Why are people anti Facebook joining the fediverse?

The arguments I’ve heard about tracking etc are misguided and don’t understand the actual risks.

Firstly, posts on the fediverse are already likely being consumed by advertising platforms like Facebook & Google. It would be trivial for big tech companies to setup relays that act as scrapers.

Secondly, the value in platform’s tracking individuals is for advertising. There is no mechanism for these platforms to identify you browsing the we if your instance federated with threads. Your instance won’t share cookie sessions etc with threads. It doesn’t increase your exposure.

Thirdly, these platforms have the know how to deal with spam and they will be incentivised to share that tech with other federated instances.

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is an evil company. But I haven’t heard a decent argument as to why them joining the fediverse is a bad thing. We always have the option to defederate in the future.

Change my mind.

ReakDuck,

You miss the entire point, its mostly about EEE

en.wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis…

Greg,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

I’m aware of the EEE argument. It’s just not valid in this instance. Let’s follow the EEE argument. Facebook extends the capabilities of activitypub and makes third party users no longer compatible. Then what? We’re in the exact same place we are now, Facebook having a wall garden and the rest of the fediverse doing its own thing.

ReakDuck,

You arw too optimistic, there is always a way, and it will probably not replace lemmy or kbin but maybe mastodon or any other healthy ActivityHub service. The danger is there, just because you don’t know the answer to the the real danger doesn’t mean there is no danger.

Facebook (or rather “Meta”) has a buisness model, and its there to damage us all, grow into infinity and be the number one. They will become creative and always take an unhealthy turn whenever its possible.

With very little probability it may become an utopia where everything will be nicely federated and still Open and Open Source. With high probability they will focus on full destruction to gain the most money out of any situation.

Tolstoshev,

I’ll give you an ELI5 answer:

Have you ever been playing with your same age friends and then a bunch of older kids come by and ask to join? You say yes and then they take over the field and ball and start playing the game they want and dominate the play. Pretty soon it’s the older kids’ game and you’re sitting on the sidelines.

CeruleanRuin,
@CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one avatar

I just wanted to chime in here and add this lame-assed meme template to things we should retire in the fediverse.

Aaron Crowder is a bigoted chode, and using him for your meme template only undercuts whatever point you want to make.

Find a new meme for this purpose. Let’s do better.

Greg,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

I have no idea who Aaron Crowder is. Do you have a suggestion for a better meme template?

CeruleanRuin,
@CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one avatar

The Lisa Simpson presentation meme is perfectly cromulent for soapboxing.

But if you didn’t know, Aaron Crowder is a right-wing Fox News presenter and commentator (he often hides under the dubious label of “comedian”) who has been booted from YouTube several times for homophobic and racist content. The meme format is okay in itself, but I’d love to not see his smarmy mug in it.

The great thing about memes is anyone can make a new one. I eagerly await the replacement for this one, which to my nose has gotten quite stale.

ethd,

I believe he’s Steven Crowder, not Aaron, just a quick heads up.

idle,
@idle@158436977.xyz avatar

We should stop calling them Meta. You cant just change your name and pretend like nothing happened. Fuck em

olizet,

Because it’s Facebook. Fixing our buggy app? No, instead let’s port those bugs to the desktop web site!

They’re powerful but incompetent. FB even sent me a survey “why are you not visiting FB like you did before?”.

Nindelofocho,

Remember how Facebook bought Oculus and people thought it was gunna be great because VR was finally getting really strong financial backing but they ended up just making their own VR walled garden that requires you to sign in with a facebook account and you are only able to selectively play with PCVR players if they allow it on their app store?

Greg,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

How is this relevant? Meta isn’t buying the fediverse

FippleStone,

But if they see potential profit in harming, whether directly or indirectly, it they will likely take that opportunity

Greg,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

Yes but the fediverse needs to be resilient enough to deal with bad actors. It’s a probably that needs to be solved for the fediverse to grow, we should run towards the challenges instead of from them.

