"Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.
"free fediverses" that reject Meta – and surveillance capitalism more generally
The free fediverses have a lot of advantages over Meta and Meta's fediverses, some of which will be very hard to counter, and clearly have enough critical mass that they'll be just fine.
Here's a set of strategies for the free fediverses to provide a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism. They build on the strengths of today's fediverse at its best – including natural advantages the free fediverses have that Threads and Meta's fediverses will having a very hard time countering – but also are hopefully candid about weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a long list, so I'll be spreading out over multiple posts; this post currently goes into detail on the first two.
Opposition to Meta and surveillance capitalism is an appealing position. Highlight it!
Focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety
Emphasize "networked communities"
Support concentric federations of instances and communities
Consider "transitively defederating" Meta's fediverses (as well as defederating Threads)
Consider working with people and instances in Meta's fediverses (and Bluesky, Dreamwidth, and other social networks) whose goals and values align with the free fediverses'
Build a sustainable ecosystem
Prepare for Meta's (and their allies') attempts to paint the free fediverses in a bad light
Reduce the dependency on Mastodon
Prioritize accessibility, which is a huge opportunity
Commit to anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and pro-LGBTQIA2S+ principles, policies, practices, and norms for the free fediverses
"instances are valuable for the relations and interactions they facilitate locally AND for their ability to connect you to other parts of the network."
By contrast, @evanprodromou notes that "Big Fedi" advocates typically see instances as typically see the instance as "mostly a dumb pipe." But The Networked Communities view aligns much better with the free fediverses' values – as does the "Social Archipelago" view @noracodes sketches in The Fediverse is Already Dead. Not only that, it's good strategy!
Here's how @zkat describes caracoles: "you essentially ask to join concentric federations of instances ... with smaller caracoles able to vote to federate with entire other caracoles."
And @ophiocephalic's "fedifams" are a similar idea: "Communities could align into fedifams based on whatever conditions of identity, philosophy or interest are relevant to them. Instances allied into fedifams could share resources and mutually support each other in many way"
The idea's a natural match for community-focused, anti-surveillance capitalism free fediverses, fits in well with the Networked Communities model discussed in part 3, and helps address scalability of consent-based federation discussed in Part 2.
There's likely to be a lot of moving between instances as people and instances sort themselves out into the free fediverses and Meta's fediverses -- and today, moving accounts on the fediverse today. There are lots of straightforward ways to improve it, many of which don't even require improvements to the software. And there are also opportunities to make creating, customizing, and connecting instances easier.
A lot of people are indeed talking about things more generally in terms of the #openweb or #opensocialweb. In this series though I'm talking primarily about how today's fediverse should evolve so decided to stick with the term fediverse.
The free fediverses should work together with people and instances in Meta's fediverses and on Bluesky whose goals and values align with the free fediverse
Many of the Meta advocates I've talked to share the free fediverses' long-term goal of building a sustainable alternative to surveillance capitalism -- and the same is true for people on Bluesky. So there are likely to be situations where some of the people and instances in Meta's fediverses and Bluesky wind up as situational allies to the free fediverses.
A few areas where collaboration could be very useful:
A key principle of organizing is meeting people where they are.
Moderation on decentralized networks is a shared challenge.
Bringing concepts similar to Bluesky's custom feeds to the fediverses, and more generally focusing on human-focused and liberatory (as opposed to oppressive) uses of algorithms in decentralized social networks designed from the margins.
Meta's fediverses, Bluesky, and the free fediverses are all vulnerable to disinformation.
Thank you for the optimistic PoV on the entrance of others to the #DeSoc of the Fediverse. It is an optimism that I share - especially with Matthias' announcement just an hour ago that his team behind the development of the #WordPress ActivityPub plugin has just released version 2.0.0 - considering the enormous footprint of WordPress installations across the entire Internet belonging to both common, everyday individuals and companies alike, of every shape and size, this is HUGE news.
It instantly, overnight, positions common folks and businesses to leap into the freedoms afforded them by the existing, privacy respecting, #FOSS based Fediverse that hitherto was... well, a bit of a leap for them psychologically. But now they have a familiar platform with which to begin a journey through the minefields of the deprecated, privacy mining, monolithic silos; its proprietors programming their masses of #subjugated_chattel into livestock holding pens, where they are weighed, measured, packaged, placed into inventory, and sold.
That does raise the issue of an error in your assertions however. You mentioned, "instances in Meta's fediverses and on Bluesky".
The truth however, the reality, is that each are merely a single instance - One big monolithic silo, as described above, with the same incentives of monetization through privacy mining techniques that have made them the dreadnoughts that they are; at least in the case of #Meta (Threads).
Bluesky is of that vertically scaling market as well, but much smaller than the #Faceplant and #InstaSPAM engines operated by Meta, and now their new spearhead into the DeSoc space occupied by ActivityPub and other decentralized or federated protocol based, horizontally scaling instances.
#Bluesky hasn't actually shown their hand yet to the general public, but already, they've disenfranchised (fired) much of their talent; some, actually principal architects of their monolith who were frustrated and disillusioned with the direction Jay has been taking the company - moving further and further away from the disowned public community they spawned, organized, and abandoned following the initial trials and tests of the open source preview version of what became #ATP protocol (ATX).
Even Jack has moved on and embraced yet another horizontally scaling protocol in the DeSoc space, #nostr, and it's already bridged and interoperating flawlessly with the ActivityPub powered portion of the Fediverse, which in turn interoperates with instances running other protocols such as #Nomad, #OStatus, #Streams, #Diaspora, and #ZOT... all of them part of the Fediverse.
