((I’m not an expert, I’ve been reading up on things as much as I can. If there’s an error, I’ll happily correct it!))
TLDR:
- Nearly all of us distrust Meta and have the same broader goals
- We need to pick the best move to go against powerful companies like Meta
- Defederation may not be the right move, and it might even help Meta move forward (and more easily perform EEE)
- There are other options that we can spend our energy on
- It doesn’t matter for Lemmy (yet), this is more a conversation for Mastodon, Firefish and Kbin
We’ve been getting a LOT of posts on this, but the misconceptions make it harder for us to decide what to do. If we’re going to try and protect the Fediverse against large, well funded companies like Meta, figuring out the right action is important. We need to actually look at the options, consider the realistic outcomes, and plan around that.
I’m willing to bet around 95% of users on Lemmy and Mastodon CHOSE to be here because we understand the threat Meta/Facebook poses, and we want to do something about it. That’s not in question here.
So in that sense, please be kind to the other user you are replying to. The vast majority of us share the same goal here. When we disagree, we disagree on the best path forward and not the goal. Wanting to stay federated DOES NOT mean the user wants to help Meta or thinks that Meta is here for our benefit.
Misconception: Defederation will hinder Meta’s EEE
It might, but not necessarily, and it might even help the EEE. Here’s a link to some history of EEE, what it means, and some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish. I’d recommend at least skimming it because it’s interesting (and because this isn’t the only fight)
Assuming Meta is doing an EEE move, they’re in the embrace stage. That’s not about us embracing them, it’s about them embracing the protocol, which they can do whether we stay federated or not.
Defederation can tell newcomers that the defederated instance is an island, and they’re better off joining the place where they can talk to their friends and see the content they want. We saw this early during the Reddit exodus with Beehaw, where many users hopped instances away from Beehaw.
Meta can more easily embrace if more people actively use their platform. They can more easily extend if we’re not around to explain why extending is a poisonous action. Being federated can allow us to encourage users to ditch Meta’s platform and join an open one (ex. Mastodon, Firefish, etc.)
Misconception: Defederation is the only move
Defederation is the first option that comes to mind. It sounds simple, it is loud and newsworthy, and it can be done with the click of a mouse. But if it is a bad action, then what are the good actions?
- Don’t let them have a monopoly over the use of ActivityPub. Grow the other platforms: The extend stage only works when the platform gets a near monopoly over use of the standard. That brings up the first action. If there are enough users, services and resources on things like Mastodon/Lemmy, then Meta (or any other company) can’t just extend the spec without causing their users to ditch Threads to stay connected to the content they want to see.
- Reach out to organizations in your area or line of work. Help them join Mastodon or other relevant Fediverse platforms. I’m sure the for-profit companies put money into this process, so brainstorm and reach out
- Add your Fediverse accounts to the bio of your other accounts, and share posts from the Fediverse elsewhere
As long as there is a healthy community away from Meta (ex. what we have right now), then they can’t extend & extinguish.
- Protect the Standards and share why it is important
- Share posts from experts about strict adherence to standards, support regulatory and legal advocacy (interoperability requirements etc.), and educate other users about the risks.
(I didn’t want to say more here because I’m not an expert, I’m happy to edit more points in)
Misconception: We should still defederate because of Privacy Risks
Not necessarily (and likely not at all?)
Meta is notorious for gathering data and then abusing that data, so this is an issue to consider. However, the way that activitypub works, the outgoing data is publicly available. Defederating with Meta doesn’t prevent that, and federating doesn’t give them any more data than they could get otherwise.
Misconception: Lemmy instances need to decide
This is a big point: It doesn’t really matter for Lemmy right now, one way or another.
It’s more of an issue when data starts coming IN to Lemmy from Mastodon and Meta’s Threads (or out from Lemmy to Threads). See below
Edit to add: For now it might even be good to defederate from Lemmy as a symbolic gesture. My instance is defederated, and I don’t plan on trying to change that. Ultimately it doesn’t change much
Legitimate risks from Federation with Meta, and more effective ways to counter them
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Algorithmic Amplification: Meta’s history of using algorithms that prioritize engagement can amplify harmful or divisive content. These algorithms are not public like it is with Mastodon and other FOSS platforms.
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Misinformation and Content Moderation: All Fediverse platforms will have to work on content moderation and misinformation. Platforms like Meta, focussed on profit and advertising, will likely moderate in a way that protects their income. Those moderation decisions will be federated around.
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Commercialization and User Exploitation: Meta’s for-profit nature means it’s incentivized to maximize user engagement, at the expense of our well-being.
