@atomicpoet this motivation makes a lot of sense. Microblogging is small in terms of ad revenue. By choosing to federate Barcelona and help it grow, he can accelerate Twitter's demise, which will be marginally good for Instagram and Facebook.
@atomicpoet i remember that the initial rumour said that the activitypub implementation would probably just be a bridge at first too (any messages sent to them via activitypub would be silently discarded)
so literally using activitypub to advertise their centralised service
@atomicpoet Not sure how Meta can harvest data from other instances through Barcelona, other than through the APIs that already exist today, and that are publically available.
@heinragas
Tracking bugs.
Mastodon won't render JavaScript, but other fediverse clients might. & if there are links directly to a Meta-controlled server (e.g. a shared image or linked post inside the Meta content network), that's a window into any client that displays the image in uncached form.
It's not perfect but they don't need perfection to pull data.
Been a while since I read on this but pretty sure even proxied data (e.g. via Fastly) is useful to them. @atomicpoet
@FeralRobots@atomicpoet Haha, that makes no sense at all because it will give them nothing more than they already know through the protocol. They will know who has subscribed to their users' posts, and they can retrieve info about those people through the existing APIs.
The current privacy nightmare of Facebook is because of all of their tracking pixels all over the internet, but ActivityPub is a really, really bad vector for it and it makes no sense to try.
@FeralRobots@atomicpoet For instance, embedded media in a toot gets mirrored by your local instance, which means that any users looking at the media won't even hit Meta's servers -- making it worthless for tracking.
@FeralRobots@atomicpoet I mean, yes. But I also don't think it is very productive to whip ourselves into a frenzy about what Meta could be doing, and how terrible that all will be.
I'd rather see what they are doing before I take any stance towards the way they implement ActivityPub.
@heinragas@atomicpoet
That's totally fair & what I let get lost in my replies (though I said it elsewhere) is that whatever they're trying to do here, the odds are they'll seriously screw it up. They have a terrible record when building from scratch.
@atomicpoet Precisely. They'll be widely blocked from federation. The acid test will come with whether they honor that or just scrape everything anyway.
I envision them injecting tracking into content that originates from Meta properties; so would be interesting to see if the fediverse relies on defederation a la Mastodon, or whether fediverse platforms [aside: how do we distinguish between server-clients & end-user-clients?] try to strip it out post-by-post. (I just use uBlock/Privacy Badger.)
@atomicpoet Sometimes big businesses using open standards for their own ends work out well, like when AOL gave subscribers access to the Web. I don't particularly like or trust Meta, but even so I'm going to put myself down as "cautiously optimistic" about Barcelona.
@atomicpoet there nothing good from the likes of these tech bros who always are only there to make quick bucks and this stunt by meta is a stunt to suppress there demise and the negative things they are doing with peoples private data or its a pr stunt for those stock market gains.
who knows what in there minds?
Although I hear you, and suspect you are right, I think that they are entitled to at least a small amount of benefit of the doubt.
Automatically blocking Meta seems unreasonable. We should be able to spot bad behavior quite quickly and react if neccessary.
@atomicpoet I think all depends on how they moderate if they should be blocked or not. I also think if this is released to the general public, it might be the end for Twitter, given the number of accounts Meta already has.
"Human! We used to be exactly like them. Flawed. Weak. Organic. But we evolved to include the synthetic. Now we use both to attain perfection. Your goal should be the same as ours.
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships.
We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
@HistoPol
I think you're giving them too much credit for competence. Facebook owes much of its current success to a long run of luck propped up with ruthlessness. People are onto them now. People with real $$ to spend aren't gonna let Facebook pull another "Pivot to Video!" scam. @atomicpoet
I was recently at an AI (strategy) symposium of about roughly 15 diverse people from different companies.
We could have developed such a strategy pretty quickly. #Suckerberg has thousands of employees and consultants.
The danger to his biz model is so obvious...
@atomicpoet The day I can quit Facebook because I can stay in touch with my Facebook communities regardless via ActivityPub (or equivalent) will be a victory for me. This feels like a step in that direction. I want my posts to be followable by anyone, even if they're on a monster proprietary network.
@Mark Darbyshire Well, Barcelona won't mean that Meta will put full ActivityPub support on Facebook proper.
This kind of reminds me of 2011 or 2012 when Friendica, then notorious for federating with everything that moved and then some, introduced its long-awaited Facebook connector. As a node admin, you needed a special developer's token from Facebook to connect your Friendica node to Facebook. As a user, you still needed a Facebook account. But this also meant that you didn't have to reconnect with people on Facebook, for all your Facebook friends practically also became Friendica connections. All of them.
