We (meaning the whole fediverse, all instances) need to be de-federating that crap immediately.
Nothing good will come from having Facebook streaming into here in anyway whatsoever.
The Fediverse as a whole needs to be a separate place so that people can leave places like that.
Also, if Facebook is allowed to "work with" the development of the fediverse at all, they absolutely will eventually destroy it for profit. And "working with" it absolutely includes them federating with it.
When their vast resources are taken into account, and their existing userbase also, they would rapidly become the main instance (or collection of, but probably just one) of the whole fediverse. Once that's them, they can use that position to dictate terms pretty hard.
Before you know it, everyone that would eventually have come here are there instead, and they're now the fediverse. They can also fork the software and leverage their Dev teams to make their fediverse vastly more polished... No donations needed on their fediverse, less bugs, everyone you know is already over there... Seem familiar?
How does that effect us who aren't there, how isn't it just the same thing as now? Our fediverse dies off because the users leave, instances close down through lack of population/need, before you know it there's nobody here and the idea just dies.
Fully agree. The reason I'm here is to escape corporate shitfuckery. if you expect anything other than more shitfuckery from Meta you're either a shill or hopelessly naive.
The Fediverse as a whole needs to be a separate place so that people can leave places like that.
The beauty of the fediverse is precisely that it is not monolithic. Each instance can be different, have different policies and decide who it wants to federate with. Some instances will federate with anyone, some with most, some with a few, some with none.
The claim that that the fediverse needs to be a monolithic whole, where all instances walk in lock-step with each other is entirely at odds with the fediverse philosophy.
If this were just some problematic instance (or a group of them, even) I'd entirely agree with you, but this is Facebook, the damage that they're almost certainly planning and are entirely capable of requires (at least in my opinion), a different solution.
Please note that I'm suggesting this as an entirely unusual solution to a very unusual problem. Not as some sort of standard practice.
You haven't articulated a problem, let alone described how this particular solution solves it. Meta building a better version of your platform that siphons away users is a problem regardless of whether or not you federate with them / regardless of whether their platform is even built to support activitypub. Federation has no bearing on that one way or another.
I don't want content stemming from a place that's controlled by advertisers and other large companies. If we're federated with Meta then that means your decentralized independent instance would still have advertiser driven, heavily capitalist and consumer manipulative content domineering and running through its veins.
That's a specific thing that I've read many people enjoy getting away from when it comes to joining the Fediverse.
this argument makes sense only if you're talking about defederating instances. It doesn't make sense here. The problem is not whether we want the users of meta's instances. The problem is whether we want a huge corp be part of the fediverse. And why are we talking about it? Because people are trying not being naive and believing that meta is here because they liked the ideas of a federated network and want to participate. Meta will cause more harm than good as it has already happened in the past in different technologies/projects.
This conversation has been going on Mastodon for a while now. The problem kind of boils down to the following: there are people who think Meta is a bad actor and having the literal entire rest of the fediverse defederating is the best way of dealing with that. And there are people who also agree that Meta is a bad actor, and think that partial defederation is the best way of dealing with it.
Its really hard to come (read: impossible) to come to a consensus on this, because part of the argument about what is a better tactical approach depends on knowing how Threads implements things like account portability, and this is currently unknown. Most people even assumed that Threads would not implement this at all, but Adam Mosseri just announced that this is an important feature, so who even knows.
It's an unpopular opinion here, but I truly think Meta joining is being a little blown out of proportion.
The fediverse is simply not valuable enough to EEE. We're a tiny niche of nerds who all have ublock installed. Meta wants a low effort solution to eat Twitters lunch, and saw bluesky do well.
We could even see this as an opportunity to grow. You can join mastodon AND find famous people to follow. Thread users themselves may realize the moderation sucks and go elsewhere.
Defedrating at best makes Threads roll back their activitypub use...and their millions of users are in a walled garden again. We did it fedi!
The only thing naiive is the people in here thinking that defederating from Meta accomplishes anything whatsoever.
Oh boo hoo, meta's instance is shinier than ours, doesn't that mean users will leave? Yeah, look around, they already will and are leaving for Meta's platforms, they have more users on Threads in 24hrs than the Fediverse has had in it's entire life.
the defederation has nothing to do with "reducing meta's number". The reason to defederate is so you're not playing their game with their own rules. Fediverse will gain absolutely nothing by playing meta's game.
Everyone keeps talking in analogies like "playing their game" because if you said "we gain nothing by getting a ton of free content from Threads users" it would sound ridiculous.
Kbin, ~57,000 users in a few months
Threads, ~10,000,000 users in a day
I don't think you understand the scale of the dynamics at play. Quantity != quality, but even if Kbin were to take all of Reddit's market share, there would still be orders of magnitude less content than Meta/Twitter.
I mean, I'll give you a non-analogy argument. That "ton of free content from Threads users" is not desireable. In fact, if early reports are anything to go by, Threads is already largely populated by brands and thoughtfluencers, all in a race to the bottom to capitalize on mindshare in a new, unexplored space.
IMO, neither that content nor those users would be beneficial for the fediverse in the long run.
i'm not here for the ton of content that meta will produce. If I wanted this content I would had been there in the first place. It looks like somebody else is in the wrong place and is dreaming of a fediverse full of brands trying to promote their products and the influencers pretending they are real life advertisements.
No, I'm just not willfully blind to the fact that social networks are only valuable when people use them. Reddit wasn't great because it was a niche forum with a handful of decentralized tech enthusiasts, Reddit was great because it was a big non-gatekeeping umbrella that welcomed everyone.
sure. But reddit was very far from what FB and instagram are. The culture that FB and/or instagram bring with them, is something that if I liked, I would had been there already
Here's the thing. No matter what the Supreme Court says, a corporation is NOT a person.
Facebook/Meta can't be welcomed, it is a construct without feeling. It is a massive profit-driven engine with no sense of fairness or ethics.
Anyone who uses Facebook can be welcomed, provided they make accounts and instances. But to allow a profit-driven engine like Meta to run an instance? That's not a good idea.
I’m neither in favor nor against defederation, I’m fine letting the community make that decision. But if you think this is the argument being made you haven’t been paying any attention at all.
Meta is facebook who engaged Cambridge Analytica to purchase our lives.
Not from us, but from them. Facebook literally sold out the world
Facebook nearly destroyed this country for a buck.
Fuck facebook. I don't want to avoid federating because I dont want them around; I want to avoid federating because anything I can do to starve them of every resource for growth that I possibly can is the best thing I can do about facebook.
Not only did Facebook allow incitement to genocide to be circulated on it for years while people begged it to stop, but after the genocide Facebook also actively impeded the international investigation into that genocide.
Where do I look to find official stance on the matter? I don’t know how to even find who the admin is for a domain. I’m assuming the kbin dev is hosting kbin.social.
Exactly. Keep this flagship instance general-purpose. If federation with Meta means you can't "feel safe here", then "pack it up" as you say and choose a place with a moderation style that fits you.
Don't try intimidating everywhere else into adopting your beliefs, like many people here are doing.
"The fact that large platforms are adopting ActivityPub is not only validation of the movement towards decentralized social media, but a path forward for people locked into these platforms to switch to better providers."
"the idea that administrators of Mastodon/Fediverse instances should pledge to preemptively block Facebook’s imminent Twitter-like ActivityPub service (purportedly named Threads) strikes me as petty and deliberately insular. I don’t like Facebook, the company, and I’ve never seen the appeal of Facebook, the product (a.k.a. “the blue app”). But there are literally billions of good people who use their services. Why cut them off from the open ActivityPub social world?"
I understand, and I do remember the XMPP debacle, but I also remember that back then people trusted Google and their do-no-harm motto, and they really wanted them to lead in the real-time voice/video chat arena, and in order to make it Google made some protocol desitions that broke away from XMPP.
