Here's a story that illustrates why I favour federating with Chains ("Threads"), even though I'm opposed to Meta's very existence.
Alice and Bob follow each other on InstaGrope. Alice, being more of an early adopter, signs up for Chains, and convinces Bob to do the same. Then Chains turns on AP federation. Alice realises she can still follow and talk to all the same people on Chains from other fediverse servers, and moves to one.
@nonlinear
> I guess mine would be no to meta but yay to FOAF
I think that's the minimum reasonable position. I have no problem with server admins Limiting or fully defederating from Chains, on the same case-by-case basis as any other server-level moderation decision. But threatening to defederate from servers that choose to let Chains accounts interact with people using their server is rude and somewhat authoritarian.
@strypey I think different instances have different goals, and that's the whole point. It's not "reasonable", it's what you want to do. Others think differently.
What I'm proposing is for instances to expose their policies, so other instances navigate accordingly.
@strypey it's not authoritarian if they themselves decided to disengage. That's kinda the whole point. You just disagree with their decision, but it's their instance and they do what they want.
Meta can warp mastodon topology. Maybe not the technology, but certainly the network. There's no silver bullet here. Instances will go their own way.
@nonlinear
> it's not authoritarian if they themselves decided to disengage
I very specifically didn't say that. Read it again.
What I did say is that it's authoritarian to use threats of defederation to try to influence other admins' choices about who they federate with and how. I stand by that.
@nonlinear@strypey
We see it as people who are desperate to stop the authoritarian Bigs from waltzing in and making a true, right mess of this place we call fedi.
People who will let the cancer in were likely always agologists and servants to the corporate state, and it would explain a good few things, in fact.
@nonlinear
> if instances are radically free, they're free to do as they choose
100%, respect for server autonomy is key to allowing the fediverse to scale up moderation so much more effectively than the DataFarms.
> connect only with good nodes
For me it's the opposite, Suspend only irredeemably bad nodes. Mainly because I prefer not to judge newbies by the server they happen to stumble in through. I encourage people to leave mastodon.social but I'd be very hesitant to Suspend them.
@nonlinear
> I don't think I have the stomach for the onslaught of poorly educated angry people, homophobes and transphobes. I rather disengage
Then you clearly haven't been here long. Those of us who've been here about a decade, have seen wave of wave of poorly educated angry people arrive and set up camp here, some of them homophobes and transphobes and some of them anti-homophobes and anti-transphobes. They take a bit of calming down, and sometimes a swing of the banhammer, but...
@nonlinear ... because of these waves of angry people, new servers have been created, to keep incompatible groups from tearing each other's throats out. New software has been created by angry newbies dissatisfied with the existing options. Improvements to the moderation tooling, initially on Mastodon and later on other software, happened because of both the angry groups ending up here.
Through all of this, the verse thrived, and slowly but steadily grew.
But Bob is confused by the plethora of server choices, and besides he's had enough transition pain for the time being, so he remains on Chains. But Alice and Bob can continue to talk to each other, until Bob is ready to choose a new server and make the move. In fact, his continued contact with Alice and her glowing reports of life outside the DataFarm makes it much more likely that he will.
@strypey if Bob really wants to follow Alice, would he be sufficiently motivated to leave Chains if there's no integration with the Fediverse? That's the real gamble. Forcing people to act decisively.
@lightweight
> if Bob really wants to follow Alice, would he be sufficiently motivated to leave Chains if there's no integration with the Fediverse?
Alice wouldn't have left Chains in the first place if there was no integration with the fediverse. Because that would have meant abandoning Bob. In theory, two people could coordinate to move. Obviously I've simplified the scenario by focusing on 2 people. Instead of the messy, multi-faceted social networks that actually keep people on DataFarms.
@strypey in the meantime, we can adopt a 'open first, closed second, if at all' approach, e.g. posting links to Mastodon posts on centralised closed social media, as a way to show folks there that a parallel universe exists. We need to be the sort of authentic people they'd want to create a new account on a new (to them) technology to follow.
@lightweight
> with their scale, even with lukewarm enthusiasm they can overwhelm us almost immediately
Right, and this is why our entire fediverse experience right now is overwhelmed with posts from mastodon.social, and lolicon from the enormous Japanese servers. Oh wait...
