I strongly encourage instance admins to defederate from Facebook/Threads/Meta.
They aren’t some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They’re a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:
- Helping enhance genocides in countries
- Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
- Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make “facebook” most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
- Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
- Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren’t able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
- Even now, they’re on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.
Yes, I know one of the Mastodon folks have said they’re not worried. Frankly, I think they’re being laughably naive >.<. Facebook/Meta - and Instagram’s CEO - might say pretty words - but words are cheap and from a known-hostile entity like Meta/Facebook they are almost certainly just a manipulation strategy.
In my view, they should be discarded as entirely irrelevant, or viewed as deliberate lies, given their continued atrocious behaviour and open manipulation of vast swathes of the population.
Facebook have large amounts of experience on how to attack and astroturf social media communities - hell I would be very unsurprised if they are already doing it, but it’s difficult to say without solid evidence ^.^
Why should we believe anything they say, ever? Why should we believe they aren’t just trying to destroy a competitor before it gets going properly, or worse, turn it into yet another arm of their sprawling network of services, via Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - or perhaps Embrace, Extend, Consume would be a better term in this case?
When will we ever learn that openly-manipulative, openly-assimilationist corporations need to be shoved out before they can gain any foothold and subsume our network and relegate it to the annals of history?
I’ve seen plenty of arguments claiming that it’s “anti-open-source” to defederate, or that it means we aren’t “resilient”, which is wrong ^.^:
- Open source isn’t about blindly trusting every organisation that participates in a network, especially not one which is known-hostile. Threads can start their own ActivityPub network if they really want or implement the protocol for themselves. It doesn’t mean we lose the right to kick them out of most - or all - of our instances ^.^.
- Defederation is part of how the fediverse is resilient. It is the immune system of the network against hostile actors (it can be used in other ways, too, of course). Facebook, I think, is a textbook example of a hostile actor, and has such an unimaginably bad record that anything they say should be treated as a form of manipulation.
Edit 1 - Some More Arguments
In this thread, I’ve seen some more arguments about Meta/FB federation:
- Defederation doesn’t stop them from receiving our public content:
- This is true, but very incomplete. The content you post is public, but what Meta/Facebook is really after is having their users interact with content. Defederation prevents this.
- Federation will attract more users:
- Only if Threads makes it trivial to move/make accounts on other instances, and makes the fact it’s a federation clear to the users, and doesn’t end up hosting most communities by sheer mass or outright manipulation.
- Given that Threads as a platform is not open source - you can’t host your own “Threads Server” instance - and presumably their app only works with the Threads Server that they run - this is very unlikely. Unless they also make Threads a Mastodon/Calckey/KBin/etc. client.
- Therefore, their app is probably intending to make itself their user’s primary interaction method for the Fediverse, while also making sure that any attempt to migrate off is met with unfamiliar interfaces because no-one else can host a server that can interface with it.
- Ergo, they want to strongly incentivize people to stay within their walled garden version of the Fediverse by ensuring the rest remains unfamiliar - breaking the momentum of the current movement towards it. ^.^
- We just need to create “better” front ends:
- This is a good long-term strategy, because of the cycle of enshittification.
- Facebook/Meta has far more resources than us to improve the “slickness” of their clients at this time. Until the fediverse grows more, and while they aren’t yet under immediate pressure to make their app profitable via enshittification and advertising, we won’t manage >.<
- This also assumes that Facebook/Meta won’t engage in efforts to make this harder e.g. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish/Consume, or social manipulation attempts.
- Therefore we should defederate and still keep working on making improvements. This strategy of “better clients” is only viable in combination with defederation.
PART 2 (post got too long!)
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Defed every corporation. McDonald’s starts an instance? Fuck off and fix your ice cream machine. Gabe Newell starts a Steam instance? No Gabe, go make half life 3. Make all these suits federate each other and see if anyone wants to talk on their shit.
We will never be able to compete with them for as long as they remain federated with us. We will simply have no unique value any longer. All of our development–open source. All of our content–available to the federation. He will have rightful possession of it all, everything we are.
