What worries me about the #FediPact is that those joining might be pressured to defederate from every server that did not sign the Pact, as data from Meta-blocking instances that goes through Meta-neutral servers might be exfiltrated to them anyways. And that would lead to a major balkanization of the #Fediverse, potentially splitting it in roughly two halves. Either scenario would be great for Meta: one half might be functionally absorbed by corporate, while the other half becomes its own echo chamber that slowly but surely dwindles in numbers. The privacy aware servers end up being functionally non-federating any longer, and to be fair many users would rather have it that way as their own carved safe space on the Internet, but barely anyone will even care about it existing and thus financial support will most likely suffer.
Hmm, eines der Kriterien bei der Auswahl der Software, die ich nutze, ist fast immer: #opensource
Fälle, dass irgendwo ewig Fehler dringelassen wurden, der Code niemand zuzumuten ist, kein maintaining mehr passiert oder scheiss-code eingeschleust wird, sind bekannt. Meist folgt die Suche nach ner Alternative, ein #fork, ein fix...
Aber wenn #meta die Arme ausbreitet für die totale Umarmung, bin ich auch, sind alle selbst betroffen. Hilft da freier Code überhaupt?
so, hab auch mal threads[.]net blockiert
bin aber kein fan von diesem #FediPact quatsch mit sinnlosen drohungen "wenn du nicht mitmachst wirst du deföderiert"
solcher scheiss ist in keiner diskussion hilfreich!
if you'd asked me about making a tumblr-specific thing similar to the anti-meta fedi pact BEFORE the car hammer incident
i'd say i personally agree with it but that finding support across the wider fediverse might be a good deal harder than a pact against meta
because even though tumblr allows some of the same horrible shit, the vibes of the site are very different and lotsa peeps have good memories of it
but now... i could totally see myself doing FediPact 2 if tumblr ever announced they were gonna federate. public perception has shifted enough that it'd be doable
In retrospect, I shouldn't have bothered writing an article regarding #defederation, the #fedipact and the #fediverse because this brilliant gem (back from the 'Endless September' Usenet days) says everything I want to say and then some. Everything old is new again, the same tribalism and existential fears remain. We are creatures of short memories and strong, deeply-felt fears.
#neuromatchstodon members are welcome to discuss joining the #fedipact before we call a vote in the social-wg channel in our discord. the link is in your announcements.
you're also welcome to come check in with thoughts or questions on what might have been a bewildering few days on the fediverse.
Those considering the use of the PhotoDNA surveillance process in the fediverse are advised to inform themselves on it first. It doesn't just detect "positives", it can also auto-report them to authorities. Implementing it could turn this network into an automated police-state snitching system. Admins who do not choose auto-reporting may be legally obligated to manually report positives.
Also (independently verified and officially contradicted), PhotoDNA is utilized not just to detect CSAM, but also "terrorist and violent extremist content". So who decides what constitutes this content? Why, the private unaccountable black box which is Microsoft Corporation, that shining beacon of privacy-respect to which a hash of every image uploaded to and federated across enabled instances would be sent. Microsoft indicates the data can be utilized for facial recognition and "AI" ingestion as well.
Do they - or will they - rate advocacy of Palestinian equality and Kurdish feminism as extremist, as governments they do business with would demand? Do they or will they accept the inputs of oil and pipeline corporations in determining what constitutes terrorism? How will they expand the parameters of disallowed sexual deviance if Trump wins the election next year?
Understand that this is already happening. Elements are in the Mastodon Github Issues calling for the addition of PhotoDNA right now. The Pixelfed project may also be adding it very soon. If that is true, antiauthoritarian instances should consider the feasibility of defederation from Pixelfed altogether.
For all those considering this: Stop. Please. All the "report" issued by the Facebook-mafia describes is the fediverse - and in fact, mostly its evil twin, the defediverse - just as it existed last month, last year, years before most on here had ever heard of it. The purpose of their influence operation is scare everyone into turning the fediverse into the kind of policed and surveilled space suitable to Mark Zuckerberg.
Hi folks! I'm on mastodon.social and I'm looking to move to a server that has pre-deferated from Meta/in Fedipact. I hope I'm not bothering by tagging! ❤️️
#Threads is a threat, and Mastodon is not your workplace. If your admin is not explicitly intending to defederate with Meta, you can make a stink about it. You can spread awareness. You can even hop instances if need be. "It's okay, I've blocked threads.net on my own account" is not enough. It's missing the entire point. It's time to start thinking beyond the individual.
Facebook: we stuck a fucking shit UI on top of Instagram and bigoted dogpiles have started already
Threads users: Wow, I can't believe how great Fediverse and ActivityPub are, things which I'm totally being introduced to right now. Pity I'm in a fucking parallel universe.
Scarlet for yer nanny for having yer ma. Fuckin scarlet.
