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.
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.
Yet another question people are asking me: "How can I, a common person, help hasten the demise of #Meta through #ActivityPub?"
Again, I want to re-emphasize this. #Fediblock is not an all-purpose tool. It's useful as a hammer. But in this scenario, we don't just need a hammer. We need drills, pliers, saws, and blowtorches.
That said, we must protect communities that choose to defederate from Meta. Which means that if those servers don't want to receive messages from any Meta-owned services, we must not only be respectful of that, we should make damn sure that those servers are quarantined from Meta. So much of the success of fighting Meta will require safe spaces from Meta.
The next thing we need is lots and lots of nodes. Currently, we only have ~25,000 nodes on the Fediverse but we need more. Preferably, these nodes should be small, agile, and well-moderated. If you have the finances and/or skill to run a node, it's important that you do so. To compete with Meta, we need to build scale -- and the easiest way to build scale is by adding more nodes to the Fediverse.
What will also be key is lobby servers. These will be servers specifically set up for migrants from Meta-owned services to help onboard them towards the rest of the Fediverse. To run such a lobby server, they need to be welcoming, moderated well, and free of the elitists and gatekeepers that poison so much of the Fediverse currently.
How to get people from Meta to try out the rest of the Fediverse? We need people willing to be ambassadors on #P92 who are ready and willing to evangelize the rest of the Fediverse. Folks like @tchambers are very good at this on Twitter, and I have no doubt that we can do the same with P92. Except this time we'll have the benefit of federation already happening 😉
Now if there's one thing I've learned about the growth of the Fediverse it's that bad corporate decisions pay dividends. We've already experienced waves of migration from Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit. And I have no doubt that it's only a matter of time before Meta makes another corporate mistake -- as they tend to do.
In which case, we need to strike fast. When another Cambridge Analytica happens, we need to remind everyone on Meta about the lobby servers that are on standby, and ready to take them on. Unlike previous migrations, let's not be unprepared for this. Let's be especially prepared since Meta plans to join the Fediverse.
Finally, we need more devs. Specifically, we need devs willing to build innovative server and client software that takes aim at Meta. And to do that, we need to support the devs that currently exist -- show evergreen devs pondering whether they should invest here that we, as a community, are appreciative of our current devs.
If you like #Mastodon, #Calckey, #Kbin, #Friendica, etc., it's important that you open up your hearts as well as your wallets and fund the next stage of Fediverse development.
This will take a lot of work. But if you want to fight Meta, challenge their dominance of social media, this is what must be done.
Personally, I'm hyped about the future of the Fediverse -- regardless of whether Meta eventually lives to tell the tale.
It has become known you are reaching out to members of our community to hold secret meetings (1), thereby roping them into a conspiracy of silence. This is not how we do things. This is an open social media network. If you have something to say, create an account and post it to all of us.
Asking you to stop this divisive tactic, and release everyone from any and all legal covenants pertaining to #P92 and the #Fediverse.
So, open message: if you're from #Meta and you are working on this #P92 service, you should contact the #W3C#SocialCG to work on compatibility with #ActivityPub.
We're excited about your project and we're here to help.
If your instance admin is speaking favorably about #facebook joining the #fediverse, get out now before they start feeding your data to the company partly responsible for overturning several elections (by violating data privacy laws with impunity). The company that demonstrates a clear conservative bias with every act.
Looking for a safer instance? Try this list of spaces with admins of integrity.
Alex Norris made this entry of Webcomic Name that perfectly describes Fedi right now.
Fedi grew out of groups forced out of places like Twitter and Facebook. It is a space built specifically to protect everyone here from the systems that did it.
When we talk about #P92, #Facebook, #Meta, #Bluesky, and newcomers who immediately want changes to make them more like other spaces, this is exactly that in 3 panels.
There is one legitimate reason to have attended the meeting of fediverse admins with Facebook/Meta and that’s if your goal was to leak the contents.
(We’re waiting.)
Personally, I don’t see how I can trust any fediverse admin either stupid enough or malleable enough to sign an NDA with Facebook/Meta.
No one made you sign an NDA with a surveillance capitalist that this space stands in diametric opposition to. You did that to yourselves. Don’t be surprised if there are consequences.
Announcing Free Fediverse, a website resource for all of us fighting to save our communities from absorption into surveillance capitalism!
There are lots of stories, thinkpieces, links and statements flying around and disappearing quickly, and it would be handy to have a place to store and reference them all. Free Fediverse is that place.
Free Fediverse is a wiki-based site linking to resources of the following categories:
Links to and information on the FediPact
Essays on the Meta threat to the Fediverse
Articles on P92 in mainstream media outlets
Announcements from instance admins on joining the pact
Links and information for development projects beyond corporate enclosure
Articles on Meta's many crimes against humanity
Free Fediverse will continue to be updated. Just hit me up to suggest a link for any category. More links to FediPact instance statements are very welcome!
