If I have to debunk the "There's no point #fediPact-ing Meta because they'll just scrape what's public" argument one more time I might have to pull out my own eyes.
Beyond the technicalities, or law, there is value in challenging what is wrong even if assholes will still try to do it. There is value in people expressing concerns and working together as a group to address them. There is value in showing those who didn't speak up or act because they thought they'd be alone that they are not.
do you enjoy the work i've done with FediPact? the rad instance i've set up? the cool clothes i DIY together? vantaradio? my awesome videos? my amazing selfies? my posting generally? or just wanna give a trans gal a nice gift?
well i'm unemployed, job searching, and surviving solely off donations for the moment so if you wanna support me anything helps
(to support cyberpunk.lol costs directly please use the separate instance kofi on our about page)
Wildeboer’s third theorem: Every commercial centralised service that offers “free” services and relies on ads and/or a percentage of subscription/donation fees ends up being supportive of misinformation, hate speech and far-right to nazi content. Either through ignorance or acceptance.
"Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.
"free fediverses" that reject Meta – and surveillance capitalism more generally
The free fediverses have a lot of advantages over Meta and Meta's fediverses, some of which will be very hard to counter, and clearly have enough critical mass that they'll be just fine.
Here's a set of strategies for the free fediverses to provide a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism. They build on the strengths of today's fediverse at its best – including natural advantages the free fediverses have that Threads and Meta's fediverses will having a very hard time countering – but also are hopefully candid about weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a long list, so I'll be spreading out over multiple posts; this post currently goes into detail on the first two.
Opposition to Meta and surveillance capitalism is an appealing position. Highlight it!
Focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety
Emphasize "networked communities"
Support concentric federations of instances and communities
Consider "transitively defederating" Meta's fediverses (as well as defederating Threads)
Consider working with people and instances in Meta's fediverses (and Bluesky, Dreamwidth, and other social networks) whose goals and values align with the free fediverses'
Build a sustainable ecosystem
Prepare for Meta's (and their allies') attempts to paint the free fediverses in a bad light
Reduce the dependency on Mastodon
Prioritize accessibility, which is a huge opportunity
Commit to anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and pro-LGBTQIA2S+ principles, policies, practices, and norms for the free fediverses
"instances are valuable for the relations and interactions they facilitate locally AND for their ability to connect you to other parts of the network."
By contrast, @evanprodromou notes that "Big Fedi" advocates typically see instances as typically see the instance as "mostly a dumb pipe." But The Networked Communities view aligns much better with the free fediverses' values – as does the "Social Archipelago" view @noracodes sketches in The Fediverse is Already Dead. Not only that, it's good strategy!
Here's how @zkat describes caracoles: "you essentially ask to join concentric federations of instances ... with smaller caracoles able to vote to federate with entire other caracoles."
And @ophiocephalic's "fedifams" are a similar idea: "Communities could align into fedifams based on whatever conditions of identity, philosophy or interest are relevant to them. Instances allied into fedifams could share resources and mutually support each other in many way"
The idea's a natural match for community-focused, anti-surveillance capitalism free fediverses, fits in well with the Networked Communities model discussed in part 3, and helps address scalability of consent-based federation discussed in Part 2.
There's likely to be a lot of moving between instances as people and instances sort themselves out into the free fediverses and Meta's fediverses -- and today, moving accounts on the fediverse today. There are lots of straightforward ways to improve it, many of which don't even require improvements to the software. And there are also opportunities to make creating, customizing, and connecting instances easier.
🧐 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 」
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.
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
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/
While Authorized Fetch remains important to activate, it is clear that even it - which remember, provides better defense than that currently implemented on most of our home servers - is inadequate to the threats facing us as the Zuckerberg incursion progresses. If we're serious about protecting our communities and expressions from absorption into surveillance capitalism and the accelerating miseries of fascism, we need to talk about a stronger grade of defensive weaponry.
