevolent properties to meta, they are evil through and through and have been pretty much since inception. Tolerating their presence would be akin to tolerating nazis, the second that happens I'm fucking out of here
  
  This talk of tolerance reminds me of something I read[^1]: Tolerance is a peace treaty, not a moral obligation. With this line of thought, the intolerance of intolerance stops being a paradox and makes a whole heck of a lot of sense. Intolerance broke that peace treaty before it even entered into it, IMO.
  [^1]: It may have been this opinion piece: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376
  
  https://imgur.com/gallery/Iyu9IPM
- It’s ok to not tolerate algorithms that promote intolerance for clicks and advertising.
- As much as I don't think the pact will do much, it's their right to defederate whichever instances they want. The protocol is still "open and interoperable" and this does not change that - in fact, this move is only possible because of that openness.
  Your argument only sounds kinda sane when applied to Meta, but the same could be said about instances made by bad actors (spammers, for example). Please do further research before commenting on this.
  
  What? Are you arguing tolerance of intolerance?
- I agree this seems kneejerk. If Meta refuses to abide by the standards of interoperability and openness then lock them out, but by doing so ahead of time the fediverse is committing the crime it's pre-punishing Meta for.
- Regardless of how untrustworthy Meta as a company is, it also tends to hold the kinds of "mainstream" social media platforms that I have actively been avoiding for many reasons. Beehaw has already defederated from other instances for having open sign-up and a disproportionately large number of users on them who needed moderation actions taken, and I can see a Meta-run instance posing the same kinds of problems.
  Plus, like others said, it's not impossible to federate later if it ends up being an overreaction. It's just that Meta and its userbase already exist, so it's possible to make pre-emptive judgement with that knowledge and correct the judgement later, potentially avoiding a flood of unwanted content.

Meta is not a brand new, fresh-faced corporation that maybe needs a chance to prove it's good intentions in the fediverse. It is an established entity that has a history of killing competition and often being on the wrong side of social issues. It should be rejected from federation outright because of its track record, if nothing else.

Thanks for the transparency. I personally think this is the right move. Meta shouldn't be trusted, based on their previous performance. If they do something to change that then we'll see, but I'm not expecting them to change their stripes.
Been catching up on all the NDA drama on Mastodon, it's really caused a rift between some users and instance admins. Felt a bit like an 'aww it's all grown up' moment to see Mastodon having a scandal.

As a user of the fediverse, I appreciate you for doing this.

Good choice, who wants to deal with a hundred thousand instagram users sitting in between every fediverse user.

Only good can come from shutting out corporate interests. Good on you ❤️

I appreciate the work you all do. Im a heavier lurker than particpater and i see little fingers of you all taking care of beehaw for us all the time and it makes me smile 😁 good work everyone!

Good. To quote WarGames:
The only winning move is not to play
Meta is at best looking to profit from the Fediverse, and more likely looking to extinguish it. I think blocking them at the borders is the only solution.

I 100% agree with this decision. At first I wanted to give Meta a chance, just to get a big player in the Fediverse, but after reading this article it totally changed my views.
- I just finished reading it. I must admit that I wasn't blown away at the start. But the last few paragraphs, especially about the "Embrace, Extend, Exterminate" strategy really convinced me.
  I did not remember that Google chat was once a XMPP client and that they pulled the plug on this.
  Anyway, I'm totally convinced that the fediverse is most probably better off without Meta. Although, I'm not sure how the fediverse admin can really block them. At some point, some people will want to see meta's stuff.
  It almost feel like we need a legal organization around the fediverse. Just some unorganized random people won't save whatever we have here. If we still want this to be as free as possible, there will be a time where a giant company will fuck thing up and we may forget why we didn't want them here in the first place.

This is fantastic news and applaud this decision. I used to work in digital marketing and having seen how Facebook, (and Twitter, Google, etc.) makes their sausage and how they operate, I advise everyone get off Meta/FB, or really any centralized social media platform for that matter.
- Well hell man, give us the details.

I hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse.
I suggest to rephrase with this better: "I hereby agree to block any instances owned by, governed by, supported by mostly, funded by only or affiliated with Meta, its subsidiaries, major involving partners and influenced involving affiliates should they pop up on the Fediverse."
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I do not provide my suggestion "as a legal advice" but as a thought to share that may be considered or configured by legal experts. I will not be held liable for any error that any revision upon or any derivative from my suggestion may cause.
- This pact isn't legally binding, but more of a moral "I stand against Meta" thing
- I really don't think this pact has any legal value to begin with.
- @xptiger @alyaza I don't know what it is about Legal disclaimers.. they seem kinda scary. Just reading "LEGAL DISCLAIMER" is enough for me to gulp and loosen the tie.
  They sound very.. Legal.. and.. and Disclaimery.
- Look at you, coming in with your legalese.
  Godsspeed.

Good move. Fuck Zuck.

As an instance admin: signed.

Y'all're great!
- Y'all'd've done it, too!

You guys rock!