This time around we don’t trust Big Tech and will not try to adjust to their ways, if they want to they can embrace ActivityPub or not. The rest of the Fediverse will not try to apply their tactics or monetization to the protocol. Either they adhere to the stardard, or their users will have no compatibilty with the rest of the Fediverse.
I am not suggesting we all embrace them and try to make them feel welcome, but let's not close our instances alltogether to them, let each person decide for themself if they want to follow people from their instance or not.
We somehow defederated with the nsfw Lemmy instance over a big nothingburger.
If we stay connected with those hate groups however, then I'm out. That's where I draw my line for support.
What is the deal with defederating from that nsfw instance? I like having a feed that will occasionally have random nudes or whatnot in it, like r/all used to have. Is defederation the reason I don't see any of the lemmynsfw.com stuff even though I'm subbed to it?
Is there a place where you can see what instances kbin.social is defederated from?
Yes. Their content isn't synced to kbin anymore due to this. You'd have to visit the actual Lemmy instance directly to see the content or use an instance that didn't defederate from them. I hope @ernest reconsiders since this was really a nothingburger anyway.
No. They defederated because people misunderstood a rule change and thought they'd allow cp imagery, which was completely false. They just loosened the rules for fictional content where the exact age of the character is hard to determine and some people took that the wrong way and caused a bunch of outrage posts.
Meta federating would be the best thing to ever happen to the Fediverse. Face it, Fediverse is not by its own in a billion years going to somehow kill off Meta. The vast, vast majority of users are going to stay with traditional social media, there’s nothing we can do about that.
However, Meta et al actually joining the Fediverse means we won. The vast majority will still stay with Meta’s services, but no one here has to. This is the closest we will ever get to a truly open standard for social media.
I don’t want to have an account with Meta or Twitter or whatever, but I, like most people, want to be able to communicate with the people who do.
As I see it, there are only two ways forward for the Fediverse:
Traditional SoMe stays closed and inaccessible for anyone who doesn’t want to sell their soul to Meta. The vast majority of people still use traditional SoMe and the Fediverse stays a minuscule hobby project at best. Even here, most people will probably also have accounts on the traditional platforms in order to not cut oneself off from the world.
Traditional SoMe embraces open standards and anyone who cares can choose to use whatever service they want. The vast majority of people still use traditional SoMe, but the Fediverse now has access to billions of people (or not, you can choose yourself) without having to become a commodity that Meta can sell to advertisers.
Ideally, instead of having to register a Meta account, I can just stay with Kbin.social without losing access to the content.
I feel that this has been a bit of an eye opening moment. It's nice to see that we at least don't have to worry about the risk of importing a toxic community, because evidently we are fully capable of producing that ourselves.
I had no doubt that that this is a controversial topic, but the fact that we as a community aren't even capable of having a civil discussion about it actually saddens me a bit (I'm not just referring to the comment I'm replying to).
Not that it was ever going to be any different, but it's very funny how a userbase that so clearly sees itself as so much smarter and more mature than the average rando is obviously using the downvote as a "I disagree" button on your comment here.
I can see thinking that this is a naïve perspective, and I'd probably agree with that really, but you clearly have a position, have thought about it, and tried to explain it. This isn't what downvotes are supposed to be for.
It's almost as if people here are just as emotionally driven as the normies they detest so much.
Frequent assumption: I am smart and logical, so everything I think is driven by logic.
Frequent corollary: If I ever admit to being driven by emotion, I look stupid.
Maybe in some circles, but I think it’s better to be self-aware and to try to fix the holes in your own thinking. If you can’t see when you’re being influenced by emotion when you might not want to be, you can make a lot more illogical decisions and take your life down a path you don’t want. Doesn’t seem very smart to me. But people of all levels of intelligence fall victim to pride, so this happens anyways.
As you enter more online spaces you start getting a feel for what different communities put in their rules and notice it’s usually the same. Don’t be a dick. Don’t spam. Don’t post illegal stuff here. No (or limited) self-promotion, we’ll consider it spam. And you stop reading the rules. Maybe this is why so many people use the downvote to express disagreement?
Federation works by instances (e.g. kbin.social) registering an interest (subscribe/follow) in a specific magazine or person on other instances.
That means content is only brought into an instance that members of that instance are interested in (its the same with lemmy instances, we don't see everything).
Similarly on kbin users can block individuals, magazines or whole domains. So even if kbin.social does federate with meta you don't have to see/interact with it.
For instance I respect kbin users might want content from lemmy.ml, as the people who run it are tankies I have no interest in anything from that instance and block the domain.
I have no issues with part of the fediverse walling itself off from meta but remaining in contact with other instances. Similar to how beehaw defederated from lemmy.world but kbin could see beehaw and lemmy.world.
I would treat meta like any other instance, if its a source of headache then deferate.
The Embrace, Extend Extinguish argument makes no sense.
Take C#, many years ago Microsoft wanted to build its own Java JDK. As part of that they added Microsoft specific extensions. Sun said that wasn't acceptable. Microsoft didn't just stop, the renamed it C# and launched the product.
Everyone agreeing to defederate from meta won't mean they stop. It won't prevent EEE.
The best way to prevent EEE is given in our example. Java had a huge userbase who simply weren't interested in migrating.
So you need to encourage organisations to deploy KBin/Lemmy instances which integrate with the fediverse. That gives them reach and when Meta tries EEE they cut off content their users want. So it forces them to be a good citizen.
What OP did not mention is the fedipact. There are seemingly admins of the fediverse signing an NDA with facebook. The fedipact is about admins swearing that they will never federate with facebook.
So of course if an admin signs an agreement with facebook and changes the conditions, the protocol, benefits from credits to improve the infra then it's a different threat and different debate.
Federating with Meta without an agreement is a laughable science fiction scenario, but federating with an agreement is dangerous for the users.
I would treat meta like any other instance, if its a source of headache then deferate.
If we federate with meta then our instance will simply stop responding because of the workload alone.
Everyone agreeing to defederate from meta won't mean they stop. It won't prevent EEE.
No. If we are talking about the EEE side of things then we must defederate. If facebook federates with the intention of EEE then they will ALSO bribe the admins.
The code for mastodon, lemmy and kbin is open source and has been forked hundreds of times.
Admins can do whatever they like and people can build and deploy their own instance and enforce their own rules.
This is one of the key strengths of open source, people have forked projects took them in their own direction and had success.
Similarly ActivityPub is documented as a W3 standard, having read the standard the biggest weakness is the number of instances, not the size of the instances.
Also @mod I meant to hit reply and hit report and can't see how to revoke
Meta cannot harm you by federating. If they want your data that you posted on kbin then they already have it. They run curl and they can swallow all your posts and metadata associated. Whatever you post is given for free to everyone with an internet connection.
Also Meta probably will never federate since it involves a huge risk that they will end up hosting illegal data against their will.
edit: also think in legal terms, meta will never publish content on their site if a federated server hasn't signed a mountain of legal documents beforehand. It's simply not happening. I'm only speaking on a user level. If our admin adopts a pro-facebook stance then of course it's a different story.
edit: The more I read about this the more doubt I have about this story. It seems that kbin still hasn't signed the fedipact? It's becoming a big deal and it will affect kbin even if we adopt a neutral stance. There is in fact no more neutral stance. We should sign.
Meta can harm us by federating - the server load alone would demolish Kbin and Lemmy. We were overwhelmed with just the recent sign ups from ex Redditors, how do you think Kbin and Lemmy could handle the firehose of Threads' data?
