We, the moderation and administration of tech.lgbt, are signing the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact in fellowship with our peer communities. (https://vantaa.black/pact)
There is over a decade of precedent that Facebook will not have users' best interests as their guiding principle but rather profit margins, if it joins the Fediverse.
We at tech.lgbt have long held the belief that corporation owned instances are a threat to the core of the Fediverse: freedom for users to be themselves and to be a part of their communities. The 2010s saw the loss of online freedom when the majority of the Web was consolidated into a few destinations, and Facebook entering here could lead us back to centralization. Furthermore, NDAs for server admins will constrain our sovereignty online by binding us legally from disrupting their business.
We are not products. We are people, and we do not welcome Facebook in this space.
@nanianmichaels@mods I just think instead of immediately promising to block it it's better to work around it. It's a fact it will federate, we should make the best of that to try to build the decentralised internet. In my opinion this just feels like putting your head in the sand and pretending outside influences don't exist. Blocking that potential instance won't solve the core problem of the internet being too centralised, it'll make it worse by alienating users.
You're free to disagree and maybe I'm too optimistic in this, but I think it's better to approach this with an open mind until definitive proof comes that this will cause damage to the fediverse, but I see this as a potentially good thing. If companies want to join the fediverse that means they see profit in it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it could also mean that they notice how they can't forever keep up the walled gardens of their current platforms.
Here’s the story of how a 37-follower Twitter account seeded a propaganda narrative about Hawaii that made headlines around the world, thanks to a network of right-wing influencers — and amplification by both Russian and Chinese state media.
I first noted this campaign on Twitter a week ago, when I saw an unusual number of tweets not just expressing the same idea, but using the same specific phrase (“fund Hawaii not Ukraine”) to do so. So I decided to look into it.
While I was doing that, right-wing media picked up the narrative…. Then Russian state media started amplifying it… And then a few days later, Chinese state media joined in, too.
At that point, I knew I was looking at something interesting…
And to be clear: There are legitimate criticisms of the US response to the Hawaii fires, but these failures are not the result of the US providing aid to Ukraine. In fact, they’re the same systemic failures we’ve known about for YEARS and chosen to ignore despite a spike in annual disasters and increasingly severe consequences.
US disaster response & preparedness are not in good shape. We should do something about this! But this isn’t Ukraine’s fault.
@BlippyTheWonderSlug@cloudguy I've similarly deleted my accounts, but it's very clearly apparent that nothing is being fully, irretrievably removed from Twitter as it stands, if it ever was.
I read that #Meta has launched #Threads and many don't understand why it's not fully usable via the web but only through a dedicated mobile app. Meta isn't interested in letting us talk but rather in collecting as much data as possible. Browsers have become (more) skilled at protecting us, while apps can have almost complete access to our mobile devices, gathering data that an average person couldn't even imagine. And our mobile devices have become the safe (or should I say, the exposed pantry?) of our lives. #privacy#datacollection#SocialNetworks
@stefano it's crazy people don't understand that anything Meta or Twitter or Twitter 2.0 (Bluesky) does is to gather data about users and monetize them, not some altruistic reason to build social connections. I'm so happy I found this place.
Indeed. The Mastodon app collects no data and uses the same ActivityPub, yet the Threads app collects a whole lot. This doesn't affect others on the Fediverse but people need to be smart and pick a better instance. Threads offers users nothing that a ton of other instances don't already offer with no bullshit attached.
I only access my instance through the website. I don't believe in installing apps to access something that an existing browser app can easily serve to me on a webpage.
@rolle I am part of the generation that knew Jabber, that was happy to see Google embrace the Jabber/XMPP protocol: anyone with a gmail address had an XMPP instant messaging account interoperable with all other servers.
And one day gmail closed to other servers. Most users, already on Google, then asked others to create a gmail account to continue communicating.
I don't want to go through that again. "Embrace, extend, and extinguish", again.
People are asking me what I think about #Meta joining the Fediverse. To review what I've said elsewhere, it's important to acknowledge five important realities:
Meta can use ActivityPub, and nothing can be done about it. Fediblock doesn't prevent Meta from using ActivityPub because ActivityPub is an open protocol.
A mass Fediblock (Gab style) is not happening. The big servers aren't doing it. And if the big servers aren't doing it, the medium and little servers don't have the power to enforce a mass Fediblock.
The majority of people on the Fediverse don't care -- and many of them even want to connect with Meta. I know, this might surprise you. But based on my observations, most people won't be leaving mastodon.social because it federates with Meta.
Even if the majority of Fediverse servers blocked Meta, that would still mean that certain unsavoury servers (which shall be unnamed) will likely connect with Meta -- and I certainly don't want those servers to be the face of the Fediverse for people who use #P92
Even if Meta pulled a Truth Social and didn't connect to the Fediverse, that does not prevent them from sucking up all that data from ActivityPub -- seeing how that data is, in fact, public.
Am I saying there's no value in blocking Meta? Not at all. Yes, block them if you don't want to send and receive messages to P92. Will that prevent Meta from seeing your messages? As I said, no, not at all. But at least that's data you haven't directly given to Meta (unless you're allowing RSS on your server). And it will also mean you won't receive messages from Meta -- if that's your purpose, blocking is good.
