Rumors are tearing this place apart out here about secret deals with #Meta. The latest is that Meta has held #NDA meetings with some of you and they will federate with large instances under contracts providing financial support (1) (2).
This is a time for leadership, not silence. Please, what's going on?
Thinking about Hacker News but sprinkled with #activitypub
imagine being able to reply and participate to any #HN post from the #fediverse and with #webmentions have fediverse comments mingled with native HN activity.
I'm becoming more suspicious of Facebook's project to integrate a new service into the fediverse.
It makes absolutely no sense.
An open 'social network protocol' and its implementaions are a threat to multi-billion companies like Facebook who absolutely need to retain tight control over their user base to extract profits.
Once plugged in the danger of their user base 'escaping' through the new connection is large.
But I still can't quite pin down why they are doing it.
@chiefgyk3d So for the opportunity to attract a million or two million people Facebook connects their network of 2 billion people to the ActivityPub network. Seems to me the danger of some of their 2 billion jumping ship far outweighs the opportunity cost.
@chiefgyk3d Sure the average internet user has a certain 'learned helplessness'. But they do, mostly, have the ability to navigate to a URL, choose a username, enter an email address, open their email, click on an activation link, return to URL and start pressing partly familiar, partly new buttons on a slightly different user interface. The idea of tech skills being required to use 'Mastodon' is vastly over-promoted.
@chiefgyk3d I am understanding what you are saying and I disagree. I posted specific steps to opening a typical social network account. I believe the average internet user can achieve these steps. Which step do you not believe they can achieve or do you just believe they can't string 5 simple steps together.
@chiefgyk3d this goes back to the 'learned helplessness' I referenced earlier. It probably also ties in with deliberate confusing statements disseminated to confuse people. I wonder who promoted them sarcasm.
Amazing how people can choose a restaurant from hundreds but some would have you believe choosing a fediverse instance is vastly complicated.
This is more semi-meta, so do what you will with that, but I want to explicitly tie together two conversational threads from yesterday:
I think the structure of Mastodon really amps rumors and misinfo because the mechanisms we use elsewhere to pass around and find corrections (visible replies, quote-posts, search) don't work here.
Instance admin politics are rarely discussed in a public, easily re-findable place—that, too, fuels the rumor-mill, as we saw re: Meta meeting discussions.
I've seen the exact opposite view promoted within the fediverse for the past 5 years: that its design is anti-viral, that it does not provide a good space for the dissemination of disinfo, and from my own partial view of the fediverse I would agree that it does not appear to do so.
The fediverse of the past 6 months is much bigger so it is possible it has changed.
[Facebook NDAs are a recipe for rumour; fedizens have a right to speculate about what may be happening.]
The influx into the lemmyverse has been impressive.
A caveat is that if you look at the sidebar on fedidb.org and click through on some of the instances that are reporting the biggest gains in the past few days some of them are clearly one person instances misreporting that they have thousands of users.
I can't say whether Facebook joining the fediverse (ditto Google, which won't want to miss this opportunity) will kill or absorb the fediverse, though it's obviously and rationally something to worry about.
But preemptively blocking them -- and the people already using them -- from your instance guarantees less relevance for the fediverse.
It also guarantees, if my instance joins such a boycott, that I'll find a new instance.
@dangillmor pretty sure big tech have destroyed the promise that the web held out turning it into a surveillance capitalist's dream. Blocking Facebook, Google and Twitter in the fediverse is a good thing.
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".
Have you considered WHY Meta is having Fediverse admins sign an NDA?
How much do you want to bet it's because they're going to pay them to federate, and in the case of Eugen and Dansup to add features to the software that benefit them? Life-changing money for Eugen and Dansup is pocket change for Meta. The only way we can counter that is through solidarity.
@freakazoid one solution to the 'big instance' problem might be if the anti-bigtech people of the fediverse organise to start a large instance that would be much more consistent with an anti-big tech fediverse. Because after all if the dot socials and universeodons get to attract the most new people to the fedi it inevitably pollutes the environment(even if they are silenced/defederated). Of course it is a big project and will take some organising....