@bandario@giallo Look at you being a big boy with big threats. Up until a month ago you and the instance you're in didn't even exist on the Fediverse. You think your empty intimidation tactics are going to work on anyone? Don't take this as me supporting Meta btw.
Personally, I'm not planning on using the Meta service, but I'm not a fan of pre-emptive defederation either. The vast majority of P92 users will have 0 clue what federation/activitypub is, let alone actually log into Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin, etc. For them, they will forever think of themselves as @username, not @username.
I'm totally fine with Meta releasing an app who's posts are exposed via ActivityPub, along with being able to consume other posts via ActivityPub. If anything, I would like to think it'll drive more people off the Meta platform and into Mastodon, as moving to a federated app doesn't mean they have to completely break connections with their network on-platform with Meta.
Overall, I'm more in favour of allowing a personal user to choose to defederate from specific instances, because regardless of what happens, if Meta joins, there will be other companies getting on the bandwagon, and endlessly splitting up based of which instances federate with which others will eventually lead to the whole damn thing falling apart and the big players becoming the de-jure instances anyways.
I mean, the vast majority of Lemmy/Kbin users migrated from Reddit, as did the vast majority of Mastodon users from Twitter. I'm fine with keeping things open to help facilitate more user growth to community run instances, while also having a place for the less tech-savvy to get their feet wet.
I mean worst case you'll see @meta.com accounts in your Federated feed in Mastodon (which for pretty much every instance is already a complete mess), I don't even really see how it'll affect Lemmy or Kbin, as they're community driven rather than user driven. I follow users with Mastodon, I follow communities with Kbin.
I dunno, maybe I'm being necessarily optimistic, but I do have friends and family who are posting on Insta/FB, and I basically maintain an account there to keep up with them. I'd love to be able to keep that connection without having to actually be locked into Meta's platforms. And I do think at least a few of my tech savvy friends would be willing to give a client like Ivory a go if they're able to do the same.
I was talking about this with someone here the other day, and this seems like the logical direction for them. They'll create a cloud of instances that users are able to utilize and create their own communities with relative ease compared to compiling the code and doing the base level software management, and also develop Meta-specific featuresets on those servers to lock people onto their platform. Oh, you want to break away from us and manage your own instance? Have fun doing it the hard way, and without features XYZ that are only available from us!
And you’re not just being optimistic, you’re being naive
Since you clearly didn’t read the article the commenter linked I’ll sum up the important point:
Corporations routinely infiltrate and integrate with open source in order to destroy it.
Meta will implement federation, then they will “extend” the specification with a bunch of new features that the other places of the fediverse can’t put out as fast, making anyone talking to a meta user at a disadvantage, just like how Apple calls out non-iMessage participants in a group text.
They’ll also likely implement a different specification than they publish, so that anyone implementing the meta features fails due to bad instructions
It’s been done multiple times before, for decades
Ffs, I’m just waiting for Microsoft to start pulling shit with the Linux foundation now that they have majority seats
these corporations are not your friends, they are not on your side, they don’t even see you as slaves, you are livestock
Using the iMessage analogy, we're currently in a state where green bubbles can't interact with blue bubbles at all. Nobody should be expecting full interop with a corporate platform, but for the long run I'd rather have partial interop at arms length.
Embrace extend extinguish only applies if platform is so focused that it cannot sustain itself without the extend phase, and the extend phase cannot happen without something to embrace.
along with being able to consume other posts via ActivityPub
I read a new article that said it remains to be seen whether P92 will allow users to see posts from other site (they’ll broadcast to ActivityPub but undecided about displaying contents from federated servers): tech.co/news/meta-decentralized-social-media
A source close to the project also told MoneyControl that “the plan as of now is that the MVP (minimum viable product) will definitely allow our users to broadcast posts to people on other servers”, but admitted the company is yet to decide whether to allow users “to follow and view the content of people on other servers.”
If they only broadcast, but not displaying contents from other servers or allow their users to follow people from other server, then what’s the point of adding federated support if people from other servers can’t interact with them?
This doesn't surprise me. The idea then might be to allow for people outside of their walled garden to follow (likely for big name accounts, celebrities, athletes, important people) etc, but not really be a true federated instance. In which case, I think defederating is even more pointless. Just let users on an instance follow who they want to follow.
