this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Fediverse

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In my understanding of the main principles of the Fediverse, federating with any large corp should never even be considered. Is my understanding wrong? What is the "idea of the fediverse" to you? (self.fediverse)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Mikina to c/[email protected]
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There is one argument I've seen missing in most of the de/federation discussions, that I think should be mentioned, and warrants it's own discussion.

I've seen a lot of people mentioning that defederating with Meta means we have broken the promise of Fediverse, that you can use one account to interact with whatever service you choose, and that it should be inclusive.

But I don't agree that's the main idea. There is something that's more important, and to make sure I'm not misinterpreting it, I'll just directly quote various websites about the Fediverse I've found (I was just taking top results for Fediverse on DuckDuckGo, but I did select only the parts that are the most important point for me personally). But I do concur, I was not able to find a single source of truth, and I'm not really sure how credible the resources are, so please disagree with me if it's wrong or I've chosen some no-name site that just matched my rethorics.

https://www.fediverse.to/ has the following sentence as the main hero header:

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

Another search result is for fediverse.party, which has the following quite in https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/ :

Fediverse (also called Fedi) has no built-in advertisements, no tricky algorithms, no one big corporation dictating the rules. Instead we have small cozy communities of like-minded people.

The page also mentions some link for knowledge about the fediverse. Some of them are only tutorials about how to join, but there's also https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_the_Fediverse%3F , with the following part:

How does it compare to traditional social media?

...

Morals

  • Traditional social media is neither social nor media. It is not made for you, it is made to exploit you and it is full of misleading ads and fake news.
  • This is because the aim of traditional social media is to make a whole lot of money.
  • The aim of the Fediverse is to benefit the people.
  • The aim of traditional social media is to control and steer the users.
  • The aim of the Fediverse is to empower the users to control the Fediverse.

I wasn't able to find more websites directly about the fediverse, and I did not want to quote random articles. But for completion sake, here is a list of FAQ/About sections of websites that are about the Fediverse, but don't directly support or imply the point of view I was trying to make (one that can be best summarized by the Morals in the last quite):

The split seems to be 50:50, but at least for my DuckDuckGo search results, the https://www.fediverse.to/ is the first result you find, and that one is pretty clear about what Fediverse should be. I wanted to start a discussion about what do the users here see as a main selling point of the fediverse, and whether morals and non-profit nature of the instances is important to most of the users as it is to me, or whether you'd rather have interconnectness and inclusivness.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

If thr Fediverse really is decentralized and open-source, then all of those other things are just suggestions. Nothing is stopping Meta (or me, or you) from launching an instance that has ads, investors, and sells all its data to people, whether that data comes from that instance or is discovered through federation.

But this will be a test of the protocols that underpin the Fediverse. I've read that the devs were extremely paranoid, and made sure that a bare minimum of personally identifying information is exposed between servers. The whole point of this is posting publically, after all, so some info needs to be exchanged. Meta already has access to our public posts just by scraping the instance, they don't need to federate to do that. But is there anything more leaking out through Federation? We're about to find out.

[–] Mikina 3 points 1 year ago

Nothing is stopping Meta (or me, or you) from launching an instance that has ads, investors, and sells all its data to people, whether that data comes from that instance or is discovered through federation.

You are right, they are only suggestions. But suggestions I would really like to se enforced, and that is exactly what defederation is for. If we want to uphold the values mentioned in the quote, and not let our content be monetized through federation, then defederating with those who don't uphold the values is the solution. It's as simple as that.

Meta already has access to our public posts just by scraping the instance, they don’t need to federate to do that.

While they don't have to federate to do that, federation makes it a lot easier, because the content is served right to them. It also legitimizes them monetizing and stealing our content, because after all - that's how the protocol works. While scraping for content is much more effort and grey-zone, since then they also have to somehow show it to the users - by impersonating us? By using fake accounts or bots? Probably, but that's still more effort. And that's what I take issue with. Meta would decide how is our content shown, they would be monetizing it and they would be using it to manipulate with their users (because as far as I know, the instance you are on is in full control of the UI, and the order in which content is shown and how), or watch and analyze how users interact with it. And I want no part in that, in spirit of the above mentioned suggestions.

