This week, I went over to Bluesky and asked people who'd left Mastodon why they left, and lots of people told me. I grabbed the replies and crunched them and wrote up a summary. I think it's really interesting and often kind of wrenching.
The Zuck suck is in full swing. In the few short hours since I started using #Threads, #DuckDuckGo has already blocked over 200 data tracking attempts. These include things like "headphone status" and "screen density."
EDIT for clarity: The 200+ attempts may have been overcounted as DDG hadn't tooled their VPN for Threads yet.
The recent excitement surrounding Thread's arrival on the Fediverse is concerning. To understand why this is not a good idea, consider their economic interest in harvesting data, their poor moderation, and their manipulations. Nothing good can come from their federation. Don't roll out the red carpet for them.
Just remember, Every time advocacy groups warn about tech/capitalism, believe them. We don't make shit up, we use history of actions and facts to state our reasons to be against it.
If your instance isn't part of @FediPact please urge your admins to join or move to another instance who is.
And if you want proof, ask the general public what Jabber/XMPP was, and then ask what Google how they killed it.
EDIT: Please send support to the creator of the FediPact, @vantablack as she is homeless. This is possible because of them.
EDIT #2: Some peppe are saying it doesn't happen anymore, but since it only happened to competitors to Facebook and only after people noticed, I don't think it was a "bug" that only impacted FOSS replacements, but a feature for Facebook removed. Don't give these Zuckers gaslight and think they remain innocent.
We, the moderation and administration of tech.lgbt, are signing the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact in fellowship with our peer communities. (https://vantaa.black/pact)
There is over a decade of precedent that Facebook will not have users' best interests as their guiding principle but rather profit margins, if it joins the Fediverse.
We at tech.lgbt have long held the belief that corporation owned instances are a threat to the core of the Fediverse: freedom for users to be themselves and to be a part of their communities. The 2010s saw the loss of online freedom when the majority of the Web was consolidated into a few destinations, and Facebook entering here could lead us back to centralization. Furthermore, NDAs for server admins will constrain our sovereignty online by binding us legally from disrupting their business.
We are not products. We are people, and we do not welcome Facebook in this space.
I just realized that there is so much noise about #Meta and very little about creating template legal policies that instances can adopt that prohibit commercial use of user data.
Whatever you think of defederation there are easy ways to do that. Legal policies on the other hand are complex and require expertise and often money.
Maybe #LawFedi can help crowdsource templates of strict noncommercial legal policies for the #Fediverse so instance admins do not have to figure it out themselves?
So #Meta's new #Threads app needs your health and fitness info. It also needs your browsing history and your location, and your purchases, and...well, it seems to need everything. If you want to get fully creeped out, here's the whole #privacy policy: https://privacycenter.instagram.com/policy/.
Mastodon instances admins are going through a very challenging time right now.
They have difficult, often heartbreaking, decisions to make 💔
They have a lot of changes to managed :blob_dizzy_face:
They have large influx in traffic to deal with :blobastonished:
And they have to deal with all of our comments and strong opinions about this :oh_no:
Be Kind with instance administrators and moderation teams. Even when you do not agree with their choices. You can state your opinion, but always remain polite and empathetic.
This is volunteer work!
They all deserve our kindness 💚
Stories like this remind us why being mindful of protecting one's privacy online is important and that "private" messages in the majority of places aren't private at all without end-to-end encryption.
Be mindful of what sensitive data you're relinquishing to companies.
I read that #Meta has launched #Threads and many don't understand why it's not fully usable via the web but only through a dedicated mobile app. Meta isn't interested in letting us talk but rather in collecting as much data as possible. Browsers have become (more) skilled at protecting us, while apps can have almost complete access to our mobile devices, gathering data that an average person couldn't even imagine. And our mobile devices have become the safe (or should I say, the exposed pantry?) of our lives. #privacy#datacollection#SocialNetworks
Yesterday Justin Trudeau revealed that agents of the Indian government murdered a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. When Canadian Sikhs went to post about it on Facebook, the platform removed their posts as a violation of Indian law.