However, he does not have to share his development with us. He does not have to share his hardware resources with us. He does not have to limit himself to only the capabilities that we want to be added.
He can, if absolutely necessary, buy us. One big Instance at a time.
Our only path forward with any independence is to defederate immediately and ruthlessly. This way, we keep our content. We keep that unique contribution, that we can use as a competitor to eventually demonstrate our value to the rest of the world. That’s the only way possible for us to have any chance of eventually toppling him, instead. We must retain our unique value. We must protect our content. If he wants it, make him scrape it and repost it with bots or something.
The craziest thing to me is that people seem to be lining up to make excuses for Meta. We learned the first week of this migration that defederating can get messy, we saw it right away with Beehaw.
Had Beehaw defederated from the larger instances sooner, then there would have been no outrage in the community over it. But while Lemmy was seeing a lot of growth, a lot of the big communities were being made on beehaw. All of the sudden, people were unable to access these communities properly and they were PISSED.
Guys, look around! Threads has what, 10 million users already? We have like, a hundred thousand, maybe a few hundred thousand at best? They will no doubt have huge communities formed by the time they decide they want to start federating. The ratio of Lemmy/Kbin users to threads users will be 100:1.
If we federate with Meta we basically have no choice but to use the communities they host. People only want to use 1 community (the issue of duplicate communities is brought up daily), so they will flock to the largest one. When Meta decides they don’t want to play nice with us anymore (and they will, it is never profitable to let people access all your content completely free, and shareholders will come knocking), defederation is going to decimate whats left here. Personally I think the place would implode, and many would migrate to where the content is.
The craziest thing to me is that people seem to be lining up to make excuses for Meta.
You’re surprised Zuck has bots?
He’s basically one himself.
They might be bots, but I think there’s a good chunk of people who just don’t think about it, so they don’t care. Writing them off as bots won’t change that, but maybe we can help them look a few steps ahead and change some of their minds.
What is more likely? An army of bots has been deployed to astroturf Lemmy already, or people are just ignorant to some of these issues? Probably a mixture of both. But more of Column B I would guess.
You think it’s unlikely that Meta would deploy bots to the fediverse to try and convince people already on it to join Threads?
I’ve got some interesting real estate opportunities for you, have you ever thought about how much passive income you could make from tolls on the Brooklyn Bridge?
Not what I’m saying.
You think its likely that every account expressing their concerns in these defederation threads is a bot? And it’s not even worth discussing this topic because everyone who disagrees is in fact actually a bot?
I’ve got some interesting real estate opportunities for you, have you ever thought about how much passive income you could make from tolls on the Brooklyn Bridge?
Ultimately this is the thing to worry about. Threads will get the largest communities and as a result the main amount of attention and when/if Meta decides to defederate, it will ruin things. Also, people will generally give zero shits about federation because 99.9% of content will be on meta’s instance.
Ironically, the main thing keeping fediverse from being more popular (the decentralized approach and “multiple places the same community can exist”) are going to be the thing that kills it if Meta gets involved and becomes the big boy.
Idunno what is arguably worse. The fediverse being restricted to more “technical” folks who give a shit, and thus a far more limited audience than a central platform, or being suddenly disconnected from the hivemind after taking all the content.
(Fwiw, I absolutely think that the Threads fediverse plan is to totally absorb all the content and become the main place for it then possibly pull the plug but honestly at that point they won’t even need to the usage stats will basically do the same thing for them.)
I don’t think accepting reality is making excuses.
Comparing meta to beehaw, or really anything else, is truly coming up short. Meta is the 8 ton gorilla in the corner. If the numbers that were released about 30 mllion people on Threads is true, they instantly have 10x the total population, and that numbers going to go up as more people stumble upon it.
Point being, Threads doesn’t need any other communities. People using Threads are those people who have never used reddit, and never would have signed up for lemmy. These people are also the same ones who don’t care about if their content is coming from a federated source, or just Threads.
Point being, Threads doesn’t need any other communities. People using Threads are those people who have never used reddit, and never would have signed up for lemmy. These people are also the same ones who don’t care about if their content is coming from a federated source, or just Threads.