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Additional Data on how the free fediverse interacts with their platform (this one is harder to make a counter for)
Counters:
- Promote user control over their feeds, and develop USEFUL but safe and open algorithms for the feeds
- Flag content and users from risky platforms, with a little warning icon and explanation (ex. ‘Content is from a for-profit platform, and it may ___’)
- Implement features so that users can opt in or opt out from seeing content from risky platforms. In particular on explore/discover/public feeds, so it doesn’t affect content the user is following.
- Develop strict community guidelines that can get Meta (and other companies) sent into the ‘blocked by default’ bins mentioned above. (edit: There’s a good point here that if Meta’a Threads is full of hatred or poor moderation, then blocking them is the right move)
Final point: Evaluate things critically. Don’t even just take my word for it. I doubt Meta or other groups care enough about Lemmy yet to spread disinformation here, and every post I’ve seen promoting defederation feels like a good faith attempt for something they believe in. But it’s still worth thinking about what we’re supporting.
Sometimes what feels like a good move might not help, and could even make things worse.
This entire argument is bullremoved. Meta needs to be an island from our perspective. Let them do their thing over there, we’ll do our thing over here. Their goal is to lure (probably former reddit or twitter) users to Threads and then cut off the greater Fediverse as a whole once their user base is established and much larger than ours. And they want to use our numbers to boost their for profit platform to make it appear more successful.
Separation from these kinds of corporate entities is exactly what the Fediverse is about. We can talk about “open” all we like but there is already a short list of bad actors we don’t allow here: Nazis and fascists, pedos and kiddie diddlers, etc. We can add Meta to that list as well.
We don’t want them interacting with us at all. Get out the hammer and ban them. Entirely.
I’ll add an edit to say this: I say that defederation is not extreme enough. They need to be blocked. Instances need to implement ToS and licensing that prohibits them from hoovering up and regurgitating our content. We need to start outright blocking Meta at the network level. Whatever the hell it takes. Line in the sand. No means no.
No Meta. Ever.
Think of this: In the past, we have never had any choice other than to roll over and accept whatever bullremoved the major social media companies push on us. If you want to communicate, if you want to use any platform, if you want to be in, you had to deal with them and their system. Because they were big and you were little, and what are you going to do about it? You have no choice but to roll over.
Well, we don’t have to roll over anymore. We have this one – and believe me, only this one – opportunity to unequivocally tell them NO. We are not your product. You have no value to us. You aren’t a monopoly anymore. We do not need your corporate influence, we do not need your corporate bullremoved. We are free of you, and we don’t need you.
Another edit: Oh, look. What do I find right at the top of my feed first thing this morning? Why, it’s yet another example of Meta being evil. And you still want them to have influence in the Fediverse?
As an instance owner I have defederated preemptively from threads. I take the same logic as ‘dont do a deal with the devil’ or ‘dont negotiate with terrorists’. Sure maybe you get lucky and win some but the odds are stacked against you. Instead I am more interested in cultivating slowly what lemmy is as a platform without some companies influence. We are doing ok right now. Ae are slowly growing right now. The only reason they are interested in us is because they see the potential. We dont need them to foster that potential. Lets focus on doing this on our own. For better or worse, at least we can say we did it our way for what we ultimately believed in if we stand on our own and do it.
And as an aside. I dont need a seconder to agree with me or tell me this is the right decision. I have done enough and seen enough in my life to make this call on my own and stand by that decision. Its not relevant to me if anyone agrees with it.
Well, I agree with it anyway. So there.
This is the way.
Plus, it’s your instance so it’s your call.
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And that’s part of the point, as well: There are tons of people on here putting forth the effort to post content on a deliberately non-corporate platform, to make lemmy.world a great place – as well as other instances.
Meta is a for profit company. Everything they do is to turn a dollar. Rest assured, they would not have any intention of attempting to integrate with the Fediverse if they did not have some plan to make money off of it. And I for one do not consent to Meta and/or their advertisers profiting off of the work and content I have posted outside of their platform.
We should 100% promote more stuff here, that doesn’t take away from the points above
I agree to an extent, but that won’t stay the case if other good people making high quality content choose the other platform because it’s not closed off.
I think that’s a legitimate risk to worry about
The content creators here are mostly former reddit content creators, we’re sick of corporations abusing our good will.
Their goal is to lure (probably former reddit or twitter) users to Threads
Their goal is to take users from Twitter, and by doing that they are opening the opportunity to get users from Twitter to the Fediverse.
There has to be at least one major news org who is looking at this and thinking “well, if Threads does bring a few hundred million people to the Fediverse, we’ll be able to drop Twitter and integrate our CMS with the Fediverse like Wordpress.”
