I don't know how many times #FAANG will need to "integrate" with open networks ostensibly to everyone's benefit, only to ultimately kill off or fundamentally change them for the worse, before some people figure out that giving them the benefit of the doubt is foolish and dangerous, but apparently it hasn't been enough times yet. #Meta#Threads
Cloudflare. A #cybersecurity service that "protects" you from bad actors, #hackers, #DDoS and other online threats.
What seemingly no one talks about is that 80% of #CDN market is owned by Cloudflare. They move more traffic than #FAANG companies combined!
They hold such obscene amount of power and control over the #internet, its hard to describe.
They are the gatekeepers, they are enforcers of whom to block, and what to allow to exist.
Google holds no power when compared to Cloudflare.
ABAAMM?
ABAMAM?
BAMAMA?
MAMABA?
MAMBAA? Oh, there we go, that's close. a little sheepish at the end though.
MAAMBA? Not bad. I like it. Rolls off the tongue.
Cyber-MAMBAA...
Techno-MAAMBA...
"The EU has just designated the cyber-MAAMBA overlords as Gatekeepers..."
Because there seems to be a whole lot of crazy discussions going on in #Fedi right now... here are my 2¢ in case anyone cares:
· I have never used any #Facebook product before and don't plan on doing so
· I think #FAANG are a serious threat to democracy
· I still welcome being able to federate with a Facebook server and believe it 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 be positive for Fedi as a whole
You can still block FB instances and/or users on an individual bases; please don't make our admins block it for everyone.
What do you think happens when 200M FB users join? When Zuck can impulsively defederate, or add/change/remove features and rules, at will, and oh...10M non-FB users object?
Right now, I can launch my own personal Mastodon server, connect to any other server, chat with anyone...many people do this now.
I can also host my own email server, but I can't send email to anyone with a gmail account, nor any other mainstream address...not because I'm blocking them, but because Google changed the rules of how email works, and forced everyone else to use their rules and block me, automatically.
That's the future of a #Fediverse with the #FAANG corps included.
To real concerns that Meta might do to Acivitypub as Google & they did to XMPP, this seems helpful including this point via @darius
"Regardless of bigco shenanigans around open protocols, Kazemi isn’t worried about what happens with ActivityPub. 'The nice thing for me is that if the big companies do jump in [to support ActivityPub] and then sort of walk it back,' he remarked, 'at worst, we’ll be back to where we are right now, which is still a pretty nice place.'”
I can host my own email server, but I can't send email to anyone with a gmail account ... not because I'm blocking Google, but because Google blocks me ... and because Google is big enough to force everyone else on Earth to block me, too.
That's the future of a #Fediverse with the #FAANG corps included.
@nattiegoogie additionally, people will look weird at you when you explain how Google is at fault. They will not understand it. They will think you're making up some conspiracy theory. Finally, they will say "just get Gmail. It's free."
No single instance/corporation should ever get that much power. That extends to mastodon-dot-social, which is also (in my opinion) too large for a healthy Fediverse.
I agree about mastodon-dot-social, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to letting the #FAANG into the #Fediverse. It frankly blows my mind that this is even a debate. I'd sooner re-federate with the fucking nazis.
An analogy we often use on the fediverse with respect to its decentralized nature is email. You didn't get an account on "The Email" you got an account on an email server which knew how to talk to other email servers. It is a great analogy. I've fallen into the trap of extending that to think that people used to get decentralized systems and it wasn't a barrier to entry but now they don't thanks to big tech changing expectations. While there is some of that a lot of that perception is rose colored glasses. The problem here goes back to the analysis paralysis of having to pick a server rather than there being some automatic default that "just works". "Didn't we do that with email?" Did we? Most people's first email accounts were from their ISP. Most places didn't have much selection of ISPs so you got "the internet" and "an email address" came along with it. If their first address wasn't a personal one at home it was one from work. Work made the decision for them. Even in the peak days of dialup many people's first internet experience was actually AOL not the raw internet. AOL came with an internet email address that "just worked". The aversion to extra inertia of having to choose servers or services at sign up time may be a bit higher than it was before FAANG took over the internet but it's still back to the same problem: human nature. #FAANG#fediverse#SocialMedia#commentary