Nice, I got the vibes you'd do that without having to announce it but I'm glad to hear the commitment. Makes it easier to feel better about building connections here knowing they won't be thrown apart when Meta comes to town.
- Personally speaking, I like announcements on these kinds of decision because it can show public support for the decision and help us in our conviction. It also allows people that don't agree to find a better place for them.
  
  Definitely agree, I guess I was more just making a point that even without saying anything that's the vibe I was getting from this instance. Which was meant as a compliment. You folks are doing a great job so far 😊

Good. There's no place for corporations on the fediverse. Specially not for a corporation like Meta that has shown time after time how dangerous they are.

Corporations will attempt to infiltrate anything they see as a threat to their profit margins. Long live the Fediverse. 😀

Love everything about this

Fuck meta and fuck Facebook. No one wants this place to become like that dogshit site. Fully support defederating from any meta owned instances

thank you for doing this

I love this instance. Thank you so much guys, all this Meta stuff has been a bee in my bonnet. Forgive the pun.
- Forgive the pun.
  Forgive? It's encouraged! Bee yourself!

Thanks! I totally support this move

Amazing. Thank you!

I'm glad, meta has no place in the fediverse.

You can't become a billionaire without being incredibly evil. They are literally working to kill off all life on the planet.
As for giving them the benefit of the doubt? Seriously? Anyone who suggests that has got to be getting a nice paycheck from the plutocrats.

Best instance 🙏
- Your pfp is really cool
  
  Thank you!!! Shout out to the amazing https://twitter.com/AWolfhardt who did it!

Really pleased to hear this. I will be staying on Beehaw for the foreseeable future, I'm on the same page as the admins.

Awesome!

I'm not shure, there are a few good arguments against plain blocking of Meta.
This article is mostly against federating
https://privacy.thenexus.today/should-the-fediverse-welcome-surveillance-capitalism/
it does highlight contra's:
John Gruber describes the Anti-Meta Pact as "petty and deliberately insular" and suggests that the whole point of ActivityPub is to turn social networking into something more akin to email, which he describes as "truly open."1
Tristan Louis says "The anti-Meta #Fedipact can only achieve one thing: make sure that #ActivityPub loses to the Bluesky protocol."2
Dan Gillmor suggests that "preemptively blocking them -- and the people already using them -- from your instance guarantees less relevance for the fediverse."
- counterpoint:
  we don't like Meta
  we have very specific goals on this instance that Meta is totally antithetical to
  we're quite open about not being open-fed with everyone and this is not out of character nor a contradiction of previous blocks we've made
  our priorities are not "fediverse first" or "ActivityPub first", they're Beehaw first. the fediverse and ActivityPub are mostly tools for us to an end, and we don't accept some obligation to prioritize the greater health of those over our own thing.
  even if you don't care about the rest of that simple logistics prevail here--we absolutely don't want to be responsible for potentially tens or hundreds of millions of additional users. that is not a thing we can ever commit to, and we will almost certainly sooner shut down the instance or completely defederate than eat that influx (particularly with Lemmy's limitations right now).
  overall, i would say this falls into the camp of "not a thing we're realistically going to reconsider".
  
  our priorities are not "fediverse first" or "ActivityPub first", they're Beehaw first.
  Ok, that's where I'm in another camp, and that's ok, we can disagree on goals.
- I think that largely the fediverse has drawn people that are against corporate control and want to go back to a more community-oriented system. I also think that there is a lot of cynicism and lack of trust in corporate social media that is growing with time.
  For these reasons, I don't think that Bluesky or a corporate takeover is welcome and that people will switch over to it.
  
  How can we promote open standards like activitypub while blocking anone else entry.
  On meta this is difficult, any Non disclosure Agreement is evil, Everything has to be in the open. and considering the history of FB/meta i'm verry sceptical. But still, open standards, open discussion , i am a bit of an optimist.
- Gruber's position is somewhere between 'internally inconsistent' and 'distressingly naive'; quote:
  On point 2, I’m fine with starting Facebook with two strikes against it. Put them on a short leash. They start fucking around, Mastodon instances should start de-federating from their product.
  So he agrees that the first time Facebook does anything wrong we should promptly de-federate from them, but somehow seems to think that they... won't? Facebook being allowed to federate is contingent on them being absolutely perfect model citizens, when Facebook have never been model citizens of any group they've ever participated in?
- better to just keep growing slowly rather than having massive capital and quick improvements only to be killed later by Meta.
- The goal of the fediverse was never to be "relevant" in corporate capital terms.
  The goal was for us all to be able to use it.
  Being embrace-extend-extinguished would not achieve what most of us are here for.
- make sure that #ActivityPub loses to the Bluesky protocol
  Like we're playing Team Deathmatch and have been placed on Team HashtagActivityPub so we've gotta do anything possible to beat Team Bluesky.
  As someone who actually kinda likes protocols themselves, I still have to wonder why anyone would care about a protocol. Users don't use protocols. Users should not have to care about protocols, let alone fight over their "relevance" (which apparently is defined as "either it's the most popular one or it's NOTHING").
  Also, why must everything be as big as humanly possible? Every single thing must be one enormous, monolithic pile of people. Can't we have a nice thing over here and just let Facebook "win" (which is kindof an asinine concept here) and be "the big one that 'everybody' uses?"
- The idea that email is "truly open" demonstrates a ton of ignorance on this topic. Email is entirely controlled by like less than 20 large operators, who often completely ignore email from smaller servers.
  Email is literally one of the worst examples of an open protocol. The fact that this person thinks for a second it is even comparable to ActivityPub in terms of openness should completely undermine their credibility in your mind.
  
