The exchange is about Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!
A 45 minute “round table” with multiple rando masto instance admins? That doesn’t sound like enough time for the table to get very round.
It sounds more like 5 minutes introduction, 30 minute presentation by Meta, 10 minutes Q&A. But oops our presentation ran just a bit long, and I really do have a hard stop at noon so we really only have about 5 minutes for questions thanks for all of the valuable feedback we’ll be sure to circle back offline.
Ah, I see you’ve taken part in Bullshit Corporate Meetings™ before!
a true person of culture!
“We here at Meta take people’s privacy very seriously and are committed to protecting our users. Unfortunately at this time we can’t discuss what measures we’ve put in place.”
Unfortunately at this time we can’t discuss what measures we’ve put in place…
Because we have none, as it’s counteractive to our revenue models.
This conversation will be off the record, as the team may discuss confidential details that should not be discussed with others
Translation: Nobody needs to know how much money we offer you as a bribe.
My guess is that anyone attending will have to sign an NDA. That will make it hard to speak out against Meta joining the federation. If someone does say anything, the Meta lawyers will destroy them.
They did with the last one. That’s why there’s so much distrust about it.
Do you have a link? I’d like to know that
sorrystory too.
An infamously vicious predator walks up and bares its fangs at us, and half of you want to pet it instead of fleeing for your lives.
It’s hard to overstate my disappointment right now.
Meta isn’t as cute as predators in the wild.
They’re the type to freeze instead of fight or flight
Freezing would actually probably be better, in this case I think its fawn.
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What an absolute legend. Also, I do so solemnly swear that any instance caught federating with meta is going straight in my hosts file.
You have been warned.
share the list, I’ll add them to my pihole!
I am looking for a new instance because my admin is on the fence.
Oh look, a tough guy behind his keyboard.
So you will block Fosstodon?
That statement is refreshingly sane. Really sick of the amount of heat over this situation and the lack of light.
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What a horrible click-bait title. No one and nothing was “destroyed” here. He replied in a polite manner to a company whose goals do not align with his own.
“Reports of Meta’s Destruction Greatly Exaggerated”
OK, it’s one of my pet peeves that every fricking disagreement is headlined as X destroyed Y. Click-bait is the bane of the internet and makes everything worse. Don’t participate.
I’m glad Kev got to speak their mind, but I highly doubt this changed anything meaningful over at Zuck HQ.
Exactly. I don’t get what was so great about being passive aggressive to a Meta employee
Seriously, if you want to see them squirm, hit them with a wall of silence. They clearly feel they need something and, for Meta, negative feedback is better than no feedback at all.
To create an Instagram account, your identity has to be validated. I prefer anonymity. Once Meta gets their foot in the door, I guarantee they will try to bully the fediverse into doing things their way. Hard pass for me.
Once Meta gets their foot in the door, I guarantee they will try to bully the fediverse into doing things their way. Hard pass for me.
Can you give any reasonable by means in which they could do this and succeed?
So much of this stuff just sounds like infeasible conspiracy theories. If, hypothetically, Meta did do such a thing (somehow, still not clear how or frankly why?) all that it would mean is that anyone who disagreed could defederate from Meta, or would be defederated from Meta… which given half the servers in existence seem to want to defed them up front anyway, doesn’t seem to make any odds.
It’s all just very confusing hearing about these lurid ideas for things Meta could do with the fediverse that simply don’t make a lick of sense either in terms of motivation or implementation.
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Great read. Those who don’t know their history indeed…
For some reason, your link doesn’t work.
The second part of your comment doesn’t answer my question, nor would “they want our data!!!” explain why Meta would want or need to create an instance in order to get it, or how the “data” (what data? Your posts? The ones that ActivityPub syndicates to hundreds of other servers automatically? Do you know exactly which servers your posts are on at the moment?) of other users on other fedi instances could somehow be “monetised” by them.
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OK, I’ve read that link and it still doesn’t really explain how exactly Meta intends to monetise other peoples’ posts - “collect data from and monetise”, how exactly are they going to monetise other peoples’ posts on other instances, when they have no ability to e.g. serve ads to those people?
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I don’t think anyone is questioning your cynicism of Meta’s intentions or motivations, but the nature of the Fediverse is specifically designed to make it very difficult (if not impossible) for any one party to control the entire thing. It’s a question of how not if.
The worst thing I could see is something like the development of React where FB has an overwhelming advantage in sheer resources and ends up having a major influence on the direction of software trends. But that would still just be a popularity thing and would not actively stop anyone from doing their own thing. Maybe there is something in the license for ActivityPub that would let them pull a Google-vs-Oracle reverse engineering, but again that won’t stop other instances or developers from ignoring them if they wanted.
Can you give any reasonable by means in which they could do this and succeed?
Read up on what they did to XMPP, an earlier federated protocol.
Spoiler: embrace, extend, extinguish.
Because it’s what we’ve come to expect from large corporations suddenly joining the table of any FOSS project that is adjacent to their financial stakes. Coexistence is possible if they can profit from the software without assimilating it, but it also stands to reason that they will be pushing for new interoperability standards that benefit their own business model at the expense of users in some way.
