non-stickied PSA: Beehaw has signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact

although this is unlikely to substantially and directly impact us and is a more immediate concern for Mastodon and similar fediverse software, we've signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact as a matter of principle. that pact pledges the following:

i am an instance admin/mod on the fediverse. by signing this pact, i hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse. project92 is a real and serious threat to the health and longevity of fedi and must be fought back against at every possible opportunity

the maintainer of the site is currently a little busy and seems to manually add signatures so we may not appear on there for several days but here's a quick receipt that we did indeed sign it.

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/c4050db0-f5fa-428e-a6e3-f23734823916.png

GreenPlasticSushiGrass,
GreenPlasticSushiGrass avatar

Meta is not a brand new, fresh-faced corporation that maybe needs a chance to prove it's good intentions in the fediverse. It is an established entity that has a history of killing competition and often being on the wrong side of social issues. It should be rejected from federation outright because of its track record, if nothing else.

dcormier,

I’m disappointed.

“The fediverse is open and interoperable!”

“No, not them.”

bear_delune,

Don’t pretend like Meta is going to be open and interoperable.

You can’t look at their history and think letting the fox sleep in the hen house is a good idea. The house is for hens.

argv_minus_one,

🚫🦊

mobyduck648,
@mobyduck648@beehaw.org avatar

🌍🔥🦊 is encouraged though, especially if you like ad blockers.

argv_minus_one,

I'll rephrase: 🚫🦊➡️🐓🏠

angusmacflapdoodle,

"FuckYouWithYourOwnDataCorp isn't allowed in your so-called Federation? So much for tolerance!"

aranym, (edited )

As much as I don’t think the pact will do much, it’s their right to defederate whichever instances they want. The protocol is still “open and interoperable” and this does not change that - in fact, this move is only possible because of that openness.

Your argument only sounds kinda sane when applied to Meta, but the same could be said about instances made by bad actors (spammers, for example). Please do further research before commenting on this.

Maeve,

What? Are you arguing tolerance of intolerance?

aranym, (edited )

I’m arguing the protocol was designed this way for a reason. Each instance is meant to be able to implement their own policies and defederate who they want, exactly what Beehaw is doing here. This is a core tenet of ActivityPub. The idea that this is against the spirit of the protocol is entirely inaccurate. Hope that clears it up.

Maeve,

Yes it does, thank you. The last paragraph confused me. I’m in agreement.

Maeve,

It’s ok to not tolerate algorithms that promote intolerance for clicks and advertising.

Ertebolle,

The thing is that this isn't really a marriage of equals; if Meta joins the Fediverse then Meta will swallow the Fediverse, simply by dint of having several orders of magnitude more users.

It would be akin to India applying to become the 51st US state; if we let them in, they'd end up controlling 80% of the House and the Electoral College and the US wouldn't really be the US anymore.

Maeve,

It’s basically what happened after the revolutionary war, and reparations were even paid: to slave owners.

Ertebolle,

Well yeah, and the 3/5 clause was essentially a compromise whereby the disproportionately populous areas agreed to accept partial credit for the share of their population that was enslaved.

Maeve,

It gave white landowners more representation while still denying human beings the right to be treated as humans.

Gaywallet,
@Gaywallet@beehaw.org avatar

While I appreciate the analogy, the electoral college is a seriously broken system which hasn't protected proportional representation in a long, long time.

Ertebolle,

Oh certainly; my point was simply that in a system where population = influence, letting in a new group with several times as many people as all of your existing groups put together means that that new group effectively takes over.

BobQuasit,

And yet even if India did join the United States as the 51st state, It occurs to me that the billionaires and corporations would still be in charge. Which is to say, although the huge population of Meta is a concern, I fear the power of Mark Zuckerberg's billions far more.

Bdking158,

The electoral college was never intended to protect proportional representation. The whole idea of equal representation in the Senate was to avoid high population states running roughshod over the smaller ones. This obviously dilutes the influence of higher population states and amplifies the smaller ones at the electoral college.

The system is not broken though. It does exactly what it was originally intended to do 240 years ago. You just don't agree with it's intention and results

Gaywallet,
@Gaywallet@beehaw.org avatar

The electoral college was never intended to protect proportional representation.