Nindelofocho,

Facebook didnt buy the entirety of VR either. But they did fracture the userbase and if you cant spend so much on VR you’re stuck buying into metas walled garden now (Reverb lacks fundamental features) This sorta ground is what Meta is going to go for. They are going to target the largest, most manipulatable audience (which is a lot on here) and swallow them

ozoned,
@ozoned@beehaw.org avatar

I’ve been around long enough to see many projects be extinguished.

To your first point, these companies essentially have infinite money compared to you, me, everyone combined on Mastodon. They can and will figure out a way to track you across servers and they will figure out how to exploit that. Cookies weren’t supposed to be used for tracking they way they are, but the money hoarders figured out how to exploit them. Browser fingerprinting wasn’t a thing, but it can now be used to track you. How you type and how you speak online can be used to ID you.

If you think that Facebook is willing to share anything, I just don’t agree. Facebook will create Threads, they’ll put it on the Fediverse, they’ll align, then eventually they’ll start building features that Mastodon, Lemmy, etc refuse to or literally can’t or won’t have the time to do, and then they’ll start selling how they’re so much better and you should come join them, or they’ll say they’re more secure, or they’ll just smear the others. People will flock to the new and better, because hey it’s still on the Fediverse and open, eventually they’ll close it off and strangle the life out of the Fediverse. I’ll still be on the Fediverse, but these platforms are all about content. If people stop showing up, they can still exist, but they’re basically useless. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again.

Greg,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

Facebook has open sourced loads of their internal tools, for instance PrestoDB. Open sourcing their internal tools is an advantage for Facebook as they get contributions from other developers. Fediverse tooling would fit this model.

bug,

Open sourcing internal tools is completely different to open sourcing your product. Companies aren’t trying to sell their internal tools, so open sourcing them can often save money that they’d otherwise have to spend supporting them themselves. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is the concern, and it seems pretty likely that Facebook will try and take over the Fediverse by luring people in with propriety features.

Greg,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

Facebook will do what’s best for Facebook. If Facebook joins the Fediverse then sharing tools to reduce spam will benefit Facebook. So I predict that Facebook would share such tooling.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is the concern, and it seems pretty likely that Facebook will try and take over the Fediverse by luring people in with propriety features

I don’t understand this argument. Who do you think would be lured from Mastodon to Facebook Threads? Is there a feature that Facebook could introduce that would make you consider moving to Facebook? I can’t think of one.

bug,

Well we don’t know what those features are yet, otherwise people would already be trying to implement them! It could be anything though, maybe the servers are just much faster, maybe the UI is more slick, maybe they’re the first to implement a load of the features we like from RES, maybe they sell you some extra content for that vendor lock-in. Whatever it is, if they implement it in an unfriendly and/or incompatible way, they start a schism with the rest of the Fediverse; if they’re sneaky and wait until they’ve already got their claws in before doing this then they take a chunk of the more casual users with them.

All this isn’t guaranteed to happen, but it seems relatively likely and therefore something people should be prepared to deal with!

Greg,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

maybe the servers are just much faster, maybe the UI is more slick, maybe they’re the first to implement a load of the features we like from RES, maybe they sell you some extra content for that vendor lock-in

They already do this though, it’s called Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. That’s why the EEE argument doesn’t make sense. The distinguishing features people keep talking about already exisit in a wall garden yet Mastodon has users. The features that Mastodon users want is freedom and control. Threads can’t compete with that but Threads can introduce millions of users to the concept of federation.

roo,
@roo@lemmy.one avatar

Facebook is reported to be using a shadow profile of non-facebook users. Mastodon stated that whenever you interact with a Threads user it will be recorded by Facebook. All they have to do is join a conversation as a lurker, and your data is sent to Facebook. Given a few more points such as time of day and topic they can start to narrow downwho you are. Add your profile picture, and manner of speech an AI, which they have a multitude of, can generate a probability of who is communicating. Over numerous interactions the law of six degrees of separation will have you nailed down. In some countries this is potentially a problem over data retention, but they’ll have lawyers looking night and day for a way around those trifling laws. Willingness to federate might be seen as consent by default in some cases.