The lowest hanging fruit would be something that allows them to associate Fediverse accounts with users whose marketing data already exists in their database, or providing a service to third parties that helps them tie their own databases back to Fediverse users. This would require some sort of hook that encourages the users to either associate their Fediverse accounts to an existing Meta service, or otherwise volunteer common PII such as email address that can be cross referenced. Maybe some kind of tracking cookie that accomplishes the same.
Keep in mind that this is just an example, it is not necessarily the exact angle they are pursuing. I’m not in the automatically defederate camp, but a healthy amount of skepticism is definitely warranted.
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Edit: Also worth a read: https://kbin.social/m/fediverse@lemmy.ml/t/83284/How-to-Kill-a-Decentralised-Network-such-as-the-Fediverse
If fediverse admins come back to us saying that they have figured out a safe way to federate with Meta, then we will know that Meta got to them (financially). Maybe that’s why they want an off the record meeting?
The proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Wow so in your view anyone who just says “I think this isn’t a big deal and it’ll be fine” has been paid off?
Regardless of the fact that’s something with absolutely no evidence?
And you’re supposed to be the rational one here?
Some people on this thread have lost their damn minds.
Dealing with an enormous corporation with an extensive track record of exploiting similar scenarios and acting on bad faith…
Yeah, it’s pretty rational to believe this time will also be reflective of their general modus operandi.
You’ve mounted an emphatic defense of Facebook based almost exclusively on the fact people in this thread don’t know exactly the technical details of what fuckery they’ll be up to this time. I’m left wondering if you have any understanding of people, history, or… context as a concept.
You have provided a good sounding board for others to illustrate just what the risks involved are. So, thank you for that.
Yeah, I’m “defending” Facebook by pointing out that people keep letting 2 + 2 = 57845789478945 and that many of the “risks” being talked about are simply imaginary, technically impossible and/or do not require Meta to start an instance to materialise.
The technical details rather matter when people are coming up with random nonsense and/or don’t actually seem to understand the nature of the platform they’re coming to the defence of.
I don’t trust Meta. I don’t like Meta. That doesn’t mean I need to also accept as true random confabulations about people being paid off and data being scraped for ends that don’t make any sense. There’s been a whole heap of heat around this subject and basically no light.
I mean, look at EEE like Microsoft did in the 90s.
Personally, I’m also scared about Linux after Linus dies. They are on a lot of the board as well
Imagining Meta wants to expand into another platform isn’t a conspiracy theory. For one, Meta could paste ads into more online spaces. They could also replace twitter without having to develop their own platform or pulling a Musk. Both of these would, yes, allow them to be more profitable.
Let me give a hypothetical: Meta makes their own nice, QoL-rich instance that could integrate with Facebook/Instagram. They could also add in analytics and ads and allow that to federate with other instances. They could allow other people to host their own version of this Metadon. If it gets adopted (because it “just works” or otherwise), they could cut support for the instances not running Metadon, taking a large portion of the userbase with them. They would have their own twitter clone (complete with users), they hardly spent time developing it beyond loading Mastodon with their crap, and they would have other people also hosting Metadon (and their ads) without Meta paying a dime.
If Meta does get a sizable userbase then they can absolutely leverage that to force other instances to play their game or defederate.
Meta makes their own nice, QoL-rich instance that could integrate with Facebook/Instagram.
This part could actually be enough on its own, TBH. Imagine that there’s one Fediverse instance where you can interact with the rest of the Fediverse and interact with FB and IG, but it doesn’t propagate stuff between the two networks (i.e. it doesn’t allow people on Beehaw to see what someone on FB posts, and vice versa). Now there’s a reason for everyone to migrate to Meta’s instance, and a built-in way for Meta to advertise the migration to everyone in the FV. Once it sucks up enough users, it just de-federates from everything else and goes on its own way.
So they can overwhelm it, when they become the majority of the users they become in charge with the loudest voice. Then they steer it their way or make sure it dies.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Someone else just posted this explanation. TLDR is essentially, one of these giant corporations can destroy a network by joining and then later walling off their own part of it. And it’s been done before.
I have read that and been linked that multiple times.
I responded to it here: https://finecity.social/notes/9gcoisoofl
tl;dr: Facebook and Google didn’t “destroy” XMPP. XMPP was used by basically nobody before Facebook and Google picked it up, and after they dropped it again XMPP is still used by basically nobody. Its spec also doesn’t include support for features that consumers expect to have in messaging software, which is part of why nobody uses it.
I really hope that we’ll be able to maintain a strong resistance and fortification against Meta taking over the fediverse.
Only defense is to defederate meta and any instance that chooses to federate with meta
I agree, the decentralized aspect is a huge plus and makes this system . But I think the OP’s approach is fundamentally misguided and I have my suspicions for a few reasons.
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It’s a 45 minute meeting that provides an insight into Meta’s operations. There’s no need to contribute anything, just sit back and listen.
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There’s no reason to post about this and brag about it now. Compare this with what Christian did when Reddit tried to claim Apollo was blackmailing them. There’s no leverage now, just some internet points.