IG has 1B accounts. If each IG account makes a Threads account and chooses to automatically follow all of their IG follows that also have Threads accounts set up, while we were federated with Threads., Kbin and Lemmy instances would be done. ETA: I understand that it won't be all 1B users instantly appearing, and that it would require someone from the smaller instance subscribing to someone from Threads, but it would grow pretty rapidly I'd imagine.
We absolutely have to defederate from Threads just to stay up and be functional. It's not all about privacy.
If the Fediverse can't scale to 1 billion users then better to find that out now so we can start working on Fediverse 2.0 that can handle it. "I hope we stay small and nobody notices us" is not a sound technical solution.
We absolutely have to defederate from Threads just to stay up and be functional.
Threads won't federate so they can stay out of touch of illegal content. The lemmy populace is radioactive material to Facebook. Even here we are fighting against the random content being NSFW, so imagine the black suits of facebook... imagine the lawyers of facebook having a quick look at what they are about to federate. They will pull the plug on it after their first visit.
I agree. it's fun to debate about whether to federate with meta but bottom line is, meta will want to control their content. by opening a gateway somewhere else, they lose that control. meta will maintain their own closed system.
Probably an unpopular opinion but I'd rather defederation be left to the users. I don't want to see content from Meta, but I want the ability to make that decision myself.
It'll ultimately be an instance-level decision. I wouldn't be surprised to see something analogous to the open source / free software ideological split develop.
Giving them time is exactly my problem. That’s exactly embrace extend extinguish works.
They start by embracing it. “We created our own fediverse instance isn’t this a cool thing, come on over to our server you can see other servers and leave anytime.”
Then they extend it. “We added a colorful widget, only available on threads!”
Then when they feel they’ve got enough of the core users, they extinguish it. “If you want to see threads content you need a Facebook account, sorry just to meant be features to stay federated.”
Look at what Google did to RCS for a real world example.
Sorry if tbis is dumb of me but why should we avoid ever using any web tech that has been associated with Meta, just because we are worried about E-E-E affecting Activity Pub?
Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:
allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform
The interoperability is the big one. The fediverse gives a way for Meta to be in compliance. EEE that breaks the wider fediverse will cause the EU to come down on them.
Thanks for the explanation. I guess I'm not as worried about the ubiquitous technologies because I'm ignorant about whether/how they could shut down the aps and sites I use.
I don't go anywhere near the list of websites and aps if I can help it. I do have to use WhatsAp sometimes and it really bothers me that Meta has hold of it now. I wish my wider society would adopt something else instead.
React is a JavaScript library that was created by Facebook.
It makes webpages pretty, basically. It makes things load really really fast while still looking clean and modern.
Dropbox, Paypal, Discord, Slack, Netflix, AirBnB all use React.
MySQL
Facebook didn't create MySQL, but they have contributed to it.
MySQL is a way of efficiently storing large amounts of data. Users, passwords, credit card info, anything that needs to store a lot of things will have at least considered MySQL.
Other places that use MySQL are Twitter, Pinterest, GitHub, YouTube, Spotify, and so on.
Memcached
Memcached was originally developed for LiveJournal, but Facebook has contributed to it.
It's a way to quickly store arbitrary data, and reduces how many API calls you need to make. This in turn makes running a large website cheaper, since you can just look up the data in your own memory rather than needing to make an API call.
YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest all use Memcached.
HHVM
HHVM was created by Facebook.
HHVM is what executes the Hack programming language (also made by Facebook). Hack is based on PHP (the same thing Kbin runs on), but is optimized in a different way and is more flexible than traditional PHP.
Slack and Wikipedia are the biggest users of HHVM.
Cassandra
Cassandra was created by Facebook.
Cassandra works basically as an alternative to NoSQL (mentioned above). It does much of the same job, but works a bit better making sure there's no single point of failure.
Uber, Netflix, Reddit, Spotify, and Twitter all use Cassandra.
Scribe
Scribe was created by Facebook.
Scribe aggregates logs from many many servers and helps engineers find problems in large networks.
The name is a little generic so it's hard to find examples, but I know that Dropbox uses Scribe internally and other large companies probably do too.
Hadoop
Facebook did not create Hadoop, but has contributed to it.
Hadoop is meant for solving problems that take a lot of data. Machine learning (ChatGPT etc.) is the classical example, but really it works well any time you need to process a lot of data.
Uber, Pinterest, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, and Slack all use Hadoop.
Hive
Facebook created Hive.
Hive lets you query the results of work done by Hadoop (above). It provides an interface that is similar to MySQL but lets you access Hadoop data.
Uber, Pinterest, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, and Slack all used to use Hive. It's largely dying out now because it can't keep up with modern data sets.
Apache Thrift
Thrift was created by Facebook.
It connects programs that were created using different programming languages. They can all share a data format through Thrift, which lets them talk to each other.
Thrift is used by Netflix, Evernote, Twitter, Uber, and reCAPTCHA.
Varnish
Facebook did not create Varnish, but has contributed to it.
It dynamically figures out what to load when you're on a website, so you can have a lot of stuff on one webpage but have it still load quickly.
GitLab, Pinterest, Twitch, and Udemy all use Varnish.
Literally you could not use the modern web without using these technologies. Meta has a loud voice in most of those techs, and outright controls a handful of them. That's been the case for most of the 2010s into the 2020s.
While I don't think Facebook necessarily has good intentions - they're a corpo, corpos are never your friends, Facebook especially has proven to be evil - they have proven to be good stewards of open-source technologies for over a decade now.
I wouldn't say I trust them with the fediverse. But I'm also not so quick to jump to EEE because they do have a fairly solid track record when it comes to web tech.
Thanks for the detail! The only one of those I notice when I use it is mySQL. The contrarian in me is saying that several of of those would probably be even better without facebook's sticky fingers in them, but that's unfair of me as it's a counterfactual and there's no way of knowing without a deep dive into the history of development.
I get tired of extension breaking other things, but a lot of that is the nature of tech evolving. I guess this is what bothers me the most about EEE - for many of us it won't be clear what is happening and how much of it is just attrition. I remember getting annoyed by Firefox for not working with gmail and "discovering" gmail still worked with Chrome. I had no idea that bug was a feature.
my point is that the OP is grandstanding and exaggerating by comparing possible enshittification with his very safety being at risk. so if it's a life and death matter, he should be taking extreme steps to avoid his bogeyman.
I think I read something about how when you block a domain, it only blocks content hosted on that domain. But a text post, for instance, gets copied over to your instance and served from there, so it's still visible. That's why there's so many posts from "kbin.social" that are actually from Lemmy.
If that's the case here, then better blocking is needed.
This seems like a fundamental flaw. There NEEDS to be a user level privacy control for disallowing your posts from being copied to a place you don’t want it to go.
If you have privacy concerns, you should probably not post here for time being.
It is prototype software. Doesn't remove EXIF geotags from photos, for example and posts here are public (and indexed by webcrawlers). Treat this as "open Internet" for your safety/privacy purposes.
It's not much of privacy I'm concerned about as much as community and visibility.
Meta is infamous for fostering insufferable users, meanwhile from what I have seen from kbin and lemmy, there is a lot more nuance and maturity in the communities here (for the most part) that I would hate to see overun by Thread users.
Secondly, it's one thing to be visible to the internet in general, but to have anything tied to Meta that they can scrape and sell is a concern to me. The fact that the fediverse is a prototype with vulnerabilities makes the likelihood of a company like Meta, who intentionally exploits vulnerabilities to harvest data, all the more likely.
Finally, almost every example of a large company joining a federation always ends with said company cannibalizing the federated networks, and I have no reason to believe Facebook won't do this. If I'm going to invest time and effort into making a community grow, I would rather not waste my time on a platform that is doomed to be consumed.
So. In 1 day, Threads has gotten more users than all of Mastodon combined. My friends are on Threads. They're not coming to Mastodon. I've tried. I couldn't even convince my fiance to join me on Mastodon for longer than a day, and we live together.