Article 1 of the constitution very clearly lays out how electors are supposed to be chosen based on the census. To say that the house is not supposed to represent proportional representation while the senate represents non-proportional representation as a counterbalance is ignoring the long history of debate and the many laws passed to attempt to bring representation in the house in proportion with the population.

The system is broken. We do not know the 'original intent' and anyone trying to argue for constitutional originalism is either completely ignorant of how literally everything changes with time or trying to enforce their conservative ideals through a guise of legitimacy.

But this isn't really the right place to have this discussion (we're on a thread about defederating from meta) so I'm gonna withdraw now and not reply to any more responses about this.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Yeah the size is what I think is most worrying. I've only just got here so I'm pretty keen on the content (which seems to be the regular content that was here before + a fusion of stuff from Reddit)

I'm really not keen on having an influx of low quality Facebook posts here.

I'm not the one to be on my high horse, thinking that these platforms or Reddit are beacons of enlightenment, but the comments here are light-years above what I see on Facebook, so I want none of that.

bathrobe,
bathrobe avatar

@AnonymousLlama

@alyaza @dcormier @Ertebolle

75% of the posts I see on kbin are the worst low quality meme bullshit, significantly dumber and worse than the horrible stuff on Facebook.

You’re worried that, what? Itll get in the way of the trash everywhere already?

livus,
livus avatar

You need to curate your feed. That's not what I'm seeing.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Yeah even on the default all view I'm seeing pretty normal content. The quality I'm thinking of when I say "Facebook quality" is rubbish from oldies or the far right / far left crazy content / misinformation. It seems to curate itself pretty nicely here

livus,
livus avatar

Yeah I haven't seen any IQ quizzes, chain reposts that imply you're not a "real" friend if you don't repost, antivax memes about 5G, etc.

ikantolol,
ikantolol avatar

there are instances in the past where big players acquire the small ones and while at first they seem to be cooperative, it ultimately destroys the small players, one such case is XMPP the open chat protocols long before we have Matrix, killed by Google

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

I guess this is a cautionary action, better to grow slower rather than be killed by Meta.

ngwoo,

I agree this seems kneejerk. If Meta refuses to abide by the standards of interoperability and openness then lock them out, but by doing so ahead of time the fediverse is committing the crime it's pre-punishing Meta for.

Lionir,

Well, we've defederated with other people in the past (and will continue to do so in the future most likely). Federated systems are not an all or nothing situation. IMO that's the biggest draw and improvement over a distributed system for social media.

bananahammock,

I agree, but why defederate before knowing any details? What is the harm in hearing them out

bathrobe,
bathrobe avatar

@bananahammock

@alyaza @dcormier @Lionir
Have you never fucking heard Facebook? That you need to reserve judgement until after they’ve destroyed everything and fucked you over?

fiah,
@fiah@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

before knowing any details?

before? facebook is almost 20 years old, they’ve had plenty of time to show us who they are and they have. If you have any doubt about their moral fiber then I suggest you pull your head out of your ass and enter the fucking 2020s

ag_roberston_author,
@ag_roberston_author@beehaw.org avatar

If there's no issues then we can refederate at any later time.

What is the harm in waiting?

Nepenthe, (edited )
Nepenthe avatar

Can't find the source, but I did see a rumor they'll be turning on federation a few months after the official release so as to not spring all of this place on a bunch of old people. So if they do that, they'll already have their own ecosystem/culture in place. I'm also a bit worried the extended introduction is going to lull people.

I think regardless, it always needs to be at the forefront of user's minds that they're not averse to playing it slow. Likely, they'll be on their best behavior starting out, especially since having a working platform at all means making as many friends in the fediverse as they can. They're not gonna come in swinging their junk around like spez.

Acting the gracious benefactor will not stop them from leaving this place a haunted backwater once they gather enough standing to start poaching users via shiny toys and high engagement. The kbin dev hasn't said anything to my knowledge yet, but being an overly reliant lapdog was XMPP's mistake and I support defederating as honestly the best way to avoid that.

Theirs is always going to be a numbers game, any niceties will be presumed by me to be a fakeout, and I'm pissed off that what was supposed to be a way to worm out from under the corporations semi-permanently stands to be drowned out immediately by corporations.

mobyduck648,
@mobyduck648@beehaw.org avatar

The same harm the inhabitants of the henhouse would come to if they decided to hear the fox out.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

I think if this were a new player in the market, say for example a new social media platform that was going to venture into the fediverse, most people here would give them the benefit of the doubt.