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We have one email and a response. Was there any further communication? How do we know this is all that was said? I could go further and question the legitimacy of this screencap but I’m willing to give OP the benefit of the doubt here.
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As others have pointed out, how does shutting them out completely stay in keeping with fediverse principles? This is legitimate question since, to me, it seems like despite the risks, it’s antithetical to the spirit of the fediverse until they demonstrate bad behavior here.
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To quote OP’s email, “Zero interest in having a conversation with #Meta 'off the record or otherwise.” “Otherwise” here is…on the record. So OP also won’t meet with them in a completely open meeting?
Look, I get it, I dislike Meta too. But this just seems like a misstep and bragging for zero actual gain.
- As others have pointed out, how does shutting them out completely stay in keeping with fediverse principles? This is legitimate question since, to me, it seems like despite the risks, it’s antithetical to the spirit of the fediverse until they demonstrate bad behavior here.
how much bad behavior do you want to see before accepting that MetaZuck is evil and has no go intentions?
There’s a literal trail of dead startups and bodies.
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What defenses are in place?
We should bake it into the software (Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc.) as a first line of defense. If you want to federate, you’d have to fork the server first.
Think we are in good hand if this is by any indication. Lol
Kinda shook at the Meta-supporting comments. They should not be anywhere near the fediverse. Meta is a business first and the users are the product. Companies now just want to maximize profits, minimize costs, and hoard wealth for… rocket ships? Fediverse itself is community-owned, independent, and decentralized.
With how new all of these controversies are, it’s kinda baffling that people are still defending this company. They’re going to continue to exploit anything and everything for profits. It wouldn’t even surprise me if the genuine reason they’re interested in this concept is because they want to take what’s open-sourced, adapt it, and commercialize it. I would imagine they’re thinking, ‘why invest in a brand new backend when we can profit off of an existing one, unrestricted.’ And this “meeting” that they’re forming is basically a free forum for them to learn and ask questions about how they can exploit the Fediverse and find any way to profit off of it. “Off the record” anything is shady as fuck.
Exactly, off the record means the expectation is Meta will be given free expertise to gain an edge on their competitors. Don’t give diddly squat to actors who want to commercialize your content. It will never end well for you, only Meta.
Also: why would you want to discuss confidential information in the presence of Meta of all companies? Their reputation precedes them.
The only confidential information about the fediverse that I can see is account information. And maybe metrics. But most metrics can be gathered by polling APIs of servers anyway. It’s an open system, unless they defederate with you.
IMO the “confidential” part is that they want to offer this person some kind of deal to shut their shit down or assimilate. Basically, they’re going to offer to “buy them out” (though that phrase doesn’t seem completely appropriate to the non-corporate world, so it’s a little weird to use it).
I sincerely hope that as many admins as possible instantly defederate from metas instance if they ever launch one.
Yes. Keep those manipulative crooks away from the fediverse!
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Fuck Meta and all they stand for.
They have done nothing to earn open community’s cooperation. On the contrary, they have not atoned for weakening democracy in countries all over the world AND distributing powerful data about its users both for money and by inadequate security.
OK, I’m just using fancy words to say Fuck You, Meta and Zuck in particular.
'Member when the Zuck assured everyone that Facebook cared deeply about their privacy, and then immediately turned around and quietly implemented features where people had to opt-out of sharing all their shit (when opting out was even an option at all), and those users didn’t even know it? And we’re not even getting into how it sells your data behind the scenes to advertisers, government entities, and anyone else with a little cash to offer.
Ah, the good ol’ days. And I don’t even resent it due to being personally affected. I’ve never had a FB account, and I just watched from the sidelines as it affected people I know and love and the broader online community as a whole.
A good response. Civlised and to-the-point.
I disagree.
I hope there’ll be people discussing sensibly.
For example the question how the rest of the fediverse would like Meta to act, when / if they have the by far largest instance on Fediverse with Threads.
Should they Rate-Limit queries from their users to other Instances, as to not overload them? This would protect other instances, but make the federated experience worse, driving more people to threads.
Would the Fediverse rather that Meta mirrors images etc on their servers too, or pull those from the original server?
Maybe they have UX ideas that would be useful to have somewhat uniform (like the subreddit/community/magazine stuff here), and would like input on them.Of course just blocking them is an option for the fediverse, but doing that blindly seems like a missed opportunity for both sides.
More freely available content would be great, wouldn’t it?Maybe they have Ideas on the protocol, that they want to talk with admins about as a first step to gain more perspective. And certainly they are likely to be data-hungry greedy shit, but there is a chance that they are actually good ideas - there are actual people working at meta after all.
There’s tons of ways in which this could be useful, and I don’t really understand the completely blocking approach I see a lot of.
They want to use ActivityPub, that’s awesome, finally something new and big that uses an open freaking standard on the web. What are the downsides? If it sucks for communities they can easily block Meta.
Yes, Meta is not a Company working for the betterment of the world, certainly.
But maybe, just maybe, goals align here, and Meta can make money and improve the Fediverse and the Internet with it. And certainly, maybe they want to “take over” ActivityPub, and that would indeed be bad. And even then, wouldn’t knowing because they told you be much better than knowing because they’re meta?