How would you suppose I talk to my friends? By joining Meta? Or by staying with FOSS on the fediverse? Because when you say "everywhere needs to defederate from Meta" you're also saying "You shouldn't talk to your friends here, nor should your friends be able to talk to you."
Quite frankly - I really enjoy that I can both be here and still be in contact with my friends. Meta can't track me here (as much, I'm aware they can still siphon data but they could do that regardless). I'd much rather stay here if I can. But if given the chance to choose, I'm going to move to somewhere that federates with Threads. Not because I like Meta - I hate Zuck almost as much as I do Elon, which is quite a lot - but because I'd rather see and talk to my friends than be locked in with a bunch of rando control freaks jumping at shadows.
If the fedipact had it their way, anywhere that federated with Threads would in turn become defederated. This will create 2 separate fediverses. People will have to choose which one they spend time on - even if they have accounts on both sides, one will always be the "primary" account.
I posit that for many people, the "primary" account is going to be the one with their friends and interests. It's going to be the side with the influencers they follow. Simply, it's going to be the one that federates with Threads. The other side will slowly wither and die, as all the content dries up and people move to where the network effect is strongest.
You can argue that we need to defederate because of "embrace, extend, extinguish". Tell me: what is the end result of EEE? A diminished fediverse, where most people use the single app that has all the people and all the content. How is that different than the splintered fediverse caused by the fedipact?
It's really not much different at all. If Meta goes for EEE, there is no stopping them. If the fedipact takes hold and rabidly defederated anywhere that glances at Meta, then the fediverse's network effect will shatter. The fedipact will simply backfire and shoot themselves in the foot as people choose the side with the larger network effect. It's ridiculous that the idea has gotten as much traction as it has; the fedipact's best-case scenario is worse than the worst-case of EEE.
If a bunch of people want to live in small segmented communities, that's on them. Beehaw is right there if you want it; that's what Beehaw aspires for. But large, general-purpose instances shouldn't bow to the whims of a loud minority that don't even realize the repercussions of their agitations.
The fediverse is at its strongest when we federate. That's what makes this place special. We've agreed that walled gardens are bad, and the one time that we have a chance to get a bunch of "normal" users on the fediverse everyone panics because they're afraid of EEE.
The fedipact isn't going to stop EEE. If Meta wants to do EEE, they're going to do it with or without the fedipact. We don't even know for sure that EEE will happen - it's true that Meta is a business, but there are plenty of open protocols you use every day that never got hit by EEE. L
All the fedipact will do is hurt people who want to use free software to see their friends so this loud minority can exercise their control over everyone.
You have the power to block the domain here if that's what you want to do. Please don't let your personal fears ruin the experience of others.
The Fediverse solutions are better because of interoperability. While I feel Meta needs to be watched closely as far as their moves and intentions in the space, I’m worried by shutting out any large company projects utilizing the Fediverse, the concept will never “take off”.
And I’ve seen some argue that they don’t want it to take off. That they’d prefer the Fediverse stay niche, and I wholly disagree. The way this is all designed allows each user to choose the experience they’re going for, and shoehorning the entire Fediverse into some vision of a fringe and niche network that no influencers or corporate interests are on at all, is just begging for it to stay irrelevant forever.
Ideally, we wind up in a situation where Meta content can easily be filtered away by any individual user, should they feel that is necessary. But if Threads takes off, I’d rather be able to interact with that content from right here than have to actually become a user of their entire platform.
I'm not against corporations integrating with the fediverse, but I do think that federating with Meta will be a net negative for the fediverse as a whole, atleast in its current state.
First of all, In a purely practical sense, since we're still struggling to keep different instances in sync with the amount of content that is here today. We're going to have a real bad time trying to sync threads content, while they can probably sync the rest of the fediverse without breaking a sweat. I am afraid that we're going to drastically increase the compute necessary to maintain a cohesive fediverse, and that we're just going to hand Meta the keys to the castle as they are the only one able to provide this service at that scale. This is probably less of an issue for Mastodon, where you subscribe to users and not communities.
Furthermore, I'll come out and say that I like that this place is more niche. I've found a lot more joy posting here than i did on reddit or twitter, despite the lower user count. I don't think that access to a large user base is necessarily going to make this a better place for the group that is here now. I think we as a fediverse needs to grow a bit as a community before we can even hope to take in Meta without it warping the entire community to the point that its no longer itself.
People don't get the technicalities of syncing so much data. And I'm not even talking about the costs.
Imagine the face of your sysadmin when you tell him that you're gonna run a carbon copy of Threads on his infrastructure. They haven't seen the size of the archive of reddit.
One day it would be fun to talk about the costs though.
That's fair, but I personally want my social media to be "everybody".
That's actually what brought me here to Kbin - I loved that it had Mastodon integration and connected everybody to everybody else.
I was originally on Beehaw, which is very much trying to capture that "Discord with my friends" feel. And that's totally fine; I understand that and respect it and think it's valid.
But the point is that we have options. Kbin especially is great because these options can happen at a user level; you can go in and block entire instances from your user account, and it'll be just as if that instance was defederated. Admins don't need to maintain a short allowlist or a large denylist; you can curate it to your comfort level on your own.
But I'll also recognize that it's not inherently a small community - you're taking a big community and slicing off parts of it, which isn't the same. But there are spots for that cozy feeling across the fediverse if that's what you want. I just don't think a broad flagship instance like Kbin.social should be one of those spots.
@EnglishMobster@0xtero@Roundcat So what you're saying is "ignore all the horrible shit Facebook as done, they have more people and that allows them to do anything they want" ?
@0xtero@Roundcat@EnglishMobster Your entire post is about how "they're going to have all the people, so resisting will be useless". So it's the classic "might makes right" attitude.
Right, yeah - Mastodon doesn't really display the comment "threading" like kbin does - that's one of the reasons I decided to create a separate account here. All good.
Facebook is going to do whatever they want regardless. They are a business, and they are in the business of making money. I don't like Facebook. I don't appreciate Facebook. I don't use Facebook (or Instagram, or WhatsApp...). Facebook will always do what is best for Zuck, and if Zuck leans into EEE that is what Facebook will do no matter what.
Right now, Facebook is giving me a chance to interact with my friends without using Facebook. That's huge; my friends don't share my anti-Facebook beliefs and are all still on there. I'd love to reconnect but want to do it on my terms. Federation allows that.
The fedipact is going to do more harm than good. It won't stop Facebook from doing what they want to do, as per point 1. If Facebook goes down the path of EEE (which we can guess but is technically not guaranteed - see how the Matter protocol is taking off), then Facebook will execute EEE with or without the fedipact. But the fedipact does Facebook's work for them by inherently splitting the fediverse into a "Facebook side" and a "fedipact side". This split is not healthy and many people will choose the side with a larger network effect - i.e. Facebook. Thus this accomplishes the same thing as EEE without Facebook doing anything other than Embracing.
Facebook is allowed to do what they want because they are a business with billions of dollars. They've done horrible shit but they're also mainstream, where my friends hang out and where the celebrities are.
If the fedipact didn't exist, I would be able to freely interact with the people on Facebook without needing to download Zuck's data vacuum. I'd be able to see my friends and talk to my friends without having to deal with all the... Facebook parts.
The fedipact threatens that because it will cause large communities (like Fosstodon, which has many open-source projects I follow) to defederate themselves from anywhere that federates with Threads. This splits the fediverse badly and in the fedipact's best-case scenario (for them) the only way I could even talk to my friends is by downloading and installing Zuck's app. I'd rather not.
Asynchronously talking to people? Not really. Or, I should say - not any where I'm able to contact those people.