And hence, defederation is a good idea.
Defederation is to protect us from them. You are absolutely right that they aren’t comparable to beehaw in size - now imagine if people here start joining the communities on Threads (not formal ones cus threads doesn’t have those), and we later decide to defederate, as some have proposed? Beehaw alone caused a massive clusterfuck, now imagine an instance with 10000x more users and power and concentrated community being let in?
Yup. If someone wants to see Threads content, sign up with them. Nobody’s stopping them.
The fact they don’t need us is entirely the danger. They will have a controlling leverage of users and content. If they are the biggest player in the fediverse, the fediverse itself is beholden to courting them.
People don’t want to lose what they get used to. Beehaw defederating from [Lemmy.world] is a good example. The defederation is far worse for Beehaw than it is for [Lemmy.world], because it means people will leave their smaller instance to get the content of the larger instance because [Lemmy.World] is such an enormous player in the space.
This problem would be infinitely worse with Meta if they become the larger instance, who after becoming a mainstay here will eventually be the entire space. and if they eventually wall themselves off - which they will, everyone who has built communities up with them will leave with them. The fact they don’t need us is why it’s dangerous.> eople using Threads are those people who have never used reddit, and never would have signed up for lemmy.
People using Threads are those people who have never used reddit, and never would have signed up for lemmy.
this will only be true at first. afterwards, the people who would have signed up for mastodon will instead sign up for Threads. They don’t just bring in new users, they also parasite users who were at all interested. Long term sabotages the organic growth of the decenterlized space. We build up leverage slowly, but once they are here they have all the power.
Seem is a perfect word - remember you have no reliable way of telling if these are legions of real people, good people, bots, etc. don’t let masses online shake you so easily! You too could be a thousand account echo chamber legion if you wanted to.
That’s how these people propagandize and brainwash societies by making use of a social mechanism we have which relies on power in numbers
You can be sure a good deal of Meta bootlickers here are astroturfing accounts. Meta’s business is to manipulate public perceptions and opinions, and astroturfing is definitely one of the tools employed.
I think there are multiple illusions into using one community. I don’t think people do. The average user love instagram when it was for sharing photos, facebook before it was for grandparents, vine (now tik tok) when it was for funny clips, youtube for silly content, reddit for thread format speaking, snapchat for stupid private chats. If we are talking about centralized communication I’m not so sure that is the case either. The reason all of those platforms I just mentioned got ruined for the most part is being of the growth of influencing and monetization. Once capitalism came in it completely changed the original intent of why the user liked those platforms, I doubt most of them even remember why they liked it when they joined it changed so fast. What people want, without actually realizing it, are the same services without the garbage product they’ve excepted and its turned into.
If we federate with Meta we basically have no choice but to use the communities they host. People only want to use 1 community (the issue of duplicate communities is brought up daily), so they will flock to the largest one. When Meta decides they don’t want to play nice with us anymore (and they will, it is never profitable to let people access all your content completely free, and shareholders will come knocking), defederation is going to decimate whats left here. Personally I think the place would implode, and many would migrate to where the content is.
Except that Threads isn’t organized around topics / communities, it’s organized like Insta / Twitter around following people, so there’s no communities to flock to.
The craziest thing to me is that people seem to be lining up to make excuses for Meta.
I’m not here to make excuses for Meta, but not a single one of these “sky is falling” posts actually articulate any real danger with federation. They just list all the bad things that have come out of Facebook to imply that surely something bad must happen here too then.
I’m not here to make excuses for Meta, but not a single one of these “sky is falling” posts actually articulate any real danger with federation. They just list all the bad things that have come out of Facebook to imply that surely something bad must happen here too then.
I did, if you read it. Past and continued malicious behaviour + open manipulativity means that what they say cannot be trusted.
Except that Threads isn’t organized around topics / communities, it’s organized like Insta / Twitter around following people, so there’s no communities to flock to.
Even if there aren’t formal Communities (as in, like Lemmy), there are still communities of people.
I did, if you read it. Past and continued malicious behaviour + open manipulativity means that what they say cannot be trusted.