So, if they want to change the Protocol, be very, very wary of their proposals. But even there there they could just want reasonable improvements because they suddenly deal with 100x of the next biggest instances.tl;dr: when you tell people what you’d like them to do, it increases the chances of them doing that.
Of course just blocking them is an option for the fediverse, but doing that blindly seems like a missed opportunity for both sides.
More freely available content would be great, wouldn’t it?The issue is once you open these floodgates you’re not going to be able to close them, at least not without alienating a vast majority of users on both sides. Furthermore, once meta gains the majority of users and content on its instances (and this is really more of a “when”, not “if” situation), they can start making changes to AP and overall infrastructure and forcing other instances to either adapt to that, or get left behind one by one, similar to what google does regardless of W3C and other browsers have to adapt even though it goes against the agreed standard.
If meta gains a foothold in the fediverse and eventually start isolating the smaller instances, it’s going to be the email situation all over again, we’ll have just a few large trusted providers and the rest will be a seemingly unsafe niche that most people avoid. Giving them the benefit of the doubt is just foolish, meta will not let a few fediverse admins dictate their policy (even assuming they have the backbone to stand up to them, and considering the recent meeting/NDA/“shareholder” drama most of them definitely don’t).
Better to nip it in the bud than let it fester like a wound. Give companies as evil as meta an inch and they’ll take a mile.
The issue is once you open these floodgates you’re not going to be able to close them, at least not without alienating a vast majority of users on both sides.
I mean, users of Meta producs are already plenty alienated from Lemmy etc, aren’t they?
once meta gains the majority of users and content on its instances (and this is really more of a “when”, not “if” situation)
I mean, it’s a matter of… minutes? hours?, probably not days even.
That’s why I’d like to be able to talk to them.they can start making changes to AP and overall infrastructure and forcing other instances to either adapt to that, or get left behind one by one, similar to what google does regardless of W3C and other browsers have to adapt even though it goes against the agreed standard.
And I agree that these are very very dangerous. I wouldn’t say they could only be bad, but still.
Anyway, not following bad changes by meta would leave people where?
Exactly where they are right now.
In that case, Meta joining the fediverse would have been a failed experiment.it’s going to be the email situation all over again, we’ll have just a few large trusted providers and the rest will be a seemingly unsafe niche that most people avoid.
I have to say… That seems like a win though.Billions of people using interoparable software to talk to each other. Email is a brilliant success!
Yes, having “few” larger instances isn’t great, but on the other hand most companies run their own email server, and those talk fine with anyone else.
Doesn’t seem like a terrible result to me.
Much rather “the Email situation” than the “whatsapp situation” or “signal situation” or “facebook situation” or “reddit situation” or “instagram situation” or “tiktok situation” where you have to join that specific thing to talk to people.Anyway, not following bad changes by meta would leave people where?
Exactly where they are right now.
In that case, Meta joining the fediverse would have been a failed experiment.Not really, in the greater context of meta controlling the vast majority of fediverse we would be the ones that are a failed experiment, a niche group of old people yelling at clouds, not willing to get with the times and join the instance that has all the content, all the users and all the new tech improvements. Just look at how much shit beehaw got for temporarily defederating the 2 largest lemmy instances, now imagine when that happens to your instance and it gets cut off from meta permanently. It’d be like trying to maintain a twitter competitor while twitter was still in its golden age.
Billions of people using interoparable software to talk to each other. Email is a brilliant success!
People don’t create private instances or join smaller communities for their email provider, they go to gmail, hotmai or even protonmail for the promise of stability, safety and compatibility with others, not getting listed as spam bots or their mail going straight into trash. Companies have dedicated people to handle this but in my experience even they just end up using microsoft or google software in the background, just with their custom domain. It is a big success for email and these corporations, it is a terrible story for the open and community-controlled internet and fediverse.
a niche group of old people yelling at clouds, not willing to get with the times and join the instance that has all the content, all the users and all the new tech improvements.
I feel like this already describes us pretty darn well.
So I don’t see the disadvantage to potentially going back here.People don’t create private instances or join smaller communities for their email provider, they go to gmail, hotmai or even protonmail for the promise of stability, safety and compatibility with others, not getting listed as spam bots or their mail going straight into trash.
you mean like the 89.5% of active users of kbin being on kbin.social or 50% of active lemmy users being on lemmy.ml, lemmy.world or beehaw.org?
That’s just normal, and as long as it’s still possible to create smaller communities it’s fine.I feel like this already describes us pretty darn well.
So I don’t see the disadvantage to potentially going back here.Not quite sure what your point is, just general apathy? Currently the servers you listed are practically 100% of fediverse, we’re literally the early adopters right now and not the isolated obsolete old people. If meta comes you’re not going to get to “go back here”, that’s the whole point of discussion - what them coming means for the current fediverse and what kind of damage it can cause.
you mean like the 89.5% of active users of kbin being on kbin.social or 50% of active lemmy users being on lemmy.ml, lemmy.world or beehaw.org?