The ToS part sounds good, and I was looking into something like that a while back.
As for the rest, could you share which parts of the argument is unfounded, or why it’s “entirely BS”?
Not to be hostile, but this is the kind of comment I’m talking about above.
- I absolutely despise Meta too, I’m trying to figure out the best way to limit their effects on the Fediverse and keep growing the good thing we have. As much as I want to do the big symbolic action, it feels performative and ineffective at best.
- It’s not really former Reddit users they’re after but rather Twitter. Lemmy is still separated and it doesn’t matter for us either way (for now)
The notion that anyone should interact with Meta at all is enough. You lost me right after that part. Anything after that is just meaningless apologetic noise for the sake of appearing nuanced. That’s the bullremoved.
No means no. Never means never. No Meta. The extremism, the “big symbolic action,” it’s all warranted. Block them. Block them forever.
P.s. You’re allowed to use cuss words on the internet. Tell your friends!
The notion that anyone should interact with Meta at all is enough. You lost me right after that part.
Maybe keep reading the rest because there IS nuance to this. I hate Facebook and think that sticking our heads in the sand will help them win. If those other platforms that died to EEE just blocked and ignored the incoming threat, they’d have died even faster.
P.s. You’re allowed to use cuss words on the internet. Tell your friends!
I didn’t write out ‘bullremoved’ because I’m on mobile now and it was a fewer letters
No, there isn’t. This is the clearest case of black vs. white you’re going to experience all week. Blocking Meta is not “sticking our heads in the sand.” There is literally no benefit for us allowing them to integrate with any of our explicitly non-corporate platforms. But there is a huge (and in their eyes profitable) benefit for them. If there weren’t, they wouldn’t try. So answer me this, what do we actually stand to gain?
Bots? Misinformation? Having our content redisplayed on Threads for profit? Ads? Corporate accounts spamming us incessantly? Corporate moderators, corporate instances, corporate communities where all the messaging is controlled? Having our content used to train AI’s? This is all the crap we escaped when moving here, rather than using the existing social media network products. What, is Mark Zuckerberg going to cut instance operators a check to help with their overhead expenses for all the content he’ll steal? Don’t make me laugh. You can see posts that were made on Threads? If anyone actually wanted that, they’d just use Threads to begin with.
The argument is that Meta integration will allow the Fediverse to become “mainstream.” Well, Lemmy and Mastadon are already doing just fine without Meta. They will continue to do just as fine without them in the future, barring any catastrophic reddit style administrative removedups on any major instance(s). Meanwhile, there is enormous risk in allowing Meta to have their way with us, our platform, and our content. None of the other hot air matters one bit no matter how it’s phrased. It will be much healthier as a whole for Fediverse platforms to grow organically without corporate (and frankly, evil) influence. And if that means they remain smaller communities now or even forever that’s okay.
The openness of the “open web” stops precisely before bad actors are allowed to co-opt it for evil purposes. Companies like Meta always have as their end goal a closed walled garden for their users remain trapped in to have profit extracted from them. Well, let them have it – on their own, without us. We need to set the precedent that those of us who give enough of a removed to use Fediverse platforms in the first place cannot be bought or sold. They’ll talk about “openness” now but I guarantee you the design is for that to be a one way street.
No means no.
Never means never.
No Meta means no Meta.
Nothing else needs to be said on the subject.
There is literally no benefit for us allowing them to integrate with any of our explicitly non-corporate platforms
Source?
But there is a huge (and in their eyes profitable) benefit for them.
Again, source? "If there weren’t, they wouldn’t try. " is a bit weird, when the reason is so painfully obvious and relates to EU regulation and wanting to pre-empt any issues by showing interoperability and an open protocol. If you know of profit-based use cases beyond that, do share the sources please.
What are the benefits?
Of providing sources? Generally that whatever argument you’re making cannot be trivially discarded because it is based on unproven assumptions and hypothesis. That doesn’t mean the argument is making a wrong point, rather that the argument is invalid as an argument.
That is to say, defederation might be the right conclusion, but as OP hints at, not for the reasons commonly stated around Lemmy or Mastodon because those make assumptions about what Meta is doing, why they are doing it, and more importantly, how being defederated affects them.
No means no. Never means never. No Meta. The extremism, the “big symbolic action,” it’s all warranted. Block them. Block them forever.
Interesting. Did you know that just recently a major social media site took such an extreme stance against third party apps? Blocked them forever?
A FOR PROFIT company blocked their users from using helpful tools is not the same and you know it.
and then cut off the greater Fediverse as a whole once their user base is established and much larger than ours.