While I have some of their phone numbers, I don't have all of them - and they're not likely to text me pictures of their new baby.
While I know a couple on Discord, that's far less than the number of people I know.
I don't think I know any of their email addresses. And this isn't the early 2000s where email chains are a thing anyway.
It's nice to be able to see what old friends are doing. I haven't talked to some of these people for years. A lot of them came from my time working at Disneyland; sometimes we were close friends; other times we just traded a couple shifts. Still others were just times we spent closing together, chatting about nothing and everything. I treasure their interactions and I want to see how they're doing - but I don't want to directly use Facebook.
Threads gives me the ability to check in on them from right here on Kbin. I don't need to leave this site. I don't need to give my info to Zuck. I just shoot them a follow, maybe send a message if they have to manually accept follow requests. I don't want Kbin to defederate because it'll take that from me for no good reason. (As I've stated elsewhere, the fedipact is self-defeating and we should fight at the "extend" stage, not the "embrace" one.)
I don't want to enter Facebook's walled garden, and right now the power of the fediverse is that I don't have to. The fedipact wants to change that - in their ideal world, I would have to. They won't stop Facebook, but they would be a pain in the ass for everyone who disagrees with their approach (again - fight "extend", not "embrace!"!), and there's a good chance their short-sightedness will destroy the fediverse.
But today, the fediverse is a collection of open websites. If Facebook wanted data collection they could just set up their own private instance with some innocent name and nobody would be any the wiser. They have nothing to gain from me interacting with someone on the fediverse; even if that someone is using their site, that person will likely be using their site regardless.
It really doesn't make any sense to enforce this stupid restriction of "defederate anyone who federates with Meta". There's nothing for anyone to gain, and a lot to lose. That's the main thing I have issues with. (I also don't think Kbin should defederate from Threads to begin with because it's meant to cast a wide net. You can make your own instance with tighter moderation if that's what you want - see Beehaw - or you can block the Threads domain. They're only on the "microblog" tab anyway unless they're replying to something they follow here.)
Right now, Facebook is giving me a chance to interact with my friends without using Facebook.
You won't be able to talk on threads if you don't first sign a legal agreement with Facebook.
You know who else want to talk to their friends: The islamic state. Do you really think for a second that Threads will federate with an instance of the islamic state? Threads won't federate. Why would they federate? Tell us. Zuck doesn't want you, you talk bad about facebook, he is glad that you are out.
No fediverse server can handle the amount of data of threads. I don't think you realize the size of these project.
@EnglishMobster Yep, might makes right, why bother resisting, gotcha.
I'm not even saying you're wrong about the damage that this could do, but you're also ignoring how FB being here and dominating will make the fedi be a place that many just don't want to be anymore.
And yeah, great that you can talk to your friends, but I see so many people be afraid of libs of tiktok, and other hate groups entering on an instance that, according to you, should never be defederated from because of its size.
That isn't what I'm saying. You can still ban individual users here on Kbin. I don't like LibsOfTikTok either, but I can ban them from all my magazines if I wish. I can block them personally.
Are you advocating for blocking anywhere that has any kind of extremist accounts of any kind? Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works have open sign-ups; if LibsOfTikTok joined either of those would you want Kbin to defederate from all of Lemmy.world?
The vast majority of people on Threads are normal people. Extremists exist, yes - just as they existed on Twitter, and Reddit, and Mastodon.social, and Lemmy.world, and anywhere that has a large number of users with easy sign-ups. Heck, I'm sure Kbin has some too.
I don't personally think that those relatively small number of accounts is worth the harm that will be caused by bisecting the entire fediverse. And where do you draw the line? If Google got into the fediverse game, would you want to defederate from them, too? What about Amazon? Apple? Disney? Wikipedia?
If you want to get away from that, you're welcome to frequent another instance that has that moderation style. I already see you're not here on Kbin; I can't speak to the rules of your instance but I am completely fine with your instance defederating from Meta if it wants to be a small community. Beehaw is another great example of somewhere that will aggressively defederate to remain small; I am sure they will defederate from Threads as well.
As for your second point, I can give you my perspective. I chose Kbin because I want to spend all day on a site scrolling away. I don't like seeing stale content. I don't like being constrained to a small community where nothing happens.
If the fediverse splits, we will go back to 2020-era Mastodon. It will be a bunch of niche communities without much in the way of updates. You'll read your whole feed in a few minutes, and then you need to find something else to do. That's probably healthy, but it's not somewhere that will keep me coming back (there's a reason why I never use my Mastodon account).
The other half will have constant updates. A new feed every refresh. If I post something, I'll get a bunch of likes and follows and comments straight away. It's an incredible dopamine hit, each time.
If given the choice... why would I choose the slow one? The one where I'll get... maybe 3 likes from some strangers. The one that doesn't have my friends or family or anyone I actually know.
I realize not everyone agrees, but I've been around the block to know that people crave the network effect and will go to where it is strongest. It's why the Mastodon Migration failed. The only reason why Lemmy/Kbin is taking off is because Reddit's moderation team is actively ruining Reddit's network effect. And one of the reasons why Threads is taking off is because Elon just destroyed Twitter's network effect.
@EnglishMobster As I don't like writing books, I'm going to keep it short. A badly moderated instance is hell for other instances, and their users. There's a reason why people should be banned from platforms, and it's very common practice to defederate from instances with a lot of abusers.
So yeah, having individuals just block individuals doesn't scale, and having no good moderation makes for a horrible platform.
Sounds like you just want to be on threads then? You prioritize infinite content and scaling up, talking to your friends and centralization over not being beholden to a big corporation so why keep insisting on ruining it for everyone else here then, just go there instead? Fediverse is not going to replace conventional social media in any near future, if ever.
@EnglishMobster IOW, yes, I can see this split ripping fedi in two, but I think you're wrong in thinking that the FB side will be the one that most of the people on here now want to be on.
It will end up just becoming another for-profit hole, exactly like the ones so many of us are trying to get away from.
The servers of the fediverse cannot handle the load of facebook. The case is closed before it even begun.
Create your own instance and ask for federation with facebook: Threads won't federate with you. Because they don't know who you are and you did not sign any LEGAL AGREEMENT before you publish on their service through federation. You really think that you can push your content on their servers before you abide to a legal agreement?
You cannot make everything about "your friends". At the end of the day "your friends" use for free an infrastructure worth billions functionning in a legal framework. You didn't think about the business problem and you didn't think about the legal problem.
Because activitypub is a buzz word. They will allow access to privileged partners who will sign contracts and legal agreements with them. Certainly not with a bunch of nerds who are here because they hate facebook. he wants us out as much as we want him out.
Can you cite your sources where Meta is forcing people to sign a legal agreement to federate, or are you just going from your gut?
No I cant. I'm going from my gut. GAFAM are all about laws, that's their only weakness. Did they talk about federating with us anywhere?
If they federate then they will host pedo content day one. Any lawyer of Zuck will warn him about that.
With this I agree. 1.2bn users is way more noise than I want to experience and I will, personally block the domain. As a kbin user, you'll have the tools available for that as well.
Secondly, it's one thing to be visible to the internet in general, but to have anything tied to Meta that they can scrape and sell is a concern to me.
To think that the big companies that base their business models solely on datamining users already haven't been mining the shit out of our data is a bit naive, I think. They don't have to exploit vulnerabilities, make their presence known or launch huge products for it. All they (or anyone!) need is a $20/month linux VPS and a Mastodon installation. The fediverse does not have data privacy controls for content (beyond masking account e-mails/originator IPs).
Finally, almost every example of a large company joining a federation always ends with said company cannibalizing the federated networks
I agree. Threads got 10M signups yesterday and they haven't even launched officially yet. They're already larger than the entire fediverse.