Trust is not required in this equation. The fediverse exists as a technical system and we can see how it operates. Within the context of those bounds I see no path for meta to break it and no one has been able to explain one beyond vague generalities like “they can’t be trusted”.
Even if there aren’t formal Communities (as in, like Lemmy), there are still communities of people.
Yes, but the point I was responding to was saying that communities like fediverse@lemmmy.world would lose all its users when they went to threadiverse@threads.net when that’s simply not even possible.
I did, if you read it. Past and continued malicious behaviour + open manipulativity means that what they say cannot be trusted.
Trust is not required in this equation. The fediverse exists as a technical system and we can see how it operates. Within the context of those bounds I see no path for meta to break it and no one has been able to explain one beyond vague generalities like “they can’t be trusted”.
I gave examples in part 2 in my post of various routes to destroy activitypub, or nore importantly, destroy or consume the existing network of people.
Even if there aren’t formal Communities (as in, like Lemmy), there are still communities of people.
Yes, but the point I was responding to was saying that communities like fediverse@lemmmy.world would lose all its users when they went to threadiverse@threads.net when that’s simply not even possible
It is absolutely possible if fediverse content is presented as-if it’s just from threads, and then the majority of posters in communities become threads users, and then they either subsume or defederate.
You can post to lemmy communities from in mastodon via @-ing, which Threads could easily add as another feature later. And referring to more general communities the same principle applies.
I gave examples in part 2 in my post of various routes to destroy activitypub, or nore importantly, destroy or consume the existing network of people.
Your points boil down to “Threads will be easier to use and more attractive so people will use that”, congrats, that’s the case regardless of whether or not you federate. That’s not a result of federation, that’s a result of meta having a lot of money to make good apps.
This entire argument hinges on the idea that the Fediverse is filled with great content that Meta will just steal and present to their users when quite frankly that’s just untrue. The fediverse is still a pale imitation of Reddit that is severely lacking in content and is still likely to die from never entering the virtuous cycle required to get a social network off the ground.
Your points boil down to “Threads will be easier to use and more attractive so people will use that”, congrats, that’s the case regardless of whether or not you federate. That’s not a result of federation, that’s a result of meta having a lot of money to make good apps.
They boil down to much more than that. Even if it’s harder to use, Facebook has the ability and the means to run campaigns to promote their own stuff even if it’s worse. Furthermore, it’s not just about that, it’s also about the fact that federating with them entwines us with their communities, and given their size it will not take long for our organisation and communities to be entirely stuck to theirs.
This entire argument hinges on the idea that the Fediverse is filled with great content that Meta will just steal and present to their users when quite frankly that’s just untrue. The fediverse is still a pale imitation of Reddit that is severely lacking in content and is still likely to die from never entering the virtuous cycle required to get a social network off the ground.
Seems pretty alive to me, actually. And the risk is not just Facebook/Meta taking our content, but more us being sucked in by theirs and having their algorithms and strategies used to manipulate us and make us too dependent on their own infrastructure to sustain our own communities again, especially if they cut us off after ^.^ (the threat of which can then be used as leverage or to outright subsume large instances).
Even if it’s harder to use, Facebook has the ability and the means to run campaigns to promote their own stuff even if it’s worse.
Federating doesn’t change that.
Furthermore, it’s not just about that, it’s also about the fact that federating with them entwines us with their communities, and given their size it will not take long for our organisation and communities to be entirely stuck to theirs.
Oh no, we’ve recreated Reddit with millions of users and a thriving community, what a nightmare!
Seems pretty alive to me, actually.
Then go check whatever instance you’re on three times throughout the day and do the same on Reddit and notice the distinct lack of change and movement on Lemmy/Kbin.
more us being sucked in by theirs and having their algorithms and strategies used to manipulate us and make us too dependent on their own infrastructure to sustain our own communities again, especially if they cut us off after . (the threat of which can then be used as leverage or to outright subsume large instances).