I have bad news for you, then. Or good news, or whatever. Threads already has 160 million users. I thought one of the talking points was that Threads was going to overwhelm the Fediverse when it connected?
We don’t want them interacting with us at all.
Don’t speak for everyone. The whole point of the Fediverse is that everyone can have different opinions and nobody can unilaterally cut someone else out of it.
If you don’t want to interact with Threads, there are plenty of instances that have already defederated and lots of clients allow users to block by instance. You don’t have to. But if someone else does want to engage with Threads users, you shouldn’t try to stop that.
Threads already has 160 million users.
That’s weird, these numbers aren’t taken into account on that graph: Threads’ user base has plummeted more than 80%. Meta’s app ended July with just 8 million daily active users.
But any way you want to compare Threads activity/uses to Lemmy’s… It’s pretty obvious that Threads is already way bigger which was the main point I’d imagine.
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even if no kne, for all practical purposes, on the end is posting, they’ll have 1000x the content.
I’ve said in other reply in other post, but many people believes Meta doesn’t harm to fediverse or they can’t analyze our posts, comments, upvotes/downvotes when accounts from Threads interact with us. 🤷
They can analyze our posts, comments, and upvotes/downvotes without there being any Threads integration at all. This is an open protocol and we’re posting in public.
Yeah that’s the part people miss. “They’ll harvest the data!” … oh noes? They’ll read the public data. How shocking. I am truly without words.
(Also, people should not post things publically if they don’t expect that information to be, well, public)
I fully agree that it doesn’t matter for Lemmy right now. The issue is mostly Mastodon and Kbin, as both compete directly with Threads; and in a smaller scale Friendica, Matrix and PixelFed as they compete with FB/WhatsApp/IG.
The main reason why I support defederation is to not have users in Mastodon relying on contacts and content from Threads at all. Because, once Threads pulls off the plug (eventually they will want to), Mastodon won’t be some small but stable network; it’ll be a shrinking one, and that’s way worse.
Because, once Threads pulls off the plug (eventually they will want to), Mastodon won’t be some small but stable network; it’ll be a shrinking one, and that’s way worse.
I don’t think that’s effective.
Scenerio: federated
Mastodon users stay on Mastodon, but interact with Threads. Threads eventually pulls the plug on federation. Assuming Threads ever reached critical mass, a vast amount of mastodon users now create threads accounts and move over, because well, their social circle is there.Scenario: defederated
Assuming threads gains critical mass, a vast majority of mastodon users now create threads accounts and move over, because well, their social circle is there.The impetus is the social engagement. Social media without the social is not really useful, so if all their friends are on platform xyz, they’ll use platform xyz. It does not matter in the slightest (at least, at scale!) what that platform is. WhatsApp, iMessage, vBulletin, Reddit, whatever. Sure, splintergroups exist but their of ignorable size either way, meaning the people who are currently sticking to Mastodon would not move fully over to threads in either scenario - that’s why they’re here right now, basically.
I’m more worried about the load if it truly gets big and mastodon and threads interact a lot, tbh.
The difference is the same as between boiling a frog* by throwing it in hot water, versus throwing it in cold water and heating it slowly.
In the defederated scenario, people resist to ditch Mastodon and go to Threads, for ideological reasons. The only ones who’d do it are the ones who are pissed at Twitter alone, and short-sighted enough to not realise that the issue with Twitter applies to traditional social media as a whole.
In the federated scenario, however, that resistance has been slowly degraded. Because Mastodon users are already interacting with Threads users, forging social bonds with them, and they’ll try to avoid to lose those bonds.
I’m more worried about the load if it truly gets big and mastodon and threads interact a lot, tbh.
I’m a bit worried about this, too. You toot something, it gets insanely popular, and now Threads users hug your instance to death, the old Slashdot effect.
*inb4 boiled frogs are bad science, but a good analogy.
Fair, although to
The only ones who’d do it are the ones who are pissed at Twitter alone, and short-sighted enough to not realise that the issue with Twitter applies to traditional social media as a whole.
in particular I would as usual argue that such a large proportion of social media users aren’t into it (“it” being socialization via digital media) for ideological reasons that they functionally drown out all other reasons. It’s not a bad reason, I just don’t think it’s going to even show up in any statistic.
This is another good point, and I’m not sure how best to fix that. It’s so hard to get people to swap platforms, and I suspect Meta will put money into getting key people on their platform.
The flagging thing might help? HCI and social networks are so nebulous that it’s hard to predict what might happen. I’m not totally confident on my stance either, just that there’s nuance here
I think we should encourage politicians, governments and public figures to either self host or use non-threads instances. That way, Threads cannot easily shut off AP support or screw around too badly or their own content will decline.