Fediverse has gotten a massive sudden influx of players and it’s natural that everyone rushed the few available instances. If anything, the fact that it’s split between kbin.social, lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, beehaw rather than everyone being on just one is already a good sign.
as long as it’s still possible to create smaller communities it’s fine.
¯\(ツ)/¯
You can still do the same on reddit yet you felt the need to come here, so obviously you care at least a bit about outside interference.Not quite sure what your point is, just general apathy?
That we have different perspectives. I already see us as the old guys shouting at the clouds (of reddit etc) for being bad. I certainly shout enough at most of Metas and Googles and Apples and Tencents products to fit that bill. I certainly don’t have all of the technology that some other people use, because I’m not willing to sell my soul to those companies any more.
I don’t feel like an early adopter. Lemmy is 4 years old, ActivityPub is 5 years old, Mastodon is 7 Years old.
I feel much more like a niche idiot who doesn’t want to give FAANG the rights to his data, and because of that doesn’t live with the times and doesn’t have google maps, isn’t on instagram for my friends to reach and doesn’t know about the latest tiktok trend.If meta comes you’re not going to get to “go back here”, that’s the whole point of discussion - what them coming means for the current fediverse and what kind of damage it can cause.
No, it’s about what happens here when meta comes. We will not stop it.
And yes, Meta can do quite a lot of damage, although I’d guess a “non-meta-fediverse” i.e. a fediverse that completely blocks all meta-content would reasonably quickly look just like this, because it’s what we have right now.
Anyway, because of the damage they can do, one should talk to them. Even if you can’t sway them one iota, you learn of their plans, and can act accordingly.You can still do the same on reddit yet you felt the need to come here, so obviously you care at least a bit about outside interference.
No I can’t create a small reddit and federate with my friends small reddit, let alone the mother-reddit.
I can’t even create a small (modern) reddit, as the code is not open anymore.
This is super naive. Facebook/Meta has zero interest in “playing nice” with competitors in any field. Their intentions with the fediverse are not pure, and you’re a fool if you think otherwise.
This is capitalism, and this is one of the most profitable corporations that has ever existed on the planet. A corporation who has made those profits almost entirely from the private data of its users (and even some users that aren’t subscribed to their service. That’s how much data they have).
They don’t “work together” with competitors “for the good of everyone.” That’s a pipe dream.
Respectful post, but respectfully disagree. The longer the fediverse can stay free of monetary-driven communities, the longer it will last. Wait until the proposals for blue check marks and karma hit the ActivityPup “plus” standard and it’s too late for the platform.
If that’s the case then there’s no need for it to be off-record. Unless the conversation of what you pointed out is open to scrutiny it shouldn’t happen.
This is the real point here. If this is a legit talk about legit points then it can be open for everyone to see.
Starting talks with Meta behind closed doors can never happen. If they have something to say or ask then they can do it publicly.
I am all for talk, because that’s the part that hurts no one, but make it as transparent as humanly possible from all angles.
I also want to know what “the enemy” is up to, so invite them to talk as much as possible, we do not need to agree to anything just because we were talking/listening.
That’s nice and all, but before we get to any of this there’s a fundamental incentive schism to overcome first. People flock to the fediverse because they are tired of being treated like cattle. If you are not the paying customer, you are the product. And you will never–NEVER–be catered to. That’s the bottom line here.
I agree. The Beautiful thing here would be that people sick of Meta could still go to fosstodon, and they could still talk to their niece on Metas Threads.
I can’t help but see that as a win for the people not on metas software.
The problem here isn’t talking to Meta or Meta making a federated platform.
Nobody can prevent Meta from doing that anyway.
The problem is the need to push against the insistence of Meta to keep these meetings off the record. It’s against the entire philosophy of something like not only fediverse but FOSS in general.
If Meta wants good faith, they have to show it first.
Notice that in the email, Kev gives his guidance as to the matter. Do whatever the fuck you want as long as you put people first and make a product for the purpose of serving them.
This should be the attitude everyone should have first.
We will accept you as long as you’re bringing value to us, not the other way round, got that Meta?
As long as any dev is taking this approach, Meta included, I’m supporting them. If someone is secretive about their intentions about a public service which is not a for profit endeavor inherently, I’ll have a hard pass too.
How is it a win for me if I specifically signed up for a fediverse account to get away from data-hoarding, money-driven corporations like Facebook? I don’t want Facebook to have access to my account information, posts and comments. I think you’re missing the point about who this company is and the extent to which it is willing to go to get people’s data.
Fucking thank you. Are people really this gullible? Maybe I have a different perspective because I’ve been free from Facebook for like 15 years now, but do these people really think that Meta/Facebook wants to be nice to its competitors? Suddenly they’re going to give up the business model that has made them one of the biggest, most profitable corporations that has ever existed on this planet, and do the exact opposite of what they did to get there? LOL.
I’m honestly questioning if TheYang is reading our comments or if they are just spewing the same talking points regardless of the arguments presented to them. It’s baffling to see people so willing to embrace a corporation that has done nothing but exploit its users and their privacy.
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I don’t want Facebook to have access to my account information, posts and comments.