@lightweight
This is not how ActivityPub works. If nobody on Server A follows anyone on Chains, none of its posts are part of their view of the network.
Posts from Chains only touch Server A when someone using that server chooses to follow someone on Chains. If Server A Limits Chains, the only people who can see those posts there are the people following the person on Chains who posted it. None of this requires blocking/ full defederation.
The thing is, they didn't extinguish XMPP. Most of the Walled Garden chat platforms use XMPP internally (just not openly federated) and there is still a thriving network of openly federating, community-hosted XMPP servers, and services like @snikket_im building smoother UX on top of XMPP and its open network.
If we refuse to federate with Chains, we do to ourselves what Goggle did by defederating from the open XMPP network.
@strypey
You're right. I should have written "made irrelevant" or "tamed and turned into a niche". I somehow misused the #embraceextendextinguish mada infamous by #microsoft
Many people included me happily used #googletalk because it used XMPP. I wouldn't have used it if I knew they planned to defederate. I like to think that avoiding federating to #meta could make people conscious. Alternatively we could inform Facebook users but I fear it's an easily lost battle 😥 @snikket_im@lightweight
@paoloredaelli
> I wouldn't have used it if I knew they planned to defederate. I like to think that avoiding federating to meta could make people conscious
The key question is, will federating with Chains help them attract more people to use it, or help more people to leave it?
@paoloredaelli
With GChat, many of us were suckered into thinking that Goggle were genuine supporters of open standards, at a time which governments had no interest in regulating tech corporations. The difference now is there is much more public awareness of DataFarming, and we know Meta's motives are impure. But there are laws like the EU DMA obliging them to interoperate.
@strypey Yes, exactly my thought too.
And then when Alice's server's admins wearily decides they've had enough and defederates with "Chains" (lol) - Bob will go "I haven't heard from Alice in a while... oh. They defederated with us... ok, time to do that move thing Alice told me about"
@jens@strypey aaaand this is where it breaks down for me. Federating with meta/threads to connect to people on that platform will allow meta to scrape the contents of the messages to/from people that are not on their platform.
@adversarial_banana
> Federating with meta/threads to connect to people on that platform will allow meta to scrape the contents of the messages to/from people that are not on their platform.
@strypey@jens Except it is. I was clear to say “contents of your message” in my original reply. The issue isn’t how the protocol works but what meta would do with the data it can get its grubby claws on. Facebook/meta is a company known for creating “shadow profiles” for non-users. I don’t want my activity pub data to contribute to that. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5544396/
@adversarial_banana
> The issue isn’t how the protocol works but what meta would do with the data it can get its grubby claws on
Except is isn't. Because as Gargron explains in that linked post, there's nothing Meta can see by federating with a server that it can't see by pointing a web browser at that same server.
Except for Direct posts, but only those sent to people using Chains.
@adversarial_banana
The insecurity of Direct posts is a problem that needs fixing anyway. Because who knows what other servers are quietly being run by DataFarmers and spooks?
In the short term, all Direct post UI needs to warn people their message can be read by anyone with admin access to the sending or receiving server(s).
In the longer term, they need to be E2EE. OR we need an SSO solution that allows DMs to be sent via E2EE matrix using a fediverse account.
@jens
> Chains has read and analysed all of Alice's DMs to Bob without her consent
As opposed to the scenario in which Alice and Bob both remain on Chains, in which case... oh. Turns out this is going to be the case in all scenarios. So... not really relevant.
@jens
> It's highly relevant for Alice, who has left Chains for a reason
The reason Alice left Chains, in this scenario, is that she can still follow and interact with her friends who remain there. If Chains is blocked by the rest of the fediverse, she might set up a fedi account too, but she's forced to stay on Chains. Not by Meta. By us.
@strypey I question the validity of an argument that claims one is forced to be on social media at all.
But she has no reason to leave Chains unless it is to enjoy things that Chains cannot offer, which can be varied, but may include not wanting to be harvested to the same degree. This is especially likely if the services otherwise permit interaction.
Staying in both worlds makes it easier for her to compartmentalize, and distinguish which things to post where.
@strypey ... cares about staying connected to Bob and cares about leaving Chains, chances are very good that Bob and the not-Chains-environment cater to conflicting needs of hers.
Add comment