Many people will switch to their app. And at some point, they will most likely make interoperability hard (so we have to adapt to their "bugs" instead of it being the other way around).
I just want to make clear that I'm in the "Defederate the shit out of them"-camp, but I also don't think the fediverse is a place that puts privacy first - if privacy is your concern, then my advice is to stay away from fedi. For now.
If 1.2 bn users join Threads, and only get content from Threads, they're just going to go back to Instagram. Facebook doesn't have an unlimited budget for this. If Threads doesn't gain traction, it'll be killed off as unprofitable.
That's the ideal scenario for the fediverse. Threads isn't able to federate with anyone else from the start, users don't see the point, Threads isn't profitable, Threads gets abandoned.
You aren't going to see ANY of those 1.2bn users, until someone on THIS server follows someone on THAT server. That's the point of federation. It isn't like Twitter - you don't just see everything that everyone over there posts. It's no different on Mastodon - there has to be a social connection before posts start showing up here.
Put another way, if hateful stuff starts showing up on the Fediverse from meta users, it is because someone on the Fediverse is following the people posting hateful stuff.
When meta eventually starts federating - you aren't going to see posts from @asjmcguire until someone here is following my account.
As for if meta makes changes that makes federating hard, that's not our problem. If they make changes that make federating with THEM hard, that's their problem. There is no reason the rest of the fediverse needs to follow what changes meta make. It doesn't hurt us if they break federation with the rest of the fediverse. Meta is in reality no different to mastodon in that regard, it's just another platform - but for example Pixelfed isn't going to bend over backward to make life easier for meta.
As for if meta makes changes that makes federating hard, that's not our problem. If they make changes that make federating with THEM hard, that's their problem. There is no reason the rest of the fediverse needs to follow what changes meta make.
If they're 90-99% of the users/content and people are used to most of their communities being on there, then it becomes increasingly difficult to say "we won't support their standards". Allowing a monopoly on the fediverse can cause issues.
But if you go to https://kbin.social/d/threads.net (obviously doesn't work yet), then you can block the whole instance, yourself, for your own account. It has the same effect as the server defederating, but it only affects you.
The only reason why that solution wouldn't be acceptable is if you believe so strongly against the very concept of Threads that you want to make that choice for everyone else. You want to forcibly hit that button on everyone's account and push your beliefs and opinions onto others.
If you simply don't like Meta, that's fine - I get it. I want to use FOSS stuff to see my friends. I want my friends to appear in my feed, and I want their hashtags to be sorted into my magazines. My wish to see my friends is just as valid as your wish to not see anyone from Threads. While Threads has some questionable people, they aren't the majority. It's much better for me to block the individual accounts that cause problems than it is for me to lose the ability to talk to all my friends.
Kbin gives you the power to go to the domain and block it yourself; this isn't Lemmy. Why do you want to take that choice away from everyone who is okay with people from Threads in their feed?
I don't want to take away that choice. I personally don't have a problem with meta joining the fediverse, and in fact today I downloaded the app and created my account. I'm excited by the possibilities of being able to speak to my friends from my Mastodon account.
My point was more for the people who think that suddenly 1.2bn users are going to be showing up in this kbin instance.
That's fair, reading it again I see I misunderstood you. :)
I apologize if I seemed hostile; I just get frustrated with people wanting to block whole instances here without cause (like the instance being primarily trolls or hate speech). On Lemmy it makes sense since only the admins can block domains (and it applies to everyone), but Kbin allows domain-level blocking on an individual level so it makes a lot less sense here.
I find the other demands going around even scarier to be honest.
"I don't want to federate with meta, but I also don't want to federate with anyone else who does federate with meta"
It's so terrifying that there are whole instances that are now attempting to dictate who the rest of the fediverse is allowed to federate with. And frankly I think it's a downward spiral if that is allowed. Because if they do it once, they will do it again and again.
Don't believe for a second that everyone wants to federate with everyone. The fediverse will be a collection of federation not wanting to federate with others, naturally. No gafam will ever federate with anyone.
Take language for example, why would a french instance federate with a polish instance?
Federating means keeping focus, you federate with instances with whom you have common interests. If we don't keep focus then we will end up with the reddit problem and the race to popular meme content.
what you (and other likeminded people) haven't understood is that these 2 are 2 different topics. Defederating with meta is not because people don't want to be near the users of meta. It is because meta is a huge corp and it is not here to promote the idea of a federated network. It is here to make profit and to exploit the network. Allowing them to be part of the same network will just cause harm to the network itself in the end.
I think misunderstand. I do understand that. I used XMPP. I've read that article.
My argument is that the fedipact, if executed as desired by the people running it, will defederate from Meta and anywhere that federates with Meta.
So now you have 2 fediverses, completely separated from one another. One side has Meta; the other doesn't. If I want to post something and I want people to see it and react to it, I will post it to the side with more people. If I want to scroll endlessly without needing to stop and refresh or wait because the feed is stale, I will look at the side with more people.
The other side - the fedipact side - will slowly become stale and niche. There will always be hardcore users - people still use XMPP - but it will fade into what it was in 2020 and 2021. My Lemmy account - @EnglishMobster - is from 2020. My original Mastodon account is even older. I've seen this place grow and blossom into what it is now, and the fedipact is threatening that growth. People will leave the side of the fedipact and join the side without it... which is to say, the side dominated by Meta.
Instead of a big wide fediverse with open source projects living alongside random PeerTube creators living alongside movie stars... we have 1 niche one and 1 dominated by a large corporation. It's literally the same result as if Meta went through with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... but done without the "extend" or "extinguish", a massive "own goal" by the FOSS community.
And worse - it doesn't stop Facebook from going through with "extend" or "extinguish" later. It literally just destroys communities for no reason, leaving us in the exact same situation that XMPP is in today.
I am fine with an instance saying "we won't federate with Threads". I'd rather it not be Kbin, of course, but I will move to an instance that does federate because my friends are important to me.
I am not fine with me being held hostage for that. I don't want to join Threads directly if I can avoid it; I'd rather use my Kbin account. But the fedipact is trying to make that impossible by saying "we will defederate anywhere that federates with Threads".
If I want to post something and I want people to see it and react to it, I will post it to the side with more people
If that's the case, presumably you're in the fediverse for other reasons? If audience size is central to you, wouldn't you be on reddit and insta/facebook?
To an extent, but morality is important to me too.
I don't use Facebook because they corrupt democracy. I don't use Twitter because Elon Musk is a wannabe fascist. I don't use Reddit because they have refused to clamp down on bad actors and have directly insulted their users.
If everyone defederates from Threads, I won't use Threads, because I don't use Facebook. My morals are more important to me than audience size.
But... as things stand, once Threads federates with the wider world, I will be able to interact with my friends without letting Zuck near me. In a most ideal world, they'd be able to follow me here on Kbin and I can follow them back. I'd see their posts in the Microblog feed and sorted into magazines, and I can like and comment and boost without logging into Zuck's website and letting him have my data again.
You can say that's supporting Facebook. Maybe. But if Threads is truly federated, then Facebook would basically be able to go anywhere regardless; in that sense I'd be supporting Threads whether I was talking to someone directly or not.
And in that sense, I totally see why people say "we shouldn't federate with Meta, they're evil and they're selfish and they're going to destroy the fediverse." I can understand why people personally would want to choose somewhere that doesn't do that. I don't think this instance should block Meta because it's large and general-purpose, but somewhere like Beehaw where that sort of thing is part of the mission statement... I get it.
But from my perspective, I am given the chance to talk to a large group of people; people who share the same interests as me; people I know in real life. People who would see my stuff - but (more importantly) I'd also see theirs. And I'm sure most people feel the same way; they're going to where the people are. This'll naturally create an audience, one that gives a wide variety of fresh content and also responds to content you give.