I hate to break it to you, but the very nature of the fediverse (as a distributed network where posts and account information automatically get distributed to hundreds if not thousands of independent servers you may or may not be aware of, that do not necessarily have to honour your deletion requests) means that it would be absolutely trivial for either Facebook or any other random bad actor you could think of to have access to all of that, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
This is an example I’ve given a few times, but if Meta were really just wanting to suck down data for the evulz (why they would do this I have absolutely no idea because it’s not like they could use that data for anything), they don’t need to start an instance amid a blaze of publicity. They could just go on Mastodon.social, sign up for a no-name account, grab an API key and suck down the contents of the fediverse in real time and that’s the end of it. The fediverse is not private and its very nature means that control over one’s own data is not quite as secure as ActivityPub advocates would like to pretend.
But that wasn’t my point. It’s not that I think that Facebook or Google cannot scrape Fediverse platforms/instances, it’s that even if they do, they cannot serve targeted ads based on our activity here.
We have different definitions for privacy. Since I’m active here, it should be clear that to me private doesn’t mean hidden. I like how the EFF put it, in their article on the Fediverse:
[T]he default with incumbent platforms is usually an all-or-nothing bargain where you accept a platform’s terms or delete your account. The privacy dashboards buried deep in the platform’s settings are a way to tinker in the margins, but even if you untick every box, the big commercial services still harvest vast amounts of your data. To rely on these major platforms is to lose critical autonomy over your privacy, your security, and your free expression.
But that wasn’t my point. It’s not that I think that Facebook or Google cannot scrape Fediverse platforms/instances, it’s that even if they do, they cannot serve targeted ads based on our activity here.
This is another one of those things where Meta’s claimed motivations for this don’t seem to stack up.
How exactly are Meta supposed to serve “targeted ads” to me, @bloonface, if I am on finecity.social and not [whatever Meta’s instance is]?
If I don’t have an account on their service, and never visit their website, they have no opportunity to put a tracking cookie on my computer, no opportunity to serve an ad to me (other than directly messaging me, behaviour which would absolutely get them defedded instantly by anyone who is even close to being on the fence about their presence), no link between my finecity.social account and any Meta accounts I may have… what benefit do they obtain from this?
Bluntly - how is this dastardly plan of theirs actually physically supposed to work?
A lot of people seem to have ascribed omnipotent powers to Meta far beyond what they are actually technically capable of. They can’t deliver you a tracking cookie or make your instance display a banner ad to you through ActivityPub, ffs.
Your posts and comments are public. Everyone, including Meta, already has access to them.
That’s not the problem. The problem is that Meta will control and ultimately destroy the Fediverse.
A more important topic is, what federated data will be kept on Meta, and most importantly HOW that data will be processed/used/sold by Meta.
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Everything you post online is public by default, stored, copied or archived by third parties without your knowledge. They don’t need a huge instance to grab data from the fediverse if they want to do that.
God thank you, I swear some people fail to realise just how ActivityPub federation works!
Post something on fedi and you lose effective control over it; for all intents and purposes, it’s out there on hundreds of different servers who don’t have to respect your deletion requests, and it’s never coming back.
And to be perfectly honest, I’m more comfortable with Meta archiving all my shitposts than, I dunno, all the nazis.
tl;dr: when you tell people what you’d like them to do, it increases the chances of them doing that.
In my experience when you tell huge corporations what you’d like them to do, it has no bearing on whether or not they will do that.
Facebook/Meta wouln’t even moderate out incitements to genocide when multiple people asked that of them for years, so it seems naive to assume they care at all about the people in the fediverse.
They are profit driven with a laser focus, and this is a really obvious attempt at co opting, not collaborating.
Facebook/Meta wouln’t even moderate out incitements to genocide
This might cause instances to have a legal obligation not to federate with them, as some countries forbid you from supporting places where hate speech exists.
An interesting and nuanced response - thank you. I’m not quite sure I agree, as it rather assumed good faith - but food for thought.
There seems very little incentive for Meta to federate with anyone, except good faith, right?
They’ll double the Fediverse Userbase in an hour, or less.The ‘embrace, extend, extinguish’ strategy is a well known one. Set out with a strategy to become the biggest instance, capture lots and lots of new users. Introduce some swanky new features that ‘unfortunately initially don’t federate very well, but we are working in that’. Then defederate from other instances that don’t adopt your features - etc etc
Facebook has done federation before - for example, back when they weren’t winning at chat, they integrated their chat system with other Jabber / XMPP servers so that people felt chat wasn’t a walled garden and could talk with people using other clients.
How did it end? 7 years later, once enough people were on Facebook Chat, they closed the gates to the walled garden by completely ending XMPP support: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/07/16/131254/facebook-finally-ends-xmpp-support-for-3rd-party-chat.
So it is really just about leveraging the fediverse to get users onto their product (and their current products, while they are similar in that they are about social networking, aren’t really like exactly like Lemmy or Mastodon). If they are successful enough, what is to stop them locking the gate to the walled garden again?
But they won’t be capturing new users from the Fediverse, they will capture them from Facebook and Instagram, and since this is mainly a Twitter competitor, also from Twitter.