Right now, social.bbc is a thing. Hopefully when threads launches activitypub, they’d notice that having a presence on both threads and their own instance is pointless, and prefer their own instance
The EU also has an official Mastodon instance:
Damn, @EU_Comission has 90000+ followers, nice.
I think we should encourage politicians, governments and public figures to either self host or use non-threads instances. That way, Threads cannot easily shut off AP support or screw around too badly or their own content will decline.
Yes to this and defederate as well.
Why defederate though? All that will accomplish is preventing Threads users from seeing their message, effectively silencing the journalist on Threads before Facebook has a chance to.
They don’t care about our cause that much. They have other reasons we can use to convince them. Also, defederating isn’t the main goal here. The main goal is to stop Meta from doing Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Because it will make Meta reliant on ActivityPub, so they cannot pull the ActivityPlug
It would be great, but Threads has said that their plans are that people will have to opt in to federation. So if they follow through, why would politicians (or the others you mention) prefer to be on an instance where they only get access to a fraction of Threads’ huge audience?
It would push threads to have federation to be Opt-out
Why would Threads want to do that? Opt-in is better for their users from a privacy and safety perspective, and it’s better for their business because it makes migration harder. And if Threads doesn’t do that, politicians et al care more about reaching a large audience than about pushing Threads to try to change their mind.
Im pretty sure meta give zero removeds about joining the fediverse beyond trying to destroy it. I imagine they only started threads to nullify it by either proving it doesnt work (threads looks pretty garbage) or they want to control the content where mainstream fediverse will never take off.
Im here because i liked reddit but hated being a product. Meta/facebook was zero percent of that initial switch calculation as i havent been on their stuff for nearly a decade. The api shutdown ay the alien site was the last straw. I dont want to interact or give data to facebook/meta. Just my two cents.
I want to throw this into the mix, but something that kept getting ignored early on during the reddit departure was the implications of defederation on how that effects networked systems.
It’s part of the math of social graphs, but bad faith instances and teolling, severely impacted Lemmy’s initial ability to catch on. By defederaring you massively reduced the total size of the network interactions that take place ( even if it’s very important to do so ).
This has the potential to allow meta controlled instances to rapidly out populate non meta controlled instances. From there it’s only a matter of time before they end up with a seat on the activity hub team. Then we’re back where we started.
Won’t the amount of users using meta effectively be a ddos attack on the smaller instances though?
Also, why is meta freaking out so hard about instances defederating if it isn’t an issue for them? I haven’t seen this much gaslighting since 2015 & 2019 days.
Won’t the amount of users using meta effectively be a ddos attack on the smaller instances though?
Nope, because Threads users will be visiting Threads, not sh.tijust.works (or mastodon.social or whatever). So even if 10,000,000 Threads accounts decide to follow a single mastodon.social account, that account’s instance only syncs it with Threads, not every single user.
why is meta freaking out so hard
Unless I missed something, they’re not. I’m pretty sure they haven’t commented on the topic whatsoever.
that account’s instance only syncs it with Threads
Which could still be millions?
Unless I missed something, they’re not. I’m pretty sure they haven’t commented on the topic whatsoever.
LMAO, I don’t think you missed something. There sure are a LOT of people that really want meta here with no benefits listed and only vague reasons why the other is wrong, that sound a lot like sway techniques. There are a few libertarians too, but mostly the first one.
Which could still be millions?
AFAIK, there is only one Threads.net
no benefits
I hate and don’t trust Meta, so the main benefit for me would be the ability to follow Threads users from my nonprofit, ad free, tracker free, Mastodon account I already have. I don’t want an account with Meta.
I hate and don’t trust Meta, so the main benefit for me would be the ability to follow Threads users from my nonprofit, ad free, tracker free, Mastodon account I already have. I don’t want an account with Meta.
That is the first actual benefit I’ve seen, lol. I won’t be following any threads users, so it wouldn’t be a benefit. I also don’t know a single soul that is a threads user either.
AFAIK, there is only one Threads.net
That’s not how it works. When you’re federated together, you get a copy of every post on your server. Someone else said that that can be avoided, but I doubt threads will do anything in the other instance’s favor unless they get something out of it.
When you’re federated together, you get a copy of every post on your server.
Nope. Only followed accounts (or in Lemmy’s case, communities), and only toots (posts) made after the first user starts following it.
Right, we’re agreeing. That could still be millions even if the 160 million isn’t true.
Won’t the amount of users using meta effectively be a ddos attack on the smaller instances though?
I hadn’t really considered that. My primary concern was more around ‘outvoicing’ the non-threads based instances.