To this end, @are0h has fired a first volley: https://h-i.social/@are0h/111653850819592308 Every fedi community which serves as a refuge for those targeted and under siege should be thinking like this. True safety only awaits us in a transitive approach to defederation, and further on, in an intentional federation based on the allow-list.
Some worry that consent-based federation would lead to isolation, but this doesn't need to be true. For the end user, nothing at all would change; it would be just as easy or hard to join an instance as it is now, minus the funneling into a centralized, poorly-moderated vanilla flagship.
And what about new instance spinups? Their prospects could actually improve from the current status quo, if an allow-list fediverse was structured into instance alliances as described in the fedifam concept. New intra-fam spinups would automatically federate: https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110793531238090472
Fedifams could then form trust-treaties with other fedifams, smoothing federation out from the fam into the broader fediverse in whatever manner of comfort or caution is preferred (such as limited or probationary federation): https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110985194948458666
We accept and support new spinups by fellow travelers were are already in community with. The servers which entirely come in from the cold are mostly those belonging to the creatures of the dark-fedi, which cause many of the moderation problems for those of us on proportionately-sized instances (and most of the other problems are caused by the disproportionately-sized ones, who will be joining the Zuckerverse).
By assuming agency for who we choose to federate with, rather than existing in a state of constant reaction against those who would try and force us to federate with them, we can defend our federation both from the fascists, racists, transphobes and pedos of the defediverse, and from the horrifying and corruptive threat of the Zuckerberg entity, and its collaborator instances.
An intentional federation would be a more decentralized one, as we could fully affirm a collective choice to keep instances small. That's not just an abstract idea; a more decentralized fedi would be a more democratic one: https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110707707012210965
And it would also be a more community-centered one. Currently, the Mastodon network in particular is being driven by an approach which denies the prospect for a riotous polyculture of small and distinct communities in favor of a growth-oriented monoculture in which "servers are not... communities" ( https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/111628882009671820 ) and "it doesn't matter which one you use" ( https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter ), an outlook which Zuckerberg must find favorable.
A note also on the gaslighting we face from Meta's colluders; the latest being the embarrassing spectacle of ActivityPub co-author Evan wagging around a "small fedi". @thenexusofprivacy has a good rebuttal to this cringe exhibitionism here: https://privacy.thenexus.today/the-annotated-case-for-a-big-fedi/
Evan has seen fit to misappropriate the "small fedi" idea, then build a blog post around warping it into a smear, with a long list of patronizing and fictional mischaracterizations. But what is truly small is the thinking that the fedi's future is surveillance, algorithmic ingestion, centralized servers too big to moderate, and huge psychotic corporations like Meta. In fact, that is social media's catastrophic past, the one we're all here to reject.
A better vision for a near-future fedi requires an exercise of both the technical and social imagination, and another thing that Meta's collaborators appear to find elusive: a moral center.
Instead of a regression into another Zuckerberg-controlled nightmare of hate speech, harassment, "brand engagement" and dehumanizing surveillance, we can push forward into an intentional federation based on consent and community, which centers the non-negotiable requirement of safety for everyone who otherwise has the most to lose from the betrayal of this online space of refuge and resistance.
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
#fedipact#meta#fediverse#activate authorized fetch
are we falling in to darkness? Just read the news. All of that disinformation. The snark and hate that peaceful young activists get. Or a woman having an abortion. The way police is turning into a gang of thugs. And a lot of this is being organized on social media. We really need to make sure to block Meta/Threads as effectively as possible. This is one little place to connect with people in and not be hit with it. It saves lives. It saves the lives of minorites. @actuallyautistic
We need an alternative to #Fedipact where admins that are willing to federate with #Threads promise to heavily moderate content coming from there to not let all the homophobic, transphobic, racist, reactionary and other awful content from there to go here.
Like, you already defederate other servers over that, why are you making an exception for Threads? Especially if they have a clear record of completely broken moderation.