I'd much rather have that then return to 2020-era Mastodon where you'd be lucky to get 3 interactions to a Toot, and you'd see everything there is to see in 15 minutes (at most).
I think I might have misunderstood your wider point. The part where you were positing a hypothetical in which the fediverse splits and one side has Meta. I thought you were saying you will align with the Meta side because of audience size.
Which kind of implies that if Meta then moves into the Extend Extinguish phases you would end up at Threads?
If I want to post something and I want people to see it and react to it, I will post it to the side with more people.
do you know how FB or instagram work? Do you think that when you post, your post reaches your whole audience? I believe you know how they work but for some reason you chose to ignore now.
My argument is that the fedipact, if executed as desired by the people running it, will defederate from Meta and anywhere that federates with Meta.
So now you have 2 fediverses, completely separated from one another.
So, you've read the history of XMPP. Did you understand what google practically did? Simply put, meta will create new features on top of activity pub. Open source activity pub developers will be in a constant race to adapt their own projects in a way that will be compatible with meta's project. They will have no voice but to follow whatever meta decides. Users will start getting fed up that their open source instance is not behaving as well as their friend's meta instance. People will jump project and/or when users are polarised, meta will decide that they had enough with activity pub. It doesn't cover their needs and they move to another completely closed project. Users again are forces to choose side and the open source community is just left with the project which they adapted in favour of meta, but now meta is gone because they were never in the same boat actually.
Staying away from meta is a decision in the basis of protecting the whole project. It is not because people don't want to be close to the users of meta. It is because meta is not here to promote the federated networks. It is here to make profit of it and they may even destroy it if they believe that this is the way to make profit. Siding with them is naive and will never bring value in the network itself.
None of that addresses the objection that has been raised though.
If instances want to defederate from meta that is perfectly fine, the Fediverse is supposed to be about choice.
Instances should not however be able to dictate what OTHER people on other instances are able to do.
By doing so - that part of the fediverse is behaving in exactly the same way that they fear that meta will behave eventually.
I don't get it. Nobody dictated anyone. People want absolutely none relation with meta and they want to be on a different network than meta. By federating with instances that federate with meta, everyone ends up in the same federated network while some pretend that they don't see each other. Meta is not here for the same values they are. Meta is not here for the values of the fediverse. Ostracizing meta is the only healthy solution if we agree that they have ulterior motives.
By doing so - that part of the fediverse is behaving in exactly the same way that they fear that meta will behave eventually.
by not doing so, is like accepting meta as friend while at the same time you're waiting for the moment they'll stab you. Fediverse and activity pub have absolutely nothing to gain by allowing this.
A company (any company) decides to integrate with ActivityPub, and the entire fediverse has a toys out of the pram moment every time that happens, gradually closing off into smaller and smaller federated circles, that stop federating with the rest of the fediverse.
A reminder, Tumblr are supposed to be adding ActivityPub.
Wordpress has.
Discourse I believe now has.
So who exactly is it that gets to decide which companies are and are not allowed to be part of the Fediverse?
It's all very very much like a dictatorship, whether you want to accept it or not - that's exactly how it is being operated.
I struggle to continue conversations when the argument is "if you're doing X to Y you are also Y". No, if you want to ostracise the biggest greediest corporation that we all know are here for different reasons than the reasons that the fediverse was created, no, you're not a dictator. You are just trying to protect your own values.
Same as when you don't allow hate speech, you're not a fascist who oPposEs tO fReE SpEeCh
Using words with very clear, historically set meaning, to describe the exact opposite thing is a very weird path to take.
For christ sake I don't understand why people aren't getting it. YES it is a dictatorship because it is not about any one instance - if it was just instances saying "I don't want to federate with Meta" and that was it - I wouldn't have a problem, that is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. But that's not what this is - this is instances saying "I don't want to talk to Meta, and if you want to continue talking to me, then YOU are not allowed to talk to Meta either" - explain to me HOW that is not being a dictatorship?
do you know how FB or instagram work? Do you think that when you post, your post reaches your whole audience?
Of course not. But it doesn't on Mastodon either. Or Kbin. Or even Lemmy.
If someone is on vacation when I make my post on Mastodon, there is a good chance they will never see it. The post isn't going to be recommended to them - the feed is chronological. They would have to specifically search me out and scroll way back to see my posts.
If my post doesn't make it to "Hot" on Kbin or Lemmy, by default it dies. The only ones who will see it are those sorting by "New". That's a fraction of the complete audience. That's just how algorithms work.
Facebook and Twitter have their own recommendation algorithm of some kind. Threads does too, from what I've seen of it. While I wouldn't expect my stuff to go viral, frankly my friends are more likely to care and react to a post I make there. I don't use Facebook anymore, but I had plenty of interactions when I did use it. You will never reach your entire audience unless your entire audience reaches out for you - but on average the people I know are more likely to care about me than some strangers on my Mastodon instance. So I'd rather post where they can see it.
So, you've read the history of XMPP. Did you understand what google practically did?
Yes, that was... like, my entire point. Everything you just described will happen with or without the fedipact. If Meta has plans to go through with EEE, they will do it no matter what. Even if everyone defederated from them, they'd still build on ActivityPub in weird ways and break the protocol over time.
But we know that not everywhere will defederate with them. So what will happen is you're going to have a splinter group defederated anywhere that federates with Meta (or federates with somewhere that federates with Meta) and you're going to have... well, everyone else.
People are going to leave and go to the side that federates with Meta, because that's where the network effect is strongest. Again, I don't care that someone on my Mastodon instance got married. I mean, congratulations, I guess... but if my childhood best friend is getting married, I'm more invested. I don't want to use Meta's stuff if I have another option; after all, I did quit Instagram and Facebook cold turkey. But I would jump at the ability to have those moments while still keeping Zuck off my computer.
So, like I said, this is going to lead to 2 fediverses. One that federates with Meta, and one that doesn't. And "normal" non-techie people are going to want to go to where they get the most eyeballs on their stuff - that means somewhere that federates with Meta.
Meta could still start extending and extinguishing. But they could do that anyway. That is a completely separate subject from the fedipact as designed. I agree that it's a problem, but the fedipact being executed will only speed up the process, bisecting the entire project and turning it back into a niche thing for nerds. You know, like XMPP or IRC.
Staying away from meta is a decision in the basis of protecting the whole project.
Staying away from Meta literally has zero impact on what Meta does. Meta will do whatever.
The choice is if Mastodon tries to adapt to be compatible or not. Breaking ActivityPub for compatibility with Meta is a losing proposition, and one that we shouldn't even start. But that's the fight we should be having; holding firm if/when Meta stops holding to the standard.
The fedipact is self-defeating and won't stop Meta from being Meta. The only thing the fedipact will do is ruin the fediverse writ large. The true way to preventing an XMPP situation is by having maintainers hold firm and act just as they did before Meta joined; no feature creep, no goalpost moving. Break EEE at "extend", not "embrace".
If Meta has plans to go through with EEE, they will do it no matter what. Even if everyone defederated from them, they'd still build on ActivityPub in weird ways and break the protocol over time.
if no one is federated with them, then open source projects don't care if they break activity pub because nobody will be in a race to adapt in order not to break the federation. They will live happily in their own custom fediverse without affecting the community. I don't get why you struggle to understand this concept. I think it is because of
But we know that not everywhere will defederate with them. So what will happen is you're going to have a splinter group defederated anywhere that federates with Meta (or federates with somewhere that federates with Meta) and you're going to have... well, everyone else.
where you clearly struggle to understand that the one who is causing the issue here are the ones that opt to follow meta's path. The ones that will try to adapt. Not the ones that want no connection with the big corp. Instead of realising that meta has no good intentions, you side with them saying "it is what it is" and you just want to wait patiently till they actively start causing issues.
