Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/9799372

What’s Meta up to?

  1. Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse
  2. Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you’re following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn’t available to the rest of the fediverse – as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol
  3. Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta’s own ends

Since the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads, the most obvious ways of exploiting it – such as stealing market share by getting people currently in the fediverse to move to Threads – aren’t going to work. But exploitation is one of Meta’s core competences, and once you start to look at it with that lens, it’s easy to see some of the ways even their initial announcement and tiny first steps are exploiting the fediverse: making Threads feel like a more compelling platform, and reshaping regulation. Longer term, it’s a great opportunity for Meta to explore – and maybe invest in – shifting their business model to decentralized surveillance capitalism.

gerdesj,

Chill mate. This is the fedi - you get to actively allow or deny what you see.

No-one can take that away from you.

doctorn,

Well, threads dot net is already fully blocked on my pleroma instance, like it doesn’t exist.

Any other urls I should maybe add to keep the big culprits out?

thenexusofprivacy,
@thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world avatar

That’s the only one that’s currently active as far as I know. mastodon.moule.world/ has a bunch of resources including blocklist for other Meta domains as well.

library_napper,
@library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

The best paragraph is at the very bottom

speaking of Bannon and his pals, since far right social networks Gab and Truth Social are built on ActivityPub, if Threads opens up two-way federation as planned later this year they’d have a golden opportunity to try to build on the Trump campaign’s successful work with Facebook on digital voter suppression in 2016, the “Stop the Steal” and coup planning in 2020, and QAnon conspiracy theory as well as Libs of Tik Tok and Moms for Liberty’s work. What could possibly go wrong?

thenexusofprivacy,
@thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world avatar

Glad you liked it, I like to put in a treat for people who read all the way to the end!

library_napper,
@library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads

Is that a typo?

thenexusofprivacy,
@thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world avatar

It’s not a typo but I see what you mean, I meant that it has a lot fewer people in it but it’s not great wording and I’ll fix it. Thanks!

library_napper,
@library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

How many people are on Threads? I don’t get it, theres wayy more people on the fediverse than Threads, no?

thenexusofprivacy,
@thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world avatar

No, Meta claims that Threads has 100 million monthly active users, the fediverse as a whole has 1.4 - 1.7 million depending on whose statistics you use. Even if they’re exaggerating, it’s still much got a lot more users.

library_napper,
@library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

Wut? Email is federated and has at least a billion users.

pineapplelover,

ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-ne…

thenexusofprivacy,
@thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world avatar

That’s a great article. I linked to it in the OP:

The same is true with Google’s adoption and then abandonment of the XMPP protocol, which is also often described as EEE. I don’t think that’s the right way to look at it; for one thing, XMPP is still around, and thanks to adoption by Zoom and others it has hundreds of millions of users – or billions, if you count WhatsApp’a non-standard derivative version. But in any case, whether or not it was EEE, Google didn’t go into it with a goal of killing XMPP. They just wanted to exploit XMPP to address a business problem of making Google Talk successful – and did so, until it wasn’t useful to them any more.

Yerbouti,

If the plan for the fedivers is to associate with Meta, I will leave it in a heart beat.

doctorn,

https://r.nf/pictrs/image/165c2027-67c9-4e27-9acb-67fd778a0709.jpeg

ULS,

…but meta is where the hookers actually are…

mub,

Can mastadon hosts just refuse to federate with activepub? (I’m probably misunderstanding everything here but hopefully you get my drift).

bogdugg,
@bogdugg@sh.itjust.works avatar

Assuming you mean “Can Mastodon instances defederate with Threads?”: Yes. Mastodon (and similar services) run on the ActivityPub protocol, which allows them to decide who they do and do not federate with. Many instances have chosen to preemptively block Threads, many have chosen not to. Pick what works for you.

thenexusofprivacy,
@thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, Mastodon instances can indeed refuse to federate with Threads – you’re not misunderstanding anything. You can track what instances are and aren’t federating at fedipact.veganism.social (the “FediPact” it mentions is an agreement that hundreds of instances have signed to block Meta). Currenntly, about 40% of instances aren’t federating – but most of the largest instances are.