If you don’t want to be manipulated by the algorithms that the Threads instances use to surface content, then don’t subscribe to people on Threads, it’s really not that complicated. If Meta leaves later and you find yourself desperately missing content, then guess what? That’s not Meta killing the fediverse that’s Meta having kept the fediverse alive for a while.
Let me put it this way: advocating for Meta being federated with us is like asking to keep a bear in the same room as the family chihuahua.
Here I am saying “gee, I don’t think we should keep a bear and a chihuahua in the same room together. This seems like a really bad idea. Bears are pretty violent and this dog has no way to defend itself”.
Your reply is “Well bears eat salmon, not dogs, so i’m not worried about it. If the bear didn’t have good intentions, why would he be getting in the room with the dog? Besides, if he does start getting violent, we can just take the bear out of the room and separate the two.”
Nah man, i just like the dog, and I don’t need him getting fucked up. If you want the bear you can hang out with him outside, and have the same experience you would have had if he was inside. I get he keeps trying to come in, but I don’t see how its worth the risk to actually let him in.
Bears are pretty violent and this dog has no way to defend itself
Besides, if he does start getting violent, we can just take the bear out of the room and separate the two
Ah, see, the difference between your analogy that uses irreversible physical violence and the actual situation at hand is that blocking an instance or defederating takes a single button click, and isn’t at all difficult for the dog to do.
Also a flawed analogy because in this case the chihuahua is a barely alive clone of a dog that is still much much healthier and actively trying to kill it, that bear might be the only thing that prevents the original dog from killing it.
Hey man, Threads is that way if you want to use it, but I came here because I very specifically do not have any interest. You can sign up there, use it all you want! But don’t fuck the rest of us over because you want to use both platforms at the same time.
And by the way, your cloning analogy changes nothing. The original dog is not in the house, he’s fucking off somewhere else. The bear is actually here, trying to come in, and you’re proposing we use him to defend against a dog that may or may not return. Ill take my chances with the dog.
Hey man, Threads is that way if you want to use it, but I came here because I very specifically do not have any interest. You can sign up there, use it all you want! But don’t fuck the rest of us over because you want to use both platforms at the same time.
Hey man, this thing called the fediverse is based around subscribing to the communities you want to and seeing content from those. You’re screwing over the people who want content from both when you could just, not go out of your way to subscribe to threads communities. Problem solved.
And by the way, your cloning analogy changes nothing. The original dog is not in the house, he’s fucking off somewhere else.
Well this is why it was a piss poor analogy to begin with. Because the real, non-analogous, facts of the situation mean that the bear, the original dog, and the cloned chihuahua are all only kept alive by the same thing, users and their content.
And again, let’s back up for a moment and point out that that’s still not an argument based on any plausible reality. It’s just fear of the unknown. You have yet to articulate any technical ways that method could kill the fediverse, but are just scared of some random X that Meta might do to steal the half dozen mastodon users away.
not a single one of these “sky is falling” posts actually articulate any real danger with federation
Dunno about the other posts, but this article talks about how Google killed XMPP, which is extremely relevant to what could happen to ActivityPub if Meta gets its way.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Yes, everyone brings up that same blog post, and it’s nonsense. Google Talk outcompeted Jabber/XMPP based messenger by providing a better user experience and it would have done that regardless of whether or not they ever supported XMPP.
Google Talk outcompeted Jabber/XMPP
Thus, it’s entirely logical for us to expect that Meta outcompetes ActivityPub by “offering a better user experience”. You know, despite the whole point of the fediverse being cooperation and coexistence, not competition
Not only did I add
threads.netto my blocked instances list, I also went scorched Earth and outright blocked Facebook’s entire IP range through my firewall. Don’t want them “accidentally” reading any data from my server ;)For reference, their IP range is
157.240.0.0/16:Edit: Actually, I might have more IPs to block:
Frankly, I think this is the only reasonable stance to take with Facebook.