The website has no ads, trackers or analytics. Ferdi the Free Fediverse Froggy sez "hop on over!"
Discussing the threat posed by Meta #P92/#Barcelona joining the #Fediverse with some tech enthusiasts feels more and more like debating #ClimateChange with a denier.
«Look at all the data indicating that this will be a disaster. It has even happened twice already!»
Responses: «It won't happen this time» «It won't be that bad» «It's actually good if that happens» and «we can't do anything about it anyway»
No, Mark Zuckerberg won't meet you in the lobby Chris Trottier.
Recently one of the fediverse's most ardent proponents of collaboration with Meta produced a long thread in which he details his argument for embracing the P92 gambit with open arms. This post is a response.
If you're wondering why he is not tagged or addressed directly in his thread, that's because Chris is want to block anyone who offers up even the most polite of substantive counterpoints. We'll just toodle along over here thanks. The intent is not actually to debate him, but to provide food for thought to those who might have been persuaded by his relentless advocacy to federate.
Trottier seems to believe that ActivityPub possesses extraordinary powers: "ActivityPub means that whatever of Meta’s userbase that’s exposed to federation will diversify into other platforms […] This diversification reduces the dependence of users on a single platform, giving them more choices and potentially drawing them away from Meta."
But he never acknowledges that Meta platforms comprise an algorithmically-governed censorship regime which repress information of many kinds - for example, the #joinpixelfed hashtag, which was banned on Instagram along with the Pixelfed account itself. Why would this entity allow pied pipers of the fediverse to frolic freely on P92 and evangelize escape from its enclosure?
For that matter, why does he think that would work at all? The userbase of Instagram will be prompted to join Threads. That means something of the existing network effect of that longstanding service will be transplanted in; and rest assured, there will be no account migration functionality provided.
In fact, the number of teen-dream travel-snap influencers who will, upon exposure to a single post by Chris Trottier on the magic of W3C protocol development, leap to wrench themselves away from the highly addictive and even financially-incentivized dependency on their established social graph and plunge themselves into the X11-Wayland religious war waged among the beloved catgirls of the fediverse is statistically very close to zero.
There is also an unsettling absence of agency in Chris's characterization of the lost souls of Meta, as if they're just sheep waiting for the good shepherds of decentralization to lead them to greener pastures. Instagram account holders are free to sign up for a fediverse account right now, and many have already done so - and by the way, the reverse flow is also quite possible for anyone here who wishes to connect to friends and family on Meta networks.
To open this "revelatory" "Pandora's Box" (his words) of the ActivityPub Rapture, Trottier proposes, with great bloviation, something called "lobby servers". As he describes: "Lobby servers can bridge communities. They act as intermediaries that connect different social media platforms, including Meta-owned ones, with non-Meta platforms. […] By federating with Meta, lobby servers can pull content from Meta’s network and redistribute it to other federated platforms. This syndication allows users on non-Meta platforms to access and engage with Meta users’ content, thereby exposing them to different perspectives and encouraging cross-platform interactions…"
The flowery language continues on, but he is not actually proposing some novel new technical development. There is nothing described which is not already part and parcel of ActivityPub federation. The "lobby server" is simply a rebrand of "an instance federating with Meta".
This Hotel California doublespeak is indicative of the most problematic aspects of the communications of pro-Meta luminaries. In a ploy more typical of the contemporary reactionary right, the values and intentions of the opposing fediverse opinions on Meta are inverted. Trottier's post begins: "Federation with Meta actually hurts Meta."
He continues, referencing the FediPact community: "… it’s not everyone’s objective to fight Meta, and there should be spaces where fighting Meta isn’t top of mind. Not everyone wants to be part and parcel of a fight, and that’s okay." So, in this new upside-down reality, the anticapitalists trying to save at least part of the fediverse from colonization by one of the most destructive corporations in the world "don't want to fight Meta"; the true revolutionaries are those eager to collaborate with that corporation.
The Orwellian trolling degenerates from there. He claims that turning away from P92 - a single vertical silo which may comprise tens or even hundreds of millions of users - will paradoxically harm decentralization, because all those little servers federated with each other somehow result in "fragmentation" instead. And the anarchists and marginalized communities in the FediPact? They're actually pro-police authoritarians! "To enforce total defederation will require whitelisting, and policing of that whitelist." The term "whitelist" is repeated over and over in this paragraph, which is a subtle dig in the direction of a general and very nasty propensity among pro-Zuck advocates to associate the FediPact with the "HOA" and the absence of diversity.
On the whole, the most visible proponents for Meta collaboration have been big-instance admins who have done neither themselves or their cause any good over the last couple of weeks. Chris Trottier is something of an exception. We have repeatedly noted people explaining that they were on the fence over the Meta issue, until convinced by Trottier's arguments. He may fancy himself as fighting Meta, but by relentlessly arguing in favor of federating with them, he is actually serving as their most useful and effective asset in the fediverse.