LoveSausage,

As i suggested from the start. Defederate any instance that federate with threads. Yea I’m being Trotsky here, split can be a good thing.

thenexusofprivacy,
@thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world avatar

Yep, I’ve said for a while that if a schism with transitive defederation happens, it’ll be a good thing. There are many fediverses!

doctorn,

Well, it makes me sad that we would have to, but that doesn’t make me agree less that it would be necessary to keep a real alternative in existence.

Every instance that allows Meta should not be considered part of the Fediverse anymore, but is now Metaverse. Mastodon/Pleroma/Lemmy/… will then just become the running software, but not by default ‘Fediverse’ anymore, that choice will become the admin’s: Fedi or Meta.

In a perfect world we can still keep the big parties out for those that choose to, though at first it will be hard, not only to keep up with instances leaking both ways, but also hard to let go of the unrelated users that had no choice in the matter and are now presented with: change server or follow the server’s choice, and the second choice will be the least trouble for most. In other words: many followers will be lost and many currently followed won’t be reachable anymore.

AnxiousDuck,

What I really hope is that the fediverse doesn’t end up in a fragmented mess trying to catch up with Meta’s eventual extension of ActivityPub… What this project needs is a slow and steady (technological) development driven by the communities instead of trying to fit in with the big players. That’s what really did harm XMPP too IMHO.

beetus,

My understanding of how xmpp has progressed is exactly what you think ActivityPub needs. Xmpp is still alive and still continuing to drive for further technological standards and classification.

Google essentially dropped xmpp b/c it was such a slow progressing standard that was focused entirely on the technological progress and that march towards standardization and specification.

jcrabapple,

The ignorance and fear mongering around this topic is astonishing. Look at all the facts. It's pretty clear what's happening here and why it's happening, and it's not EEE. The whole point of federation and decentralization is that it can't be "extinguished". Threads can come and go and it won't matter. The fediverse will still be here. Block it if you want but I'll not be blocking it on my instance. I'll let my users decide for themselves.

AMillionNames,

So, the Microsoft method - except that never really killed Linux.

It’s really basically number 2 to get you to move to Threads, the exploit part is going to happen on the Threads side, and is basically going to be with ads (which you can block or avoid seeing) or with selling data about the fediverse in one platform (which defederation isn’t going to be able to prevent against). But if embrace and extend is your problem, might as well defederate from kbin and mbin …

jackpot,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

So, the Microsoft method - except that never really killed Linux.

explain

AMillionNames, (edited )

en.wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis…

Nowadays, it’s more of a tactic for getting sued out of a couple of million.

Oh, hi dessalines, saw your downvotes, anything you disagree with specifically? Or is upvoting comments that say explain and downvoting comments providing said explanation just your vision of what you wanted lemmy to evolve to? Nice profile pic.

jackpot,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

how can you see who downvotes

dgkf,

Thanks for sharing! Really interesting history in this article. It’s scary to think what a world would look like if Sun didn’t sue Microsoft into oblivion and put an end to this strategy.

We could be living in a world where Windows is the dominant desktop OS instead of our beloved Solaris.

To be serious, though, being sued/forced to settle isn’t an indicator that the strategy hasn’t worked. In fact, as is evident by the continued doubling down on the strategy by Microsoft and the unfettered execution of this strategy with Chrome, it’s clear that the value far outweighs the cost of the occasional settlement. The only real deterrent is antitrust regulation and that has been just about entirely defanged. These concerns are especially pertinent for something like Lemmy where there’s no central entity to soak the legal fees to go to court.