A study by the Common Cause Foundation, due to be published next month, reveals two transformative findings. The first is that a large majority of the 1000 people they surveyed – 74% – identify more strongly with unselfish values than with selfish values. This means that they are more interested in helpfulness, honesty, forgiveness and justice than in money, fame, status and power. The second is that a similar majority – 78% – believes others to be more selfish than they really are. In other words, we have made a terrible mistake about other people’s minds.
The revelation that humanity’s dominant characteristic is, er, humanity will come as no surprise to those who have followed recent developments in behavioural and social sciences. People, these findings suggest, are basically and inherently nice.
...
So why do we retain such a dim view of human nature? Partly, perhaps, for historical reasons....
Another problem is that – almost by definition – many of those who dominate public life have a peculiar fixation on fame, money and power. Their extreme self-centredness places them in a small minority, but, because we see them everywhere, we assume that they are representative of humanity.
The media worships wealth and power, and sometimes launches furious attacks on people who behave altruistically. In the Daily Mail last month, Richard Littlejohn described Yvette Cooper’s decision to open her home to refugees as proof that “noisy emoting has replaced quiet intelligence” (quiet intelligence being one of his defining qualities). “It’s all about political opportunism and humanitarian posturing,” he theorised, before boasting that he doesn’t “give a damn” about the suffering of people fleeing Syria. I note with interest the platform given to people who speak and write as if they are psychopaths.
...
Misanthropy grants a free pass to the grasping, power-mad minority who tend to dominate our political systems. If only we knew how unusual they are, we might be more inclined to shun them and seek better leaders. It contributes to the real danger we confront: not a general selfishness, but a general passivity. Billions of decent people tut and shake their heads as the world burns, immobilised by the conviction that no one else cares.
Most people who use social media disagree, and unfortunately for you, it's their opinions that matter most as to whether they use a given social media platform.
I don't really care to follow celebrities and athletes either, but I recognise at least that I am in a minority.
Oh I'm very much aware that the majority are not people that I want to interact with. That's why I find this whole situation so ridiculous. This community could stay it's current size and activity level and I'd be overjoyed with it.
Once you invite the majority to any platform, it's ruined. The choice is quite clear to me. Meta have shown quite clearly who they are and what they are interested in. Any idiot left on their platforms at this point is not someone I care to interact with. I'm not sure why there's any interest at all in what they have to say.
At least here, if you're not a fan of de/federation practice, it's minimal work to change servers.
I'm not excited at the idea of my posts on another service entirely getting shipped off to a meta server for them to reconstruct my network through that activity. It's the same issue of as their shadow profiles, where meta knows who you and who you know by watching the posts your mom makes on FB.
Some of this is inevitable, I know, but I'm at least here for adding more barriers to privacy theft.
Indeed, what is the point? It may be as simple as them trying to coopt the movement to get ahead of it and steal mindshare. Think Hitler and the intentional naming of "National Socialism".
"Oh, ActivityPub is the hot new thing, let's check it out," says clueless user #39,728 as they click on the first link in their Google search, which coincidentally now happens to be Facebook.
I think this is the logical pragmatic take. They'll start on day 1 with more users than the entirety of the fediverse. Defederating just allows them to ignore us and pretend they own the fediverse. We should at least try to win over those users and prevent FB adware software overtaking Mastodon as the dominant fediverse platform.
I don't understand why people think the end goal should be one network of Fediverse instances connected to each other. We already don't have that and never will.
Meta adding "more users than the entirety of the Fediverse" is irrelevant. They already have more users and content from Facebook, Instagram or whatever else Meta owns is not showing up on my Lemmy or Kbin front page. How would I notice any difference if the tech behind Meta's services is different?
If Meta wants a platform that’s larger than anything else they already have Facebook.
The one and only reason Meta’s looking at the fediverse is to scrape it for content. It’s social content they risk being left out of and they want in. It’s as simple as that.
Federate with their instances and they will scrape the shit out of yours, build shadow profiles around your users, feed all your posts and comments into their LLM, cross reference them with their Facebook data to figure out everybody’s real identity, and so on and so forth.
I like to think they see the rapid growth as an opportunity to grab some Reddit refugees. I'm not sure they see the Fediverse as a viable threat YET. They could hedge it though and try to snuff it out while they still can.