[–] lowleveldata 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The promise of Fediverse is that it is decentralised. Allowing each instance has its own policy is part of that.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The current matter with Meta is that they have bad intentions towards the fediverse

https://infosec.pub/post/400702

And even if you don't have Threads app installed, Meta is also a privacy threat to fediverse users. If there are fediverse instances that are still federated with Meta.

Ross Schulman, senior fellow for decentralization at digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that if Threads emerges as a massive player in the fediverse, there could be concerns about what he calls “social graph slurping." Meta will know who all of its users interact with and follow within Threads, and it will also be able to see who its users follow in the broader fediverse. And if Threads builds up anywhere near the reach of other Meta platforms, just this little slice of life would give the company a fairly expansive view of interactions beyond its borders.

https://www.wired.com/story/meta-threads-privacy-decentralization/

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Assuming the fediverse becomes mainstream one thing I hope to actually see is that existing company forums start to join the fediverse.

Think if you no longer needed to login to EA's website to post about bugs to the Sims. Or if Prusa's 3d printer community forums could also be found right here... Or any other existing community help forum.

The problem though is, that in order to get there, Meta and others have to bring the users and essentially show the way first.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I'd much rather be in a server that protects my rights but at the same time allows me to keep in contact with whoever I want to, instead of whoever the fucking admin decides for me

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for your thoughts. I would say that federated means decentralized in the first place. But to me it is also important that everybody can start an instance, users can switch from instance and you need to be able to control whith whom you connect. That means no forced algorithm. Being able to connect to other types of social media via something like activitypub is also high on my list. I disagree that the fediverse needs to be not-for-profit by definition. Bluesky is a for profit company and it has it’s own activitypub-like protocol. Is it part of the fediverse or not? Personally I prefer the not-for-profit fediverse and donate to several small instances monthly. I enjoy these communities that are not driven by profit, but by idealism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for mentioning your donating. Reminded me to go and get that set up!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I think the solution for those against defederating with meta is to have accounts on instances in both fediverses and merge the feeds.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would make a simpler and more objective rule: no instance should host more than (say) 25% of active user accounts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That's a useful health check, but not a useful rule for de-federation. It's more a sign that we have become lopsided and need to correct in other ways.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is no "should be" when it comes to tools. Only what people use them for.

The bits about "ad-free" were clearly because who the hell would've thought Facebook of all companies would pop into the ActivityPub scene? I'm sure they would adjust that statement now.

[–] Mikina 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But fediverse isn't only a tool, but also a network and thus, a community. And a vision is pretty important for communities. So the question about what should be the main values and ideals behind the fediverse are important. If we would be only here because the fediverse is a tool - a social network - then there is a lot of better alternatives, with more content and better user experience. I mean, unless you want to talk about some super-controversial topics that would get you banned, there's not really that much of a difference in how limited are you in the way you interact with Reddit, Facebook or Twitter, apart from the UI being a little bit more difficult.

And letting any other big player into the fediverse will only lead to them eventually bringing the difficulties in, as has been already mentioned in other posts - by extending ActivityPub, and using their teams to create difficult to implement but really handy features that any FOSS will have difficulties with implementing, causing them to be inferior and bringing people over to them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This federation stuff is nothing new. Nobody calls emailing a network, they call it a tool. That is what ActivityPub is. This culture of glorification surrounding "federation" is silly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One of the things that's very funny to me is when free speech absolutists confidently assert that defederation, a standard practice and indispensable tool of the fediverse, is inherently tragic and destructive, and that people who don't want to be in federation with the worst people and entities imaginable should leave and start their own protocol. (It would actually make more sense for those folks to leave and start their own platform where it's impossible to defederate.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It might be standard practice, but it is somewhat bad in that it destroys potential value. This does not mean that it is net negative, just that defederation is a cost.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The idea of the fediverse to me is a multiplicity of policies allowing users to pick a community that behaves as they would like. It allows for experimentation by communities and users.