They do a lot of good things. They do a lot of bad things. The entity itself has zero understanding of the difference
Take the good - Facebook has invested in the maturation of a lot of technologies…as the only clear victor in social media, they very literally have more money than they know what to do with, and they threw some of that at FOSS
Leave the bad… Or more accurately, do everything you can - not only to block their data collection and manipulation of you, but also of your friends and family. Ad blockers, local cdn, and Firefox if they’ll go for it
And most importantly, keep them far from the operations of anything you hold dear. The fediverse should make this list - this is something important. It’s social media without an agenda - that’s both rare and pretty damn important for all of us
They can’t stop. There’s a lot of good people at Facebook, but they can’t stop - that’s just what a corporation is. I’ll happily break down why from first principles, but the takeaway is this - every last employee of Facebook could be the most moral, competent group out there and it’d still act like an amoral cancer on society
It’s not a matter of good or evil, they will take every path that promises ROI on a time frame inversely proportional to their size, and they’re freaking huge…
Thanks, this was a very good insight. No matter how good the person, if they are under pressure, they are still going to make the wrong decisions. This is why we should stay away from them as much as possible.
This should be copied to a post so it’s easier to see for other instance owners.
Post saved for when I have time to do this, thanks!
I did the same but went an extra mile and rooted my phone and blocked facebook domains with adaway since PiHole doesn’t really work if you’re using mobile data
Aha, have been studying for the CCNA. I understand. I FEEL SO LITERATE.
How do you block whole instances?
I run my own Lemmy instance, there is an option on my administration page called “blocked instances.” I’ve added it there.
100% agree. I’ve been shocked at what seems like extreme naivety or willful ignorance in some of the discussions on federating with corps. Corps only want profit. People are the product at meta. They just want more product.
There’s either a streak of loud and stupid that started up when the NDAs came to light or some of these “Facebook would never do anything bad” people are suspicious af.
My gut tells me we should defed all corporate instances as a matter of policy. Our uniqueness is at jeopardy , think of threads like the borg.
Fuck me I only just got here and it’s already cracking off.
The post is too big for my next edit, so here is the next edit in a comment:
Edit 2 - Clarification, Expanding on Facebook’s Behaviour, Discussion of Admin-FB Meetups
I want to clarify the specific dangers of Meta/FB, as well as some terminology.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, and Embrace, Extend, Consume
The link I posted approximately explains EEE, but in this thread I’ve used the phrase “Embrace, Extend, Consume”, to illustrate a slightly modified form of this behaviour.
Embrace, Extend, Consume is like Embrace, Extend, Extinguish except the end goal isn’t complete annihilation of the target. Instead of defederating at the endpoint, Meta/FB just dominates the entire standard, and anyone who steps out of line is forced into a miniscule network of others.
They can then use this dominant position to buy out or consume large instances, or for example, force data collection features into the standard and aggressively defederate anyone else who doesn’t comply >.< - because they’re so big, most instances will comply in the service of “content”.
Such a dominant position can even be obtained simply by sheer user mass, which Threads already has to some degree, as long as the relevant instance has large amounts of financial resources to buy out instances.
In this way, they consume the network entirely, which doesn’t necessarily destroy the communities but essentially Borg-ifies them and renders people unable to leave their grasp.
Facebook/Meta-Specific Threats: Information Warfare & Manipulation
One of the major specific threats of Meta/FB in particular is their long and continued history of engaging in what essentially amounts to large-scale psychological manipulation and information warfare towards it’s various goals (money, total domination of human communication, subsuming the internet in countries where the infrastructure is still too small to resist a single corporation restricting it’s content, political manipulation, collection of ever more data, etc.), against both it’s users and non-users.
They have well over a decade of experience in this, hundreds of times more users than us (providing good cloaking for astroturfers), and untold amounts of labour, research and other resources have been poured specifically into figuring out the most effective ways to manipulate social groups via techniques like astroturfing, algorithmic prioritization, and more sophisticated strategies I am not aware of. All backed by data from literally billions of human beings >.<
This means that exposing the Fediverse to Facebook/Meta is essentially exposing us all to one of the most organised and sophisticated information warfare machines that has ever been created. Cutting off the connections immediately (as in the other analogy by @BreakingBad@lemmy.world) not only protects from direct EEE/EEC, but also makes it harder for Meta/Facebook to influence, dominate, and consume the conversation here, either by sheer user-mass, or by malicious information warfare (or even unintentional consequences of their algorithms), or by a combination of all of these.
