Apparently Meta has been contacting some instance admins about their plans for the fediverse. I am not sure whether to be happy or sad, but they didn’t contact me.
I am seeing a rift emerging in the fediverse that is a bit reminiscent of my own CISA episode back in November of 2022. At the time, the people who objected fell into two overlapping camps:
ACABs that couldn’t see past CISA’s placement in the DHS and simply object to the concept of any law enforcement affiliated person being on the fedi (NB: there are a LOT of them here and they’re all over the fediverse)
Instance admins that wanted to protect their constituents from the surveillance that comes along with DHS.
While the context is materially different, the Meta situation seems to come down on similar lines: conceptual rejection of Meta because of who Meta is; and a concern for the privacy of one’s fedi-data.
Regarding the former point, I think it is fundamental to the fediverse for people and instances to be able to pick who they want to participate with, almost for whatever reason. If there are people who really dislike bald guys, I’m one to block. The latter reason is more problematic. As with the DHS situation, Meta creating an account or an instance is really not an effective way to conduct a surveillance operation (either to send people to jail or to show them ads) - not on an infrastructure that has oodles of open APIs that make it far easier to collect data using direct connections vs creating an instance.
Said another way, the lack of a branded Meta or CISA account or instance is not an indication that such data extraction isn’t happening. We generally wouldn’t know if it were.
I’ve heard the “embrace/extend/extinguish” accusation about every 6 months in the 7+ years I’ve been here. The company that bought Pawoo was going to take over the fediverse. Medium was going to be installing paywalls and feeding ads across the fediverse. Vivaldi and Mozilla were going to bring so much trash into our timelines that we should just preemptively block them.
If I, or any instance admin, finds that Meta or any other company is surreptitiously collecting data from our instances, we will take action. I will highlight that suspending instances and accounts won’t be very effective here - we would have to implement firewall level blocks, assuming we can identify where they are coming from. And I doubt it will be coming from a branded instance. Sadly, even this is trivial to work around if they connect to a relay or set up an account on an instance that doesn’t isn’t blocked. The major concern, of course, is that your fedi data is linked to a record they maintain about you in their own databases, and then use your content to help tailor ads as you visit other parts of the internet.
If we identify that an instance is behaving badly, of course they are going to get suspended, just as happens today. But be aware that this only prevents YOU from seeing THEIR content. If Meta does set up an instance and start spamming out ads, that is exactly what will happen.
In the mean time, if you want to block Meta owned domains and instances who aren’t blocking Meta owned domains and instances who are not blocking instances who are not blocking meta owned domains, that’s ok.
For me, I am going to wait until I know more to make a decision.
"I’ve heard the “embrace/extend/extinguish” accusation about every 6 months in the 7+ years I’ve been here. The company that bought Pawoo was going to take over the fediverse. Medium was going to be installing paywalls and feeding ads across the fediverse. Vivaldi and Mozilla were going to bring so much trash into our timelines that we should just preemptively block them. "
Well put, remember exactly those statements at each turn.
conceptual rejection of Meta because of who Meta is; and a concern for the privacy of one’s fedi-data.
No. Meta lures users into the use of their "private" services, and then they sell the data to people like Steve Bannon. They also use dark patterns and addictive feedback to habituate users to posting private details and using apps that exfiltrate. Apple has had to put their foot down to limit their activity.
Meta also intentionally ignores genocidal campaigns on their services.
@jerry Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm sorry you weren't contacted by Meta because then your reflection would pack even more insight about this whole story. When it comes to Meta and their products, I have a fare share of those in my working environment, and don't see any need to be exposed to their narratives and products in my "private" online endeavors. On online privacy against corps and state agencies - I'm sorry to say, for most it's unattainable. A made up concept.
@jerry My own interest in blocking a hypothetical Facebook instance would simply be to reduce the value to people in being on that instance, no more and no less. (I have no illusions about privacy on fedi.)
Given that, I might be in favor of precommitting to blocking any Facebook/Meta instance if and when one pops up, since that might make it less likely that they go through with it. That's where I think wait-and-see doesn't work as well.
...however, I'm still not sure I've convinced myself that the social dynamics of that approach would play out favorably in the long run.
@jerry It really depends on what was disclosed that can't be shared (due to NDA). For example, if there is going to be a META version of Mastodon that embeds tracking pixels, then that could be an issue if it isn't disclosed.
@jerry At least our instance admins have the tools to block bad actors. And if they do not, we have the freedon to move to an instance where the instance admin will. The beauty of the Fediverse.
> I’ve heard the “embrace/extend/extinguish” accusation about every 6 months in the 7+ years I’ve been here. The company that bought Pawoo was going to take over the fediverse. Medium was going to be installing paywalls and feeding ads across the fediverse.
haven't most instances defederated from Pawoo over potential CSAM content over there?
@jerry and regarding Medium and the like, it's still too early to tell and I don't think you can draw any conclusions from the first few months of their existence in the Fediverse. Google and Facebook have embraced XMPP for a few years each before ditching it and closing themselves off. of course Meta will be playing nicely and claim to support the Fediverse at first - until they won't.
@jerry for one hand it shows that Fediverse have a lot of potencial the other hand with Meta if they brace the Fediverse it will come with a lot of advertising, etc … meaning your privacy will be profit for them.
Regarding moderation it’s complicated, if I return to 1999 I remember to moderate in IRC, tv site forum, ICQ, MSN, etc. but the extremism’s, hate, etc it was already visible.
Well can be wrong but even in teletext …
…Nietzsche knew the problem …
@jerry Thank you for posting this, i personally plan to block their instances as a user. I'm aware they could be scraping data already.
For me it's about community, i don't want FB or IG or another incarnation of those platforms connecting to my account and as a user i can control that in terms of the instances i communicate with.
I think this post probably helps a lot of folks who are suspicious too at this point of everyone running a larger instance. I wish you didn't have to deal with this and feel the need to post it but i appreciate that you did to make things clear to people on your instance and others.
@jerry
To be totally honest, regardless of how bad a company they are, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if what they were actually thinking was something like "Hey, why don't we rip out this crappy messaging system Facebook has and replace it with mastodon?" rather then any sinister machinations.
The fediverse is really more important to us then it probably is to them...
@jerry man, corporations suck. They want to suck up everything they can about everyone. Just to feed their models and ads, all in the name of never ending growth.
@jerry@threddyrex one thing we can be reasonably sure of: meta will be using its IP space to connect to instances.
They are now so large, and have such an internal legal team, that AWS/offbrand based sniffing of “user data” would be so hard to arrange its not worth it. A simple block of Facebook’s AS numbers would be enough.
@jerry Whoa, whoa, whoa. No reactionary ranting and raving? You’re going to be all calm and level-headed, and… and… what? Base your decision on facts?? Madness! It’s like you don’t even understand internet! /s
@jerry As a side-topic, what ever happened to the objection to the Raspberry Pi people hiring a form intelligence officer to used r-pi-s to create monitoring hardware to spy on people?
I recall a rather large call to ban their mastodon instance but when Jeff Gerring interviewed the CEO, they made no mention of it, just the shortages.
@jerry I was waiting to see where you fell out on this Jerry. Thanks for being level headed. It will be interesting to see how this whole thing shakes out.
@jerry i respect your respect for neutrality at this point, but them mofos are shady af. I personally would let them flounder on their own trillion dollar platform and tell them to leave this one alone
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