The exchange is about Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!
The exchange is about Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!
A good response. Civlised and to-the-point.
I disagree.
I hope there’ll be people discussing sensibly.
For example the question how the rest of the fediverse would like Meta to act, when / if they have the by far largest instance on Fediverse with Threads.
Should they Rate-Limit queries from their users to other Instances, as to not overload them? This would protect other instances, but make the federated experience worse, driving more people to threads.
Would the Fediverse rather that Meta mirrors images etc on their servers too, or pull those from the original server?
Maybe they have UX ideas that would be useful to have somewhat uniform (like the subreddit/community/magazine stuff here), and would like input on them.
Of course just blocking them is an option for the fediverse, but doing that blindly seems like a missed opportunity for both sides.
More freely available content would be great, wouldn’t it?
Maybe they have Ideas on the protocol, that they want to talk with admins about as a first step to gain more perspective. And certainly they are likely to be data-hungry greedy shit, but there is a chance that they are actually good ideas - there are actual people working at meta after all.
There’s tons of ways in which this could be useful, and I don’t really understand the completely blocking approach I see a lot of.
They want to use ActivityPub, that’s awesome, finally something new and big that uses an open freaking standard on the web. What are the downsides? If it sucks for communities they can easily block Meta.
Yes, Meta is not a Company working for the betterment of the world, certainly.
But maybe, just maybe, goals align here, and Meta can make money and improve the Fediverse and the Internet with it. And certainly, maybe they want to “take over” ActivityPub, and that would indeed be bad. And even then, wouldn’t knowing because they told you be much better than knowing because they’re meta?
So, if they want to change the Protocol, be very, very wary of their proposals. But even there there they could just want reasonable improvements because they suddenly deal with 100x of the next biggest instances.
tl;dr: when you tell people what you’d like them to do, it increases the chances of them doing that.
The issue is once you open these floodgates you’re not going to be able to close them, at least not without alienating a vast majority of users on both sides. Furthermore, once meta gains the majority of users and content on its instances (and this is really more of a “when”, not “if” situation), they can start making changes to AP and overall infrastructure and forcing other instances to either adapt to that, or get left behind one by one, similar to what google does regardless of W3C and other browsers have to adapt even though it goes against the agreed standard.
If meta gains a foothold in the fediverse and eventually start isolating the smaller instances, it’s going to be the email situation all over again, we’ll have just a few large trusted providers and the rest will be a seemingly unsafe niche that most people avoid. Giving them the benefit of the doubt is just foolish, meta will not let a few fediverse admins dictate their policy (even assuming they have the backbone to stand up to them, and considering the recent meeting/NDA/“shareholder” drama most of them definitely don’t).
Better to nip it in the bud than let it fester like a wound. Give companies as evil as meta an inch and they’ll take a mile.
I mean, users of Meta producs are already plenty alienated from Lemmy etc, aren’t they?
I mean, it’s a matter of… minutes? hours?, probably not days even.
That’s why I’d like to be able to talk to them.
And I agree that these are very very dangerous. I wouldn’t say they could only be bad, but still.
Anyway, not following bad changes by meta would leave people where?
Exactly where they are right now.
In that case, Meta joining the fediverse would have been a failed experiment.
Billions of people using interoparable software to talk to each other. Email is a brilliant success!
Yes, having “few” larger instances isn’t great, but on the other hand most companies run their own email server, and those talk fine with anyone else.
Doesn’t seem like a terrible result to me.
Much rather “the Email situation” than the “whatsapp situation” or “signal situation” or “facebook situation” or “reddit situation” or “instagram situation” or “tiktok situation” where you have to join that specific thing to talk to people.
Not really, in the greater context of meta controlling the vast majority of fediverse we would be the ones that are a failed experiment, a niche group of old people yelling at clouds, not willing to get with the times and join the instance that has all the content, all the users and all the new tech improvements. Just look at how much shit beehaw got for temporarily defederating the 2 largest lemmy instances, now imagine when that happens to your instance and it gets cut off from meta permanently. It’d be like trying to maintain a twitter competitor while twitter was still in its golden age.