  I can host an email server. You can host an email server. Even if the big players choose not to accept mail from us, we can accept mail from each other.
  I use sendmail notifications on every VM I host, and I use one of the "large operators" for my own email inboxes; I never have trouble getting messages from my VMs. The big players aren't blocking my little servers. Even if they did, they can only block the mailbox that they host. They don't host my VMs, and I am perfectly free to spin up my own mailbox to completely bypass their imposed limitations.
  Contrast with a reddit, facebook, or twitter inboxes, which are entirely under the control of spez, zuck, and musk: they host (and thus control) both the sender and the receiver, as well as the path between them. Messages sent on their platforms are entirely at their whim.
  Email is certainly an open protocol, and ActivityPub functions very similarly.

Thank you!!!! Say NO to META's disregard of privacy!!!

I don’t know if I have a settled opinion for or against defederating from Meta instances, but I know enough to say I absolutely respect the decision to.
I may appreciate more exposure to federating social media, but I also appreciate that Meta has a problematic track record. Besides, my shifting away from Reddit has me realizing that juggling accounts is not as difficult as I thought. If I end up having a reason to get on a Meta instance, it wouldn’t be an issue to make a compatible handle that can communicate there.

War is coming. Thank you for taking a strong stance now rather than later.

Meta was one of the killers of democracy. No one should ever affiliate with it.

I salute you!

kudos

Try saying that five times fast.

More instances should consider this pact.

@alyaza I am conflicted on this. While I feel like it's probably the right thing to do as Meta would just destroy the fediverse if it entered it, it makes me uncomfortable that this network that is supposed to be so open and connected with each other can be so easily and glibly made into what is essentially yet another privately controlled website.
- You are on kbin, your experience will not be affected by this.
  
  As someone else on kbin I'm really hoping Ernest will enter this pact too.
  Meta's "embrace extend extinguish" is a threat to us all.
- Who says it's "supposed to be [fully] connected?" Who gets to decide for everyone that no one is allowed to block, no instance is permitted to separate or shape its own view of the network? What's the difference between what you want and Reddit? One solid mass of "everyone must be mashed together at all times and nothing may be done to protect against harmful parts of the network" seems to betray the point of federation far more than some instance(s) blocking others or just straight-up forming their own clique (in the graph theory sense) or separate network.
  Basically my thought here is: defederation is the point of federation or else it would just be distributed hosting.
  
  This has always been the reason I don't believe in distributed models of social media. Federation also means defederation and that's good.
- Quoting the FediPact:
  Openness for the sake of openness is meaningless. Two things that are very valued on fedi are consent and freedom of association. The whole point of the fediverse is that instances are free to choose who they talk to. We don't have to federate with the likes of gab, for example. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell, chasing a capitalist pipe dream

Thank goodness.

Great, fuck Meta, fuck Zuck.

What about twitters project?
- Twitter's project? You mean Jack Dorsey's BlueSky? It doesn't do ActivityPub - it's not part of the fediverse
  
  It is federated, but I forgot it wasn’t activitypub.

How do we even know that they're not already running instances? Why would they start announcing it, especially after the response?
- This has to do with Project92, not just with Facebook hosting Mastodon instances. I wouldn't put it past them to discretely host instances to gather data, but we can't see them, and therefore we can't defend against them (and mass-defederation of potential instances is a recipe for disaster).

Hell yea, fuck meta.

let them create there's and lets see what happens. I do not like meta but i like their open source projects like react and lexical. if they do any unethical stuff we can just not use them.

Glad to hear it. Over the years, Meta has shown that they don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. They’d have to prove themselves, which I suspect they are able (but 100% not willing) to do.

I've seen a lot of sentiment shifting positively for Facebook (I refuse to call it meta) over the past few months and I find it kind of unnerving. Mostly outside of tech/journalism circles. Maybe it's just that standing next to Twitter, Facebook has looked a lot prettier lately or something but I don't understand how anyone can forget all the malicious evils Facebook has been and brought onto us. Could the name change have really bamboozled people into giving them a clean slate?
I'm all in on holding the line against them taking over the fediverse, glad to see the energy and I hope we keep it.
- Look at what they are doing with Mark Zuckerberg. Their big PR campaign to show him as a mans man. Posting that he did the Murph challenge, talking about ju jit su, and accepting Elon's ridiculous challenge for a cage match.
  There is this fairly obvious PR campaign to make him seem less like a emotionless robot.

Refusing to federate with Meta servers is practically a no-brainer anyways.
Nobody really wants brain-dead facebook users on the fediverse anyways.¹
1 > This, of course, doesn't include anyone owning a facebook account out of necessity who also has the technical knowledge to register and conduct themselves appropriately on the Fediverse in general.

Good shit

176 comments