It is nice he thinks ActivityPub is the Internet of the future, calling it "the post-platform" world in which journalists, individuals, organizations all run their own ActivityPub services rather than create accounts on platforms like Ex-Twitter or Facebook. But his perspective is still limited to a world where all applications run on the HTTP protocol with DNS identifying services. He talks about the "Post On (your) Own (host), Syndicate Everywhere" (POSSE) model, and how organizations and individuals can deploy Mastodon instances on their own servers. They also interviewed @pluralistic (Cory Doctorow) which was nice.
They really should have interviewed the @spritelyinst folks to see the real Internet of the future, in which HTTP is replaced with the Object Capability Network (OCapN). But to be fair, this tech is still pretty new and maybe not yet to the point where tech journalists at The Verge would be interested in doing articles about it.
#FediPact is an agreement between all current Mastodon instances to never federate with #Facebook, in response to the #Metacorporation's recent announcement that they will be making Facebook compatible with the #ActivityPub standard, and thus allow Mastodon and other ActivityPub services to federate with Facebook.
Most of the arguments I hear in favor of federating with Facebook come down to trying to expand the reach of the fediverse and Mastodon in particular. If people on Facebook can interact with Mastodon, this can only grow the fediverse and make it more relevant. This is a failure to recognize the real threat of Meta.
This pro-Facebook sentiment is usually accompanied by accusations of #FediPact supporters being irrationally dogmatic, overly paranoid about advertising and other for-profit ventures, overly concerned with privacy, and/or ignorant of how technology works. The attitude here is "Don't be so paranoid, just try it and you will see the benefits." This is a straw-man argument against #FediPact.
Simply said: a battle between a federation and a corporation.
#Mastodon (and other #ActivityPub#fediverse services) needs to see themselves the way the #Meta corporation sees Mastodon: as a competitor and a bitter enemy. Mastodon and the larger fediverse needs to strive to make itself a better and separate from #Facebook. The federation should not be providing free content that improves the quality of their competitor who is trying to shut them down.
Therefore all #fediverse instance admins (#Mastodon#Kbin#Lemmy#Pixelfed#PeerTube) should agree to #FediPact . Federating with Facebook entails nothing but risk, and provides no actual reward. Federating with Facebook will not grow the fediverse, it will destroy it, slowly but surely.
Maybe, if hell freezes over**, Meta might agree to pay admins of Mastodon instances for federating with Facebook. Those who provide the service of quality content should be compensated, after all. But that is a separate discussion entirely. Let's just say that any Mastodon admin that allows Facebook to federate with their instance without compensation, especially for the increase in web traffic to their server accompanied by the increased bandwidth costs, is poorly informed fool who is happy to be exploited by a massive corporation.
**EDIT (2023-06-23 16:10) Someone I trust has explained to me that Meta will in fact pay some instances for federating with Facebook. In that case, I favor an evidence-based approach to deciding whether to defederate with the instances "blessed" by Facebook.