Technology

Maybe I'm bitter, and I know a lot of people wouldn't agree with this, but honestly? I think the non-corporate part of the Fediverse should just assume malice from the get go and preemptively defederate from whatever Meta put out. That way nothing's changed - Meta would essentially have a private / proprietary / isolated network, as far as users are concerned (much like Facebook already is), and even if the Fediverse will see less growth in the short term because of that, there will be no confusion on where everybody stands.

E: Well, thankfully and as expected, I'm not the only one to think this way: FediPact is an Organized Effort to Block Meta’s ActivityPub Platform

I sure hope that Meta doesn't try to integrate ActivityPub into their apps. As a user that feels like they finally found their home (Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy/kbin), please, go away Meta. lol

I remember google also sabotaging firefox by introducing subtle bugs which breaks google sites on firefox but works perfectly on chrome.

Amen. When people talk about how Reddit or Twitter will always be bigger, I say, "Let them be bigger." What we have out here is fantastic just the way it is. In a global world, "small" is still millions of people.

Great fucking article. Nice look into the history of proprietary software. This part stuck out to me:

But there’s one thing my own experience with XMPP and OOXML taught me: if Meta joins the Fediverse, Meta will be the only one winning. In fact, reactions show that they are already winning: the Fediverse is split between blocking Meta or not. If that happens, this would mean a fragmented, frustrating two-tier fediverse with little appeal for newcomers.

We need to convince instance owners not to federate with Meta. History tends to repeat itself and I'd rather not see this nice little corner of the internet die.

The biggest issue is who pays for the server infrastructure at scale.

The Fediverse is bound to come to the attention of big corporations, and if it becomes big enough they will view it as competition and try to crush it. I doubt it can outcompete them in terms of popularity. The best hope has to be coexistence, in which the Fediverse doesn't try to win the most users, but defends its integrity against large corporations entering the space to sabotage it.

The comparison with XMPP may not be conclusive: XMPP is purely a communication protocol, so if not many people use it, not many people can be reached through it and it becomes less useful. Something like Lemmy, by contrast, is not intended to get you in touch with everyone in the world. It can function as long as it has enough users to make it interesting, enough money to pay for servers, and enough skilled developers willing to work on it. It doesn't need huge numbers of users, and it doesn't need to outcompete Reddit or any other corporate platform.

I hope Lemmy can equip itself with good tools for managing trolls and other kinds of attack, including corporate-led sabotage, because those things are likely to come soon. There has been an explosion in bot accounts recently, which are ominously dormant for the time being. If those all get switched on at once, there will be a huge amount of noise and a big increase in traffic. Lemmy needs to prioritize equipping itself to withstand this.

That should be in the FAQ

But the Fediverse is not looking for market dominance or profit. The Fediverse is not looking for growth. It is offering a place for freedom. People joining the Fediverse are those looking for freedom. If people are not ready or are not looking for freedom, that’s fine. They have the right to stay on proprietary platforms. We should not force them into the Fediverse. We should not try to include as many people as we can at all cost. We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.

This above is, I think, a very important attitude that is all too often thrown aside in the search for success. So many have dreamed of the "year of the Linux desktop," but I have never shared that desire; and it is largely for fear of what is being referenced above. I like those peculiar freedoms of Linux and other open source software projects. If it, or other such projects, were to take a truly significant market share I feel it would almost certainly start becoming what it opposed. I want the freedom and the honesty of such projects to remain, even if (possibly because?) they are somewhat niche, geeky and not entirely newbie friendly.

It baffles me that so many don't see it for what it is.

Meta contacts their competitor, and says that they want to build a competing product, and want us as competitor to help them with that. How can you possibly fall for that. Meta can already use activitypub for whatever they are building without any need to contact anyone from the Fediverse. The only possible reason they contact instance admins is because Meta wants to dictate the terms on how to Fediverse operates.

I'm not on Facebook for a reason, I will never fed with meta.

I've never really understood the EEE argument here. XMPP was an open proptocol, Google embraced it and attracted users, then extended it and took those users away. But according to this article, Google didn't extinguish XMPP. It's still around and serving its niche community.

That's already the situation the fediverse is in. This is a niche community and there are already existing social media companies that the majority of internet users are on. If Facebook joins the fediverse, it brings billions of new users to the fediverse. If they then leave the fediverse, ActivityPub will still be here and all of us on the real fediverse will still be here, in a niche community. Everyone here has already chosen the fediverse despite it being a clunky, unpolished, niche network. How is EEE a relevant fear for the fediverse?

Interesting, it was a variation of embrace, extend, extinguish, without the extend part.

In a way, I think it happened to the entire internet. Look at browsers today, web development (that one might be controversial, but I think big techs somewhat forced bloated frameworks to be the standard way to create websites), video streaming, etc.

Should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants this to succeed. I hope we don't make the same mistakes as doomed so many other open source open protocol projects in the past.

it's better to have a small place with nice people rather than a big place full of bad people

Great Article. Meta brings nothing I want to ever see. Dont federate with them.

I hope the Fediverse chooses not to play the larger corpos game and minimizes their influence at all stages. I forget where I saw it posted but just like linux, the Fediverse doesn't need to rush success. It will be successful, because what large corporations offer as social media is dreadful. Sooner or later all of them force some form of poison pill through their platform. Your content doesn't need to be commodified into product. No one owns your content and no one should be able to push content/ ads on you that you do not approve of. We may need to pay a little something for this freedom, and that's cool. Free as in freedom & not as in beer. Long live the fediverse or what ever currently holds to those values.

As opposed to many of you, I look forward to Meta joining up with ActivityPub. I've learned to embrace Eternal September; and have come to understand the debt I owe to it. Companies win, yes. I haven't used Google chat in years. I don't bother keeping a copy of Gaim/Pidgin on my PC because I don't want to bother talking with anyone in a Jabber chat (Yeah, yeah, it's XMPP now, I started when it was Jabber and I was on the mothership server). Everyone I need to talk to moved from GChat to Skype, and then at some point, from Skype to Discord. They never stopped at Jabber, Mumble, or other OSS options; though some joined me in passing through. As I've said, human nature is opposed to load-balancing. People want to be part of the largest possible community, at least at first.

I would love to have an easy way to talk to local friends again, and have a wide base of information to share with them. If this new system is easier to coordinate local groups with than Meetup is, I'll be joining and becoming a fairly active user. I might keep my Lemmy accounts, my Mastodon account, and my KBin account - just like I'm keeping my Reddit account now.

If servers want to defederate from Facebook, that's their loss.