We know they are extremely malicious and willing to use these methods towards real-life, ultra-harmful ends. Examples are at the start of this post :)
For hypothetical examples on how this might work - in reality it might be different in the specifics (these are just illustrative):
- Meta/FB could start a campaign (maybe astroturfed) for “user safety”, where they encourage people to distrust users from smaller instances or any user with their instance address marker not on
@threads.<whatever their url> - Meta/FB could add “secure messaging” (lol, it’s facebook), but only between threads users. Then they could push the idea that ActivityPub is bad for privacy (the DMs are, but just use Matrix ;p - if you post stuff publicly, it makes sense that it’s public).
- Meta/FB could by simple user mass result in most communities being on Threads. People tend to drift towards more populous communities about the same topic, in general, and Threads unbalances the user ratios so much that everyone would just go to those >.< (as opposed to right now, where we have similar sized communities on several large instances, where most people subscribe to most of them)
- Meta/FB could use social engineering to push for changes to the ActivityPub protocol that are harder for other ActivityPub servers to implement ^.^, or even ones that are hard for non-proprietary clients to implement. For example, embedding DRM in the protocol or something like that.
- Meta’s algorithms could over time shift towards deprioritising non-“paid”/“verified” Threads users.
- It’s already been explained how the app as we know it essentially makes it hard for people to leave due to the fact only they have access to their server software and they also ensure that the app is only a specific client for this service.
Instance Admins, and the “Friendliness” of Meta
Some instance admins have been in contact with Meta/FB. It does make sense for at least some of them to do “due dilligence”, but I’ve seen in at least one post a comment on the friendliness and cooperativeness of the engineers and the fact they mostly discussed architectural concerns and stuff like moderation and technical stuff.
I want to remind instance admins that no matter how nice the engineers are - and how much they share your interests - they are still working for what is essentially a mass information warfare machine. This doesn’t make them malicious at all, but it does mean that what they are doing is not a solid perspective on the actual goals and attitude of Meta/Facebook, The Corporate Assimilator Organism.
Regardless of what they have discussed, they are obligated as employees to act on Meta’s orders, not the things they actually want to work on or the things both them and you find important ^.^ - or even act towards the goals they want to act towards when Meta inevitably goes for the throat.
I encourage instance admins to keep this in mind, and further keep in mind that Meta is pretty much royalty when it comes to social stuff and how to appeal to people. If they were trying to appeal to a more corporate social media service, they’d probably have gone with sending in the C-suite, but they know this community is technically inclined and less likely to buy into corpo speak and corpo bullcrap, so they probably hooked you up with all the chill engineers instead :).
Reiterating my view: Resist Corpo-Assimilation!
Note on This Post
I’ve realised this post would probably be most useful if the primary targets of Threads could see it (Mastodon). But I don’t have Mastodon cus I really am not into microblogging myself, so RIP ;p
- Meta/FB could start a campaign (maybe astroturfed) for “user safety”, where they encourage people to distrust users from smaller instances or any user with their instance address marker not on
Reddit and twitters recent moves were the driving force behind me switching to mastadon and lemmy, but I ditched meta/Facebook services long ago. Adding those back into this fold really makes the choice for me kind of easy. Inviting meta to the party is just a non starter.
OP is correct. We have very little to to gain and everything to lose.
Almost once a week for the last 5 years there is a neoliberal that screams about defederating from leftist instances that have absolutely zero power and influence in the world just for disagreeing with them politically. Doesn’t matter whether you’re on lemmy or mastodon or other services, this happens like clockwork.
Those exact same people are currently defending against defederating from an evil megacorporation with literal cia employees on staff that does real quantifiable evil shit in the world, and they claim to be moral.
Billionaire and neolib bootlickers are one of the most disgusting things on the internet. Everything for the imperialist/corporatist agenda even when it goes against their own wellbeing.
“Defederate from the communists because sometimes they say things we don’t like!”