Basically, even a tiny fraction of their users being engaged would almost instantaneously be an extinction level event for what would become the “old” fediverse. De-federation early with problematic instances pretty much killed the growth the lemmy could have seen, even though I do agree it was important and necessary. Right now if I go to Top of 1 Hour on Lemmy.world, I only need to go 3-4 pages deep to have seen all the posts from all the federated instances that have been submitted in the past hour. Maybe 100-300 tops. Within that, the total number of comments in this corner of the fediverse is equally low, and I think we’re likely in some of the most active regions of the fediverse (although we’re kind-of flying blind).
If we assume even 1/10th or 1/100th the rate of engagement comparing a current lemmy user (which I think is not very charitable) to a future threads user, and if we assume we currently have around 70,000 active users (which again, not very charitable), they’ll only need 700,000 - 7,000,000 subscriptions to become “most” of the content on the fediverse. This is where the network interactions aspects becomes critical, because they instantly become superconnectedness in graph theory explains much of the emergent phenomena we see around things like post popularity and virality.
Basically, Meta can come in and swamp us with content through pure numbers, and if federated, there is nothing we can do to stop them. Likewise, if not federated, we’re relegated to a backwater position in the fediverse; it will become almost impossible for any non-threads based content to find its way to the top. This is fundamental to the math behind how these kinds of networks function. There is nothing you can do to stop it.
I’m not trying to be a pessimist. Like you I’m trying to be a realist about the implications of federating with meta and the considerations and consequences that come along with it. I’m more concerned around the implications when I look at it through a theoretical lens.
I don’t know what the answer is, but de-federation seems preferable to extinction.
before they end up with a seat on the activity hub team. Then we’re back where we started.
There is no activity pub team. There is an informal group discussing enhancements at https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks but anybody can join that and submit proposals. Any nobody is required to accept or implement those proposals. I have joined the forum and submitted a proposal myself, but nobody has implemented it or even seems likely to.
Also, not blocking threads doesn’t make your instance a “meta controlled instance”. Meta has no power over any instance other than Threads. Even instances that don’t proactively block Threads can’t be forced to use any hypothetical Meta extensions to AP. And its really unlikely that people who started servers on a minuscule network (most likely for fun or philosophical reasons) are going to follow Meta’s lead just to have access to more people. Everyone who is here and everyone who started a server here knowingly did that on a network that is a tiny fraction of a percent of the size of other social networks; an increased userbase isn’t some big reward for fediverse server admins.
I’m ok with instances defederating because it gives them time to wait and see how to handle the influx and what other unknowns might happen, but I agree that it’s just not a strategy to stop EEE. We need to do more and do it smartly.
To me it’s like a trade war, we have a couple strategies we can do. Isolationism is one of few options that I can think of that has only failed historically. I’m ok with protectionism even better when it’s just reusable user protections, like automating ad blocks, sponsored content blocks/labels, etc, but also maybe we do things like not federation communities from Threads, definitely blocking anything that isn’t in the open spec.
Boomer yells at cloud, incoming. Skip it if you want. You have been warned.
I don’t want anything at all to do with Meta or their removedty soylent green, and I intend to block them for myself as a single user. I don’t want to tell anyone else what they need to do.
But anyone who is convinced that a company that thinks it’s cool to manipulate emotion and create depression in its users, whose users (plural) have even taken their own lives because of the deliberately unmoderated but manipulated engagement-boosting emotive filth that Meta panders as a matter of course – and I’m totally not even addressing how far they have gone to help undermine democracies and democratic processes – is a company to safely be involved with even casually, then all I can say is that I don’t think they’ve lived long enough.
We are all literally sitting around here hypothesizing about what Meta will and will not do on the Fediverse because all of us, down to the last Lemizen, already knows that Meta removeding lies and we can’t believe a removeding word out of their mouths, so we have to guess.
And we’re doing that without even blinking: notice how NO ONE, absoremovedinglutely NO ONE here, no matter how pro-Meta-federation they are, has suggested we ask Meta.
It’s because they already know. WE ALL ALREADY KNOW.
Goddamn, with this Meta removed I feel like I’m back in an abusive relationship where I have to stay three steps ahead of my partner just to be able to sleep at night, knowing there’s some removedery going on because there always is, because that’s what they do, but having no idea what it is, and not even bothering with wasting words on the fool because all I’ll get back is removed, and then on top of everything if I ask I’ll have to act like there’s even the tiniest bit of truth to be found in those words.
And on and on it goes.
Lol, no.
