And that's precisely why so many people are calling for everyone to defederate immediately from anything facebook-owned. The only way to prevent this is to not even let them get started.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Yeah imo this is the only way. Fediverse should be completely user-owned, we need to isolate any corporation that tries to get involved.
Non-profits like Mozilla and Wikimedia might be OK.
I would at least give them a chance. Meta is DOA.
Might. Possibly. Maybe.
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I agree with the sentiment but with a caveat:
Just like with email, I think the future of the Fediverse will involve institutions and companies running their own instances for discussion related to their niche.
For example, universities might run their own servers for campus-related discussion, and game companies (Paradox Interactive comes to mind) might run a server for discussion around their games and by their members.
Running a server is expensive, and in the long run I think the sustainable future will be for established institutions with large budgets to put a tiny part of that forward for instance hosting, rather than individuals self-hosting instances that actually lose money even when buffered by user donations.
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Pretty stupid to want to defederate an instance over one Trump troll, but not defederste Zuckerberg, the emperor of trolldom. Yes, pls do everything possible to keep Meta away.
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The moment I start seeing Meta content here is the moment I leave. People are being very, VERY naive in thinking that the Fediverse is immune to corporate interest. Judging by the Mastodon response, we are already seeing that it's not.
Then block meta you don't need to leave make them leave you were here first we built this space not them don't surrender to meta
The whole point of open protocols is that anyone can use it. Just block any instance you don't like and you're good!
In email world, gmail became so successful that now its a problem when they decide to blacklist any other email domains that Alphabet don't like. We should never allow profit driven entities get their foot in the door. We should develop a strong immune system against such profit seeking groups/companies etc. We should remain open to people, non-profits, universities and the likes only.
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^ They absolutely intend the last E. Gotta get rid of the competition, especially if it isn‘t another big ass corporation. You can buy a competitor, you can‘t buy a federated network.
While I agree you can't buy it, I think one of the reasons why Meta is considering federation at all is because some not insignificant fraction of the 1 in the "90-10-1" social media model has left Meta's circles and is now active in the Fediverse. I think Meta wants their content and engagement. I also think this same group is probably going to be the first to leave for a Meta-free island of the Fediverse. If I'm right about this, Meta probably doesn't want to drive these users out. Should they rage farm the Fediverse, they inevitably will. Could be wrong of course.
I don’t think fedi is currently competing with any meta property? This is an opportunistic land grab from meta aiming to capitalise on twitter’s weakness. Fedi offers them a ready made protocol tested at scale.
This could very well be the case, but then why would they be considering federation? Federation would seep their users' info into a lot of third party hands. There must be something they want from the Fediverse if they actually end up federating. It can't be the volume of users, they have that.
Volume of users is everything here. Picking up enough share grants you a tremendous gravity as a social service. Once a service has network effect on their side it takes an extraordinary amount to unseat them - and Instagram users will pad the numbers at first but who knows if they will engage. Fedi users are demonstrably early adopters willing to put up with a new service’s teething issues. If meta can plug in and grab them it’s a big win.
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Along with Facebook, we’ll also have to be prepared to deal with bought-out Fediverse platforms who’re willing to federate with Meta. Do whatever to cut them off.
I believe, with Authorized Fetch (what Mastodon calls secure mode) blocking intermediaries won't be needed, as instances will have to cryptographically "authorize" themselves to receive/send data, and you can just say "no" to any requests coming from threads.net, acting basically as a "defederation enforcement mode".
I could be wrong though, haven't caught up on the exact details.
If accurate, this is awesome!
EDIT: Couldn't another solution be allowing users to block entire instances, i.e. block Threads? That way even users using an instance federating with threads would have a choice. Not a solution on a large scale, but could be useful.
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FFS from Reddit to Facebook??? I am d‘losing all I can to avoid any of them!!!
If instances defederate from threads, the users rageposts wont even be seen on mastodon
Yeah, that's the Meta-free island scenario.
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So many knee-jerk reactions.
This is an open protocol with complete freedom to create apps and scripts. If this becomes an issue users could block certain interactions in a granular manner, for example block replies from certain instances.