Prominent voices advocating for collaboration with the Zuckerberg surveillance entity sure do talk up decentralization a lot, when they're not advocating the subjugation of the fediverse to a single vertical silo of 100 million users. The irony, of course, is that they tend to be admins of instances with tens or even hundreds of thousands. And two of the most prominent control multiple mega-servers, which means they're not just overseeing centralized instances, they're hoarding them.
In contrast, by default Pixelfed servers are limited to a maximum of 1000 users. Though a deep dive into the parameters can override this, its status as a default is an affirmation of the decentralizing ethos. "Thou shalt keep thy instance small."
The microblogging space of the fediverse hasn't been allowed to develop an equivalent consciousness, as the agenda has been set by mega-server admins who drove the conversation around topics like "smooth onboarding". But these aren't evil people; the problem is that they have no real vision.
A comment circulated recently - receipt unfortunately not saved - suggesting that the development of fediverse tools to useful to organizing community would be an effective alternative to the "how to funnel in granny" mentality, because then there would be incentives for entire communities to migrate in together; surely a more holistic view of "onboarding" than fretting over how to pick up confused and wandering individuals one at a time. That is the kind of exercise of technical and social imagination we need.
To become viable, the Free Fediverse will need to define itself by not just what it stands against - corporate enclosure by the Meta monstrosity - but by what it stands for. Real and actual decentralization - not just shallow lip service towards it - can be one of those foundational values.
This value can then be encoded into the technology, as it was with Pixelfed; because, let there be no doubt, Zuckerberg is not just absorbing certain of the fediverse's communities, but also certain of its technologies. We'll need replacements, but that's an opportunity to break the current state of developmental stagnation in the predominant microblogging service and ActivityPub. And more important still than protocols and apps are those who create them. Essentially, the Facebook Fediverse gets the techbros, but the Free Fediverse gets the catgirls - which means we win!
Real decentralization - lots and lots and lots of quite small communities, distinct yet federated - has already proven itself to be a better facilitator of good moderation, and will enable another important value to be addressed shortly. But on the moderation issue, a timely real-world example of why decentralization matters is instructive.
There has recently been a calamity visited upon our instance, Kolektiva. Among all of the discussion following its disclosure, there was not a full analysis of its chain of causality. Let's take a flyover of the recent timeline.
April - A massive spambot wave first hits mastodon-dot-social, then spreads quickly through the entire fediverse. Kolektiva, and many other servers, temporarily limit dot-social until the invasion is under control.
Early May - Another spambot attack hits masto-dot-social, and of course, everyone else. This time, an error is made, and a Kolektiva admin defederates rather than limits dot-social. All Kolektiva users irrecoverably lose their follows and followers from dot-social. There is disquiet.
Mid-May - In an attempt to restore the lost follow-follower data, a Kolektiva admin recovers a snapshot backup of the database from before the defederation, an operation which occurs with what turns out to be "spectacularly bad timing".
Yes, there was a fuckup; in fact, a fuckup compounded by another fuckup. But - beyond noting that both mistakes were attempts to do right by the users of the instance - the wellspring of the disaster actually wasn't Kolektiva, but mastodon-dot-social, that mega-server with hundreds of thousands of silo'ed users, open registration and next-to-no-moderation; that irresistible honeypot for spammers and scammers, that 500-pound gorilla with a bullseye painted on its ass.
The mother of all instances has repeatedly proven itself to be a problem for the rest of the fediverse, as in the examples above, when the admins of literally every other server federated with it were put in the position of having to locally address a crisis not of their origination, each an opportunity to make mistakes they would not otherwise have needed to risk.
Smaller instances are easier to moderate, larger instances more difficult. And if masto-dot-social is any indication, a large enough instance becomes a lost cause - take a look at dot-social's local feed and see if you agree. Decentralization distributes moderation agency more effectively, both to admins and even to users. And by scattering targets, it creates network resiliency against threats like spambots and crypto scams. Decentralization isn't just a foss-nerd buzzword, it yields tangible benefits for those seeking safer community online.
i wish gargron would say literally just a single word about FediPact, even just something short and dismissive like "not a fan," so i could quote it on the website lmao
Jak vypadá boj #Fediverse s #Threads? Prakticky asi tak, že ho odmítá jen výrazná menšina. #FediPact (defederalizaci Threads) podporuje 2,55 % serverů, 6,44 % aktivních uživatelů.
Why Meta is looking to the fediverse as the future for social media
“You could imagine an extension to the protocol eventually — of saying like, ‘I want to support micropayments,’ or … like, ‘hey, feel free to show me ads, if that supports you.’ Kind of like a way for you to self-label or self-opt-in. That would be great,” Cottle noted, speaking casually. Whether or not Meta would find a way to get a cut of those micropayments, of course, remains to be seen.
Why Defederate Meta?
(x-post from Fedia.org/m/DefederateMeta)...