However this is meta, they shouldn't take get the benefit of the doubt with how they've been operating over the last decade. There's no good faith that they'll be good participants

Lionir,

The details are under NDA and Facebook has a really bad history of having a terrible moderation culture. I don't see any reason based on their past history to believe that they will change.

It feels kinda like giving a gun to a serial killer and just waiting it out. It's an exaggerated analogy but I think it illustrates the point well.

magnetosphere,
magnetosphere avatar

Corporations are motivated by profit. One of the ways Meta profits is by using your personal information for targeted advertising. For them, “community building” is a means, not an end. What else could you possibly need to know?

If a known con artist asks you to listen to their pitch, are you going to “hear them out”, or slam the door in their face?

alyaza,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

it's literally Facebook. i think we've heard and seen more than enough to from Mark Zuckerberg and the platform which actively continues to be one of the worst vectors of online harm, misinformation, and advocacy for social and political violence (among many, many other ills). particularly with respect to our instance: their project can get fucked as far as i'm concerned.

aeternum,

UnshavedYak,

Yea, i'm not sure how much benefit of doubt we should be handing Mark Zuck of all people. There's few people in the world who make their intentions more clear than him. Not that i'm trying to paint him as evil, i'm not and i don't think he is, but i also see no reason to expect self-run instances to offer an olive branch to him.

We should be vary paranoid about Embrace Extend Extinguish in these communities.

Cube6392,

Anyone here into cross stitching? I'd like to send the Zuck a cross stitch that just says, "Get Fucked"

Maeve,

I think this is the digital version.

bird,
@bird@beehaw.org avatar

@Kamirose

Kamirose,

I mean

alyaza,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

ahhh, now i think it'd be a funny collaborative idea to send him a fediverse communal "Fuck Off!" blanket

sour,
sour avatar

because history

debounced,
@debounced@kbin.run avatar

And just so happens to be the same pesky thing people refuse to read, color me surprised. 🙄

retronautickz,

Do you really think Meta wants to be "one of us", that they plan to be on equal ground as the rest of the already existing instances managed by individuals and not by corporations? Are you that naive?

TehPers,

Regardless of how untrustworthy Meta as a company is, it also tends to hold the kinds of "mainstream" social media platforms that I have actively been avoiding for many reasons, including their communities. Beehaw has already defederated from other instances for having open sign-up and a disproportionately large number of users on them who needed moderation actions taken, and I can see a Meta-run instance posing the same kinds of problems.

Plus, like others said, it's not impossible to federate later if it ends up being an overreaction. It's just that Meta and its userbase already exist, so it's possible to make pre-emptive judgement with that knowledge and correct the judgement later, potentially avoiding a flood of unwanted content.

fiah,
@fiah@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

it’s the paradox of tolerance. We (fediverse) cannot be tolerant of the intolerant (meta in this case), lest we be destroyed by them. And do not for one second ascribe any benevolent properties to meta, they are evil through and through and have been pretty much since inception. Tolerating their presence would be akin to tolerating nazis, the second that happens I’m fucking out of here

magnetosphere,
magnetosphere avatar

The Paradox of Tolerance

mifuyne,

This talk of tolerance reminds me of something I read[^1]: Tolerance is a peace treaty, not a moral obligation. With this line of thought, the intolerance of intolerance stops being a paradox and makes a whole heck of a lot of sense. Intolerance broke that peace treaty before it even entered into it, IMO.

[^1]: It may have been this opinion piece: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376

azureeight,

I appreciate the work you all do. Im a heavier lurker than particpater and i see little fingers of you all taking care of beehaw for us all the time and it makes me smile 😁 good work everyone!

Deebster,
@Deebster@beehaw.org avatar

Good. To quote WarGames:

The only winning move is not to play

Meta is at best looking to profit from the Fediverse, and more likely looking to extinguish it. I think blocking them at the borders is the only solution.

z3n0x,

kudos

xptiger,

I hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse.

I suggest to rephrase with this better: "I hereby agree to block any instances owned by, governed by, supported by mostly, funded by only or affiliated with Meta, its subsidiaries, major involving partners and influenced involving affiliates should they pop up on the Fediverse."

