If the Fediverse is truly the architecture of the future, then shouldn’t it be able to stand any attempt by Meta to control it? If Meta is able to control it, then isn’t it the wrong solution?
No, projects like the Fediverse require initial protectionism. If you let megacorporations into your project, they will dominate and gain control over how the protocol develops in the future. Google Chrome’s huge share of users has enabled it to get dangerously close to locking other browsers out of most of the Internet (the Web Integrity API shenanigans are just the start). Chrome also removed support for JPEG XL, killing that attempt at a standard and enshrining its own WebP. It’s called “Embrace, extend, and extinguish”.
If the Fediverse actually wants to grow, it must unite against this. Otherwise we will end up with a couple hundred thousand Fedipact hardliners and millions on Facebook 2. No progress will have been made.
Defederation is silly here in my opinion. I’d personally prefer more content and more mainstream stuff. We’re basically isolating ourselves. If it’s so great, it’ll flourish; instead we won’t allow it. So much for an open community. :shrug:
We also collectively downvote people who think this which is also silly. Heck even this post is more/less to bully these instances into doing what this group wants.
Good. On one hand it’s good to see fediverse stuff coming mainstream, on the other hand the last thing we want is a load of celebrities and brands trying to cannibalise said fediverse as an opportunity to corner the market instead of genuinely useful resources for communication
In case you young whippersnappers have no clue what is so special about September:
Back then, the internet (and usenet, bitnet, talk) community had been nearly 100% academic. No idiots, no stupid loudmouths, no antivax moms, no politicians. Each September was an inflow of new students accessing the net for the first time, and it was up to the existing population to educate the newbies on things like netiquette and overall good behavior. People learned to use free and open services without abusing them. Back then, those newbies were usually quick to learn, so any problem arising from people who might cause issues usually was over within a few weeks.
Then, The Flood came. The Eternal September began. The time where AOL disks were so common that people used them as coasters. The Internet and all the services on it never were the same again. The existing netizens were no longer capable to educate new users on proper, civilized behavior, and usenet posts solely consisting of text like "me too" became common. It went downhill from there. Formerly open services closed up because of unmitigated abuse. One day, even lawyers invaded the net, people despicable things like Sanford Wallace, for example. You newbies today cannot imagine a time like it was before criminals like him invaded this space.
As part of the eternal September myself, we didn’t just use AOL disks as coasters, we used them for awesome pranks like filling eachother’s cars to the brim with them. It was truly astonishing how many of those disks were around.
The flood of new users overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums and the ability to enforce existing norms.
That’s not really true, in hindsight.
The real problem was that the tools for enforcing existing norms and protecting forum culture didn’t exist yet. Look around today, though, and you can certainly find forums and boards and other online spaces where a distinct culture exists and its norms are enforced.
Yeah, there’s this weird agism I’ve seen. Maybe they think the ‘young people’ (30 years in this case) are bragging? I just view it as someone adding their context, nothing abhorrent ¯*(ツ)*/¯
Yeah I meant it not as bragging but as acknowledgement of the reality that for many of us it is so far into the only internet we’ve ever known that as a cultural touchstone it’s lost on us, even those of us in the fediverse/linux sphere.
Young or old, in our society age isn’t an achievement or something one should brag about. But it’s important to keep in mind the wide array of ages present here. Some here lament the death of forum culture, others caught the tail end of it, and still others will need the explanation of why it’s worth missing (and yeah I’m not that young, but I know professionals who are)
The eternal September is to some of us full adults, people complaining about our parents being on the internet for as long as we’ve been alive, which is actually something we can agree to complain about, but people that age are also here
And also it feels like while there’s just the one eternal September there’s also several. I’ve been part of some and I’ve been frustrated with others, and for some I showed up in December and didn’t realize what I’d missed
Having lived through it, it really does feel weird though. I (mostly) missed the gasoline crisis (I was a child). It's hard to imagine gas pumps all over the US being out of gasoline, and mile long lines waiting for a tanker to show up so you could get gas. It's pretty much impossible to imagine staple rationing (butter, sugar) during wartime in modern US. I certainly didn't live through it - having the TP aisle empty during covid doesn't quite match that. And the actual (1930s) depression. I suspect those folks would consider the crashes of 87 99 01 08 and 20 minor annoyances - a bad Tuesday - compared to what they lived through.
