It’s kinda sucky we are getting all the #Meta#Facebook#P92 details in tidbits. I was “fuck them” before all the details. I am “fuck them and the horse they rode in” after hearing some of these details, conditions and even legal shit. Fuck. Them.
Last boost, WAY too many people seem to be freaking out about Meta's move, in a way that seems counter to why I like the Fedisphere.
Even if it was a Microsoft style, Embrace, Expand, Exterminate tactic, that would involve US moving to their servers, which... sorry ain’t happening.
Yes, we should look at what Meta is doing skeptically, but we should let them do it because damn it, if they implement correctly, it would also mean moving OUT of their environment is easier.
Open Data is a two way street, in AND out of a system.
what is protecting those users from the numerous unknown instances that are already here from doing whatever it is Meta is going to do?
Batshit. Insane. Gobs. Of. Wealth.
Facebook is scale at scales the mind simply boggles at.
3 billion monthly average users (MAU).
5 billion items posted per day. That's about 60,000 per second.
A market capitalisation (after a couple of bad years, I'll add), of three quarters of a trillion dollars.
Compared to its home state of California, that's a wealth of $19,000 per person in the state which Facebook can leverage to do its bidding. Facebook bought WhatsApp, then making a loss on $10m in sales, for $19 billion, largely cash. Keep in mind that the typical US household would struggle to meet an unexpected $400 expense. Facebook's price was more than $400 per resident of California, which is to say, Facebook's buying power is comparable to that of the wealthiest state in the United States.
Yes, there are threats that small instances may pose to the Fediverse. Yes, there are privacy and surveillance issues I've long been aware of and have warned against, as have others (see @alex particularly, who ... has greater pedigree than I do in this space). But those instances don't have access to Facebook's resources, combined with Facebook's nearly-twenty-year record of abusing its dumb fucks, excuse me, users, and violating condition after condition after condition regulators have imposed upon it.
@daringfireball@gruber Also: NO profiling of accounts that are followed by - and thus downloaded to - those #P92 instances!
My information is mine to spread on the #fediverse - but NOT to be used to create a profile of me for use by companies who wish to push ads against them or unleash so-called-AI against them to create a profile of me!
I’m seeing bits and pieces of rants by various server admins in the Fediverse that are upset at the idea of big companies building ActivityPub compatible services.
This is really weird to me given many of us have been advocating for social network interop from the OpenSocial days but that got distracted by widgets/gadgets.
This comes across more like gate keeping in the same way nerds don’t want their favorite bands or hobbies to go mainstream.
@carnage4life Yep, this is just one of many assumptions being made. The whole "#P92 will provide an on-ramp to the broader fediverse because people will see that there are better alternatives" is ... ummmm ... optimistic! And also the notion that Meta needs the fediverse to build network effects for a Twitter competitor 🤣🤣🤣 But it's stated confidently so people fall for it.
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.
"I believe ActivityPub will ultimately be Meta's own undoing."
I believe that also. But that undoing will not come tomorrow, next week or in two years time with a bang 💥 It´s a process which needs persistence and patience. A little confidence and faith won´t hurt also.
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.
#Meta thinks that their chances to win some by joining the #fediverse are higher than by not joining. And many people in the fediverse think so too.
Can you imagine a different outcome? That Meta could lose by joining the fediverse because the users like it that much that they switch to other instances because they are ad free, more welcoming and better moderated? They could still follow their favorite creators on #Barcelona#P92 but have a better experience. We could help them with switching away from Meta. I like that idea.
I don't really think I see why everyone is so up in arms about #meta starting up an activity based server and joining the fediverse.
Other than being owned/controlled by a corporation rather than she rando, how is their server going to be any different?
It's not like they can just take everything over. If you don't want to federate, you, or your instance admins, have the power to block. So why is this such a big ordeal?
@finner There was a long-standing false trope about free software development that conflated the potential for anybody to contribute to the code with anybody can contribute to a codebase.
The licence permits redistribution, modification, and by extension, forking. The project administrator however exercises control over what goes into their branch of the project. As Linus Torvalds has often said, his main job (for a few decades now) has been to say "No". As in "no, that patch is not entering the kernel*.
This gets more complicated when a single large entity can control and direct both development and specification. The capacity to empty dumpsters full of cash on developers to do what you tell them to do ... is an effective mechanism for control over a project, and if you happen to own a money-minting machine (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, IBM), then you're going to have an outsized influence on development. Indeed we've seen Linux affected in this way to an extent, Chrome (and with it the HTML/CSS/JS specs) immensely by Google, and various communications protocols by numerous entities (chat, email, voice, social media, video).