People don’t create private instances or join smaller communities for their email provider, they go to gmail, hotmai or even protonmail for the promise of stability, safety and compatibility with others, not getting listed as spam bots or their mail going straight into trash. Companies have dedicated people to handle this but in my experience even they just end up using microsoft or google software in the background, just with their custom domain. It is a big success for email and these corporations, it is a terrible story for the open and community-controlled internet and fediverse.
I feel like this already describes us pretty darn well.
So I don’t see the disadvantage to potentially going back here.
you mean like the 89.5% of active users of kbin being on kbin.social or 50% of active lemmy users being on lemmy.ml, lemmy.world or beehaw.org?
That’s just normal, and as long as it’s still possible to create smaller communities it’s fine.
Not quite sure what your point is, just general apathy? Currently the servers you listed are practically 100% of fediverse, we’re literally the early adopters right now and not the isolated obsolete old people. If meta comes you’re not going to get to “go back here”, that’s the whole point of discussion - what them coming means for the current fediverse and what kind of damage it can cause.
Fediverse has gotten a massive sudden influx of players and it’s natural that everyone rushed the few available instances. If anything, the fact that it’s split between kbin.social, lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, beehaw rather than everyone being on just one is already a good sign.
¯\(ツ)/¯
You can still do the same on reddit yet you felt the need to come here, so obviously you care at least a bit about outside interference.
That we have different perspectives. I already see us as the old guys shouting at the clouds (of reddit etc) for being bad. I certainly shout enough at most of Metas and Googles and Apples and Tencents products to fit that bill. I certainly don’t have all of the technology that some other people use, because I’m not willing to sell my soul to those companies any more.
I don’t feel like an early adopter. Lemmy is 4 years old, ActivityPub is 5 years old, Mastodon is 7 Years old.
I feel much more like a niche idiot who doesn’t want to give FAANG the rights to his data, and because of that doesn’t live with the times and doesn’t have google maps, isn’t on instagram for my friends to reach and doesn’t know about the latest tiktok trend.
No, it’s about what happens here when meta comes. We will not stop it.
And yes, Meta can do quite a lot of damage, although I’d guess a “non-meta-fediverse” i.e. a fediverse that completely blocks all meta-content would reasonably quickly look just like this, because it’s what we have right now.
Anyway, because of the damage they can do, one should talk to them. Even if you can’t sway them one iota, you learn of their plans, and can act accordingly.
I don’t think there’s a point in continuing this discussion, we obviously have different expectations and experiences about this. I’ll just leave you with this article that is being spread around that says all of what I’ve been trying to say in a much more detailed and sourced way. https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Maybe you get something from it that you couldn’t from my comments, otherwise I just hope you’re right and history doesn’t repeat yet again, somehow.
This is super naive. Facebook/Meta has zero interest in “playing nice” with competitors in any field. Their intentions with the fediverse are not pure, and you’re a fool if you think otherwise.
This is capitalism, and this is one of the most profitable corporations that has ever existed on the planet. A corporation who has made those profits almost entirely from the private data of its users (and even some users that aren’t subscribed to their service. That’s how much data they have).
They don’t “work together” with competitors “for the good of everyone.” That’s a pipe dream.
Respectful post, but respectfully disagree. The longer the fediverse can stay free of monetary-driven communities, the longer it will last. Wait until the proposals for blue check marks and karma hit the ActivityPup “plus” standard and it’s too late for the platform.
If that’s the case then there’s no need for it to be off-record. Unless the conversation of what you pointed out is open to scrutiny it shouldn’t happen.
This is the real point here. If this is a legit talk about legit points then it can be open for everyone to see.
Starting talks with Meta behind closed doors can never happen. If they have something to say or ask then they can do it publicly.
I am all for talk, because that’s the part that hurts no one, but make it as transparent as humanly possible from all angles.
I also want to know what “the enemy” is up to, so invite them to talk as much as possible, we do not need to agree to anything just because we were talking/listening.
In my experience when you tell huge corporations what you’d like them to do, it has no bearing on whether or not they will do that.
Facebook/Meta wouln’t even moderate out incitements to genocide when multiple people asked that of them for years, so it seems naive to assume they care at all about the people in the fediverse.