The vast majority of P92 users will have 0 clue what federation/activitypub is, let alone actually log into Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin, etc. For them, they will forever think of themselves as @username, not @username@meta.com.
Exactly. I know it's a bit elitist, but I just don't care what meta users have to say about anything. If you're dumb enough to participate in their little data extraction operations then I don't want to know you.
A 45 minute "round table" with multiple rando masto instance admins? That doesn't sound like enough time for the table to get very round.
It sounds more like 5 minutes introduction, 30 minute presentation by Meta, 10 minutes Q&A. But oops our presentation ran just a bit long, and I really do have a hard stop at noon so we really only have about 5 minutes for questions thanks for all of the valuable feedback we'll be sure to circle back offline.
"We here at Meta take people's privacy very seriously and are committed to protecting our users. Unfortunately at this time we can't discuss what measures we've put in place."
i haven’t seen any hard confirmation, but i believe one of these mastodon admin meetings has already happened (the one attended by the universeodon admin) and an nda was involved. this would be the second meeting.
All right. Well, TBF I'd rather "sound unemployed" (whatever that means) than sound like I'm shilling for big tech corporations and their predatory practices. shrug
Signing an NDA to talk about an unreleased product is not predatory, it's standard practice for virtually any business (especially the kind inviting random people off the internet to see them). Many jobs require you to sign NDAs just to go through the interview process.
There is nothing gained by not going to the meeting with Meta, if they want to launch their Twitter clone they are more than capable of doing that regardless of whether or not this guy takes a meeting to hear them out. All he's done is learned less about what they plan on doing leaving him less capable of taking the best course of action, and if you trust him to make the right decision then that's objectively a bad thing.
stepping in a bit to say chill, this is a bit much of an accusation to make over what appears to be a pretty simple disagreement (which you've more constructively elaborated on downthread!)
Off the record doesn't mean completely secret. And it doesn't necessarily mean it will be under NDA (although it also happens sometimes). If anytime a major company is drawn to talk about a heated subject they get hammered by the news cycle and their stocks tank, or their investors get the shakes - they will stop coming to the table to discuss issues.
Off the record used to mean something in journalism. That's the "off the record" I'm talking about. If Meta has something else in mind - take issue with it then. But give them the benefit of the doubt until then. "Off the record" gets shit done in a world of red tape, woke hysteria and cancel culture.
Now, although I'm not pro MetaBook, I'd rather they come to the table, even if I think they don't do it in good faith. It means that they can be called on their bullshit, and get their response. Even if that response will not be quoted to the rest of us, or broadcast to the world to see - it's better than the current situation, where people just speculate about what Meta's public-facing, public-relations-sanitized statements actually mean.
To create an Instagram account, your identity has to be validated. I prefer anonymity. Once Meta gets their foot in the door, I guarantee they will try to bully the fediverse into doing things their way. Hard pass for me.
Once Meta gets their foot in the door, I guarantee they will try to bully the fediverse into doing things their way. Hard pass for me.
Can you give any reasonable by means in which they could do this and succeed?
So much of this stuff just sounds like infeasible conspiracy theories. If, hypothetically, Meta did do such a thing (somehow, still not clear how or frankly why?) all that it would mean is that anyone who disagreed could defederate from Meta, or would be defederated from Meta... which given half the servers in existence seem to want to defed them up front anyway, doesn't seem to make any odds.
It's all just very confusing hearing about these lurid ideas for things Meta could do with the fediverse that simply don't make a lick of sense either in terms of motivation or implementation.
Imagining Meta wants to expand into another platform isn't a conspiracy theory. For one, Meta could paste ads into more online spaces. They could also replace twitter without having to develop their own platform or pulling a Musk. Both of these would, yes, allow them to be more profitable.
Let me give a hypothetical: Meta makes their own nice, QoL-rich instance that could integrate with Facebook/Instagram. They could also add in analytics and ads and allow that to federate with other instances. They could allow other people to host their own version of this Metadon. If it gets adopted (because it "just works" or otherwise), they could cut support for the instances not running Metadon, taking a large portion of the userbase with them. They would have their own twitter clone (complete with users), they hardly spent time developing it beyond loading Mastodon with their crap, and they would have other people also hosting Metadon (and their ads) without Meta paying a dime.