Many of the extant #ActivityPub powered instances in the Fediverse merely need to install these capabilities with a couple of clicks to enable this interoperability, while others bridge the divide through infrastructure developed and deployed over the past year or so.
What will be Meta's use case here for their business product?
That's the main question I think folks need to address - not punish the good people on the so-called evil side of the divide, the hitherto subjugated chattel that populate Marks so-called Metaverse or whatever he thinks he can compel people to adopt and endure. The point is, childish, domain level blocking by juvenile minds operating ActivityPub powered #Fediverse server instances only serves to paint themselves (and the users who have to date trusted those admins with being told what they can and cannot see and do) into a corner where they effectively cancel themselves, and find that their users have migrated to other spaces... maybe WordPress, where they truly control their own destiny in the DeSoc space and can now fully participate and engage with others - but on their own terms, not someone else's.
And that, I believe, is what the whole thing has always been about, going back as far as #AngelFire and #GeoCities :)
I do agree with you that we should indeed embrace these common, everyday individuals who, through their programmed ignorance, are mostly clueless as to exactly what the Fediverse is, and more importantly, has always promised for them. This is an opportunity, like Steve Austin, (the Six Million Dollar Man): "We can rebuild them, we have the technology, we can make them better, stronger, faster..."
One more thing I should correct you on, the Fediverse is an internetwork of networks, on the Internet - there are no fediverses, Fediverse is itself a plurality, but your intent wasn't lost on me.
Great article, I enjoyed the read and most of all, your optimistically tempered intent. Thanks for sharing and I hope to see much more from you in the future!
Thanks for the lengthy response @tallship I'm using the plural of "fediverses" to emphasize the evolution to regions. The split between instances that federate with Meta (Meta's fediverss) and ones that don't but instead reject surveillance capitalism (the free fediverses) isn't the only one.
Transitive defederation -- defederating from instances that federate with Threads as well as defederating from Threads -- isn't likely to be an all-or-nothing thing in the free fediverses. Tradeoffs are different for different people and instances. This is one of the strengths of the fediverse, so however much transitive defederation there winds up being, I see it as overall as a positive thing -- although also messy and complicated.
So the recommendation here is for instances to consider#TransitiveDefederation: discuss, and decide what to do. I've also got some thoughts on how to have the discussion -- and the strategic aspects.
@thenexusofprivacy >"Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.
@jenniferplusplus The ad targeting (and data harvesting that comes with it) is based on a leak six months ago via somebody at Instagram that discussed win/win opportunities via revenue sharing and ads. The automated moderation's based on statements from Meta's supporters.
Of course, Meta might not go that route (hence the "potentially"), and even if they do many of the current fediverse instances who join Meta's fediverses will probably just say no. But if Meta does decide to invest in the decentralized approach, they've got a great opportunity to partner with corporations and media who host their own ad-funded sites and share revenue. The "Decentralized Surveillance Capitalism" section of https://privacy.thenexus.today/embrace-extend-and-exploit/ goes into more detail.
@thenexusofprivacy@fediverse@fediversenews Simply blocking Threads won't actually accomplish anything, except leave people stuck on Threads. If we want to actually help people, we need to take active actions beyond boycotts. We need to bleed users off of Threads, and we cannot do that if we block them outright.
Thanks for the link. Instances in "Meta's fediverses" are likely to take the approach you recommend. I'm skeptical how well it'll work -- most well-moderated instances today rely on instance blocking as an important part of their toolkit -- but I hope I'll be pleasantly surprised!
But a lot of people and instances want nothing to do with Meta, and blocking them's the best way to accomplish that. Why block Meta?}(https://privacy.thenexus.today/should-the-fediverse-welcome-surveillance-capitalism/#why) and [Why the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact is good strategy for people who want the fediverse to be an alternative to surveillance capitalism look at some of the reasons why. I don't really think of this as a boycott, for most people it's more choosing not to participate in an exploitative and dangerous system.
In any case, though, I certainly agree that blocking Meta's not the only action to take, hence the other strategies in this series.
Protecting the users of your service and fostering the culture you want is a responsibility. If you're not up for that responsibility, you should not be a moderator.
Do we want ActivityPub to go the way of XMPP? Neither ignoring Threads nor outright blocking will help to avoid that fate. Getting a different outcome takes work.
@thenexusofprivacy@zdl If you view moderating a community as a fun low-effort hobby, you're going to be a bad moderator. It takes work, it takes hard decisions, it takes being the bad guy at times.
If it's just a "spare fun-time activity", then you're going to be a bad moderator. It will cause stress and obligation.
I say this as someone who has been moderating online communities for ~25 years.
@Crell That's true but @zdl's question was specifically about your framing that we should "help" people by "bleeding them off Threads." It wasn't moderator-specific. And, even looking at it from a moderator's perspective, your response seems to assume that fediverse moderators have a duty to help people on Threads, and I'm not sure where you think that mandate comes from.
@thenexusofprivacy@zdl To be clear: I'm not saying Mastodon admins have an ethical obligation to help Threads users.
They have an obligation to do what's best for their users, and by extension for the Fediverse at large.
I claim the best way to help our users and the Fediverse at large is to let Threads federate and be "better than Threads, because no Nazis", so Threads users are incentivized to migrate.
(The degree to which "because no Nazis" is true is a separate question to work on.)
@zdl@thenexusofprivacy Then I assert that you are a poor moderator, and I have no further interest in conversing with you, nor being part of any community where you are a moderator.
@zdl@thenexusofprivacy You don't know me. You don't know what abusive experiences I may or may not have had or from whom. Assuming that because someone is light skinned they've never dealt with abuse is straight up racist.
Also, crypto currency is mostly a scam that's burning the planet. Nice try though.
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