Just like having many states under one Federal government, where people can travel and immigrate between them without walls, but which each have their own way of doing things.

This isn’t “for” or “against” federating with Meta. It’s for providing each community the option to choose this for itself, and to not require the other communities to do the same.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Decentralization to me is instance to instance communication. I don't see it as necessarily being anti-corporate, just lacking centralization. Sites like Twitter and Reddit are popular because of the content, not the site themselves. With decentralization, content is more powerful and I can access it from any instance. Even if I'm federated with a big corp website, it gives me more content and it pulls more people and community into decentralization. I see it as a win-win. More users are better to my, I really don't care the instance, I just want content.

[–] Mikina 1 points 1 year ago

I agree that decentralization isn't anti-corporate. I would even say that it has nothing to do with your motives for doing it. But I'm hoping that the consensus that is reached about what Fediverse should be will include focus on being anti-corporate, and stay in the realm of community-owned and non-profit. Actually, I don't mind being for-profit, or even ads that are respectful, as long as it's not manipulating with users in any way based on their data, for example though the content they are shown. DuckDuckGo would be the best example - you get static search results, nothing is "personalized", and the ads you get are related to your current search only. No ML models exploiting you as much as they can. That's what I imagine under "privacy-centric"

And unfortunately, this disqualifies almost every larger company.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't even know what Fediverse means, and at this point I'm too afraid to ask

[–] Mikina 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I didn't research it too in depth, but from the quick understanding I have about it, it works something like this:

Fediverse is just a name for servers that implement the protocol ActivityPub. The protocol defines a way how different servers should share data and interact with eachother.

For example, you have Mastodon, which has decided to implent a Twitter-like social network. Or Lemmy, that implemented Reddit-like social network, or the Pixelwhatever, that implements a picture sharing service.

When someone hosts an instance of the social network, you use it just like you would a normal social network. But in addition to that, ActivityPub protocol defines a way how can the servers talk to eachother - how they share data. So a user of i.e lemmy.ml can ask their home instance "can you let me subscribe to posts from programming.dev community?", and the instance will use the protocol to start fetching posts from there, to show to the user, while also sending back comments the user makes on said treads.

It would also be possible to connect Mastodon with Lemmy - assuming that some kind of UI is created that would handle the difference in type of content. But the ActivityPub protocol gives them a common language about how to interact. So if a Mastodon creates a special post type for Lemmy posts, users can start requesting "Hey, can you get me posts from this Lemmy instance?", and it will be able to get them though ActivityPub and then somehow show it to them.

A fediverse is just a network of servers that are allowed to talk to eachother. If Meta would join the Fediverse and we did not defederate with it, it would mean that Meta's servers can ask any instance to give them their content and let their users interact with it - but Meta will decide how is it shown. So Meta can riddle it with ads, run analytics about how are users interacting with the posts, scrape it for user data or simply use the content we have as a way how to kickstart their platform that noone would want to use in the first place.

So, defederation just means "I don't want to talk to you, and I will not give you any data."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the detailed information. From the sounds of it it's starting to sound like web segregation, would that be the right takeaway?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Fediverse is to lemmy/kbin/mastodon what reddit is to reddit or meta to Facebook/Instagram/threads.

[–] Mikina 2 points 1 year ago

I've though about it some more and I have realized something - while I definitely don't want Meta to have any access to my content, so I will simply not be interacting with any instance that won't defederate, if it would allow me to message people on Messenger with my account on a random federated server, I'll be all in - but only use the instance for messaging. Which reminds me that I don't really know how interconnected are Threads with the rest of Meta ecosystem - will you be able to message someone on Facebook from Threads? As far as I know, I don't even think you can message someone on Instagram from Messenger, unless they have a FB account - at least I never managed to do that.

So I'm 90% sure that will never happen.

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