Greg,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

This highlights my point. This attack vector exists with or without threads. Facebook and friends can already scrape fediverse posts and map them to users. Defederating Meta instances won’t solve this vulnerability. Which is my point, people don’t understand the actual risks.

Dee_Imaginarium,
@Dee_Imaginarium@beehaw.org avatar

Data gained through integration of an instance is far more than what’s gained in scraping. The data gained through federation will no doubt increase as Meta adds new features that require more data in order to federate with them. They have over a decade of evidence showing us they’re evil and have no respect for privacy or people. I do not understand your logic in saying it’s okay to federate, it’s like watching somebody defend an abusive partner. They’ve hurt you and communities in the past, stop giving them more rope. The devil does not need an advocate.

sunbeam60,

It’s worth saying, though, that Threads hasn’t joined the fediverse yet. They could be pulling an Apple, who committed to opening FaceTime and changed their mind. Let’s see.

balance_sheet,

You can’t put Facebook and positive in the same sentence.

theshatterstone54,

mb.com.ph/…/meta-to-embrace-extend-extinguish-the…

mim,

Sorry, but I think you’re missing the main point.

The risk is not to be tracked, the issue is embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE): …wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

They are currently competing with Twitter and Bluesky, they just need users to kickstart their new platform. That’s where the fediverse comes in. All Meta has to do is to convince the instances to give them users.

Meta has a lot of money to throw at UX, they will design a better one than Mastodon. Their instance will also be more reliable (since they have money for lots of computational resources). This will allow them to spread their influence on the fediverse (so that people follow others on Threads), growing up to be the largest instance, and then just defederate from everyone else to “stop spam”. People will then move to Threads so they keep following their friends there (because their friends signed up for meta, since it was all compatible anyway).

And only then, they will start to harvest data and put ads in front of you.

Greg,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

The “user kick start” argument is interesting and not something I had heard. The fediverse does have active users which is valuable for growing a social media platform. However, Facebook would only need to convert 0.1% of it’s users to the new threads and it would drawf the fediverse. So I’m not sure of that’s their angle.

mim,

It’s still a free userbase that they didn’t have to grow.

They might not go down that route if they are successful from the beginning to establish a community. But they are still competing with Twitter and Bluesky, so they probably approached the instance admins to get an insurance that there would be activity from the start.

The last thing they want is to be the next Google+ (which they managed to beat). You have to guarantee buzz from the very beginning. After the metaverse flop, they cannot afford another one.

Snugglebug,

Advertising to people currently on the Fediverse probably isn’t their goal. Neither is just joining the Fediverse. Their goal is to become the Fediverse to swallow it whole.

…wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

They also have no incentive to share anti-spam tech. They would be giving up a massive sellin g point of their instance if they did.

Additionally, Threads is already stripping its implementation of ActivityPub of some features like alt text and CWs. Worse though is that they’re removing the option for a chronological timeline, forcing their algorithm as the only option for its users. This would be fine, except it would also effect content on all instances (to an extent). Given that Threads will no doubt have a userbase larger than that of most instances, and that posts which play into its algorithm will show up for significantly more people, posts which engage with Threads’ algorithm will be boosted more often, thus showing up for more people who aren’t using Threads.

Say Threads’ algorithm really likes posts that get lots of replies. Someone writes a controversial post on mastodon.social and lots of people on Threads immediately get in arguments in the replies. This post is then promoted by Threads’ algorithm, causing it to be seen by more people on Threads. More eyes on a post means more likelihood of getting a higher number of boosts. Lots of accounts on Threads boost the post, which causes it to be seen by more people in federated instances. Again, more eyes means more likelihood of getting boosted. At this point the post is popular not just in Threads, but also in instances federated with Threads. Which means it’ll pop up more often on other instances that do not federate with Threads. Threads’ algorithm, only being implemented on Threads, extends its toxic influence out even to servers which refuse to federate with Threads.

Stan,
@Stan@lemmywinks.com avatar

these platforms have the know how to deal with spam

Lol they have the know how to generate spam.

Steinsprut,
@Steinsprut@szmer.info avatar

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth XMPP the Wise? It’s not a story the Corpos would tell you.

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