They are profit driven with a laser focus, and this is a really obvious attempt at co opting, not collaborating.
This might cause instances to have a legal obligation not to federate with them, as some countries forbid you from supporting places where hate speech exists.
That’s nice and all, but before we get to any of this there’s a fundamental incentive schism to overcome first. People flock to the fediverse because they are tired of being treated like cattle. If you are not the paying customer, you are the product. And you will never–NEVER–be catered to. That’s the bottom line here.
I agree. The Beautiful thing here would be that people sick of Meta could still go to fosstodon, and they could still talk to their niece on Metas Threads.
I can’t help but see that as a win for the people not on metas software.
How is it a win for me if I specifically signed up for a fediverse account to get away from data-hoarding, money-driven corporations like Facebook? I don’t want Facebook to have access to my account information, posts and comments. I think you’re missing the point about who this company is and the extent to which it is willing to go to get people’s data.
Fucking thank you. Are people really this gullible? Maybe I have a different perspective because I’ve been free from Facebook for like 15 years now, but do these people really think that Meta/Facebook wants to be nice to its competitors? Suddenly they’re going to give up the business model that has made them one of the biggest, most profitable corporations that has ever existed on this planet, and do the exact opposite of what they did to get there? LOL.
I’m honestly questioning if TheYang is reading our comments or if they are just spewing the same talking points regardless of the arguments presented to them. It’s baffling to see people so willing to embrace a corporation that has done nothing but exploit its users and their privacy.
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I hate to break it to you, but the very nature of the fediverse (as a distributed network where posts and account information automatically get distributed to hundreds if not thousands of independent servers you may or may not be aware of, that do not necessarily have to honour your deletion requests) means that it would be absolutely trivial for either Facebook or any other random bad actor you could think of to have access to all of that, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
This is an example I’ve given a few times, but if Meta were really just wanting to suck down data for the evulz (why they would do this I have absolutely no idea because it’s not like they could use that data for anything), they don’t need to start an instance amid a blaze of publicity. They could just go on Mastodon.social, sign up for a no-name account, grab an API key and suck down the contents of the fediverse in real time and that’s the end of it. The fediverse is not private and its very nature means that control over one’s own data is not quite as secure as ActivityPub advocates would like to pretend.
But that wasn’t my point. It’s not that I think that Facebook or Google cannot scrape Fediverse platforms/instances, it’s that even if they do, they cannot serve targeted ads based on our activity here.
We have different definitions for privacy. Since I’m active here, it should be clear that to me private doesn’t mean hidden. I like how the EFF put it, in their article on the Fediverse:
This is another one of those things where Meta’s claimed motivations for this don’t seem to stack up.
How exactly are Meta supposed to serve “targeted ads” to me, @bloonface, if I am on finecity.social and not [whatever Meta’s instance is]?
If I don’t have an account on their service, and never visit their website, they have no opportunity to put a tracking cookie on my computer, no opportunity to serve an ad to me (other than directly messaging me, behaviour which would absolutely get them defedded instantly by anyone who is even close to being on the fence about their presence), no link between my finecity.social account and any Meta accounts I may have… what benefit do they obtain from this?
Bluntly - how is this dastardly plan of theirs actually physically supposed to work?
A lot of people seem to have ascribed omnipotent powers to Meta far beyond what they are actually technically capable of. They can’t deliver you a tracking cookie or make your instance display a banner ad to you through ActivityPub, ffs.
Your posts and comments are public. Everyone, including Meta, already has access to them.
That’s not the problem. The problem is that Meta will control and ultimately destroy the Fediverse.
The problem here isn’t talking to Meta or Meta making a federated platform.
Nobody can prevent Meta from doing that anyway.
The problem is the need to push against the insistence of Meta to keep these meetings off the record. It’s against the entire philosophy of something like not only fediverse but FOSS in general.
If Meta wants good faith, they have to show it first.
Notice that in the email, Kev gives his guidance as to the matter. Do whatever the fuck you want as long as you put people first and make a product for the purpose of serving them.
This should be the attitude everyone should have first.
We will accept you as long as you’re bringing value to us, not the other way round, got that Meta?