I think you’re missing the point. We are weary of Facebook’s decision to enter the Fediverse exactly because we know it sees the Fediverse as a long-term threat and it could try to extinguish it. While they at first would adopt open standards and protocols, what stops them from creating proprietary extensions and using those and its dominance and resources to make it difficult for users to switch to other platforms in the Fediverse?
While they at first would adopt open standards and protocols, what stops them from creating proprietary extensions and using those and its dominance and resources to make it difficult for users to switch to other platforms in the Fediverse?
Nothing, which should probably raise concerns around how good a standard ActivityPub actually is if all it takes to drive a truck through its intent is one bad actor.
I’d guess the plan is that if the fediverse and meta mingles together, the fedi-users start to follow the meta users in such amount that when the breakup finally happens, they are reliant on meta to continue. People stay on facebook, eating the ads and manipulation just because their mothers and friends are there.
Just thought about the future nightmare of receiving an invite on mastodon to a friends private meta-instance “party” and to view it you are suddenly offered to either decline or import your fedi-account.
Even if they are acting in good faith, I think they’ve earned our derision and deserve to be shut out. You don’t get to play unfairly for decades then turn around and expect no consequences.
The history of Facebook (there I said it) and the EEE example MS already provided us years ago (as referenced by @HeartyBeast ) does not incline me to believe in their good faith. If Meta has proven one thing over and over and over, it’s that their interests will always lie in harvesting of user data to enrich themselves, and that any restraint on their part will be that which is legislatively forced.
Let the Fediverse grow on its own. It’s not a race. And it’s surely not a race best won by letting the wolf in through the front door.
The day we federate with Meta is the day I find the fediverse instances that refuse to do so, and take my account there.
Edit: Blog post on this topic that goes into some detail about historical precedent and etc.
No incentive other than good faith? This is one of the most profitable corporations that has ever existed, talking to one of its competitors. If you think this is how corporations operate, I’ve got news for you. This is like Capitalism 101.
Yeah, because the ~2 Million monthly active users on the whole fediverse actually matters to the company with 2.95 billion active users on Facebook and 1.2 billion monthly active users on Instagram.
those 2 Million Fediverse users are .06% or .167% compared.yeah, those rounding errors are totally the reason why Meta is going for ActivityPub
Nobody’s saying that, in terms of user bases, the Fediverse is comparable to Facebook or Instagram. And it seems to me that you are misrepresenting why people here, myself included, don’t want our instances to federated with Facebook. It’s not that we don’t want bigger communities. Most of us have been on Facebook or Reddit and have given up on those bigger communities and adopted the Fediverse because it aligns with our values and privacy principles. Facebook does not. Its Fediverse platform will not suddenly be the opposite of what the company has been doing for more than a decade.
Nobody’s saying that, in terms of user bases, the Fediverse is comparable to Facebook or Instagram
Well, maybe I got the wrong impression, but I felt like the userbase of the fediverse was implied as the motivation for Meta federating.
And I wanted to put in a comparison, why I don’t think that this is the case.I don’t see a reason why Meta should want Threads to federate, except for “well, whatever, doesn’t hurt us to get those fractions of a percent”. They’ll probably have to use whitelists anyway, due to different legal situations on different instances. So at best they’ll federate with some of the bigger instances.
Most of us have been on Facebook or Reddit and have given up on those bigger communities and adopted the Fediverse because it aligns with our values and privacy principles.
I’m sorry to tell you, but your privacy isn’t exactly great here.
Every Thread, Comment and Upvote at least can be requested from any fediverse instance.
And do you know what, you don’t even have to be a fediverse instance yourself to do that.
But I guess you knew that, so you’re here because nobody tracks what you look at, which is great, and because you like Open Source.
That’s not going to Change when Meta Federates.Facebook does not. Its Fediverse platform will not suddenly be the opposite of what the company has been doing for more than a decade.
That’s true.
But it will be two things, if I may steal the analogy of someone else in this thread:
first it will be a black hole ripping through the Fediverse.
I’d like that to do as little damage as possible.
I’d love it if mastodon continues to grow after Metas release, and doesn’t collapse under server costs, Spam and other detrimental effects.
For that, preparing for the coming storm seems useful.second it will be a huge amount of possible connections, of people.
I’d love to be able to toot a reply to some meta thread.
I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if the fediverse would already know certain rules that meta may require to federate with them? And I mean sensible rules, like no/flagged porn, issues with piracy etc.
One could also talk about how Meta allows/blocks instances. A lot of legal trouble for Meta could probably be avoided if they only show posts from a whitelist of instances, but any user could post to their instance.
But how would they deal with non-whitelisted instances trying to pull Threads-Content?
Maybe they want to talk about how to deal with those “half-federating” situations, because this is not the current norm, and they may not actually get more bad press when a meeting could have prevented it.For both of these effects I think communication with meta can only help.
Fascinating comment from someone who doesn’t understand rates of growth at all, and has no idea why this “offer” is coming at this point in time.
It’d be entirely open to Meta to simply turn off federation, in the same way that Truth Social and Counter Social have.