#P92 is equal parts scary and exciting. What gives me hope is that while the product is dictated by the deeply untrustworthy #Meta company, it’s being developed by engineers who are amenable to the #OpenSource ethos, as evidenced by React, Docosaurus, RocksDB, PyTorch, LLaMA etc.
If you believe in the #fediverse like I do, you’ll see we have a far more compelling story for fellow techies to come along with. If we make it easy for them to do the right thing, it’s harder for Meta to do wrong.
People who build spaces distanced from Meta.
People & spaces who interface cautiously/casually with various controls.
Frontline people & spaces who go in and entice people out of the corporate silos.
All 3 are necessary, needed and should support each other. Fediverse account flexibility means one can be in several places as needed.
It's what the #Fediverse requires. A spectrum of responses, each important in it's own way.
The more I'm trying to understand the call to block #Meta's #P92#Threads, the less sense I think it makes. Let's see some of the arguments:
"Meta is evil": Yes they are. Don't sign up to their new service. I don't think all of their users are evil though. I still have my facebook account.
"There are privacy concerns". Yes there are - for their users, not ours. For us, as admins of communities that are willingly federated, what are the privacy concerns? Most of the stuff we do is public anyway. We're federated to hundreds/thousands of servers. Do we know who owns each of them, and what they do with whatever data they get from us? If you think there are privacy dangers from federating with servers that you don't know what they do with their data, then we should defederate from everyone we're not 100% sure about - so basically from everyone. Saying that federating with a Meta server is dangerous is like saying that an open federation was a bad idea all along.
"We have to protect our users". From what? I get defederating from nazi servers, and then we are actually protecting users. If Meta doesn't completely screw up moderation, I don't think we can seriously claim that interaction with Meta users in general will be abusive and harmful. If your users don't want any interaction with Meta users, they can block them at user level.
"We have to protect the Fediverse". From what? From being an open space for communication? From not being a walled garden? By pushing people to actually use Meta's platform, if they want to communicate with other Meta users? Do you realize that the biggest obstacle for mass adoption is that most users need social media to communicate with their friends, and if they can't do it from fedi, then they'll stick with Twitter or Meta? And if you don't want "mass adoption", then what are you even doing using an open protocol? Just set up a defederated instance or forum. I use an open protocol because I want users of the platform I provide to be able to communicate with more people on other platforms. I don't have to agree with the other platforms on everything - if we did, we'd just make one platform instead of thousands of different ones. I'll use fediblock to protect users from abuse and harassment, not from communicating with whoever decides to use a "free" platform (and "pay" by viewing ads and giving up their privacy). I think they're getting ripped off, but hey, it's their choice. It's definitely not the same as being a nazi.
"We have to stop Meta's plans". Sorry to break it to you buddy, but you can't do that by blocking them. ActivityPub is an open protocol and they have every right to use it. They will attract users for a number of reasons: They'll have celebrities on board, they have the money to provide a smooth service, and they can provide communication with their already enormous userbase on Facebook and Instagram - and with the fedi servers that will choose to federate with them. If you think that the current active fedi userbase of a few million people worldwide is such a selling point for Meta... it's not. It's not what will convince people to sign up. If someone wants access to the fedi userbase, they can already do that by just signing up on a Mastodon, Calckey etc server.
I'm all for blocking the new platform if it causes actual practical problems for us. But declaring you'll block them anyway because you don't like Meta (I don't like them either)... to be honest, this kinda feels like an admin power trip to me. It could be even perceived as an asshole move to your own users. You're not "protecting" them from Meta. If they want to be protected from Meta, they can just not sign up to Meta. If they don't want any communication with Meta users, they can block them on a user level.
I'll be discouraging anyone from using Meta's services, as I already do. But forbidding fedi users to interact with Meta users is not the same thing.
About Meta on the Fediverse :facebook::geodesic::
I have a lot of concerns about Meta coming soon to the Fediverse.
I fear what this means for the exchange of information that will inevitably happen between us and them.
What it means legally,
what it means technically,
but mostly what it means ethically.
I also fear for the culture we have developed here.
I have deleted my Facebook account 5 years ago and never regretted it. I do not have any other accounts with Meta. For many reasons, I intend to stay away from this unethical corporation as much as I can.
I do not know what my instance intends to do about this, but personally I will block entirely any instance(s) controlled by Meta. I might also lock my account if necessary. This isn't about the people on there, this is very much about the practices of the corporation that controls it.
I sincerely hope their presence will not break the Fediverse :geodesic:
I hope we will stay strong and fight together for the better world we have started to create ✊:heart_cyber:
But I can’t help seeing the arrival of Goliath as a threat to the new world we have built...