I'm baffled by the trend in recent years of everyone insisting that they need to be in control of every byte of data that they deliberately publish onto the open medium of the Internet.
I mean, I'm not really baffled. I understand that people see that their data might be worth pennies and they want those pennies to be their pennies, darnit. I mean I'm dismayed by it.
If Meta's going to be supporting ActivityPub, then yay, IMO. If you don't want Meta's servers to see your data then stop posting it on an open protocol whose purpose is to show it to Meta's servers.
Look, I understand your opinion and I respect it, but I simply do not trust Meta. They are a business, and they are always going to do what is best for their business. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with that - all businesses are in the business of staying in business - but I think their track record makes them an untrustworthy actor in regards to the fediverse; they're a big tech company joining a small (and I would argue obscure) ensemble of social networks.
Of course, I could be totally wrong and this could be a total boon for Activity Pub, kbin, mastodon, and the wider fediverse. I just think that the opposite is more likely.
And if Meta tries to pull some sort of destructive shenanigans, sure, then defederate from them. Not because they're Meta, but because they're pulling destructive shenanigans. There's already plenty of instances that get defederated for that sort of thing.
That's not what I'm annoyed about here, though. I'm annoyed by all the people who have come to the Fediverse claiming that it's because it's open and free and all that, and then when some company that they have a particular personal dislike for comes along and wants to participate in the protocol exactly as intended they go "but not like that!"
If some random instance like lemmy.ca (name picked randomly) was to find itself in financial difficulty keeping the lights on and was to strike some kind of deal with an advertiser to put banner ads on their site, would there be a similar enormous hue and cry about it? Maybe users on lemmy.ca who have to actually deal with the advertising might raise a ruckus, but over here on kbin.social it wouldn't affect me in the slightest.
And if Meta tries to pull some sort of destructive shenanigans, sure, then defederate from them. Not because they're Meta, but because they're pulling destructive shenanigans. There's already plenty of instances that get defederated for that sort of thing.
In principle, I agree.
My fear is that the fediverse has no big hitter that can compete with Meta’s resources. The closest thing would be Mastodon.social, and they are still tiny compared to the two-billion instagram users Meta is gonna advertise Threads to and the 390 million Twitter X users that they are trying to poach.
I think Meta will play nice in the beginning, but eventually (perhaps even quickly) will gain a much larger userbase than everyone else. From there, it is only a matter of time before their users create more communities and content than everyone else.
Eventually, anyone who is federated with Threads is going to get accustomed to seeing and enjoying Threads content (why wouldn’t they? It’s from people.) That is where I fear Meta will start to flex their muscles because at the end of the day their business model is based on selling user data to advertisers; having users being able to interact from other platforms doesn’t really fit into that as well as having everyone be on your platform.
Obviously, I don’t have a crystal ball and all of this is theoretical, but I can see something like this happening where people start to abandon smaller platforms for Threads because their preferred platform got defederated.
It's not hard to defederate. It's a simple, easy lever to pull. All I'm saying is that it's silly to pull it preemtptively. Meta might do something destructive, but if it doesn't then defederating preemptively is a huge waste of an opportunity.
wants to participate in the protocol exactly as intended
I don't think they want to participate in the protocol as intended at all. I think they want to gradually warp Activity Pub for their own ends.
This isn't about liking or disliking, it's about inferring future behaviour based on past patterns. That company has an abominable history. It actively impeded an international genocide trial (after it spent years facilitating the genocide).
When that's the kind of level they can stoop to I think it's madness to engage with them and expect good faith. The secret meetings haven't helped.
A wild polar bear might not bite me if I pat it either.
Personally it doesn't seem preemptive to me because I think the part where Meta held secret meetings with certain Fediverse admins and made them sign NDAs was a clear indication of the way they are going to do things, i.e nontransparent and not as equals.
Perfect conditions for embrace extend extinguish, which is boiling a frog so could do a lot of damage before most people are able to spot it.
I accept that YMMV though, I just don't think it's particularly closed-minded of those of us who are too wary of their motives to want to federate with them.
Why in hell would a massive social media company give two flying shits about a decentralized, comparatively tiny not-quite-one-platform?
To eat it. To completely destroy it and thus gain greater power and control over even more.
Like, the fediverse isn't a threat at all to fb/meta, but people, chatting on internet, without total top down direct oversight on what comes up in your feed?
Well how would they make their money? Or push their propaganda?
I honestly want it. I want to follow people who have Threads accounts without needing a Threads account myself. I want more people in the fediverse and I don't care what platform they're using to access it because I'll be on kbin.
If Meta one day decides to leave ActivityPub, that's fine with me because I'll still be here on kbin with all the same people who are here now who also would never use Threads.
The Fediverse is an experiment and should/needs to be robust enough to cope with large commercial instances. I’m happy to see how this goes before blocking if it goes badly
They'll boil the frog slowly enough. Threads is huge compared to the fediverse, and will likely do piecemeal federation. Like sending account activity out but not sharing any fediverse voices, getting everyone here following and desensitized
I'm not super familiar with the right terminology, but in short I think users should be able to follow whoever they want, but restrictions on how it is interacted with is fair game. I think following and replying to threads accounts is sort of a must, even if boosting and other functions are disabled. Also on favor of preventing non-replies from being sent to threads.
The real issue issue is interop with Threads means surveillance of users. Limiting the info going from here to there is essential. However a read-only mode that lets us get some value out of it is fine
Refusing to federate with Threads would achieve exactly that outcome. Most people on Threads wouldn’t know the Fediverse existed any more than most people on Google knew XMPP existed.
The Fediverse is struggling to get a large enough userbase to be as useful as the mega-services it replaces. Threads can gift that userbase and make people more aware that the Fediverse exists.
FWIW this is exactly why Threads didn’t join the Fediverse until they’d overcome the legal obstacles to operating in the EU. If they’d federated first they risked losing all their potential EU users to the Fediverse.
The quickest way to lose this game is not to play it and the Google/XMPP example iillustrates why.
I really don't see the issue. So more users is bad? I thought our issue is the lack of users currently.
I've seen people complain about ads and data harvesting here. But instances can already do that. Meta joining would change nothing about that. Actually, being a proper legal company, it might be easier to sue them over misusing your data than random instances.
"Embrace. Extend. Extinguish"? Let's stop between the last two steps then, not before the first one.
Kbin would be crippled by the amount of Threads content? I thought federation only happened if one kbin.social user is following a user on Threads? Should be as easily manageable then as Mastodon is currently. Or am I misunderstanding how this works?
To me, big sites federating looks like a clear advantage. I don't really get the big problem.
My understanding of the EEE doctrine is that the large company/userbase pervades, overshadows, and quite literally takes over, so the fediverse wouldn't really get a say in the matter.
So block them, block them hard, block them now and forever
While going somewhere I usually listen at music at least, might read/write messages or uncommonly play a game.
Might read/send messages wherever I am, when convenient.
While going somewhere with the bicycle I usually listen at a podcast, call someone or listen at music.
When paying bills or otherwise dealing with moneyz, I use the two way auth on the phone.
In the evening, usually at bed, I do three diaries and then go to sleep.
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