Meta isn’t looking at what the Fediverse will be at some future point and betting on margins; Meta is looking at what the Fediverse already IS and how it can be manipulated for fun and profit. It’s what they do.
And even the people here who don’t want to admit it in so many words already know that’s what Meta does, in the same way that the cutest cats are happy to kill birds and enjoy every second of the slaughter without the least remorse. It’s not a moral question. They do it because they’re cats.
Meta is in the business of processing and redistributing brain product, using that processed brain product to get more brain product, and also getting more data on those brains so as to force more brain product from them as well as display targeted advertising at those brains every waking moment, because that’s Meta. That is what Meta does.
We – the Fediverse, its users, our communities, our online relationships, our comments – are product. The only difference between us here and those on Threads is that WE did not choose THEM, they chose us. Why? Well, what is it they make over there? Oh, yeah. That. And we’re just more of it.
The morality of the removed Meta gets up to is only a question for people with morals, like those people and governments who have demanded that Meta answer for its actions and implement change, but morals are NOT what Meta does. Anyone thinking Meta et al will do anything but chew up and spit out whatever they find here, including the federation itself, is deluded.
We all know this too: notice how NO ONE here is demanding that Meta do anything differently. They won’t. The thought itself is laughable. But see how quickly and completely we have internalized it, to the point that no one has yet suggested that META change in order to be allowed to federate, or that pre-conditions be placed on their federation.
This post does at least address some of the false dichotomies involved, and that’s a start. There are always things a collective of users can do to throw wrenches into works; one thing we could do as a collective is restrict our copyrights differently than we do now. Will Meta honor that? No, of course not, but having a provable misdeed like that makes it easier to kick them out whenever their plans do become clear.
If I start putting “© ChunkMcHorkle 2023 - Not For Distribution by Meta Platforms, Inc./Threads.net” at the bottom of every one of my posts, skipping the whole ActivityPub federation protocol and instead specifically naming the for-profit corporate entity, and they distribute it anyway, that’s a tiny headache for them if I want it to be. What if all of us who don’t want Threads to republish our content do that? It’s a slightly bigger headache, but it’s something. Enough somethings and you’re too problematic to removed with. Why aren’t we thinking about these options?
Another thing is that our devs have gotten us this far; if they ever give us the ability to block by instance this almost becomes a non-issue. And so on. There are a lot of really bright folks here; we can come up with some good removed if we stop thinking the way Meta wants us to, in boxes made of false dichotomies and assumptions wherein we have no power.
Let any instance that wants to federate do so, and any user that wants to get that highly processed and curated fecal matter in their feed consume as much of it as they want. For myself, I’ll stay here on lemmy.world – I’m already here and I do not have to sort out the merits of one instance over another, which will be another consideration when Meta finds a way to SEO its place on join-lemmy.org and fill the first several pages with its own instances – and I will simply put threads.net and associated domains in the hosts file, find a way to personally block Meta content from anywhere else, even walk away if I have to, and be done with it.
But anyone who thinks a wolf will suddenly behave differently in the 99th henhouse it sets eyes on hasn’t lived long enough. This is Meta, and this is what Meta does. Meta ALREADY has a plan for the Fediverse as it exists today, we don’t know what it is yet but it will be as morality-free as all the rest of their activities, and anyone who participates does so at their own risk.
I think a lot of your post is spot on but one thing I do disagree with you on:
Meta doesn’t do anything “for fun” it does everything for profit. If their exec board thought that promoting well-being and good mental health was more profitable, meta would do that instead of the other removed you talk about. A minor nitpick of your post but I think it’s always worth bearing in mind that companies like meta are singularly motivated by greed.
Your point is well taken, and I thank you for the compliment, but it’s still just people in the C-suite, who started the business before they knew what direction it would take or even be successful at all, and who steer it now whether for good or for bad, whether for provocation or for supporting mental well-being. It’s the same business either way.
But over the last 20-ish years they’ve consistently steered the existing business in a very cruel direction, IMO.
And behind every cruelty for profit there’s a sociopath – or several – absolutely doing it for fun AND profit.
Do you really not think it gave some folks at Facebook a charge to be able to removed with the moods of thousands just by tweaking the algorithm?
There’s a certain point where inner values/morality stops those of us with a conscience from harming others lightly. The lines differ, but where there is a conscience the lines are present. When there is no working conscience, and those lines aren’t there (iow, sociopathy), others are no longer seen as fully human, or even human at all, and they just become fun toys to play with.
Like Facebook achieved with their algorithms, and their propagandistic elevation of provocative, angering, and even trauma-inducing posts, and the way they actively helped subvert the choices of millions of voters by trying, and succeeding, to bait them with radicalizing content.