As long as any dev is taking this approach, Meta included, I’m supporting them. If someone is secretive about their intentions about a public service which is not a for profit endeavor inherently, I’ll have a hard pass too.
A more important topic is, what federated data will be kept on Meta, and most importantly HOW that data will be processed/used/sold by Meta.
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Everything you post online is public by default, stored, copied or archived by third parties without your knowledge. They don’t need a huge instance to grab data from the fediverse if they want to do that.
God thank you, I swear some people fail to realise just how ActivityPub federation works!
Post something on fedi and you lose effective control over it; for all intents and purposes, it’s out there on hundreds of different servers who don’t have to respect your deletion requests, and it’s never coming back.
And to be perfectly honest, I’m more comfortable with Meta archiving all my shitposts than, I dunno, all the nazis.
An interesting and nuanced response - thank you. I’m not quite sure I agree, as it rather assumed good faith - but food for thought.
There seems very little incentive for Meta to federate with anyone, except good faith, right?
They’ll double the Fediverse Userbase in an hour, or less.
The ‘embrace, extend, extinguish’ strategy is a well known one. Set out with a strategy to become the biggest instance, capture lots and lots of new users. Introduce some swanky new features that ‘unfortunately initially don’t federate very well, but we are working in that’. Then defederate from other instances that don’t adopt your features - etc etc
Facebook has done federation before - for example, back when they weren’t winning at chat, they integrated their chat system with other Jabber / XMPP servers so that people felt chat wasn’t a walled garden and could talk with people using other clients.
How did it end? 7 years later, once enough people were on Facebook Chat, they closed the gates to the walled garden by completely ending XMPP support: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/07/16/131254/facebook-finally-ends-xmpp-support-for-3rd-party-chat.
So it is really just about leveraging the fediverse to get users onto their product (and their current products, while they are similar in that they are about social networking, aren’t really like exactly like Lemmy or Mastodon). If they are successful enough, what is to stop them locking the gate to the walled garden again?
But they won’t be capturing new users from the Fediverse, they will capture them from Facebook and Instagram, and since this is mainly a Twitter competitor, also from Twitter.
I think you’re missing the point. We are weary of Facebook’s decision to enter the Fediverse exactly because we know it sees the Fediverse as a long-term threat and it could try to extinguish it. While they at first would adopt open standards and protocols, what stops them from creating proprietary extensions and using those and its dominance and resources to make it difficult for users to switch to other platforms in the Fediverse?
Nothing, which should probably raise concerns around how good a standard ActivityPub actually is if all it takes to drive a truck through its intent is one bad actor.
Is it really fair to call Facebook just one bad actor? It’s one of the largest corporations in the world, has some of the largest social media and messaging platforms out there. In terms of resources, there are very few companies, let alone individuals or groups, that can compete with Facebook.
If you look at it in these terms, you understand that Facebook has an interest in making sure that ActivityPub doesn’t too large without Facebook having a say in it. If it could control the whole internet, I’m sure it would. So, no, I don’t agree with your framing of the issue.
I’d guess the plan is that if the fediverse and meta mingles together, the fedi-users start to follow the meta users in such amount that when the breakup finally happens, they are reliant on meta to continue. People stay on facebook, eating the ads and manipulation just because their mothers and friends are there.
Just thought about the future nightmare of receiving an invite on mastodon to a friends private meta-instance “party” and to view it you are suddenly offered to either decline or import your fedi-account.
Even if they are acting in good faith, I think they’ve earned our derision and deserve to be shut out. You don’t get to play unfairly for decades then turn around and expect no consequences.
The history of Facebook (there I said it) and the EEE example MS already provided us years ago (as referenced by @HeartyBeast ) does not incline me to believe in their good faith. If Meta has proven one thing over and over and over, it’s that their interests will always lie in harvesting of user data to enrich themselves, and that any restraint on their part will be that which is legislatively forced.
Let the Fediverse grow on its own. It’s not a race. And it’s surely not a race best won by letting the wolf in through the front door.
The day we federate with Meta is the day I find the fediverse instances that refuse to do so, and take my account there.
Edit: Blog post on this topic that goes into some detail about historical precedent and etc.