“No, don’t defederate from the people literally killing children by intentionally giving them eating disorders with unethical research! They’re fine!”
“But gommunism killed TRILLIONS of people!”
We’ll feel the results of neolib indoctrination (and intentional dumbing of the masses) for decades, and it’s disgusting.
Nutjobs should just be ignored, as much as I dislike leftists Meta is an actual massive threat to Fedi.
They’re not nutjobs, they just know which side their bread is buttered.
They oppose leftists and support corporations like Meta for the same reason. The corporate system that rules the world is literally the creation of the neoliberals. These two positions are actually in harmony for them, the only lie they consistently tell is that they do everything for moral reasons rather than self interest because they have materially benefit from that system or aspire to.
Okay, but why does your comment sound so defeatist?
Fight goddammit, this is the time when the most actual leftists will see this shit. This is an inflection point, this could be the moment that matters… Or just another missed chance
I am fighting. The point in cases like this one is to expose the neoliberals for not really being leftists whatsoever, they’re centre right anywhere in the world other than america. The only way we move people away from them and towards real anti-imperialist politics and leftism is by exposing and critiquing them from their left.
is there a server somewhere that is dedicated to not defederating? i know there are a lot of reddit mod refugees here but im not here because i loved the mods on reddit. i dont want them censoring things for me i can handle it on my own. i would really like to be on a server that is using this technology but will not defederate as i know the server i use (lemmy.world) is already doing that. im not trying to get into bad shit i just dont really want to be part of that drama. it’s basically like when mods from certain subs would ban users for having participated in another sub they didn’t like. anyway, i am asking in earnest if anyone knows of a lemmy server that is normal but also not defederating because of dumb posts like this one.
Define “normal”. The fascist servers haven’t defederated, but everyone else defederates from them.
Removed by mod
Not exactly constructive is it? I don’t really care about being insulted by tories but I’ll report it when people don’t actually say anything I can respond to.
Removed by mod
I’m still baffled that some people can argue “why are you so worried?” about this. We have twenty years of history of shit hitting the fan, how much more do you need to not trust Facebook/Meta?
I’m struggling to understand it too, especially from instance owners. FB is diametrically opposed to FOSS and decentralized ideals. My only guess is the hopefulness people feel for decentralized internet extends to naivete about FB doing the right thing this time.
Exactly, not a hypothetical question here, we have historical evidence to show it’s fact.
We’ve seen similar embrace, extend, extinguish with protocols before. It reminds me of XMPP, which used to be the defacto chat protocol and once upon a time you could use self-hosted providers to chat directly with people on things like Google Talk. Obviously once enough people were on Google Talk, they switched the protocol to a propriety protocol and XMPP basically died.
The lesson is that if you want a protocol to be resilient then you want to avoid corporations having a majority user share on it.
Agreed. It’s not cowardly or “anti-competitive” to choose to avoid stepping in crap. Because that’s what Facebook and Twitter are. Single ownership of an entire social media is a terrible idea, because that platform will always be promoting and protecting the interests of its owners, not its users.
Exactly.
I’m not sure why anyone would look at Facebook at this point and not think they’re coming to manipulate and destroy external platforms.
Well maybe it is anti-competitve, but anyway competition is what leads to shady tactics like meta are using. The point of the fediverse is cooperation, and absolutely avoid competition
Tl;dr - https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
This is how google killed XMPP
For what it’s worth, I’d like to put my voice. Out here in support of defederating them.
Our goals and their goals are like parallel Lines, They’ll never cross.
Going in 180degrees different directions
That’d be the same line, no?
Two parallel lines can coexist on a plane heading in opposite directions (vectors) without being the same line. They are traveling 180 degrees relative to the other line’s vector, not a fixed point on one of the lines
Wouldn’t those be rays?
The lines themselves would be rays because they each have a starting point and no defined end. The direction of those rays would be the vectors which would be traveling 180 degrees in the opposite direction relative to their individual starting positions.
Of course, the example is flawed anyway for a number of reasons. But yes, you are correct. The “lines” are actually rays
Same line, we each follow in a different direction, yes.
