I'm confused by this - there are various things Meta might want from the Fediverse (free content, more data, more people to serve ads to), but new users can't be one of them. No one from Mastodon is likeky to migrate to Meta's platform; the people who want to use Meta are already there.
Anyone operating an instance should defederate from this shit immediately. This is exactly the kind of corporate overreach that isn’t welcome here. This will end very poorly for the fediverse I think.
By that logic though all of Fediverse is illegal and should be shut down. There is significant work to be done there, not just by Facebook but by the Fediverse community on the whole.
The Fediverse doesn't require that anyone provide any personal information, though. Literally none. It's the user's responsibility to choose not to post any.
Certainly, but when you make a comment or post it gets transferred to all federated servers without your express consent and you currently can't permanently delete anything.
"Illegal" is a harsh term, I'd rather say "legally naive". There's no TOS anywhere saying things like "you give us the right to publish the comments you enter" which would clarify things but if you were to take an ordinary instance to court, you'd probably be thrown out with reference to you implicitly agreeing to have your comments published by, well, writing and submitting them. Licenses are ruled by contracts and contracts don't necessarily need written form.
Meta is a whole another thing, though, because now we're not only talking publishing, but straight commercial exploitation of your content. There's no equability to be seen anywhere, meta doesn't contribute to the maintenance of your home instance, it straight-up leeches your content to put it next to ads. An implicit license doesn't suffice for that, a written one might not even (because no equability), that's why all the corps have TOS.
If you post a comment on a publicly accessable page, there is an expectation that what you've posted will also be public. That's implied consent and doesn't require signing a contract.
In fact, the EU generally takes the position that a Terms of Service agreement is pretty much worthless. Nobody actually reads those documents, so the terms in them cannot be enforced. A TOS clarifies what a company/organisation will do with user entered content, but in terms of what can legally be done with the data the TOS doesn't apply.
It is absolutely not illegal. But it is subject to GDPR, so I could send a deletion request to the admin of an instance, and they would have to delete my content on their instance.
In general, any data that can be used to tack you, such as IP number that is sent with the request, is identifiable information so an anonymous username is not enough in itself
Importantly, posts hosted and visible on Meta's server will be subject to Facebook's content moderation rules, which means those policies will likely have a sweeping impact across the Fediverse.
Is it just me or does that sound like anything on instances hosted outside of meta's own that can be merely seen from theirs? I'm all for moderation, the stricter moderation against hate-speech is part of why I joined Beehaw. But if I'm reading that right (I hope I'm not), then it seems like they plan to call the shots on other instances as if they have any say in what everyone else does right out of the gate.
Maybe what's meant here is simply defederation of entire instances and banning of problematic users like any other instance does, ok. But it could also mean pressuring admins to enforce Meta's TOS on a case-by-case basis which feels like the start of EEE tactics.
They will very soon have the largest userbase of any instance. If your instance gets blocked by Meta, your users suddenly have a fraction of the reach because no Meta people can see your posts anymore. That would put a lot of pressure on admins I imagine.
Sort of, you don’t have to subscribe to their communities or follow users from Meta. We don’t want to talk with Facebook users, that’s not why we’re here. There isn’t a single person on Facebook who would feel disrupted if they suddenly didn’t see my content anymore, either.
I was thinking the absolute worst case scenario is a bad faith use of the regulatory laws aimed at Meta but put on a firehose and aimed at federated servers who don't prostrate before them.
Things like partnering with copyright holders for automated DMCA floods for literally all images on the instance that have copyrighted content visible.
In a worst case scenario this could gut everything. I've had several 30 day facebook bans for morbid funny memes, like the classic with Dahmer asking, "Are you hungry? I've got Ben and Jerry in the freezer".
Nearly everything I find on imgur that I'd want to share with my few old friends on Facebook is either too dark/morbid or would be copyright claimed. Practically everything I find funny, the mods there think is "glorifying violence". It's ridiculous.
It just means they'll block users who don't abide by local site rules, which is standard practice.
Remote content is viewed locally, via mirroring, so in order for local users to see that remote content it had to be hosted on the local site. If that content does not meet local community standards, it gets removed, and the poster gets blocked.
This absolutely puts pressure on other admins to adhere to Meta's standards, because if they don't then they'll risk being defederate, but that's the whole history and controversy of Fediblock in a nutshell.