In the case of ActivityPub and the Fediverse, I see two main concerns:
FB swamping the cultural dynamic and information flows. Even conservatively FB are at least 1,000x larger than the present Fediverse, and I suspect that's an underestimation.
FB hijacking aspects of the protocol and clients themselves. There are plenty of extant examples of this, and it might be possible even without malicious intent. Mastodon has (/me checks Github...) 830 contributors, and I'd suspect that a power-law distribution holds, with a small fraction of those dominating. FB have > 58k employees, and even if only 10% of that is engineering, that's approaching 10x Mastodon's development team. Keep in mind that non-engineer contributors can also provide useful roles (PMs, QA, etc., etc.)
The fact that both the comms protocol and the development licence are open in no way whatsover compels other Fediverse instances, or the Mastodon project itself, to accept traffic or code from FB. And the harms which might come from doing so, based on historical precedent, are huge.
I've seen a lot of takes on #Meta and defederation, but I've only seen them in context of whether microblogging servers (masto et al) should federate or not. I've not seen any real discussion yet on the interaction between #Lemmy/#Kbin and #Threads.
Even though, I think this is where one of the real strength of the fediverse is: the ability to interact not only cross server, but also cross platform.
Mein Statement zum Thema #P92 und #Meta als Betreiber von tyrol.social:
Es gibt zurzeit ein #FediPact (fedipact.online), womit man sich als Instanz-Betreiber darauf einigt, zukünftige Instanzen von #Meta (Facebook) zu blockieren. Ich habe mir diesbezüglich Gedanken gemacht und bin zum jetzigen Entschluss gekommen, dass wir dem Abkommen erstmal nicht entgegenkommen und unterschreiben werden.
Ich werde mir die Lage zu dieser Thematik nach und nach anschauen und mitverfolgen und erst dann einen finalen Entschluss daraus ziehen.
Mir ist wichtig was ihr als Community von tyrol.social davon haltet und wir zusammen eine geeignete Lösung finden! :blobheart:
It's not a regular option on clients like #Mastodon but optional direct only messaging to followed only accounts and forcing confirm follows at the instance level may be something to consider in the future
This would allow users to interact with selected #P92 accounts in a silo of sorts
#Meta is awful let's not sugar coat that. But hamfistedly keeping users from their real life contacts is a recipe for stunted non-corporate #fediverse / #ActivityPub acceptance
Remember when Meta literally broke the internet due to a BGP misconfiguration? And we all had a good laugh, and they were losing hundreds of millions of dollars every hour?
Anywho they don't need to run a server to get our data. That's all I'll say about that, for now.
@tchambers That's a great thought...but in reality what if #P92 (ps: not P95) starts inserting ads in the text of people's posts...that then appear in everyone else's TL's if you boost or reply?
Meta is not gonna buy Mastodon or any server, this is based on absolutely nothing and untrue.
Yes, some of us indeed got contacted by Meta/Insta because they are working on a new social platform (this was in the news) and they are looking into joining the Fediverse (Mark Zuckerberg also told this in the recent podcast)
SO.
This contact was about a "heads-up" for a potential big platform to join the network and not for a "take over".
Of course, even if your admins have not signed, they may still be on the “preemptive block” camp, so do enquire with them to know —and consider moving to an instance that will block if yours won't. Especially if yours is a big one and you're moving to (or setting up) a smaller one, this is actually good for the health of the Fediverse regardless of how things go with #P92 anyway.
TL;DR: the damage that will come to the #Fediverse when large #waitAndSee instances defederate from #P92 will be immensely worse than the one that works come from #preemptiveDefederation. And the damage that will come to it if they refuse to defederate even after the shit starts flying will be even greater.
#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.
@simon_brooke that’s right, we still sorely lack good conventions and tools for coordination on the fediverse.
But we muddle through by finding consensus in shared stories. What’s great about this network of ours is that it works somewhat similarly to a multi-state nation, wherein individual states can try out a new policy without nation-wide approval. If the state demonstrates positive outcomes, other states will follow.
Careful federation with #P92 will be done first by individual servers.
Meta's Twitter Alternative Will Probably Be Called 'Threads' (uk.pcmag.com)
Meta wants to make it easy for billions of Instagram users to sign up for Threads on launch day....