So, my instance admin (#stux) thinks #Meta is good, by default, and will need evidence that their behavior in the #Fediverse is negative.
This is deliberately ignoring the history of #Meta, #Facebook, and #MarkZuckerberg, which is a trait I've seen too often in my life, and especially since 2015, in white men, especially, other white people, and their sycophants.
#Meta, by default, is horrible. How they behave in the Fediverse, if they connect, remains to be judged.
@ricardoharvin@jsm I mean not many social networks can boast of having DELIBERATELY pushed its users into depression and suicidal ideation "for the algo",
being "genocide enablers" and "mob propogators" worldwide CONSISTENTLY,
or managed to host political misinformation in EVERY language online,
sans ANY meaningful moderation.
There are PEOPLE HERE ON THE FEDI WHO HAVE LOST LOVED ONES TO META'S POLICIES!
During cold-war (and still very much existing today) there was a direct hotline between Washington and Moscow.
Everyone understands that the existence of this line is absolutely crucial. Nobody would call you a traitor for talking to Moscow. Actually people would call you absolutely crazy if you were to cut that line. Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.
Everyone also understand that every conversation over that line is TOP SECRET and probably strongly encrypted.
Actually I cannot think of a single reason, a single context, a single universe where "never talk to your enemy" is a good idea. It’s a terrible advice in 100% of the cases.
But somehow, talking with meta is bad, signing a NDA is bad and it’s somehow reason enough to move your account from some instances, publicly-shame some admins and defederate from them????
Can someone explain the reasoning like I’m five? Do you want to let meta do everything they want without speaking your mind to them?
Anyone surprised that it's the bunch of men we'd all suspect who are selling out the #Fediverse ? It really is time to de-platform these bourgey "fediverse evangelist" jerks. #Meta#DefederateMeta#Mastodon#p92
jan lawa pi kulupu ni li toki e ni:
kulupu Meta li ike.
ona li lanpan e sona jan pi pana ala.
ona li pali ike tawa jan mute.
ale ni la, kulupu Meta li wile kama tawa kulupu Petewesi la, mi toki e ni:
mi weka e ilo Project92 e ilo ale pi kulupu Meta. kulupu toki.social li toki ala tawa ona.
People have gone full panic mode about #P92 and you shouldn’t. Fediverse is a protocol, not a town. You can block their servers at an individual level and at a server level if your admins so choose. It would be like saying “fastmail is ruined because Facebook is launching an email service”.
“Well Meta is going to steal my data.” They can already access your data. Posts here are not secret behind auth. They can see who you follow and who follows you. Which all presupposes they care about that information which seems like a stretch.
I’m convinced the Meta play into the #Fediverse is a regulatory play. If users are not required to use Meta to access content on their servers, it’s harder to make an argument they should be broken up. “It’s an open protocol where companies compete with us without any interference.”
The DAU for the entire Fediverse is not at a level where someone like Meta is going to care about your small bespoke server. If Meta has an open platform that it still dominates on and users don’t migrate from, it’s useful to point to when combating regulation and legislation.
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.
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.
Questa è per il Fediverso italiano: avete già chiesto ai vostri amministratori come pensano di gestire #P92/#Barcelona/#Threads di Meta quando sarà disponibile?
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»
I feel like a lot of people extremely over-value the effectiveness of the federated part of mastodon in terms of its (relative) success. I think the distributed aspect currently offers little more than a promise and a unique selling point, and success is mostly related to network effects of the mastodon brand, rather than anything at all to do with the structure or design of the platform.
@dotstdy This is actually one of reasons why I'm extremely skeptical of Meta's #P92/#Barcelona/#Threads —there is still a fragility to the network that makes it easy to “attack by centralization”, which is (in part) what happened to email (self-hosting email has been made extremely hard, under the pretense of spam protection). Easier self-hosting and nomadic identities (and wariness against corporate interests) are needed to avoid the trap.
Great reflections by @oblomov on #meta entering the #fediverse . I'm not sure if I support a #fediblockmeta altogether, but I still think the analysis works great.
Oblomov's overall assumption is that Meta will make a fedi platform only to "embrace, extend and extinguish". That is:
"when (not if, but when) it will defederate, it'll push a lot of people to move from the Fediverse to #P92 to remain in contact with the people there."
Almost like a platform made to fail just to gain more users.