Think of this, though - you have Covid. Okay we have Covid. That's a world-wide event with life-changing implications for so many. And, we can hope, we don't get another pandemic event of that magnitude in our lifetimes. And a decade or two from now you can lord it over some kid who was born in the last 3 years and just "doesn't understand" that "closing school for three days because the flu is so bad" is not a pandemic, and that they just don't understand what a game changer Covid was. ;-)
One trick is to tell them stories that don’t go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they call Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now where were we? Oh yeah! The important thing was, that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
I’ve used this analogy before, but threads is like a huge, 5k passenger cruise ship docking in a small town in Alaska. You don’t have to know ahead of time that the 2 public bathrooms, one at the general store and the other at McDonalds, aren’t going to be enough. You can also forecast the complaining about how everything isn’t really tourist ready. It will suck for everyone. The small museum will be overrun and damaged, the people will be treated like dirt. It’s an easy forecast.
Here’s the important bit, just because they’ve never been in the cruise line business, doesn’t mean you have to give them a chance to ruin your town.
The problem with analogies is that they are not literally the thing that you're analogizing, so there's going to always be parts of the analogy that don't "work."
In this case, what resource is Threads (the cruise ship) actually using from the small town (the rest of the Fediverse?) that causes the inhabitants of that small town any actual trouble? The fact that people on Threads can read posts from people on the Fediverse doesn't actually affect people on the rest of the Fediverse in any way. If you're concerned about the converse - the Fediverse being overrun with content from Threads - that's not actually something that they're implementing.
that’s not actually something that they’re implementing.
That’s not true, their CEO said that you’ll be able to converse and comment without leaving the app in the near future. Also, most instance owners are small, they could be overwhelmed pretty easily.
I’m 100% sure that this small town isn’t ready for a cruise ship. That’s not to say, that in a year or two, we couldn’t be prepared for it. Right now, the relatively small influx from Reddit brutalized the existing community. This is the wild, wild, west for Meta because they’re not getting enough new users for their shareholders in their existing platforms, I’m sure they’re salivating.
A Threads users' content is only going to be visible outside of Threads if the user explicitly opts in to that. The vast majority of people aren't going to do that, or even be aware they can do that. In this analogy, most of the people aren't going to be aware their cruise ship has docked at a town and aren't going to be interested in getting off of it.
Where are you getting this information and if it’s true? Even if it’s true, Meta isn’t known for sticking with what works for the user, but what works for their shareholders. They will figure out a way to exploit and/or extinguish the fediverse.
In the cruise ship analogy, they will stay on the boat the first few 3 or 4 times so everyone backs down and then they’ll open the bridge for all 5k. None of this rocket science.
I think that widespread adoption of open protocols like ActivityPub are a good thing.
Why is it a good thing?
Edit: I should clarify this question. You’re saying you like open discourse, etc., but if threads EEE’s the crap out of the fediverse, then this side is gone and you’re killing off open discourse. Also, corporations like meta, are closed discourse.
It keeps things open to competition. It prevents situations like we saw with Reddit, where single organizations are able to gatekeep content and force everyone to use their portals to access it.
meta is a closed discourse and privately owned, so is reddit. This is user and volunteer run, why would you expose the user and volunteer ran place to closed and greedy companies to do that here?
The whole point of this thread is that Meta is opening up by implementing AcitivtyPub support, people are responding with hostility towards that, and as part of their justification for that hostility they're accusing Meta of being closed.
No, I am not an employee of Meta or any of its subsidiaries. Even though I'm not 100% opposed to everything they ever do. Do you think there's no possibility of nuance on a subject like this, anyone who doesn't completely hate Meta and oppose all of their actions must be secretly working for them?
Yes, which as far as I understand functions via an instance federating with another instance, bringing users along with it regardless of input.