AMillionNames, (edited )

Sun’s problem was competing with Linux, which it couldn’t. Nobody wants to pay premium for discount proprietary Linux. Sun’s Java, however, still exists. Microsoft’s browser is far from the norm. There’s more alternatives to popular software than ever, whether it be office suites, video editing, 3d modeling, 2d painting, you call it. No, they don’t compete with the industry leaders that have both stability and far more features, but they won’t die off.

Embrace, extend, and exploit is just something that’s being thrown around to see whether it will stick as an argument, and quite frankly, I already see the 3E’s from already existing lemmy instances whose entire approach to the lemmyverse is essentially that - not that it makes it more ok, just that it’s clear that people have other priorities when they throw the concept aroud.

HKayn,
@HKayn@dormi.zone avatar

I stopped reading when I saw a copy-pasted definition of the word “exploit”.

This article thinks we’re dumb as shit.

thenexusofprivacy,
@thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world avatar

I didn’t have that in the original draft, and half the people who reviewed it said “I don’t understand what you mean by exploit”. And no, I don’t think people reading the article are dumb as shit, I assume that most people who already know what exploit means are intelligent enough to skip over the four lines of cut-and-paste text and read the rest of the article.

doctorn,

Maybe it’s trying to exploit us.

Anticorp,

Meta can’t even keep Facebook or Instagram functional. They get worse with literally every single update. New things are broken every time I visit. They need to take care of what they have, not go looking for other things to fucking ruin. Stupid-ass anti-trust pig dogs.

BaldProphet,
BaldProphet avatar

So much fear mongering.

downpunxx,
downpunxx avatar

it's almost as if you believe these evil companies aren't to be feared at all, which is a certain type of psychopathy to be sure

Anticorp,

Right… because Facebook has never bought out or destroyed competitive platforms.

BaldProphet,
BaldProphet avatar

The Fediverse isn't owned by a single entity, so it can't be simply bought out.

mub,

Correct, but it will try damn hard to make everything but their own shit effectively irrelevant.

BaldProphet,
BaldProphet avatar

By that logic, the Fediverse is already irrelevant, because it has fewer features and fewer users than major corporate social media platforms.

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

So many people with no experience of big tech taking over and killing things. You know some of us are older than 20 right? We have seen this many times before. Maybe listen instead of speak and you may learn something.

BaldProphet,
BaldProphet avatar

Oh, believe me, I do listen, and I learn about things that I use on a regular basis. Based on my understanding of the ActivityPub protocol, I sincerely believe that concerns about Threads are exaggerated. It's very cult-like, with talk of "pacts" and tendencies towards prophecy and a "purity" mentality.

masterspace,

Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you’re following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn’t available to the rest of the fediverse

That’s already available to Threads users regardless of whether or not they federate.

as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol

kk, then defederate from them when that happens.

Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta’s own ends

This is a nonsense sentence that says nothing and makes no actual tangible point.

This is nothing but more hysteria.

thenexusofprivacy,
@thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world avatar

Try reading the article, others seem to understand the point I’m making (whether or not they agree).

Anticorp, (edited )

It’s hard to get someone to understand that which they’re paid to not understand. Seems there’s all kinds of Facebook shills up in this thread.

Edit: oh, and would you look at that? Right out of the gate with the exploit stage in full effect .“Threads” has been an internet term for these forum discussions for as long as the internet has been around, but now zuckerfuck wants it all to himself. Now a billion upon billion different forum posts are going to inadvertently mention his stupid-ass platform.

admin,
@admin@lemmy.my-box.dev avatar

Everyone who disagrees must be a paid shill huh?

Have you ever heard of Hanlon’s Razor?

I do think every instance should preemptively defederate threads (I did on mine). But assuming that everyone who disagrees must be a shill, rather than just naive or uninformed… That’s some serious next level conspiracy theory.

BraveSirZaphod,
BraveSirZaphod avatar

Ok, you mean I could be getting paid to not panic about Threads? If you have a referral link, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Implying that anyone who disagrees with you must be a paid shill is not the rhetorical dunk you apparently think it is.

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