One central quote to me, however, is this: "But interaction with users from other platforms does not raise awareness of the existence of these other platforms, as we see with Mastodon even now: a lot of people interact with users on other platforms and remain blissfully unaware, because Mastodon hides this information, both by hiding the platform of origin and by crippling content that isn't just short notes with no formatting."
I think this really hits the nail: The principle of the fediverse's philosophy is not just federation/interoperability. It also needs to design for #fediawareness / #fedivisibility , and it should always require freedom of #migration between platforms.
Tech Press don’t understand the #Fediverse, so how can they understand its growth?
To hear them talk, most of them believe that #Mastodon and the Fediverse are one and the the same. Some of them go so far as to call the Fediverse the “Mastodon network”.
Which means that they don’t have a clue about what the Fediverse entails, nor how it has grown.
Case in point: between Jan-May 2023, #Misskey and its forks grew by 300,000 accounts. No one in the Tech Press reported this.
Okay, perhaps they didn’t know because the bulk of growth happened in Japan. But still, this is fairly important to know since Misskey is now responsible for generating the bulk of Fediverse content. Even so, Tech Press think the Fediverse is about Mastodon.
And now, #Lemmy and #Kbin are experiencing lots of growth, with both collectively gaining 100,000 users in a week. This is quite a noteworthy event since the #RedditMigration is part and parcel of dissension on #Reddit – a pretty major Big Social platform.
Does the Tech Media report on this? Nope. But again, that’s because they don’t understand the Fediverse nor what it entails.
Then Meta signal that a new project they’re making, #P92 (a.k.a., #Barcelona), will be joining the Fediverse. There’s even screenshots that show this app interacting with remote Fediverse servers.
But instead of reporting about how this will affect the existing Fediverse, press such as the #BBC say this is an altogether different social network than Mastodon.
That’s right! Tech Press don’t even realize P92 will be joining the Fediverse – a social network that already exists!
Is this all ridiculous? Yes.
But this is why we have to be forthright about what the Fediverse is, what it entails, and why it all matters.
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...
»What a world we live in!!! Facebook (Meta) has no trust among any user group, but it still seems like a better alternative to the alt-right s**thole that Twitter's becoming.
People who blamed Zuckerberg (imo, a bit unfairly) for the 2016 elections will look to his platform as an alternative to Musk's.«
You owe it to yourself to read @christianselig’s account on how #Reddit forced the #ApolloApp out of business. It’s a well-documented retelling of events (he has audio recordings), and the Reddit crew comes out of it looking like scummy lowlifes, which I believe is close to the truth.
It’s not a stretch to say that Reddit is powered by unpaid volunteers. As far as I can tell, the company pays none of the tens of thousands of subreddit moderators and millions of content creators who make the site worth visiting. To turn around and ruin the business model of one of the most loved volunteer-built clients is a slap in the face of the community that built the site.
I’ve been on Reddit for 13 years, but I’ve been using the site less and less over time, and this is probably the thing that will push me over the edge. I don’t think I’ll visit again after June 30. Hope that IPO goes well.
@drahardja@christianselig Unfortunately, there is not a viable alternative to #Reddit just now. #Lemmy is pretty sparsely populated. I imagine Meta will be watching closely. They already have their answer to Twitter in the works with #P92 that will connect to ActivityPub. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them wade into the discussion forum arena, also using ActivityPub. That would provide the fastest development time.
"Meta is talking to celebrities like Oprah and the Dalai Lama about being early users. ‘We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run,’ a top exec told employees."
This is how you do marketing, #Fediverse take notice. We need to get our act together, otherwise Meta will be the default marketing department for the Fediverse, and that would be ... suboptimal.
OK last one on #P92 and #Barcelona: yes it's true, it doesn't matter what I say. It won't be treated like Gab, it'll find lots of friendly instances willing to federate, especially among the larger ones (mastodon.social anyone?)
I guess the only thing left to do is save my previous threads for future reference when I'll get the opportunity to spam #toldYouSo in a couple years' time.
Point blank, a mass Fediblock isn't going to work with #Meta.
The cold truth is that people will use #Barcelona whether it federates or not. Even if it fails, Barcelona will probably have more users out of the gate than almost every project save Mastodon. Hell, it will probably eclipse #Bluesky too.
And even if you convince every server to defederate -- which you won't -- this will not be a PR coup for the Fediverse. Newspaper headlines won't blare "Fediverse successfully resists Meta." Instead, they will probably follow @gruber take with "Open source zealots complain that an open protocol is open."