But honestly if I were them, given the hostile reaction I’d probably just do that and knock the whole ActivityPub thing on the head. It feels like a waste of time when realistically they would get more people on Threads/P92 in one day than a million Musk-buying-Twitters could do with Mastodon. Then everyone is happy - no Meta on fedi, Meta gets its new exciting Twitter clone that it fully controls.
Put it this way - either they’re up to some form of non-specific evil, in which case they can probably achieve whatever goals they have far more concretely if they fully control the content on Threads, or they’re not and all this is actually in good faith, in which case they’re doing this for the benefit of a few hundred thousand fedi nerds who have reacted mostly with hostility and are going to block it on sight.
More freely available content would be great, wouldn’t it?
I doubt most people moved to the fediverse simple because of better content. Personally I didn’t. And quantity doesn’t mean quality.
And certainly they are likely to be data-hungry greedy shit, but there is a chance that they are actually good ideas - there are actual people working at meta after all.
Contributions are open for these people. But the moment the contributions are facilitated through Meta, they represent Metas business interests.
What are the downsides?
Control. Meta could swamp the fediverse and just because its open source the current platforms wouldnt necessarily continue to exist in the same way they currently do. We could see even bigger fragmentation or breaks, some Admins might feel forced to federate with Metas service, leading to the currently existing community breaking up.
But maybe, just maybe, goals align here, and Meta can make money and improve the Fediverse and the Internet with it.
Imo the last years has proven, without a doubt, that those things simply do not align.
To conclude: We have seen these things before and they havent ended well. People here seem to undererstimate the power Meta has and the impact that this power has. Even if all current instances were to defederate from Meta, simple association, user demand caused by an influx of Meta users and hard to guess power dynamics would make the fediverse a far different place than it currently is. To make a comparison: you cant drop the gravity well of a black hole into a small, complex planetary system and expect it to be unaffected.
I get your argument, but fundamentally
more freely available content would be great, right?
doesn’t hold true. For example I don’t need a flood of Instragram thots on my Mastodon or Lemmy pages, even if I got it for free. Quality is more important than quantity, I am here for in-depth discussions on current events and issues we face, with individuals capable of empathy and critical thinking. Considering the types of interactions that come from Facebook and related sites, I need better public reassurance that Meta’s involvement won’t tank the platform and it’s vibe.
We’ve handled the Reddit migration about as well as we could have hoped, but the folks on Meta are a whole different beast. Many will be fine but there will also be a chunk of people completely blind to forum Nettiquite.
Lastly Meta acting behind closed doors is antithetical to FOSS development ethos. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I would refuse closed door discussions but be open to public ones. NDAs are rich corporations’ tools to silence people.
Yeah large EEE on ActivityPub feels like almost a given if they start to use it.
But should you block people from embracing a good thing, just because you’re scared they’ll try to extend and extinguish?
no one is preventing people who have facebook or instagram accounts from joining the fediverse by blocking meta. what they are doing, is preemptively taking action to ensure an immoral company doesn’t do exactly what it has shown itself to be in it’s nature to do.
Thanks for answering “the Yang” so that I don’t need to :-)
Remember, don’t feed the trolls !
I really wish kbin had user tagging just so I could tag you as a “leopards eating faces” party member.
@TheYang @steb They want to use an open protocol? That’s great.
But then they should be open about their intentions, and not send invitations to a few select individuals to a confidential “off the record” “roundtable”. This seems just too fishy to me.I agree with you, and I appreciate that Facebook at least tries to reach out, but after all that happened I also understand that there is a certain aversion against Facebook.
But maybe, just maybe, goals align here
If you think that, then you haven’t read up on Facebook and XMPP.
Meta’s motives are simple: destroy the Fediverse.
I can imagine all sorts of technical points like how the firehose will be load-balanced so as to not overwhelm any instance, or what metadata they should include in their feeds. Meta also has a lot of AI and moderation expertise that could be of benefit to the Fediverse once it grows into an attractive enough target for the troll farms and spambots.
Quite frankly, the sooner that festering cesspool that is Twitter is killed off, the better off the planet will be. If it takes Meta to wean the talking heads like Oprah from Twitter, so be it. It would be better if Oprah set up her own instance, but that’s unlikely to happen, media businesses still haven’t understood they need to take control over their distribution rather than the easy way of going through big social networks that will stab them in the back when expedient like Facebook deprioritizing media outlets from users’ feeds.
I need meta to just stay away from the fediverse forever
FB: We’re confused why someone would sign up for a social media site set up by somebody in their dorm room, tell us how to be more like you.
Meta also: forgetting how their original IP, Facebook started in much the same way.
TL;DR (if you can’t be bothered reading all of the below) - Fosstodon will wait and see what happens, but if Facebook’s new service introduces any issues that could negatively impact our users, we will defederate.
This is Fosstodon’s official stance on the whole Facebook joining the Fediverse debacle.
Which is a bad plan, TBH. At this point in history, zero waiting needs to be done to know exactly the sense of Meta’s involvement. The “if” is a certainty.
yeah i mean i… don’t know why you’d “wait and see”. it’s literally Facebook. they’re going to negatively impact your community, if not in features (lol) then in sheer size and volume.