So new Friendica users primarily piled onto those nodes that advertised having the Facebook connector. It was literally possible to use Facebook without actually using Facebook. Like, you could communicate with all your Facebook friends through Friendica. Bidirectionally.
Sounds like a dream, especially for getting people to move from Facebook to Friendica. Imagine Mastodon federating with Twitter, thus allowing for a smooth transition. (By the way, Friendica did federate with Twitter as well for as long as it could still connect to the API. Same goes for Hubzilla.) Optimists expected Friendica to suck Facebook dry like a juice box.
Actually, it was a nightmare. Not to mention that it was hardly used to convince people to come over to Friendica.
People had their entire Facebook timelines mirrored into Friendica with everything on them, pictures and all, I think, even comments and comments on comments. And some of them had hundreds or thousands of "friends" on Facebook. Friendica wasn't made for even nearly that much post traffic.
Also, Friendica's federation features were already memory-hungry, but the Facebook connector took the cake. There was quite a number of public instances back then, but they all closed their registrations somewhere between 100 and 130 users because they were full. And they certainly weren't running on Raspberry Pis.
And hardly anyone switched from Facebook to Friendica anyway. It didn't help that Friendica users felt like Friendica actually had no more space for their buddies, what with most nodes already being filled to the brim. People would have had to launch multiple Friendica nodes each to create enough space for all their friends.
But then Facebook found out that Friendica allowed Facebook users to circumvent Facebook itself while still staying in contact with all their Facebook friends. So they changed their API rules: Data could only be inserted into Facebook anymore and no longer be extracted. Third parties breaking this rule will lose their developer keys. In Friendica's case, that would have meant that the Facebook connector of the respective node would stop working.
Some node admins left the old connector running for as long as they'd stay unnoticed. A few switched to a new connector that only worked from Friendica to Facebook but no longer from Facebook to Friendica. It was easier on the nodes, but pretty useless. By and by, the Friendica nodes disconnected from Facebook eventually.
@atomicpoet I'm more worried than sceptical here; I think Meta would actively try to E^3 the fediverse. So yes, it's a validation if they start to use it, but active measures would need to be taken to prevent them from overtaking it.
I mean we're old enough to have seen the "do no evil" company doing this to a bunch of other technologies.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews
I actually think its something good. Its nice to see such a giant corporation adopting open standards. Meta has a way of making social media platforms and I bet many people will use it, not just as a twitter alternative but many Instagram users experimenting with it, so its good that the rest of the fedi would benefit.
Plus, even if it doesn't work out in the end, it would give a lot of Fediverse coverage which is something we need.
Also remember that with both 'Barcelona, and Tumblr joining, it could make federation a standard for many young people, which means they might keep using it for the rest of their lifes.
@peterkal@atomicpoet@fediversenews what are the chances that they will drop ActivityPub support after a few years, or disallow people jumping to another fediverse service?
@nickapos@atomicpoet@peterkal Knowing Zuck I can believe they would do it, but at that point the fediverse will be normalized and people will understand easily how to switch to another instance or platform
@anubis2814
Even now, when only friendlies are there, switching comes with a loss, loss of generated content and old id. That is dampening migration. Won't things be more dire when Meta joins. @atomicpoet@peterkal
@aswath@atomicpoet@peterkal Yes and no, I still have a twitter account that acts as a rolodex only unless I have something incredibly important or need to promote my latest work. The issue most people have with the fediverse is its so bizarre and alien to them, they have both the things you mentioned and HUGe learning curve. Once the learning curve is out of the way, there will only be what you mentioned there and more people will shift, making the network effect have an impact.
@nickapos@atomicpoet@fediversenews
I get your point and I find it very reasonable. I think to find ourselves a good answer we first need to take a step back and question why they are adding AP support from the first place.
Two reasons come to my mind:
Opening that small Walled Garden, would give them a much more preferable position in courts, and will reduce the pressure from regulators.
Opening a new social media, even if it's made by Meta, is not an easy job. You need to have some content to show, remember also that Instagram is a photo-focused platform, so many people might not be interested and possibly some Twitter refugees would never found themselves in that platform.
Federating with the rest of the AP world, means that the platform would be extra supported by a vibrant community of over 10 million users.
Now, supposing that the platform launches and it doesn't get cancelled in the meantime, defederating doesn't make that much sense. Firstly, closing again the walled garden and using the Embrace-Extend-Distinguish would make them lose whatever negotiation power it gave them against the regulators.
Secondly, since federation is the core part that made the platform alive, it would be a feature that users will be heavily dependent on it, so cancelling it might cause troubles for the service itself.