XMPP being thrown around as an example makes me think people who do it weren't there to witness it. XMPP by itself wasn't really used by many but there were also many more popular messaging platforms at the time. XMPP wasn't killed because it wasn't ever alive other than short golden era when it was mostly a way to open itself to third party clients (Gaim, Trillian, Adium etc) which was very nice.
Next year EU is going to make all tech giants open in this way again. Mastodon can EEE Threads too by being a better implementation. It has no commercial pressure and Activity Pub and formatting tweets is not as complex as a web browser engine or a word processor document format which are way better examples of successful EEE.
If you defederate you'll end up exactly where XMPP is.
I agree with the sentiment, I'm not a fan of preemptively blocking meta on instance level, especially when everyone was touting about how the fediverse is corporation resistant and by design it is resilient because of it's horizontal nature, but at the first sign of threat they resort to the nuclear option.
Having said that, Lemmy specifically lacks tools on the user level, especially blocking instances. If a user doesn't want to associate at all that is understandable (privacy concerns, not wanting to interact with hate groups, etc) but right now they can only block communities and users individually, which would make it impossible to block meta.
Lastly, I feel there are avenues that haven't been properly explored, like forcing them to open source if they want to federate. (On the grounds of privacy concerns and security) In practice that would be the same as blocking them, but it would laid out a good foundation for new companies that want to enter the space without having to discriminate on a case by case basis.
Problem is that blocking is the nuclear option and everyone blovking before something comes out, which no one knows the danger yet like a hate speach platform would entail, goes against the spirit of the fediverse.
My reason for preemptively blocking Threads is much simpler - Lemmy exposes a TON of data from all instances. I simply don't want to feed the data hog any more than absolutely necessary.
But a counter is that much of that information is already public and can be scraped, they aren't gaining much on outside meta users that they aren't already able to do.
Best advice at the end of the day is that for social media, unless advertised on privacy, never post anything you dont want to be public. And for cases like lemmy, expect even metadata to be available for anyone interested.
I understand the wish to not interact with meta, even if its for privacy concerns.
But Im a firm believer that it is the user first who needs to make that decision, not the instance. But as I said, Lemmy being the only one of the big fedi platforms right now that doesnt have a feature for instance/domain blocking user level kinds of screws this up.
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The first thing that will happen if Thread user trying to brigade Mastodon is Mastodon will defederate Thread, and that's the end of the story.
Rochko didn't sound that trigger-happy in his blog post from yesterday and he's (the Mastodon team) running some of the biggest instances. And so I think it's still an open question which instances would defederate and when. Maybe mastodon.social won't defederate ever. That'll cause a massive split.
I have to agree, that blog post was concerning in its openness to Meta joining ActivityPub. Any fediverse user who knows a little internet history should be very worried right now
They already have been lol. The whole fedi is up in arms about it and it's already dominated the conversation without any algorithm!
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What does EEE stand for?
Embrace, extend, extinguish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
For an excellent writeup how Google used this to kill XMPP read this (and an explanation why this is a real concern for Mastadon/Fediverse):
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
It's the three steps process for killing an open source competitor. First you adopt it, start using it, then you improve on it, but keep these improvements to yourself, then you break compatibility.
You now have the bigger better version of the exact same thing, and no-one else gets a slice.
Endorse-Expand-Extingush or some variation. In essence you:
- Adopt the technologies.
- Expand within the community and inflate user interaction.
- Cut off the free elements / monopolise the platform
You'll see loads of historic examples of this and various theories on how Meta intends to do it. Fascinating if not depressing reading.
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I read somewhere that all the Admins are blocking Facebook on a firewall level so that they can't touch any instance. Hope all Admins do it.
I can see a lawsuit down the line targeting the big lemmy/mastodon instances. I don’t know how it will work but corporations will come up with some sort of discrimination claim if they are not allowed to be federated.
I don’t see this winning, but I do see SLAPP suits and harassment bring an issue for our administrators. You also have to consider LEO investigations and cybersecurity requirements. This is something folks need to understand and harden themselves for now, or get out of the game.
You forgot one E, Enshittify ;)
Man I was actually excited for threads. Then I had to see EVERYONE without the option to just see things I followed. Then it sucked immediately.
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