No incentive other than good faith? This is one of the most profitable corporations that has ever existed, talking to one of its competitors. If you think this is how corporations operate, I’ve got news for you. This is like Capitalism 101.
Yeah, because the ~2 Million monthly active users on the whole fediverse actually matters to the company with 2.95 billion active users on Facebook and 1.2 billion monthly active users on Instagram.
those 2 Million Fediverse users are .06% or .167% compared.
yeah, those rounding errors are totally the reason why Meta is going for ActivityPub
Nobody’s saying that, in terms of user bases, the Fediverse is comparable to Facebook or Instagram. And it seems to me that you are misrepresenting why people here, myself included, don’t want our instances to federated with Facebook. It’s not that we don’t want bigger communities. Most of us have been on Facebook or Reddit and have given up on those bigger communities and adopted the Fediverse because it aligns with our values and privacy principles. Facebook does not. Its Fediverse platform will not suddenly be the opposite of what the company has been doing for more than a decade.
Well, maybe I got the wrong impression, but I felt like the userbase of the fediverse was implied as the motivation for Meta federating.
And I wanted to put in a comparison, why I don’t think that this is the case.
I don’t see a reason why Meta should want Threads to federate, except for “well, whatever, doesn’t hurt us to get those fractions of a percent”. They’ll probably have to use whitelists anyway, due to different legal situations on different instances. So at best they’ll federate with some of the bigger instances.
I’m sorry to tell you, but your privacy isn’t exactly great here.
Every Thread, Comment and Upvote at least can be requested from any fediverse instance.
And do you know what, you don’t even have to be a fediverse instance yourself to do that.
But I guess you knew that, so you’re here because nobody tracks what you look at, which is great, and because you like Open Source.
That’s not going to Change when Meta Federates.
That’s true.
But it will be two things, if I may steal the analogy of someone else in this thread:
first it will be a black hole ripping through the Fediverse.
I’d like that to do as little damage as possible.
I’d love it if mastodon continues to grow after Metas release, and doesn’t collapse under server costs, Spam and other detrimental effects.
For that, preparing for the coming storm seems useful.
second it will be a huge amount of possible connections, of people.
I’d love to be able to toot a reply to some meta thread.
I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if the fediverse would already know certain rules that meta may require to federate with them? And I mean sensible rules, like no/flagged porn, issues with piracy etc.
One could also talk about how Meta allows/blocks instances. A lot of legal trouble for Meta could probably be avoided if they only show posts from a whitelist of instances, but any user could post to their instance.
But how would they deal with non-whitelisted instances trying to pull Threads-Content?
Maybe they want to talk about how to deal with those “half-federating” situations, because this is not the current norm, and they may not actually get more bad press when a meeting could have prevented it.
For both of these effects I think communication with meta can only help.
It seems we have different priorities and concerns, and I can respect that.
I’m skeptical of Facebook, as I see the potential of it attempting to take over the Fediverse. As I’ve said in a different comment recently, Facebook’s business model goes against the Fediverse’s business model. And, in the long term, the Fediverse model has the potential to compete with larger for-profit corporations. And, as it has done in the past with the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, Facebook is now once again trying to prevent its demise by joining the Fediverse. Again, I’m not saying that the Fediverse is an existential threat to Facebook now, but it could be in the future. As people increasingly become weary of big corporations stealing their data, Facebook has to pretend that it’s changing. That it has learned from its past mistakes. And I just don’t buy it.
We’re here because these large corporations have failed us.
Yes, I wasn’t implying that Google or Facebook cannot see what we’re talking, when I mentioned the privacy concerns. I was referring to this data not being used to profile us for targeted ads.
Not if most instances choose not to federate with Facebook. People who want to be on a federated instance can sign up to that instance. The option to not federate is a build-in feature of the Fediverse, and I hope kbin.social takes advantage of that. If not, I’ll see myself out and look for an instance that does.
Here’s an article that helped me understand this issue better: https://ianbetteridge.com/2023/06/21/meta-and-mastodon-whats-really-on-peoples-minds/.
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Fascinating comment from someone who doesn’t understand rates of growth at all, and has no idea why this “offer” is coming at this point in time.