Now I've come to believe that when Meta joins the Fediverse, the Fediverse will largely be divided into three factions:
Faction 1: Servers that federate with Meta
Faction 2: Servers that don't federated with Meta, but federate with servers that federate with Meta
Faction 3: Servers that don't federate with Meta, and don't federate with any server that federates with Meta
Factions 1 and 2 will probably go on their merry way. It's Faction 3 that I believe will die because it's ultimately unfeasible.
"But Chris!" some might say, "There's that pact!"
Unless all those servers in that pact are only federating via white labeled servers who've signed that pact, the pact is useless. Such white labeling would mean that every server that federates must be manually reviewed. And it means that every new server that joins the Fediverse will be federated with Faction 1 and Faction 2 before they're federated with Faction 3.
Which ultimately means that Faction 3 gets tinier and tinier, especially as churn occurs, and those users don't get replaced by newcomers.
In the end, what will federation via white label achieve? Not a whole lot, except make certain people believe they have done something substantial to fight Meta when they haven't.
At a certain point, we have to accept reality: Meta will use ActivityPub, and most people using the Fediverse will talk to them.
So am I waving the white flag?
Not at all. What's important to acknowledge here is that it's not we, the Fediverse, who have conceded. It's Meta.
It's Meta who have given up ownership of their own corporate-owned network effect in order to join the Fediverse.
Despite this concession from Meta, I'm not happy about them joining the Fediverse.
However, there's another consideration: for people who use Meta. it's an incremental improvement over what they had before -- which was no federation. Again, less worse is better than worse. If the world is slightly better -- even if it's not ideal -- it's still better.
Do I want people to use Meta-owned social networks? Not at all.
Here's where I disagree with 99% of people panicking about Meta: I believe ActivityPub will ultimately be Meta's own undoing.
@atomicpoet
Fair enough, that is a very admin / owner point of view.
From an user perspective. I have been cyber bullied back in Facebook. The moderation team did nothing, and you know I'm not the only one, many people that comes here escaping from harassment are being told "just give them another chance to bully you, then we will ban them", but why? why are we waiting for it to happen?
Others have said "we can teach them about moderation" and yourself talking about "we can undermine them"
@punko Responding just to you because I don't follow Chris or vice versa. I'll respond to each of the points by number.
Nobody is arguing that Meta is not allowed into the Fediverse, so this is a red herring.
This is right. A mass fediblock is not happening, and IMO it shows what a huge problem the big instances are.
Also right. But I'm not aware of anyone making the argument that "we should defederate from Meta because most people in the fediverse don't want to interact with them". We already knew people on the huge instances didn't give a shit.
I could not care less if Meta decides to expose their own users to fascists. And to the extent this makes Meta users' lives worse, GOOD.
Yet another red herring. I've already discussed this issue at length. There is a huge difference between handing Meta your data on a silver platter and having it be scrapable with a robots.txt file or a robots meta tag that says don't scrape it.
I don't really know if there will be 3 factions, but I've been pushing for defederating from the largest instances for a while now. Their existence makes the Fediverse de-facto centralized under the control of people who have shown themselves uniquely unqualified to have any power over it. If faction 3 would be infeasible, the early fediverse would also have been infeasible. People who want to be in faction 3 aren't going to move to faction 2 or 1. In fact they'll move FROM the other factions.
And frankly, if Meta can just come in and there's nothing we can do about it, then the Fediverse is a failed experiment and should just die.
so on #Bluesky, rather than going with the well-documented and defined webfinger protocol, behind the .well-known directory, decided to make their own shit for verifying domains via HTTP.
thus, somebody took the S3 bucket name "xrpc" and now is s3.amazonaws.com on the platform
So, Twitter :twitter: decided to pull a DeviantArt move and change its Terms Of Services to include anything you post there on their AI dataset, to re-publish your art and benefit from it without your consent or compensation.
:twitter: TIME TO DELETE YOUR ART PORTFOLIO ON TWITTER :twitter:
I will only leave my contact information there, nothing else.
@Victor_el_DM I don't usually read terms of service, but I read some of them when they changed on the other site, and I just thought they seemed like jerks.
I think we're witnessing / experiencing a "Kessler Syndrome" of the #Internet.
#KesslerSyndrome is a cascade effect that can happen in Earth orbit, where there's so much junk and debris flying around, that it keeps hitting/destroying satellites and producing more debris, faster than the existing debris is cleaned up.
It could make it impossible for humans to launch anything into space for generations, and it's a serious risk.
It's not a perfect analogy, but AI-enhanced spam is turning the Internet into a garbage-filled wasteland, where the existing garbage keeps spawning more garbage faster than anyone can hope to clean it up.
👉🏾 Many brands are abandoning Threads (including #NFL)
👉🏾 Meta’s geo news ban of #Canada 🇨🇦 could have spooked BBC
👉🏾 Lack of public Threads API makes it difficult to automate posting news
👉🏾 BBC just prefers Mastodon
@darnell@BBCRD@darnell BBCRD barely toots; I wish there was BBC presence here with a BBC account (not just a Twitter mirror bot) posting links and BBC journos interacting with people here, but so far it isn't really happening :(.
This is gonna blow over, just like every other Reddit controversy of the past decade. Subreddits'll have their dark protest day, and a month later, they'll have a glorious IPO and no one who invests will even remember this (or, at least, won't care).
@eb I suspect this will turn out to be a much bigger deal than people currently realize, but even if it doesn't I commend you for taking these steps. And you're absolutely right about the power issue - the fact that individuals can force billion (at least on paper 😂) dollar companies to comply with the terms of open-source licenses is huge.