Then again, I think we're having the conversation in a wrong basis. Your biggest argument is that you want to be in the same platform as your friends. Yes, if for you the reason of existence of the federated network is to enable you reaching your friends who don't want to leave from their corporate networks, yes, then federation with meta is necessary. However the idea behind such network is not only to provide another UI to join a corporate network. Its much more than that.
I know I haven't replied/addressed all your points, most probably I'll come back later.
If you want "quality discussion", why are you on here and not Tildes? Tildes' whole purpose is quality discussion. Shouldn't you go for the place where that's being optimized for?
Tildes is a great example, actually. They're small and quiet and want to be quiet. They don't want to take off. You can get through Tildes in an hour.
That's why I get bored of Tildes easily. I don't want to just be one-and-done with a site. I want to constantly be discovering new things. I want to see number go up (to an extent). I want to read a bunch of comments, some insightful, some dumb.
If I'm going to post something, I don't want to post it to Tildes. I'll get a slow trickle of comments and replies, people replying to a week-old post with something I've long stopped thinking about.
I worry that if defederation comes and severs the fediverse in two, engagement will go down. Mastodon.social isn't part of the fedipact, and likely won't be. Everywhere that relies on content from Mastodon.social - which is a lot of them, non-techies don't want to find a specific instance - will have a lot less content, very suddenly.
People like me who love refreshing feeds will see the torrent of posts slowly... come... to... a... stop. People like me will get bored - where are all the posts? Why can't I see the creators I really like?
"Well, they're on a server that federates with a server that federates with Meta."
So you'll just be left with those in the fedipact. People who are used to the fast-moving feed (like me) will get frustrated. There's a reason why I left Mastodon in 2019ish and why I left Lemmy in 2020 - they got boring quickly (well, Lemmy was also full of tankies). I left Tildes because it got boring quickly too.
I'm in this sort of industry. I'm not going to reveal much about what I specifically do, but I know that most people want something that is new and exciting and moves fast. It draws them in and causes them to spend most of their time there.
When that feed slows down, they spend less time on that site. When they have enough experiences of "opening the app just to close it again", they'll eventually remove it from their home screen (or bookmarks). Then it gets forgotten about.
When the user forgets about a site, it gets less content. In turn, that makes the content even slower. In turn, that drives more people away, except for the die-hards who love slow discussions (like Tildes or 2019-era Mastodon).
Where are the people who left going to go? Well, they might go to where their creators were - somewhere like Mastodon.social. Or they'll leave entirely, or they'll move to Bluesky or Threads.
A lot of those options aren't healthy for the broader fediverse, so you'll just have this one branch that is dominated by Meta and the other which slowly dies as people leave due to increasingly stale content. If they were united, they might've stood a chance against Meta if/when Meta made an anti-competitive move... but divided they're a lot easier for Meta to scoop up and slowly extinguish, XMPP-style.
Again, the fedipact is doing Meta's dirty work for them.
I'm in this sort of industry. I'm not going to reveal much about what I specifically do, but I know that most people want something that is new and exciting and moves fast.
Well I mean first of all, it's not "most people". It's "most people in the influencer industry".
Second of all, fuck those people. They don't care about corpos running their lives. We don't need them or their content in the fediverse.
And thirdly, you're in that category too. You're a shill for big corpos but you want a veneer of respectability. Just join Facebook and get it over with.
How many times must I say that I disagree with Facebook on a moral level? How does that make me a "shill"??
My point is largely:
The fedipact is self-defeating. Nobody has refuted this point, they all seem to ignore it to focus on personal attacks. It won't stop EEE; it will simply divide the fediverse and make it a worse place when it's still new and fragile.
This is a general-purpose instance. As such, it shouldn't sign the fedipact or defederate from Threads. If you're running a niche instance - that's fine, you can sign if it's important to you and you wish to stay niche. But a loud minority shouldn't speak for the entirety of one of the largest fediverse instances out there (which is what kbin.social is).
People may have legitimate reason to communicate with people on Threads, and because they may disagree with Facebook on a moral level (like me), you shouldn't force them into Zuck's slimy fingers. I'm not going to use the service if I have to go through Zuck's gateway to do so. There's an opportunity to use FOSS stuff and stay away from Zuck, but people who ostensibly agree that Zuck is bad are telling me I can't do that? For reasons they can't even vocalize. So me not wanting to join Threads makes me a corporate shill, somehow. Okay.
People may have legitimate reason to communicate with people on Threads, and because they may disagree with Facebook on a moral level (like me), you shouldn't force them into Zuck's slimy fingers.
By opening up the fediverse to Facebook, you're already in Zuck's slimy fingers. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too. Doesn't work like that. Those who federate with them will get eaten by them.
And here's a point for you to consider:
Why don't you just host your own instance? Federate with Threads AND the rest of the Fediverse? Why are you trying to convince us to federate with Facebook at all??
Why must you force your beliefs onto communities with tens of thousands of people, many of whom don't agree with you? The status quo is that kbin.social federates with basically everywhere, as it should since it's a general-purpose flagship instance. Why do you want to change the status quo because of your personal beliefs?
Instead of trying to force Kbin.social to change, maybe you should host your own instance where you can block Meta and everywhere that federates with it. Or you can join a Kbin instance that already does so: https://kglitch.social/
But there should still be places that allow for federation if that's what they desire. That's how Kbin.social is currently set up. I am defending the current status quo, and you are trying to argue for changing it. There are instances that already agree with you; you don't need to stay here and fight everyone who disagrees.
There is no more status quo. Facebook stepping into the fediverse has changed it. The only question is in what manner do we want it to change.
The admins of kbin.social have not come out in favor or against. I am trying to persuade them. If they choose to federate, then yes I'll probably find a new instance.
And I am saying we should maintain the status quo. Rather than trying to persuade, you should go somewhere that already guarantees you get what you want.
You don't get it. The status quo is gone. It's not an option. The options now are defederate Threads, or be consumed by it. You've admitted so yourself. The old fediverse won't be happening.
That's not what I'm saying. You are putting words in my mouth and then refusing to have a conversation. But I get the same feeling that we're going to keep talking past each other.
It doesn't matter because you likely won't read this. But I'm not saying you should go elsewhere - I am simply asking why you chose here and not a place that focuses on discussion, like Tildes. I am not telling you to "go away"; I'm merely pointing out that there must be more to your decision and it can't all be because you want serious discussions, since this place isn't suited for that as well as others are.
This thread is specific to Kbin, which is why I mention it.
Lemmy doesn't integrate well with the rest of the fediverse at all, period. It's one of the many reasons why I left.
Threads users won't be able to make articles here on Kbin anyway (IIRC); they'd make microblogs. So blocking them would effectively remove them from your microblogs, and if they reply to anything in here I don't think you'll see that either.
Blocking a domain through kbin only blocks threads from appearing on your feed. You still see users from that domain and their comments, and they see you and anything you post since it gets sent to their server.
I think I've seen people comment on threads from mastodon, and maybe down the line threads implements... threads... as well, nothing's stopping them really.
edit: also, as for
This thread is specific to Kbin, which is why I mention it.
We're all part of the fediverse meaning someone from lemmy might want to participate on kbin magazines too. Not considering them when making decisions like this is a bit selfish.
People from Threads will largely be in the "Microblog" tab, which Lemmy doesn't have. The only people in the comments section will be people who purposely choose to follow Kbin communities.
It still isn't a good enough reason to take away that interaction from tens of thousands here on Kbin, though.
With this I agree. 1.2bn users is way more noise than I want to experience and I will, personally block the domain. As a kbin user, you'll have the tools available for that as well.
I can't imagine how a kbin users would be wanting to watch facebook memes.
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