Meta won't have control over what users on other instances post. Instead, they'll just have very strong influence over the rules on instances that desperately want to federate with senpai Meta.
And really it’s nonsense. If we wanted to be on Facebook then we already would be. Meta coming in and telling everyone how to run their instances because a Facebook user might see their content, won’t bode well.
Meta is going to be treating content on any instance in any way it suits them. They're entering this as the 900 pound gorilla and expect they'll be able to throw their weight around, naturally. They'll treat all Fediverse content as "their" content and take, take, take.
There's no way to win this. The only winning move is not too play. Defederate all their instances sight unseen.
That way when they claim to be part of the Fediverse we can say "so, who are you federating with, yourself?" and we will be able to point out it's just same old Facebook with a new coat.
The Verge article is paywalled for me, but the screencaps Alex shared in his toot don't really support his summary. The article mentions that Threads can import content from Mastodon as an example of the sorts of things ActivityPub supports, and that's about as close as it gets.
And then there's this:
The company is planning to create a roundtable for administrators of other servers and developers to share best practices and work through problems that will inevitably arise, like Meta's server traffic putting strain on other, smaller servers.
Emphasis mine. How would Meta's server put strain on other, smaller servers if it's not federating with them?
I'm fully willing to believe Meta wants to EEE ActivityPub, but this particular claim doesn't seem to check out.
From a product side, I think most meta users who are looking for microblogging are happy enough with Twitter. So I think it will be tough to get a lot of initial buy-in.
In regards to the embrace, extend, extinguish concerns: I can't, off the top of my head, think of any feature adds that would outweigh fediverse peoples distaste for ads or corporate social media. I mean, are flashy ai filters enough to split the user base of a reddit-alike or twitter clones? Is anyone clamoring for vr group-chats to improve their link-sharing threaded convos.
I'm not saying there's nothing to worry about, but I think the feature-poor nature of these types of services (that really aren't significantly different than old bbses) insulates at least those corners of the fediverse to some extent.
Plus, feature-creep is something people usually hate, or are uninterested in with big social media before this all started to pop off? Remember Foursquare check-ins, deals, credits, crypto, live audio...
Should we be surprised at this, after the whole Anti-Meta Pact thing got so much traction? Like on one hand we don’t want to federate with them, but on the other we’re unhappy when they won’t?
So... let me see if I've got this right: Meta is going to start a Twitter-like instance on the fediverse that will be marketed to Instagram members and will be subject to Facebook's content moderation rules, and Mastodon users who want to will be able to transfer their accounts to Meta's instance, in which case they will be subject to Facebook's content rules.
I keep trying to see what all of the fuss is about, but no matter how often I look at it or from how many different angles, all I see is Meta and Zuckerberg doing yet another faceplant.
It's as if Walmart announced that they were going to open a chain of art house cinemas and market them to Walmart customers.
Yeah... you know, I've seen this EEE thing so many times in the last couple of days that it's starting to feel like astroturf.
Here's a funny thing - I was actually on Voat when it came apart and I watched it happen, and what happened there is, I think, very much relevant.
It wasn't always a toxic right-wing cesspool - it was actually quite a bit like this in the early days - just people posting.
But then there was this sudden push to get people all wound up about an external threat - in that case, Reddit "powermods," and especially the SRS brigaders. The hue and cry was that they were going to destroy the free and open forum unless we did something about it.
Sort of like how Meta is going to destroy this free and open forum unless we do something about it.
But the thing is that the constant fanning of the flames just led to increasing paranoia and hysteria and infighting and harassment and brigading and general ugliness, and when the dust all settled, the toxic right-wing authoritarians had shouted down, alienated, stifled and ultimately driven away everyone else. All in the name of "protecting" the site.
Not saying that that will necessarily happen here (especially in that particular way, since if nothing else the tankies aren't going to give in to the righties). Just saying that I've already seen a forum destroyed by an obsessive fear of some bogeyman, and I'd rather not see it again.
In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway. They didn’t care about respecting a protocol they were not 100% in control. So they pulled the plug and announced they would not be federated anymore. And started a long quest to create a messenger, starting with Hangout (which was followed by Allo, Duo. I lost count after that).
