Given the timeline for the release of #threads, it's painfully obvious that #p92 was not in good faith. What kind of changes based on admin feedback could possibly have happened between then and now?
Threads, le nom définitif pour le projet #P92 de #Meta pour venir s'incruster dans le #Fediverse en proposant un service compatible #ActivityPub, est une telle purge en terme de respect de la vie privée qu'il est d'ores et déjà interdit en Europe deux jours avant son lancement précipité.
The most important point about #Threads (which nobody else seems to be making) is that a number of advocacy groups, news organisations, and other professional bodies have Instagram accounts, but no presence within the Fediverse.
If Threads brings BBC News, CNN, Sky News, and their reporters to engage with us here, this can only be a good thing.
Even Twitter had its multitude of influencers, trolls, and posers... They're easy to avoid.
And away we go… Note how the Verge already wants to be an influencer for big tech. Nobody gives a single fuck about the future of social media, journalism or democracy. We’re all in bed with selfish infants and they’re all going to shit the bed at one time. While we’re still in it.
Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads, launches on July 6th - The Verge
@shoq this might be why they made that biased podcast ep where they labeled everyone on Fedi who opposed #P92 as a sexist who did not want women on here
@DocCarms I'm keeping an eye on them using the #threads hashtag. Pretty sure the Fediverse will be reacting strongly once the Instagram people start straggling in.
The #P92 and #Barcelona hashtags aren't as useful. The first is too sparse and the latter gets you a lot of posts about Spain 😁
Fuck #Threads and fuck threads – this way of publishing content online isn't just a consequence of characters limits, which aim at preventing the people they're abusing from conceptualizing what's happening to them by restricting their speech, they're also a dispositive of power in themselves, because you really need a solid thread structure before a long, painful publishing process – because they're really just paragraphs that you can't edit and between which you can't insert new contents, being published as you're writing them.
“Threads” as a publishing method should be a shame in itself. I'm fine with journalists using them but you should be aware that (1) they're white collar workers, they have a high cultural capital, and (2) social media are meant to be attractive to white collar workers to get a legitimacy they don't deserve. According to Hybels, 1995, legitimacy is the relationship we have with institutions, as stable aspects of our societies. If institutions stop being perceived as legitimate, they cease to exist. I believe pieces of software are institutions, they're dependant on legitimacy and thus on high profile public figures, media, etc.
This name is arguably the first mortification rite users will face when they'll enter the institution – rites that are meant to remove your self and basically to make you obedient. These introduce you to total institutions, communities whose inmates are isolated from a differentiated society (Goffman, 1965). There are total institutions on social media, whose users are exploited, through their addiction, into publishing lots of contents (in the hope of getting their dopamine) and also into consuming lots of contents (to find low quality inspiration). Mortification rites encourage their users to “follow people” and thus to consume these contents, and then (that's the onboarding process on Twitter) to write their first message and to “interact” with other users. Welcome to the institution!
(There are total institutions on Mastodon too, because it's addictive. Making it addictive makes it used by people even if it doesn't actually fit to their use cases, so it builds nice curves and helps to get attention from mainstream media. Twitter has always been a crappy publishing platform (being bootlegged was part of their branding) so it had to basically be super harmful. This is also why Twitter users will tell you to use software that doesn't fit to your use cases, such as Archlinux, even if you're an illustrator, I guess…)
Goffman, Erving, 1961: “Asylums: Essays on the Condition of the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates”
Hybels, Ralph, 1995: “On legitimacy, legitimation, and organization: a critical review and integrative theoretical model. URL: https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/AMBPP.1995.17536509
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!"
Seems that users of the #Facebook / #Meta#P92 project will use threads.net as their domain name. So @UserName This can (and I guess will) change over time, but if you want to preemptively block traffic from Meta, adding threads.net to your instances blocklist seems to be a no-brainer.
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.
I'm very excited to see what happens to #BlueSky (and the apparent presumption that it'll immediately replace #Twitter when it leaves invite-only beta) once Meta's Twitter rival, #Threads, finally launches worldwide.
BlueSky currently has around 100k users and 2m on the waitlist—but Threads will receive the full weight of #Instagram's promotion to >1.2bn monthly active users.