If Meta does get a sizable userbase then they can absolutely leverage that to force other instances to play their game or defederate.
Meta makes their own nice, QoL-rich instance that could integrate with Facebook/Instagram.
This part could actually be enough on its own, TBH. Imagine that there's one Fediverse instance where you can interact with the rest of the Fediverse and interact with FB and IG, but it doesn't propagate stuff between the two networks (i.e. it doesn't allow people on Beehaw to see what someone on FB posts, and vice versa). Now there's a reason for everyone to migrate to Meta's instance, and a built-in way for Meta to advertise the migration to everyone in the FV. Once it sucks up enough users, it just de-federates from everything else and goes on its own way.
So they can overwhelm it, when they become the majority of the users they become in charge with the loudest voice. Then they steer it their way or make sure it dies.
Someone else just posted this explanation. TLDR is essentially, one of these giant corporations can destroy a network by joining and then later walling off their own part of it. And it's been done before.
tl;dr: Facebook and Google didn't "destroy" XMPP. XMPP was used by basically nobody before Facebook and Google picked it up, and after they dropped it again XMPP is still used by basically nobody. Its spec also doesn't include support for features that consumers expect to have in messaging software, which is part of why nobody uses it.
Because it’s what we’ve come to expect from large corporations suddenly joining the table of any FOSS project that is adjacent to their financial stakes. Coexistence is possible if they can profit from the software without assimilating it, but it also stands to reason that they will be pushing for new interoperability standards that benefit their own business model at the expense of users in some way.
The lowest hanging fruit would be something that allows them to associate Fediverse accounts with users whose marketing data already exists in their database, or providing a service to third parties that helps them tie their own databases back to Fediverse users. This would require some sort of hook that encourages the users to either associate their Fediverse accounts to an existing Meta service, or otherwise volunteer common PII such as email address that can be cross referenced. Maybe some kind of tracking cookie that accomplishes the same.
Keep in mind that this is just an example, it is not necessarily the exact angle they are pursuing. I’m not in the automatically defederate camp, but a healthy amount of skepticism is definitely warranted.
If fediverse admins come back to us saying that they have figured out a safe way to federate with Meta, then we will know that Meta got to them (financially). Maybe that's why they want an off the record meeting?
Dealing with an enormous corporation with an extensive track record of exploiting similar scenarios and acting on bad faith...
Yeah, it's pretty rational to believe this time will also be reflective of their general modus operandi.
You've mounted an emphatic defense of Facebook based almost exclusively on the fact people in this thread don't know exactly the technical details of what fuckery they'll be up to this time. I'm left wondering if you have any understanding of people, history, or... context as a concept.
You have provided a good sounding board for others to illustrate just what the risks involved are. So, thank you for that.
Yeah, I'm "defending" Facebook by pointing out that people keep letting 2 + 2 = 57845789478945 and that many of the "risks" being talked about are simply imaginary, technically impossible and/or do not require Meta to start an instance to materialise.
The technical details rather matter when people are coming up with random nonsense and/or don't actually seem to understand the nature of the platform they're coming to the defence of.
I don't trust Meta. I don't like Meta. That doesn't mean I need to also accept as true random confabulations about people being paid off and data being scraped for ends that don't make any sense. There's been a whole heap of heat around this subject and basically no light.
The second part of your comment doesn't answer my question, nor would "they want our data!!!" explain why Meta would want or need to create an instance in order to get it, or how the "data" (what data? Your posts? The ones that ActivityPub syndicates to hundreds of other servers automatically? Do you know exactly which servers your posts are on at the moment?) of other users on other fedi instances could somehow be "monetised" by them.
OK, I've read that link and it still doesn't really explain how exactly Meta intends to monetise other peoples' posts - "collect data from and monetise", how exactly are they going to monetise other peoples' posts on other instances, when they have no ability to e.g. serve ads to those people?
I don't think anyone is questioning your cynicism of Meta's intentions or motivations, but the nature of the Fediverse is specifically designed to make it very difficult (if not impossible) for any one party to control the entire thing. It's a question of how not if.
The worst thing I could see is something like the development of React where FB has an overwhelming advantage in sheer resources and ends up having a major influence on the direction of software trends. But that would still just be a popularity thing and would not actively stop anyone from doing their own thing. Maybe there is something in the license for ActivityPub that would let them pull a Google-vs-Oracle reverse engineering, but again that won't stop other instances or developers from ignoring them if they wanted.