As expected, no Google user bated an eye. In fact, none of them realised. At worst, some of their contacts became offline. That was all. But for the XMPP federation, it was like the majority of users suddenly disappeared. Even XMPP die hard fanatics, like your servitor, had to create Google accounts to keep contact with friends. Remember: for them, we were simply offline. It was our fault.
And it's not an accident:
What Google did to XMPP was not new. In fact, in 1998, Microsoft engineer Vinod Vallopllil explicitly wrote a text titled "Blunting OSS attacks" where he suggested to "de-commoditize protocols & applications […]. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS project’s entry into the market."
Microsoft put that theory in practice with the release of Windows 2000 which offered support for the Kerberos security protocol. But that protocol was extended. The specifications of those extensions could be freely downloaded but required to accept a license which forbid you to implement those extensions. As soon as you clicked "OK", you could not work on any open source version of Kerberos. The goal was explicitly to kill any competing networking project such as Samba.
This anecdote was told Glyn Moody in his book "Rebel Code" and demonstrates that killing open source and decentralised projects are really conscious objectives. It never happens randomly and is never caused by bad luck.
It's not exactly the same, since yes - many of those most involved in the ugliness were the same toxic posters who had been ejected from Reddit. More notably, it was different in that it was a single, monolithic site rather than a federation of individual instances.
However, the broad dynamic of it all - the way in which the destruction played out - was, to ne, disturbingly similar to what's happening here now.
It all started with posters banging the drums of fear, and specifically fear of some external actor that was going to move in to the site and destroy it. Exactly as is happening here. Then that drumbeat of fear started to alternate with the repeated refrain that "we" need to do something to protect the site from the threat. Exactly as is happening here.
The next step was to "do something." Specifically, a group of people pushed for a broad community commitment to opposing the invader, then appointed themselves guardians of that commitment. They began harassing and brigading people and subs that they claimed to be agents of the threat, or simply were accused of being insufficiently committed to "protecting" the site. And it was all downhill from there - the site tore itself apart from the inside.
Obviously none of that has happened here. Yet.
And yes, I'm aware of that article. Really, at this point, it's pretty much guaranteed that anyone who's spent even a few minutes on the fediverse is aware of it. since every single discussion of this topic brings another 37 links to that same article.
It does make some salient points, but it too is starting to feel a bit like astroturf.
And I find it a bit disconcerting that the focus seems to be on the threat the article outlines rather than the solution it prescribes:
Fediverse can only win by keeping its ground, by speaking about freedom, morals, ethics, values. By starting open, non-commercial and non-spied discussions. By acknowledging that the goal is not to win. Not to embrace. The goal is to stay a tool. A tool dedicated to offer a place of freedom for connected human beings. Something that no commercial entity will ever offer.
It does make some salient points, but it too is starting to feel a bit like astroturf.
Astroturf is created by billionaires to make it seem like a bunch of ordinary people agree with them. A legit article about several actual instances of corporations killing FOSS does not become astroturf just because a lot of ordinary people found it useful enough to post and cite.
The solution offered is not entirely clear but I read it as "do not federate with huge corporations because they will bury you".
As expected, no Google user bated an eye. In fact, none of them realised. At worst, some of their contacts became offline. That was all. But for the XMPP federation, it was like the majority of users suddenly disappeared. Even XMPP die hard fanatics, like your servitor, had to create Google accounts to keep contact with friends. Remember: for them, we were simply offline. It was our fault.
People keep posting that, but where that specific example breaks down is that xmpp requires network effects to work. You need your friends to use the same system and it's more person to person interaction.
They have a lot more leverage because if you want to talk to your friend, then you have to use their setup.
Link aggregators, forums, reddit, and lemmy/kbin work differently. Your friends use them but you probably don't interact directly.
It's about the community.
And I'm not really sure how Meta changes that. They are creating a thing for their Instagram users (using activitypub protocol??) and they are planning on allowing people to move their mastodon accounts over to their thing. Their thing that doesn't federate. It's a walled garden.
Those people, if they move, are required to follow Facebooks terms of service. Well no shit? You just moved to Facebook.
What's being forced on anyone?
If they "enhance" the protocol and attract people to their service...then what? You can't stop people from using a different service. Tildes could take off and pull people from the fediverse. Tildes could offer a service to import your account. How does that impact the rest of the fediverse??
Just keep using this. Build your community and carry on.
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