Profit, yes. But it took a LOT of people to say yes to all that dehumanizing manipulation at Facebook/Meta that begins from a premise of not seeing humans participating on their platforms as worthy of courtesy and respect, much less their own human equals.
I don’t think I can be convinced that among all of them, there’s not a single one who didn’t get off on the sheer POWER of it all.
Zuckerberg is on record as thinking of Facebook users as dumb removeds, and he controls the corporate culture over there. It’s his knob the C-suite and layers of middle management are slobbering. If he doesn’t think users are human, or worthy of courtesy and respect, his well-placed minions won’t either, and in turn they too will hire those that fit in with that corporate philosophy.
Some of them are only pretending to love this . . . but many more aren’t pretending at all, and the ones who would have protested are long gone by now.
A small note: in 0.19 Lemmy has introduced the ability to defederate from instances on per-user base.
Now, when lemmy.world updates, you’ll be able to block Threads from your Settings.
Many instances already updated.
Many thanks!
Evaluate things critically, okay let’s do that.
Pros: Meta doesn’t exist here.
Cons:
I like your take. Unfortunately, I don’t see a way forward where Meta isn’t at least partially successful in extinguishing the fediverse. We’ll probably be fine, because we’re here now and our removed works, but the most likely scenario I see is in the future the common perception of fediverse microblogging apps will be, “oh, that place where users can never see when I’m using ___ feature.” Then it will be harder to attract new users, just like it was so hard for Firefox to attract users when sites were broken because of IE’s EEE tactics.
It’s not extinguishing, people just need to check their expectations.
It’s like when people blame Google for “extinguishing” XMPP. As if XMPP needed any help towards irrelevancy. It was perfectly fine of seeing itself out. If you’re small enough, you cannot prevent “socialisation” from congregation to someone else who is inherently bigger. The whole idea of social is to be, well, social.
Small setups can work fine for specialized environments (example: The current one right here) but they will only feel as if they are big due to a lack of alternatives. As soon as one rolls around (like when the criticial flood from digg to reddit happened) the smaller place becomes hyper-specialized and quite niche.
And that’s hardly special, or even requires an open-vs-commercial or federated-vs-not debate. That’s a very general thing in how we socialized. There’s a reason everyone konga-lines to the largest mastodon/lemmy instances.
I vote yes because I don’t want to see threads posts.
I’m mostly afraid of spam. I don’t mind if a company wants to advertise to their own user base, but I definitely don’t want to deal with spam from elsewhere. I hope the protocol addresses this in a way.
I’d like to see the fediverse embrace and extend, rather than meta.
Money is going to be involved at some point, better make the rules now before meta does.
Money is going to be involved at some point, better make the rules now before meta does.
That’s a really good point. Defederation might delay things, but should the fediverse as a concept take off, we will see big commercial players move in. One way or another. Need to be ahead of the game and regulate it.
Money is going to be involved at some point, better make the rules now before meta does.
Totally agreed
It’s harder to change things up once there are well known rules for how things should work.
I’m mostly afraid of spam. I don’t mind if a company wants to advertise to their own user base, but I definitely don’t want to deal with spam from elsewhere. I hope the protocol addresses this in a way.
Yea same. I’m not sure how, but it’ll only get worse once bigger ones move in. Maybe user curated filters like with uBlock? It might be hard to pick out the useful from the spam if there was a system that could be gamed
Well written, well said.
image was just for the thumbnail, hope it doesn’t distract from the message
It’s just about the only piece of AI art I’ve ever liked so well done
I like the picture.
Right? Really cool graphic
Wrong. degeneration might be the ONLY way to prevent Faceboom from pulling an EEE.
You just don’t invite a vampire into your house. Consider the nazi bar analogy.
degeneration might be the ONLY way to prevent Faceboom
So we should just start posting furry porn to try and scare them off?
Yes please!
The new 196 rule, you must post furry porn before signing out from Lemmy.
I like how amplified divisive content, misinformation and content moderation is the “legitimate” risks like it’s not already an issue here.
It’s a risk everywhere, but they are incentivized to act a certain way because of profit and advertising while other platforms can focus on fixing it without the potential conflict. We don’t need to pick between shareholder profits and what’s better for users
I’m not going to bat for Meta/Facebook.
But in my personal opinion, users choice is best for the users. If Threads ultimately has more and better content(because let’s face it, we’ve all seen LINUX BEATS WINDOWS IN 10 GAME TESTS! 100 different times already), users who want that content will have to create an account with Meta to access it. I’d rather use my Lemmy account and access Meta through that.
but again, just my opinion which ultimately doesn’t matter.