It's not cynicism if the other party has a track record of behaving in an anti-competitive manner. The Fediverse became a competitor once it showed non-negligible growth.
Meta introduces convenient, cool and innovative features not originally on fediverse code
Everyone wants new features, but features are locked under propietary code.
Everyone flocks to meta’s product.
Meta is now the fediverse and the fediverse is nothing but a husk of its former self
The solution is 1: to make sure users understand that it’s a bad idea to flock to meta’s instance, and 2: to implement that feature in the fediverse if everyone likes it so much they’re willing to leave. The solution is not defederating now because of the posibbilty that they do that in the future.
But meta cannot claim all the fediverse as accesible content. Therefore making it akin to using facebook and reddit. Separate services that serve different demographics
I agree with you guys, it could be problematic to work with #Meta but maybe it could be the step we need to make the fediverse mainstream. The things to discuss are the conditions but the frontal confrontation baybe will not be the answer this time.
It's hilarious for Meta to invite some person who happens to run a server to an "off the record" conversation with "confidential details that should not be shared with others" anyway. LOL.
The only "confidential" information that's likely to be involved in such an exchange would be some kind of bribe for the person to shut down or assimilate their infrastructure with Meta's. It's not like they're going to reveal Meta's trade secrets to someone they believe to essentially be a competitor or anything.
This has me thinking, is there a space set aside for putting profits over people instances out and center so admins can preemptively defederate and/or block them?
I haven’t found one yet but I am rather new to this.
Meta doesn’t need to spin up an instance to abuse user data on the fediverse, they just need an app that can read it. A hypothetical meta fediverse app could allow users to select their own instance and still read and collect data on the connected instances. As far as I know, there is no way in the protocol to prevent this.
It‘s not just about the data—which is bad enough but as you said they could just write a crawler to get at it. The question is why would they want to federate and why now? Meta being Meta the most likely reasons are terrible for the fediverse and it reminds me very much of Google and xmpp. I saw a really good writeup on this yesterday: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
they may be able to read certain data from another instance but their current platform allows complete surveillance of what you looked at, how long, every click and scroll, etc while also being able to feed that in to manipulating what you see.
imo it will be basically impossible to have that kind of impact on people from instances not controlled by them, particularly if the other instance defederates so they don’t see meta instance content.
Our exchange here is public, a gift to humanity and all aliens that might stumble upon it. If meta can make money from it, so be it. But anyone else can just as well.
The people who would use a Meta variant will use it, and people like us will not. This reminds me of the interview with the Mexican restaurant that spawned Taco Bell. The lady who owned it essentially said, "I'm glad he (the founder of Taco Bell) was able to take our teachings and turn it into something. Good for him." If they build proprietary code, that's nice. ActivityPub will still be the same open-source code it's always been, and all of the Fediverse stuff will still exist. It kinda sucks that Meta is trying to make it seem like they're the good guys, but in the end there isn't much they can do to the already established stuff beyond make their own.
Edit: also, if they do try anything, we at least have previous data and most of the people who care about freedom to privacy here that I'm sure we could come up with something. We're not getting blindsided like with Google and XMPP back in the day.
Meta is going for a price run on failure it feels like, I worked for a company bought out by (no names to prevent breaking my NDA) them super publically and then a year or so later firing 90% of the staff and replacing them (for no reason) and leaving a skeleton crew.
And as expected things have just been on a steady decline ever since. The people running the show at Meta have to be off their rocks on coke.
That's the thing though, it's still around and getting marketed by them as one of their major products. So they're beating a dead horse that they shot to death themself really.
What a horrible click-bait title. No one and nothing was “destroyed” here. He replied in a polite manner to a company whose goals do not align with his own.
"Reports of Meta's Destruction Greatly Exaggerated"
OK, it's one of my pet peeves that every fricking disagreement is headlined as X destroyed Y. Click-bait is the bane of the internet and makes everything worse. Don't participate.
I'm glad Kev got to speak their mind, but I highly doubt this changed anything meaningful over at Zuck HQ.
Seriously, if you want to see them squirm, hit them with a wall of silence. They clearly feel they need something and, for Meta, negative feedback is better than no feedback at all.
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