On paper at least, pretty much theirs for the taking if they play it right.
After seeing here earlier that #P92 / #Threads had soft launched in some markets on Google Play, I to check on data.ai, the app release rankings platform, where. It couldn't tell me where it was live (nowhere now?), but, weirdly, it did tell me Threads had been registered as an upcoming app back in 2019(!).
Good news: I'm seeing several of my fave peeps from the MusKKKyBird site transferring over to the Fediverse. Good. Time to stiff-arm MusKKKrat straight to China.
Bad news, though: They are all signing up on mastodon.social, which I can't access due to the #FediBlockMeta and #P92 controversies. Ugh.
Hey @jerry, just checking, you aren't working off any unencrypted backups of the site dB and actively protesting the feds in some wierd way that they raided you and put all on this server at risk, meanwhile withholding that breach event info for months before notifying everyone to take precautions with their accounts on the server, are you? #hypothetical#askingforafriend
@victor No one should enable this. It's likely connected to #Facebook / #P92 at worst, and even taking a less conspiratorial angle, "monetizing users" is not a good lens to view community through...
Also I wish this feature had a transparency flag that warned if it was in use so people could make better decisions. Something like "this instance/server has chosen to exploit your interactions with it for profit."
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.
This is an excellent theory from @J12t of what's driving Meta's #P92 ActivityPub adoption:
"...the EU’s Digital Services Act is the most likely reason why Meta is implementing ActivityPub in its upcoming Twitter competitor 'P92', and that ActivityPub is really the only game in town that meets Meta’s requirements for interop for 'P92'"
If that's the case, ActivityPub purists better be prepared for a mud-fight with the W3C about standards.
...But some who do use Meta's "Threads" to take tentative steps into the Fediverse, will begin to realise that there are alternatives they could migrate to.
This won't happen if many existing instances choose to block #P92 from the get-go.
There's a danger of being flooded with Facebook-esque spam and hateful posts from nutjobs (due to poor moderation) but that danger could arise from any corner of the Fediverse.
I'm just not a fan of knee-jerk reactions, I suppose.
It is an existential threat to the very core of Meta’s social media monopoly. Surprisingly, if the goal is to fight against Meta’s hegemony, the most effective strategy may be to federate with them.
“But Chris,” some of you might state, “Even you agree that it might be better to defederate Meta – and you’ve even set up notmeta.social for expressly this purpose.”
Yes, because 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.
Let’s first acknowledge the technology through which federation happens. #ActivityPub is an open standard protocol that enables the decentralized social networking that powers the Fediverse. It allows different social media platforms (#Mastodon, #Calckey, #Kbin, etc.) to interoperate, meaning that users on one platform can communicate with users on another platform. Federation is the process by which these platforms connect and share content, forming a decentralized network.
The most important thing to understand about ActivityPub is that, more than a technology to merely send and receive messages, it’s also a common ruleset – a gentleman’s agreement that everyone will play nice when sending and receiving messages.
Now when Meta opts to use ActivityPub, they’re abiding by the agreement: to play by the same rules as everybody else. Should they renege on this agreement, they are no longer using ActivityPub. They’re using something else.
But let’s assume for a moment that Meta is abiding to use ActivityPub, and they indeed will play by the same rules. Knowing Meta, this is a tall order – but still, let’s assume.
ActivityPub means that whatever of Meta’s userbase that’s exposed to federation will diversify into other platforms. This is because, through ActivityPub, smaller platforms can connect with each other and offer a combined user base that competes with Meta’s centralized network. This diversification reduces the dependence of users on a single platform, giving them more choices and potentially drawing them away from Meta.
This creates an erosion of Meta’s network effects. Meta’s entire monopoly is based on ownership of their platforms’ network effects, where the value of the platform increases as more users join. Suddenly, by federating, Meta no longer own the network effect. This is because federation challenges this by breaking down barriers between platforms, allowing users to interact regardless of the platform they are on. This reduces the exclusivity and advantage Meta holds, as the network effects become distributed across multiple interconnected platforms.
