I can't say whether Facebook joining the fediverse (ditto Google, which won't want to miss this opportunity) will kill or absorb the fediverse, though it's obviously and rationally something to worry about.
But preemptively blocking them -- and the people already using them -- from your instance guarantees less relevance for the fediverse.
It also guarantees, if my instance joins such a boycott, that I'll find a new instance.
@dangillmor pretty sure big tech have destroyed the promise that the web held out turning it into a surveillance capitalist's dream. Blocking Facebook, Google and Twitter in the fediverse is a good thing.
I'm quite sure META has shown us all what it values, and what it doesn't, and there is no presumption in blocking them, simply self protection based on their past and ongoing efforts to skew, promote, and equate fascist ideology to earn revenue off the chaos. You do what you like, Danny. It's a terrible idea to let META in, at all, in any form, ever.
@dangillmor Imagine you were made fediverse czar, and that it was clear that Meta intended to embrace/extend/extinguish the fediverse. What actions would you take as fediverse czar to try to prevent that?
@jasongreen@dangillmor what Google and Facebook did. That's key. Meta has already done this. And people here are advocating for letting them do it again to the Fediverse
I don't mind, perhaps even like, the idea that Meta/Google and others link to the fediverse. It would bring so much more content and value. However, we must restrict there ability to gather and abuse user data the way they are doing now. If they want to store every bit of information of the people an serve them targeted ads on their own instance, fine by me. As long as they cannot track or serve ads on other instances.
And that is where I think it will be very difficult, since I do think that they potentially can profile other fediverse instances. I'm not sure how we can prevent that.
@dangillmor To the contrary. One way the #fediverse is relevant is as an alternative to surveillance capitalism. For instances who see it that way -- or want to attract individuals who see it that way -- preemptively blocking #Meta reinforces that relevance.
Of course that's not the only reason people are here, and instance admins and devs have a lot to gain from working with Meta, so we'll likely see a schism. But that's not a bad thing!
@jdp23 An alternative to surveillance capitalism? How? Everything you post here is public. Anyone who cares to surveil your toots, Meta included, can easily do so.
@argv_minus_one y'know I don't agree with my instance admin @tchambers on everything, but I am 100% confident that he is not trying to making billions of dollars a year exploiting my personal data, breaking privacy laws, and manipulating my behavior. It's true that the software here doesn't protect privacy, but that's a bug that should be addressed.
[Tim, if that really is your plan sorry for inadvertantly outing you!]
@jdp23@argv_minus_one@tchambers besides encrypting direct messages, how can Mastodon protect privacy better, when posts are public? Genuinely asking, not trying to be confrontational.
@Brendanjones For one thing, Mastodon could provide better support for posts that aren't public -- local-only posts, for example, which forks like Glitch-soc have supported since 2017. Also, the "noindex" option that's supposed to keep posts out of search engines doesn't work correctly, so even if you select it your posts (even unlisted posts!) can wind up on Google.
@Brendanjones And Mastodon doesn't have the equivalent of Twitter's "private profile", where you can make all your posts private with a single action. Oh and back to non-public posts: Mastodon could support private groups. @argv_minus_one@tchambers
@jdp23 Content in private profiles and private groups can be seen by an attacker if anyone with access to said content is on an instance controlled by the attacker. Federation makes it very hard to make anything truly private.
@argv_minus_one It sounds like you want to have a different conversation. Brendan asked me about what things besides end-to-end encryption would improve privacy. Despite their limitations, all of the things I listed would meaningfully improve privacy. It's not an all-or-nothing situation.
@jdp23 Local-only posts can still be HTML-scraped from your instance. Noindex is merely a polite request not to index your content; scrapers are not forced to honor it. Neither of those measures will do anything to stop someone who's determined to collect your posts.
@dangillmor FWIW, I'm not afraid of Meta and Google interacting with the #Fediverse
Because regardless of their activities, you control your social media graph and connections. It's "portable" even if you leave their instance.
That's the power which they cannot take away. But they will somehow try.
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