People are asking me what I think about #Meta joining the Fediverse. To review what I've said elsewhere, it's important to acknowledge five important realities:
Meta can use ActivityPub, and nothing can be done about it. Fediblock doesn't prevent Meta from using ActivityPub because ActivityPub is an open protocol.
A mass Fediblock (Gab style) is not happening. The big servers aren't doing it. And if the big servers aren't doing it, the medium and little servers don't have the power to enforce a mass Fediblock.
The majority of people on the Fediverse don't care -- and many of them even want to connect with Meta. I know, this might surprise you. But based on my observations, most people won't be leaving mastodon.social because it federates with Meta.
Even if the majority of Fediverse servers blocked Meta, that would still mean that certain unsavoury servers (which shall be unnamed) will likely connect with Meta -- and I certainly don't want those servers to be the face of the Fediverse for people who use #P92
Even if Meta pulled a Truth Social and didn't connect to the Fediverse, that does not prevent them from sucking up all that data from ActivityPub -- seeing how that data is, in fact, public.
Am I saying there's no value in blocking Meta? Not at all. Yes, block them if you don't want to send and receive messages to P92. Will that prevent Meta from seeing your messages? As I said, no, not at all. But at least that's data you haven't directly given to Meta (unless you're allowing RSS on your server). And it will also mean you won't receive messages from Meta -- if that's your purpose, blocking is good.
Now I've come to believe that when Meta joins the Fediverse, the Fediverse will largely be divided into three factions:
Faction 1: Servers that federate with Meta
Faction 2: Servers that don't federated with Meta, but federate with servers that federate with Meta
Faction 3: Servers that don't federate with Meta, and don't federate with any server that federates with Meta
Factions 1 and 2 will probably go on their merry way. It's Faction 3 that I believe will die because it's ultimately unfeasible.
"But Chris!" some might say, "There's that pact!"
Unless all those servers in that pact are only federating via white labeled servers who've signed that pact, the pact is useless. Such white labeling would mean that every server that federates must be manually reviewed. And it means that every new server that joins the Fediverse will be federated with Faction 1 and Faction 2 before they're federated with Faction 3.
Which ultimately means that Faction 3 gets tinier and tinier, especially as churn occurs, and those users don't get replaced by newcomers.
In the end, what will federation via white label achieve? Not a whole lot, except make certain people believe they have done something substantial to fight Meta when they haven't.
At a certain point, we have to accept reality: Meta will use ActivityPub, and most people using the Fediverse will talk to them.
So am I waving the white flag?
Not at all. What's important to acknowledge here is that it's not we, the Fediverse, who have conceded. It's Meta.
It's Meta who have given up ownership of their own corporate-owned network effect in order to join the Fediverse.
Despite this concession from Meta, I'm not happy about them joining the Fediverse.
However, there's another consideration: for people who use Meta. it's an incremental improvement over what they had before -- which was no federation. Again, less worse is better than worse. If the world is slightly better -- even if it's not ideal -- it's still better.
Do I want people to use Meta-owned social networks? Not at all.
Here's where I disagree with 99% of people panicking about Meta: I believe ActivityPub will ultimately be Meta's own undoing.
Not only will #Threads not be launching in the EU (presumably because it'll be sucking up so much personal data that they can't make it GDPR compliant), but now the The European Court of Justice has agreed with Germany’s anti-cartel watchdog that Meta can't share harvested personal data between Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. That ruling will also apply to Threads.
This whole federating with Threads thing has never made any sense and now we see it is very likely they have just been playing us the whole time. Let's stop falling for this nonsense and get back to building great open social media.
🎉The winner is Kibby! 150/375 votes. To celebrate, I have a gift for everyone! ❤︎ 🎉
It's been two days since I originally posted the final name poll, votes have stopped coming in, and the winner is Kibby!...
How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) (ploum.net)
Everyone who’s into the fediverse concept should read this article.
iOS AppStore privacy preview for Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-based app Threads
#1 won by a landslide! Thanks for all the voting and feedback everyone! Now, what is his name? 🤔
Edit: Vote on the poll for a name!...