Again, as I've said countless times, I'm not saying you should federate with Barcelona or any Meta-owned property. If you want, defederate. The joy of the Fediverse is freedom of association.
But a mass Fediblock doesn't solve a few important problems with Meta, and perhaps makes them worse.
The most critical problem is that Meta users need to migrate away from Meta-owned social networks. Until now, a migration path has simply been unfeasible to most. But when Barcelona gets launched, it is possible that many of them will become aware of a greater Fediverse.
How to build that awareness? By interacting with them through services beyond Barcelona.
This approach works. I've interacted with many Mastodon users through services beyond Mastodon, and this has resulted in adoption of other Fediverse software. #Calckey is a case in point.
However, there's a bigger problem concerning Meta: Fediverse replacements for Meta-owned social networks aren't getting mass adoption. And it's not because these apps aren't good.
#Pixelfed is an #Instagram replacement. It is also one of the slickest apps on the Fediverse. Yet, Pixelfed only has 150,000 registered accounts.
#Friendica is a #Facebook replacement. It's been around since 2010. It is a mature product that does many things very well, but Friendica only has 17,000 registered accounts.
The software is great but we are failing to effectively market the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Now I'm trying my darnedest to change this, and so are many people. But facts are facts. Fediverse alternatives to Meta are a blip on the radar.
Refusing to federate with Barcelona won't change this. How do I know?
Because we don't federate now, and the status quo remains intact.
Meanwhile, Meta is practically gifting Pixelfed and Friendica an opportunity for federation, and it would be foolish to not consider broader implications.
How is it that more people aren't considering this opportunity?
Dare I say that most people -- including devs -- suffer from myopia concerning what the Fediverse is. The Fediverse is not Mastodon, and it is wrong to view the Fediverse solely through the eyes of Mastodon.
And I'll go further: by focusing Barcelona on text, I suspect that Meta is likewise making the same mistake of viewing the Fediverse as a "Twitter killer".
What they may not be considering is that the Fediverse might be a "Meta killer" too. And connecting Barcelona to the Fediverse is opening a can of worms Meta hasn't entirely considered yet.
If Barcelona is indeed text-based, what will happen when a Barcelona user encounters Pixelfed and asks, "Why does this post show reels? And why can't I do the same?"
Believe me, this is the kind of content that triggers migration.
We need to think bigger than Fediblock. Yes, for your own mental health and safety, you may not want to federate with Barcelona. However, there needs to also be a means for Barcelona users to encounter content outside Barcelona.
Perhaps there needs to be "lobby" servers that help Barcelona users enter the greater Fediverse -- helping them make the switch beyond Meta.
@atomicpoet oh boy I have an enormous list of counterpoints. Hope you don't mind this getting split over multiple messages, I'm on Mastodon. So, anyway:
the point of blocking #P92 isn't to make it fail, it's to prevent its usage as an #EEE torpedo against the #Fediverse
Newspaper headlines will not speak positively of the #Fediverse either way. In fact, if it's let in, there's a high chance of it eating all the mindspace, because that's the objective:
Look, it's not that I don't get the enthusiasm about #P92/#Barcelona —that's not the reason why I warn against federating with it <https://sociale.network/@oblomov/110397020867065165>. I do get it. There is something elating, validating, empowering even, when some{one,thing} Big & Famous (seems to) adopts “underdog” tech. I know because I've been there, both as a user and as a developer. But because of that, and for having been burned already not once, not twice, but three times at least, I know what to look out for.
until every person with a following on Mastodon will sport such a link proudly on their website (and there's still a lot that don't), the #Fediverse simply doesn't have the kind of mindspace that would allow it to resist the #P92 torbedo.
So let's stay away from it. If you really do care about the good people you know on FB, IG and WhatsApp, tell them to come to the #Fediverse now.
This seems very important and worth ongoing study:
“Once again, results suggest a rise in diversity as the 10 biggest server contribution to the Fediverse is reduced by more than 10%. So, even if the biggest servers are accumulating more users, it seems that the Fediverse is becoming more decentralized.”
@tchambers Agreed that we don't know what if anything actually #Meta's going to do with #P92 (@J12t makes some great points) but it will be #SurveillanceCapitalism because that's who they are. And if the biggest instance in #Fediverse is a surveillance capitalism site, then the fediverse will likely (and justifiably) be seen as a surveillance capitalism network.