Federation also gives Meta’s users power that they never previously had. Federation promotes decentralization by giving users greater control over their data and interactions. With ActivityPub, users have the freedom to choose which platform they prefer without sacrificing connectivity. This user empowerment threatens Meta’s control over user data and engagement, potentially leading to a loss of influence and advertising revenue.
ActivityPub poses a tangible threat to Meta’s monopoly on social media. By choosing to federate, Meta might be opening Pandora’s box. The moment Meta’s users receive a message from a server not owned by Meta is the moment they’re exposed to something else beyond Meta’s control. Inevitably, this will create more diversity of ActivityPub-enabled platforms – not less. This will erode Meta’s network effects. For people who use Meta, the power of decentralization – giving them more freedom – will prove revelatory.
Of course, this is a fight. And just because Meta federates doesn’t mean it’s game over. In the next post, I will explore what Meta is hoping to gain by joining the #Fediverse.
Obviously, #Meta has something to gain by federating through #ActivityPub. If they saw no benefit in joining the #Fediverse, they wouldn’t do it. So let’s explore what they might hope to achieve.
Meta might be hoping to re-enforce their dominance. This is obvious when you look at their immediate objective: to kill Twitter. Federating with other platforms actually strengthens their ability to do this because Twitter is unlikely to federate. And what’s more, Twitter closed off their API access. When Meta rolls out #P92 (a.k.a., #Threads), they’ll have a platform that’s much more adaptable and extensible than Twitter’s. This could lead to both devs and users abandoning Twitter in favour of Meta’s Twitter competitor.
Another assumption Meta might have is that their immense user base, combined with federated connections, would give it even more control over the decentralized network. They might hope that this user base will prove to result in Threads becoming the central hub of the Fediverse, allowing them to exert significant influence and dictate the terms of interoperability, potentially stifling competition and innovation.
This is a big gamble. So why might Meta want to make this gamble anyway?
Federation could serve as a strategic move by Meta to address antitrust concerns. By appearing open to interoperability, Meta could argue that it is fostering competition and avoiding a complete defederation scenario. This approach may allow Meta to maintain its dominance while alleviating regulatory pressures.
But the biggest thing Meta might hope to achieve is fragmentation and consolidation of the Fediverse. If Meta establishes its dominance within the federation, it may exert control and influence in a way that undermines the original vision of a decentralized and open network. This consolidation of power could hinder the potential benefits of federation, such as increased user choice and data control.
On this last point, defederation might prove to help Meta rather than hinder it since defederation creates the conditions for more fragmentation.
Defederation within the Fediverse leads to fragmentation, inadvertently creating conditions that contribute to Meta’s dominance in the social media landscape. As platforms disconnect and sever their connections, the loss of interoperability and weakened network effects diminish the overall appeal and competitive strength of the Fediverse.
This fragmentation allows Meta, with its vast user base and resources, to emerge as a central hub of connectivity, attracting users seeking a more cohesive experience. The limitations in content distribution and discoverability further solidify Meta’s dominance, as it leverages its centralized network to offer a comprehensive and accessible content experience. Efforts to maintain a connected and cohesive federated network are essential to safeguard the principles of decentralization and prevent fragmentation from undermining the potential of the Fediverse as a viable alternative to Meta’s dominance.
The more the Fediverse fragments, the more Meta is likely to dominate it and consolidate its power.
However, as much as some people might want complete defederation of Meta – demanding not just defederation of Meta, but also defederation of all servers that federate with Meta – I believe that’s a losing battle. To a degree, there might be fragmentation of the Fediverse. But it’s unlikely we will see a multitude of competing Fediverses that are all powered by ActivityPub.
To enforce total defederation will require whitelisting, and policing of that whitelist. Who will decide which server is on that whitelist? It would need to be a central entity. And the moment you have a central entity deciding who is on the whitelist is the moment that version of the Fediverse centralizes.
This defeats the purpose of the Fediverse – which is decentralization.
So what can be done to actually deal with Meta’s threat? I have some ideas on how to use federation to fight Meta.
Are you proposing a whitelist approach or defederate with anything that remotely resembles a bot mob from #Meta (#P92)? It can make #Fediverse look like digging its own hole in defencelessness, to be frank. Isn't this supposed to be an opposite that we do: absorb the #SocialMedia and let people choose what they really want in their feed?