I know theres a future version on the way that will let users block out set instances, but since when do users need to pick and choose what instances their instance shows them?
What do you mean? I follow a lot of hashtags on Mastodon. Won’t I be seeing a lot of Threads content if I’m on a server federated with them without explicitly opting into that?
Threads' implementation is planned, at least initially, to flow inward rather than outward. The posts they make won't be seen outside of Threads at all initially, and later they intend to add that as something users will have to opt into in their settings (people rarely change their default settings so this will likely not happen much).
Even if it eventually does happen, many Fediverse server projects are already implementing features to allow users to block instances for themselves without need for defederation. If you find the comments from Threads to be annoying, block them.
This comment feels like it’s been on the Fediverse too long. To continue the analogy, your small town suddenly starts hosting a lot of voices on soap boxes. The more visited the town becomes, the more town criers it gets. Those criers bring their audiences, so not only do you have long queues for the two public bathrooms but you get fights in the town square; struggles over ideologies and all the underhanded trolling that entails. Corpos move in, governments move in, all eager to bend the ear of anyone unfortunate enough to get in grabbing range.
I liked Digg. I loved Reddit. At some point you just need to make a stand. Money and profitability aren’t part of the equation, fuck’em. I’ll keep my small town tyvm.
The 41% number combines both instances that have actually blocked Threads and those who have pledged to do so at some point, so “have blocked” is a bit misleading
As stated, this is a percentage of instances, not users. Roughly 24% of users are on instances that have limited, blocked, or pledged to block Threads.
yes, on Mastodon when a user block an instance, it's more like a mute than a block. Your posts will still be available to them, but you won't see their content.
The only solution if you want to protect your content from being shared on an instance is to block it at the instance level AND that the instance use Authorised Fetch.
Indeed, it's downright incoherent on a protocol like ActivityPub. The whole point of a system like this is to let content spread around. This isn't supposed to be a walled garden, with all sorts of terms and conditions and DRM and whatnot. When you make a post and click "send" you're announcing that content to the whole world. Even to parts of the world that you may not like.
It's ironic that many of us came to the Fediverse because Reddit tried exactly this sort of nonsense.
I came to the fediverse in 2017, so nothing to do with reddit or meta or twitter.
The fact is here, we have a choice. So you do you.
On mastodon I have an account on an instance that blocked meta and is using authorised fetch (so the proper way to block a domain) : great, my content won't go there or on any other blocked domains : it's my choice.
I have another account on another instance that didn't blocked meta : great, my content will be shared with threads users and I will be able to browse threads.
I said many of us. I know there were people here already when Reddit had its meltdown.
I have no problem with individual instances federating or defederating with whomever they want. The problem is that there's a movement afoot to try to get everyone to defederate with Meta. That's what the "FediPact" is about, and this thread is about the FediPact. So I argue against that. If everyone defederates then there goes that choice you're fond of.
"i am an instance admin/mod on the fediverse. by signing this pact, i hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse. project92 is a real and serious threat to the health and longevity of fedi and must be fought back against at every possible opportunity"
What goal do you think a pact like that has? Do you not think they want everyone else on board? Don't waffle with some "will no one rid me of this troublesome priest" sophistry. They want Meta locked out.
Indeed, one of the great benefits of an open protocol like ActivityPub is that it's impossible to force stuff like this. So ironically, they're going to fail to impose their desired outcome for the same reason that they don't need to impose their desired outcome.
protecting your content from being pushed to an instance that you though your blocked.
protecting your content from being shared where you though it won't because of the way things are worded.
I wonder how that breaks down in terms of numbers of users. The largest instances seem to have federated, and they’re the ones that cost the most to run, and Meta has vast amounts of disposable income. I worry Meta will fund some of them in exchange for influence.
Meta doesn’t need to bother with back-channel influence peddling of existing instances. If Meta simply opened its own Lemmy instance it would immediately be the largest Lemmy instance by orders of magnitude.
For all I know Meta or X or Reddit already control or outright own one or more instances. I don’t hang out wherever the fediverse admins hang out, so I don’t have any tea to spill.
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