It’d be entirely open to Meta to simply turn off federation, in the same way that Truth Social and Counter Social have.
But honestly if I were them, given the hostile reaction I’d probably just do that and knock the whole ActivityPub thing on the head. It feels like a waste of time when realistically they would get more people on Threads/P92 in one day than a million Musk-buying-Twitters could do with Mastodon. Then everyone is happy - no Meta on fedi, Meta gets its new exciting Twitter clone that it fully controls.
Put it this way - either they’re up to some form of non-specific evil, in which case they can probably achieve whatever goals they have far more concretely if they fully control the content on Threads, or they’re not and all this is actually in good faith, in which case they’re doing this for the benefit of a few hundred thousand fedi nerds who have reacted mostly with hostility and are going to block it on sight.
@TheYang @steb They want to use an open protocol? That’s great.
But then they should be open about their intentions, and not send invitations to a few select individuals to a confidential “off the record” “roundtable”. This seems just too fishy to me.
I agree with you, and I appreciate that Facebook at least tries to reach out, but after all that happened I also understand that there is a certain aversion against Facebook.
I get your argument, but fundamentally
doesn’t hold true. For example I don’t need a flood of Instragram thots on my Mastodon or Lemmy pages, even if I got it for free. Quality is more important than quantity, I am here for in-depth discussions on current events and issues we face, with individuals capable of empathy and critical thinking. Considering the types of interactions that come from Facebook and related sites, I need better public reassurance that Meta’s involvement won’t tank the platform and it’s vibe.
We’ve handled the Reddit migration about as well as we could have hoped, but the folks on Meta are a whole different beast. Many will be fine but there will also be a chunk of people completely blind to forum Nettiquite.
Lastly Meta acting behind closed doors is antithetical to FOSS development ethos. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I would refuse closed door discussions but be open to public ones. NDAs are rich corporations’ tools to silence people.
If you think that, then you haven’t read up on Facebook and XMPP.
Meta’s motives are simple: destroy the Fediverse.
Yeah large EEE on ActivityPub feels like almost a given if they start to use it.
But should you block people from embracing a good thing, just because you’re scared they’ll try to extend and extinguish?
no one is preventing people who have facebook or instagram accounts from joining the fediverse by blocking meta. what they are doing, is preemptively taking action to ensure an immoral company doesn’t do exactly what it has shown itself to be in it’s nature to do.
Thanks for answering “the Yang” so that I don’t need to :-)
Remember, don’t feed the trolls !
I really wish kbin had user tagging just so I could tag you as a “leopards eating faces” party member.
I doubt most people moved to the fediverse simple because of better content. Personally I didn’t. And quantity doesn’t mean quality.
Contributions are open for these people. But the moment the contributions are facilitated through Meta, they represent Metas business interests.
Control. Meta could swamp the fediverse and just because its open source the current platforms wouldnt necessarily continue to exist in the same way they currently do. We could see even bigger fragmentation or breaks, some Admins might feel forced to federate with Metas service, leading to the currently existing community breaking up.
Imo the last years has proven, without a doubt, that those things simply do not align.
To conclude: We have seen these things before and they havent ended well. People here seem to undererstimate the power Meta has and the impact that this power has. Even if all current instances were to defederate from Meta, simple association, user demand caused by an influx of Meta users and hard to guess power dynamics would make the fediverse a far different place than it currently is. To make a comparison: you cant drop the gravity well of a black hole into a small, complex planetary system and expect it to be unaffected.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
I can imagine all sorts of technical points like how the firehose will be load-balanced so as to not overwhelm any instance, or what metadata they should include in their feeds. Meta also has a lot of AI and moderation expertise that could be of benefit to the Fediverse once it grows into an attractive enough target for the troll farms and spambots.
Quite frankly, the sooner that festering cesspool that is Twitter is killed off, the better off the planet will be. If it takes Meta to wean the talking heads like Oprah from Twitter, so be it. It would be better if Oprah set up her own instance, but that’s unlikely to happen, media businesses still haven’t understood they need to take control over their distribution rather than the easy way of going through big social networks that will stab them in the back when expedient like Facebook deprioritizing media outlets from users’ feeds.