Looking it from that prism, I think that they are 3 options for them:
Cancel the Service
Launch the service without AP support, with all the risks
@peterkal@atomicpoet@fediversenews I agree with all of the above, if they close it, it won’t happen any time soon and it will only happen if they have a captive audience. If fediverse is vibrant they won’t do it because they lose a potential source of data.
@peterkal@atomicpoet@fediversenews Google is your friend (until it's not) https://xmpp.org/ . Open instant messaging protocol. There was a time you could use any compliant instant-messaging app to send (Facebook) "messenger" messages. So, some people built up a network og contacts, and used it WITHOUT logging in to the facebook app/web-page. Suddenly pidgin and other chat clients were unable to authenticate, and you HAD to use Facebook to receive/send messages.
@hakona@peterkal@atomicpoet@fediversenews Some federation instances use to support XMPP, though no idea on which ones still do. Many of them sadly do not anymore these days.
Whatsapp is still xmpp. It listens until now on xmpp-typical ports... 😁
Google Hangouts is xmpp.
Googles cloudprint is xmpp.
Installing an app on your android from playstore webview is xmpp.
I'm sure, facebooks messenger is still xmpp.
I think, xmpp is the most used messaging-protokoll on the whole world, but known by almost nobody... 😝
@jakob
It may be true that XMPP is the most used messaging protocol. But if open clients are not allowed, if unilaterally & purposefully refused to federate w others, is it still "XMPP"? By the the same thing could still happen to Fediverse. We have to wait & see when large servers come about. @atomicpoet@hakona@peterkal
@aswath
Yes. it is xmpp. Because the protocol is xmpp, not the service.
And if Meta decide to turn off federation, but they still use ActivityPub/ActivityStream, it is still part of the fediverse, of the AP-Fediverse, because they use the same protocoll.
Diaspora is not able to use ActivityPub, because they have only their own protocol... and they are also called part of the fediverse, but can only interact with friendica.
And there are even mastodon-instances, which are defederated at all... gab and donald trumps truth.social... are they part of the fediverse or not?
If diaspora is part of the fediverse, then gab and truth.social is also part of the fediverse. my opinion.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews Wait for the first users to come in, and watch carefully. If Barcelona misbehaves or the new user flood is too fast, block or defederate.
If Meta wants to participate in the fediverse according to the same rules as everyone else, I say welcome! But I suspect they want to use the fediverse to get a competitive advantage over Twitter, and then ditch ActivityPub once they grow. Kind of what Google did with Android.
Construct or forward to a landing page for #Metas asking a user to create a native #Fediverse#handle WITH a compulsory #introduction (no easy way in for intelligence-steered bots from #Russia, etc).
@atomicpoet@fediversenews I like that my current social media service UX has no "Orders and payments" section. And I have no interest in exposing my "Close Friends" to the hellscape of Zuck's business model...again...
Not necessarily, Cuntroll. Embrace/extend will only work if 1) Meta’s product is measurably better for average humans than the alternatives, and 2) the existing community drops the ball and does not adapt. The battleground is now in usability, design, accessibility.. not tech stacks and need-points. But no product from Meta (or any company) is a guaranteed hit. So let’s go beat the pants off of them. @ctrl@atomicpoet@fediversenews
@menelion@fediversenews@atomicpoet The more the merrier I suppose. If they end up being a bad actor, other servers aren't required to federate with them.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews Said it before, I will not interact with Meta. If I can’t disconnect myself from them one way, I’ll do it another. I’ll abandon any social network if meta infects it. Period.
@atomicpoet
Well, let's just see how decentralized they really are. I will welcome them if they actually let their users set the premises. I have my doubts, though. @fediversenews
@atomicpoet@fediversenews Not 100% sure why so many people here are annoyed. They can just defed meta like they already do to the rest of the fediverse.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews them being interested means they see an interest and fediverse as a platform they can profit from. if the way they profit is somehow opt in (for example a tag allowing in bio or something), then im fine with it. otherwise, big no from me
@ConserveChange@atomicpoet@fediversenews I totally agree with your premise and welcome new participation as much as I can. My biggest concern is how they will implement the one-way streets. Content from their platform will only flow out and private data from the Fediverse at large will only flow in. There will be impressive mental gymnastics to justify this policy. That would be the best reason I could see for banning them in a knee-jerk reaction.
I think it'd be nice for older, conservative ppl who would otherwise have no way of experiencing decentralized social media... but yeah I'm not thrilled by the thought of it. Probably insta-block
@zlatiah@atomicpoet@fediversenews the best way to achieve this is by reaching out to those people, engaging with them, and welcoming them to your community. Technology does not fix people problems, it can only obfuscate them. Corporate-controlled social media takes advantage of this to silo them into the appropriate profitable market segments.
Add comment