🧐 Copy, Acquire, Kill— How Meta could pull off the most extraordinary pivot in tech history
ᐅ @fromjason
「 Meta must create a new market out of thin air to accomplish this monumental pivot. Such a feat could prove risky without something to compel indie developers and server admins to use Meta's shiny new infrastructure. That something could be regulation. Targeted lobbying has made it difficult for start-ups to compete in social media 」
WHO ARE WE? we're a scrappy little fresh-faced underdog instance of glitch mastodon. we have but one humbly stated mission: to put the PUNK back into cyberpunk here on the fediverse
WHO AM I? i'm vanta. trans enby girl polyam lesbian gender terrorist, the fediverse's favorite pirate radio DJ, DIY clothing auteur, and rogue wordsmith extraordinaire. i've been posting on fedi heavily since 2017
THREADS? not only is this instance a fedipact instance that has threads.net blocked, but... i'm the one who made the whole pact to begin with lmao
Mastodon is become more a brand than a software. If one searches 'mastodon' one gets a bunch articles that pretty much treat M'don as a brand with scant lip service to Fediverse, and links to a couple of the biggest M'don instances that happen to be melding with Threats.
If a #NewYearsResolution is your thing, set out to say and write 'fediverse' — proudly and deliberately.
We have recently been advocating the activation of a function which is present but usually off in Mastodon and other fedi services called Authorized Fetch. As we plead with the major development projects to take safety more seriously and make it a default, we have learned that Meta itself didn't think twice about it and has activated it in their own ActivityPub implementation against us.
We know this because of news that a fascist has devised a way to evade it and force federation with Threads. They promise to then turn their technique upon us and coerce unblockable federation with fascist and cryptospam instances: https://soapbox.pub/blog/threads-server-blocking/
I do not want #threads on my feed,
I do not want Threads spying on me.
I do not want Threads here or there,
I do not want Threads anywhere.
When you push transphobia you push your luck,
I will not federate with fucking Zuck. #fedipact
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.
today, I just blocked the threads.net domain. I advice everyone who cares about the integrity of the fediverse, facebook's past actions, privacy and big corp influencing this little space we still have, to do the same as soon as possible, in stead of waiting on your instance. I hope my instance admin blocks them as well, but yeah, open internet as it goes, people should still be allowed to interact with threads if that's what they want from their lives #meta#threads#fediblock#fedipact
I would love a list of servers who have activated authorized fetch, because ultimately not being associated with facebook, twitter etc is more important to me than making it easier for people with friends still using those services to see those posts. #AuthorizedFetch exists and if it means paying my instance every month to be part of something I can feel good about as opposed to feeling like I am complicit in the crimes commited by facebook and twitter, I would happily do that. #Fedipact#AskTheFediverse
"Nevertheless, I hope it becomes increasingly clear why the line, for some of us, isn’t about “non-commercial” or “non-algorithmic,” but about Meta’s specific record of bloody horrors, and their absolute unwillingness to enact genuinely effective measures to prevent future political manipulation and individual suffering and loss on a global scale."
What if the real #Fedipact was that the whole #Fediverse exclusively set AOL.com as their homepage and used AOL for all their web searches from now until 1st January 2024 to really confuse #AOL employees when they returned back to work. They'd think it was 2001 again.
There is a diversity of servers and a diversity of ways admins can act regarding Threads like:
Federating (users can still opt-out by blocking the domain)
Limiting (users won’t see threads posts by default, but can still opt-out even more by blocking the domain)
Blocking Threads (defederating) denying the choice from users. In this configuration the users have no other choice but to have Threads blocked or move to another server
But here’s one new intermediate option admins can choose (if softwares other than pixelfed implements it or admins manipulate their databases):
Blocking Threads by default, but leaving the option for users to opt-in.
This has, as far as I’m aware, never been done before, but it would avoid like 90+% of the defederation dramas. If an admin want to block an instance to protect their users, but there is still legitimate reasons to federate with them, then opt-in is absolutely the way to go.
User-level Authorized Fetch also seems like a great idea to me. More security without taking too much ressources.
Pixelfed is full of great ideas like this. For example, replies control, something that exists on instagram since forever, that bluesky is working on and has been a discussion for a long time on the fediverse with no real implementation before pixelfed.