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I do not provide my suggestion "as a legal advice" but as a thought to share that may be considered or configured by legal experts. I will not be held liable for any error that any revision upon or any derivative from my suggestion may cause.

alex,

I really don't think this pact has any legal value to begin with.

Kryostar,

@xptiger @alyaza I don't know what it is about Legal disclaimers.. they seem kinda scary. Just reading "LEGAL DISCLAIMER" is enough for me to gulp and loosen the tie.

They sound very.. Legal.. and.. and Disclaimery.

retronautickz,

This pact isn't legally binding, but more of a moral "I stand against Meta" thing

TWeaK,

Look at you, coming in with your legalese.

Godsspeed.

TendieMaster69,

Corporations will attempt to infiltrate anything they see as a threat to their profit margins. Long live the Fediverse. 😀

sculd,

Thank you!!!! Say NO to META's disregard of privacy!!!

Rentlar,

This is great, I don't think federating with Meta will benefit the admins' mission with this instance much at all.

UprisingVoltage,

Good shit

TheTrueLinuxDev, (edited )

I salute you!

EthicalAI,

What about twitters project?

Lionir,

Twitter's project? You mean Jack Dorsey's BlueSky? It doesn't do ActivityPub - it's not part of the fediverse

EthicalAI,

It is federated, but I forgot it wasn’t activitypub.

retronautickz,

It's decentralised and open-source, but not federated, as it works on its own isolated protocol (similar to Matrix)

EthicalAI,

Matrix is also federated... having your own protocol is not related to the concept of federation, which is simply the property of having the ability to run your own servers and join a network of other servers which share a protocol.

retronautickz,

Yes ,and no.

It depends on how you define both terms. If decentralised = federated, matrix is federated. But if federation is defined as a model of social network in which different servers based on different platforms interact through the use of the same protocol(S) (decentralisation + interoperability), being isolated, Matrix doesn't fit the definition.

Because Matrix doesn't accept other platforms to enter its protocol, nor plans on adding it's commonly not considered to be truly federated

Lionir,

Matrix does. There's multiple different projects that implement Matrix's protocols: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/servers/

retronautickz,

Those are still Matrix (platform) style servers.

You don't have something like Mastodon vs Pixelfed vs Lemmy in terms of diversity of products.

Lionir,

Those all speak ActivityPub.

But if you want to put some weird UI to say that it's federated (which is not necessary to be a federated service). You have Cerulean : https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/

retronautickz,

I know they are ActiVItyPub based. I'm talking about the diversity of platforms, not which protocol they use.

that it’s federated (which is not necessary to be a federated service).

What do you mean by this?

Lionir,

I mean that the word federated does not necessarily mean different UI. And most of the ActivityPub diversity you ascribe is just a UI change.

If the UI was what made it federated then I guess I'd be entirely possible to say Twitter is federated because they have tons of different UIs thanks to various apps.

Does this make sense?

retronautickz,

The thing is, I never talked about UI.

Server =/= UI =/= fork =/= platform

Twitter is completely centralised because all the data is inside of a unique server and cannot interact with other social media platforms. You cannot talk to someone on tiktok through twitter.

You can federate, through the use of plug-ins, on/with Wordpress and (soon) Tumblr, but neither are decentralised, as each concentrates its data in a sole server.

Lionir,

I'm not really sure what you mean by platform then.

BioDriver,
@BioDriver@beehaw.org avatar

This is fantastic news and applaud this decision. I used to work in digital marketing and having seen how Facebook, (and Twitter, Google, etc.) makes their sausage and how they operate, I advise everyone get off Meta/FB, or really any centralized social media platform for that matter.

yarr,

Well hell man, give us the details.

cavemeat,

I'm glad, meta has no place in the fediverse.

lemor,

More instances should consider this pact.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • chat@beehaw.org
  • DreamBathrooms
  • tacticalgear
  • InstantRegret
  • magazineikmin
  • everett
  • rosin
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • ngwrru68w68
  • osvaldo12
  • kavyap
  • mdbf
  • cubers
  • khanakhh
  • anitta
  • cisconetworking
  • Durango
  • provamag3
  • thenastyranch
  • ethstaker
  • modclub
  • tester
  • normalnudes
  • megavids
  • GTA5RPClips
  • Leos
  • JUstTest
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •