A clear victory for the free fediverse: Meta now says integrating with ActivityPub is "a long way out"

When Meta launched their new Twitter competitor Threads on July 5, they said that it would be compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon, and all the other decentralized social networks in the fediverse "soon".

But on July 14, @alexeheath of the Verge reported that Meta's saying ActivityPub integration's "a long way out". Hey wait a second. Make up your mind already!

From the perspective of the "free fediverse" that's not welcoming Meta, the new positioning that ActivityPub integration is "a long way out" is encouraging. OK, it's not as good as "when hell freezes over," but it's a heckuva lot better than "soon." In fact, I'd go so far as to say "a long way out" is a clear victory for the free fediverse's cause.

nekat_emanresu,

I’ll stop fighting when Meta no longer exists.

outdated_belated, (edited )

I’ll stop when capitalism and governments no longer exist.

(By government, I mean the institution of a group of rulers and attendant enforcement, used to compel others to do what they would otherwise not).

WarmSoda,

Governments will always exist. Sorry to burst that bubble. They always have and they always will.

outdated_belated,

Source?

WarmSoda,

Human history. The oldest history of humanity we have is the Sumerians. From that time on every large group of people formed a government. Babylon. Arkadian. Egyptian. Greek.

Other forms of government are tribes. Hunters. Gatherers. Those are tribes.

Show us people that didn’t have a form of government and we’ll be impressed.

outdated_belated,

I see, if you define government as “any collection of humans,” than yes, it’s always been extant.

What I meant, however, was a group of rulers that use force to compel others to do what they would otherwise not.

Written history is also a blip terms of the duration of the history of humanity, too. Something like 1%. We can access some of the rest via anthropology.

WarmSoda,

Yes. Those types of people have always been around. Have you never read history before? You can aCkuALY all you want to, I don’t care. I’d rather you left that shit attitude at reddit, though.

outdated_belated,

Ah, that’s just the point - the types of people have been around for awhile, but the institutions supporting them — backing militias, basically — have not.

WarmSoda,

I can’t continue with this conversation simply because of how ignorant you are. I’m not here to argue with you over the dumb things you feel are gotcha points. You are not as clever as you think you are.

EremesZorn,

You’re out of line. If anyone has the reddit attitude of casting aspersions rather than rebut effectively, it is you.

WarmSoda, (edited )

I’m not here to rebut anything, much less effectively. I’m not the person trying to argue dumb things for no reason.

If you’re looking for the debate team club, this isn’t it.

featured, (edited )

Lmao you think there were governments when early humans were wandering around the plains of Africa in tiny little tribes?

E: Downvote all you want but by the definitions being proposed here then all species have governments because they snatch food from one another, which is an immensely asinine description of ‘government’ since it describes and means effectively NOTHING

gonzo0815,

So you want to reduce humanity by 99%? Because hunter gatherer lifestyle isn’t sustainable with more than 100 million people.

Oh and you also want to go back to a life expectancy of 40 years, barely any useful medicine, exorbitant child mortality, countless women dying at birth and the constant fear that your surroundings will kill you.

Sounds great!

featured,

Huh??? I never advocated for going back to a pre-agriculture society society at all, i was pushing back against the idea that governments ‘have always existed’ because of course they haven’t, that’s patently absurd since they are social constructs

gonzo0815,

You’re right, I didn’t look at the usernames and thought you were op, arguing that we don’t need governments and can go back to tribes. Sorry :/

outdated_belated, (edited )

Yeah, the fatalism is sad.

People lack both the knowledge to realize that different forms of society already existed (and do, currently), and imagination to realize that it’s possible to move towards a different and better form.

Hexadecimalkink,

Tribalism is a form of government hate to break it to you…

Kalkaline,

As long as there is a limited supply of resources there will be some form of economic distribution and a government to settle disputes about that distribution.

nekat_emanresu,

If you argue that any attempt to resolve an economic dispute(that apple is mine!) is through government, then yes, they will exist as long as we do.

irmoz,

That’s called a state, governments are the state’s employees

loaf,
@loaf@sh.itjust.works avatar

It’s almost as if the entire point of Threads was to use the Twitter hate to harvest more personal data with zero interest in creating an actual longstanding platform. 🤔

RoboRay,
RoboRay avatar

"almost"

rm_dash_r_star,
@rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee avatar

Threads is pretty blatant about censorship and sharing of user data. They use terms like “a friendly space” and “convenient” to sell it to users. So you’re actually losing something by jumping ship from Twitter. The one positive for Musk era Twitter was an attempt to reduce censorship, but the crazy things the company did otherwise far outweigh it.

One of the shitty things profit driven social media sites do is curate content to create a more advertiser friendly space. It even extends to special interests and government interests. I mean what do you call that when public information is curated by the government. I sure as hell don’t want my US government telling me what I can and can not discuss in a public venue.

In the USA there’s a little thing called the first amendment. Granted these are companies and don’t necessarily have to adhere to civil rights in the same way government agencies do, but in effect they’re doing the same thing. The US government should absolutely not be coercing these US companies into censoring content, which they are.

RaincoatsGeorge,

Reduced censorship, so long as what you’re posting paints musk in a positive light, doesn’t upset him, and so long as it’s mostly racist.

Reduced censorship. Lol. No man, just no.

SilentStorms,

🙄 “Saying slurs on a private forum is mah god-given right!”

There’s plenty to criticize about Twitter and Threads, but the unmoderated parts of the internet are cancer.

Also pretending that Elon doesn’t remove things he doesn’t like is a joke.

rm_dash_r_star, (edited )
@rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee avatar

I could have made that a lot longer, but I just wanted make a few points without creating a wall of text.

Of course there’s garbage you don’t want to see in a community. But the difference is there’s an actual human being I entrust to the task of removing it (the moderator). If I don’t like how a community is moderated, I can go to another community. Mods make these calls for the sake of quality and topicality of their particular community, not because of some ulterior motive.

This is in comparison to an institution of some kind using keyword algorithms to mindlessly remove intelligent discussion only because it may be against some kind of predetermined policy. The US government does this. They have official agents placed within the staff of major social media outlets for this purpose.

The only thing I said about Musk is that it’s a positive he tried to reduce censorship. I never implied that he removed censorship altogether. Twitter is still guilty of curating content same as the others. However Threads has flat out stated a full tilt censorship agenda.

WarmSoda,

No? You’re not going to respond with any evidence at all about anything you said here? Come on man. What a let down. Why do you even write this stuff then?

WarmSoda,

using keyword algorithms to mindlessly remove intelligent discussion only because it may be against some kind of predetermined policy. The US government does this. They have official agents placed within the staff of major social media outlets for this purpose.

Please please please provide evidence of this one.

SilentStorms,

Can you provide some evidence for your claim of US agents on staff for censorship purposes, as well as elaborate on which speech you believe is being removed?

99% of the time I see people upset about ‘censorship’ of online spaces, they’re mad about far-right hate-speech or dangerous misinformation.

rm_dash_r_star,
@rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee avatar

Well I’m not wikipedia here, just going on things I’ve read in past. You can either believe it or not believe it, suit yourself.

In the pre-internet days it was a well known fact that major media outlets in the USA had federal officials on staff to put the kibosh on issues of national security. That criteria has since broadened. For anyone that still watches news media on TV they can see for themselves the stories that never get past the editorial desk.

I’ve read claims of the same federal scrutiny happening for large social media outlets. These are USA companies operating in the USA so they fall under jurisdiction. They’re certainly not going to advertise that’s the case. I don’t doubt this is happening for a second and in their own best interest they keep it on the downlow.

I’m not sure I understand the comment. You meant 99% of those complaining are posting hostile shit? If so, it’s the 1% that post intelligent and legitimate counter arguments we need to allow a voice. It’s not uncommon for legislation to push through under the guise of some public benefit that further erodes our civil liberty. As US citizens we need to be vigilant about that kind of thing or we’re just throwing our freedom away.

forrgott,

So, nothing that any of us can research for ourselves? Odd. Well known facts shouldn’t be hard to cite…

WarmSoda,

Well known facts from the pre-internet days, no less. You know, back when everything was recorded in physical books. Sadly all of those records have been lost. Tin foil hat sad face.

queermunist,
@queermunist@lemmy.ml avatar

Of course there’s garbage you don’t want to see in a community. But the difference is there’s an actual human being I entrust to the task of removing it (the moderator). If I don’t like how a community is moderated, I can go to another community. Mods make these calls for the sake of quality and topicality of their particular community, not because of some ulterior motive.

Unless those moderators are getting paid, you are just benefitting from unpaid labor and externalizing the costs of running the community onto volunteers.

That’s why I’m not against algorithmic moderation. The work itself is never going to be paid labor unless social media is nationalized, so it must be automated.

WhoRoger,
@WhoRoger@lemmy.world avatar

It’s ironic, considering how much we’ve been fighting over whether to let Meta in or not.

Fuck me, that’s exactly how society works, some bully doing something, the normal people fighting over it, then the bully going “never mind lol”.

jdp23,
@jdp23@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

That’s true, although I’ve been saying all along that Threads’ potential arrival is a great opportunity whether or not it happens.

Dirk,
@Dirk@lemmy.ml avatar

They did something similar a few years ago.

At one point they opened their messenger system and allowed XMPP clients to connect. This worked absolutely fine, and chatting in any XMPP compatible client was possible.

But it was also possible to OTR encrypt the data so Facebook only got seemingly random character strings that are absolutely useless for data harvesting and profile analysis to sell to advertisers, so they closed down the messenger and disabled the XMPP bridge not long after they opened it.

Same will happen here: As soon as people start interacting in a way it is not possible for the company to track everything, they will stop allowing it.

On a personal note: I will defederate from Meta as soon as they establish their ActivityPub bridge (it of course will only be a bridge, or does anyone really think they would base one of their main features on an open standard?)

esaru,

If someone plans to move to my neighborhood and that one has a record of burning down houses, it’s not a good idea to give it a chance.

Mylemmy,

Bummer I honestly can’t wait until we can integrate. Connecting with some who would just never come to the fediverse otherwise

Mylemmy,

Bummer I honestly can’t wait until we can integrate. Connecting with some who would just never come to the fediverse otherwise

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

Called it. I said this last week when everyone was still hysterical about blocking Meta:

Everyone is talking about defederating preemptively because of XMPP and EEE. But the very fact that we know about EEE means that it’s much less likely to succeed.

Zuck is seeing the metaverse crash and burn and he knows he needs to create the next hot new thing before even the boomers left on facebook get bored with it. Twitter crashing and burning is a perfect business opportunity, but he can’t just copy Twitter - it has to be “Twitter, but better”. So, doing what any exec does, he looks for buzzwords and trends to make his new product more exciting. Hence the fediverse.

From Meta’s standpoint, they don’t need the Fediverse. Meta operates at a vastly different scale. Mastodon took 7 years to reach ~10M users - Threads did that in a day or two. My guess is that Zuck is riding on the Fediverse buzzword. I’m sure whatever integration he builds in future will be limited.

TL;DR below:

https://i.imgflip.com/7rt9zi.jpg

vamp07,

Without activepub integration, I just see threads as another Twitter. I don’t think any of these walled gardens are very interesting, especially Twitter copies such as Mastodon or Threads. It’s just another platform for the few to get their message out to the many. It’s boring in almost all cases.

redditcuntsz,

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 a clear victory. It’ll be a few months.

jdp23,
@jdp23@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

That’s right, as the article says

And from the perspective of the “free fediverse” that’s not welcoming Meta, the new positioning that ActivityPub integration is “a long way out” is encouraging. OK, it’s not as good as “when hell freezes over,” but it’s a heckuva lot better than “soon.”

great_meh,
@great_meh@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I don’t trust them. So this means nothing.

jdp23,
@jdp23@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I don’t trust them either, and they’re very likely to move ahead with federation anyhow. It still means something that they’re changing the story that they’re telling.

mojo, (edited )

I haven’t heard a single valid reason why federating with Meta is bad. Only people misunderstanding how technology works.

edit: remember pretty much all objections can be solved by personally blocking the domain, rather then forcing it to be blocked for everyone. Also that all the information Meta could possibly get, they can already get regardless because all of our content is public.

penguin_in_suit,

I hope this can be a polite argument of different opinions.

Like others said it could be bad for the fediverse in the long run. If meta joins activitypub they are the only ones that are really winning. We get access and engage their content, which promotes their network. They would be the largest node by far and it will give them power to influence activitypub. They can push “features” that only works within the threads network and when they don’t work with the rest of the fediverse creating a disparity in the userbase. People on threads will think that we are the ones that are weird for not having them since all users on threads have them and will probably push, “just download threads”. (Kind of how apple controls iMessage and how people get bullied into buying iphones just so they don’t have a green bubble, the fediverse is the different one that will need to adapt to meta wishes) Or maybe they can suddenly decide to defederate, and now all the people that had connections with threads will be forced to download threads if they want to keep those connections. People that would otherwise never had downloaded threads in the first place. Regardless of the outcome, they join to stay or leave, they are the ones that will win in the end.

This has been done in the past. Its Microsoft " embrace, extend, extinguish" philosophy. A recent example of an open standard is the XMPP being killed by Google. Ultimately meta is a for profit corporation and they have every incentive to monopolize this space.

You brought up the point of people being able to block the domain. The vast majority of people don’t change the default settings so the fediverse experience would include threads by default. Just like how ppl can block meta, and since the majority of fediverse don’t really want the connection, if threads is so important for you why can’t you sign up on their pratform?

For me, other than my concerns with the future of the fediverse, i also consider is that meta is so bad that threads is not even available in Europe because of safety and privacy concerns and so I want nothing to do with it.

One last thing, meta was supposed to join WhatsApp, FB messages and Instagram direct, meaning from each of those platforms you could message ppl on the other platforms. They haven’t even been able to do that yet. They connected FB and Instagram but not WhatsApp yet bc ppl opinion of FB is low enough and the backlash was big enough.

Hopefully I managed to convey my reasons why the federation with meta is bad.

But also, what are the good reasons to federate, like you (just opposite) I haven’t seen a valid reason to federate.

reclipse,
@reclipse@lemdro.id avatar

We need multiple corporations joining activity pub

mojo,

As soon as they start pushing features, it’s no longer ActivityPub, but a fork of ActivityPub. There’s no reason why our fedi clients would be forced to adapt. We already have this weird display issue sometimes, like upvotes and threads on Lemmy not properly showing up on Mastodon for example. It’s not a huge issue if it’s not entirely interoperable.

That just download threads mentality already exists. If you think it’s an issue on the internet, it’s 10x more powerful in person. It already exists, it won’t suddenly appear when Meta federates. If you make a new best friend in threads from Mastodon and Threads defederates, surely that isn’t your only point of contact? If it’s that important to you that alternative means of communication isn’t viable, then maybe just download Threads if they aren’t willing to download Mastodon. That’s more of a social issue which greatly varies per person.

I think you’re speaking for others when you say it’s too hard to defederate for users. For the sake of Mastodon, you just press the three dots and block threads.net. That’s very easy UX, no settings involved. Also I can say the same, if choosing to restrict everybody from threads instead of just yourself is so important, why can’t you simply press that block instance button? That way you aren’t taking choice away from others.

The reasons to federate should be obvious. People. That’s the whole point of social media. I don’t want to be restricted to fedi users who think they’re superior then the average person who uses Facebook. I’m not going to stop using Mastodon either just because I don’t like these people. I want to talk to family and friends. I want to invite the people I actually like because decentralization and growing the fedi is good for all. More content the better. That’s what social media is.

reclipse,
@reclipse@lemdro.id avatar

Same here.

great_meh,
@great_meh@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

It’s simple. Meta does not do this because they are nice. Their goal is to collect data, grow the Market and remove competitors. This also includes appeasing (mostly European) Regulators by appearing nice.

Do. Not. Trust. Them.

mojo,

Don’t know how many times this needs to be said. All your content on the fedi is public. There’s nothing they can see by federating that they can’t already see. Please understand how the technology and privacy works on fedi.

jdp23,
@jdp23@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Should the Fediverse welcome its new surveillance-capitalism overlords? Opinions differ! has plenty of perspectives from both sides.

mojo,

They don’t need to. There’s not any more information they’d get that they can’t already get. You realize all our comments are public and scrapable, right? Regardless if they’re federated or not, our content is public for anyone to scrape.

jdp23,
@jdp23@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

That’s incorrect. Followers-only posts (and local-only posts on instances that have them) aren’t public. Profiles that don’t make public and unlisted posts aren’t discoverable. And, as Threat modeling Meta, the fediverse, and privacy discusses, there are plenty of things that could be done to reduce the amount of data that’s public.

Also, that’s only one of the many reasons people oppose federating with Meta.

esaru,

Because the long-term influence of such a powerful yet detrimental network like Facebook is bad, and when the negative effects for the Fediverse show up, or even later, when enough people realize it, the Fediverse will have been influenced in a way that it can’t go back to a healthy state.

mojo,

So who determines what’s healthy, and why do you feel the need to take away the choice from others?

esaru, (edited )

“healthy” here means “healthy for the Fediverse”, which means “being nice to each other” and supporting diversity, both values being contrary to the Facebook network, which is predatory to other networks, as having proven in the past.

The need is to prevent the predatory network from accessing the weaker one that promotes diversity and freedom of choice.

mojo,

It’s that way because of moderation. Trust me when I say, there are some extremely vile servers out there that are significantly worse then anything you’ll find on Facebook. Also I just read this as gatekeeping, assuming that the current users are somehow better to each other then the average person. Also the fedi is one of the least diverse communities I’ve ever seen.

beastieboyofthenet,

@mojo @nexusofprivacy I don't want Facebook content in my mastodon feed. Period. If they federate here I'm leaving.

mojo,

You realize you can just personally block the domain lol. Problem solved. This is what I mean by people don’t understand the technology.

esaru,

It’s not only about ignoring Facebook users. Imagine in real life a bully comes to your group and you could block him, so you don’t see him, but he still influences the people around you in a negative way, changing the environment you used to love. You better make sure he stays out of your circle. Facebook has a long record of destroying other social networks.

mojo,

So you want to take away the choice from others? What’s stopping those same influenced users from being influenced already? They can simply download the app right now, it doesn’t need to appear on their Mastodon or whatever feed.

jdp23,
@jdp23@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Nobody’s talking about taking the choice away from others. Some instances are saying they’ll federate with Threads, you’re free to move your account there. Or as you say, people who want to hang out with the bully can download the Threads app right now!

Ne10,
@Ne10@mastodon.online avatar

@mojo @beastieboyofthenet
Please read the following and then revise your statements.
The Deadline by Tom DeMarco. A Novel About Project Management.

mojo,

No

Thorny_Thicket,

The user base on a platform like Threads is probably quite different from that of Lemmy (or reddit) Federating with them means their content is starting to also flood to our platform and in a big way due to their huge number of users meaning that we’re getting our faces stuffed with facebook quality content that many specifically is trying to escape here.

vogumvogum,

from my experience there are some decent communities and people on FB, it’s just that you have to find them hidden under heaps of bullshit. No different from Reddit, Twitter or YouTube in that sense imo

With something like Lemmy though, both the users and community moderators have way, way more agency over what they’re interacting with, so I don’t think federating with mainstream social media would necessarily be that bad

I think, at least?

mojo,

Then block their domain. Problem solved. Any other objections that can’t just be resolved by personally blocking the domain? Don’t ban it by default, give users the choice to ban themselves or not. There’s no downside.

Thorny_Thicket,

Lemmy doesn’t currently give the option for users to block individual instances. If it did then that would indeed be a better solution

reclipse,
@reclipse@lemdro.id avatar

Lemmy will surely add such basic feature at some point.

mojo,

It’ll definitely add that feature in the near future. I’m confident it’ll land before/if Meta goes ActivityPub.

esaru,

There is a downside: Because many people don’t see the negative long-term effects, Facebook will have enough time to influence and dominate the Fediverse in a negative way. The masses don’t see what Facebook is doing in the long run.

There’s also not much reason to federate with Facebook. Sign up there if you like that network.

mojo,

I say not federating is influencing the Fediverse in a negative way. Since I obviously don’t agree with that, it’s more content. I don’t like gatekeeping and this sense of toxic superiority that fedi users are above average Meta users. I want to talk to my family. Same can be said with your influence argument, they can sign up there already and use the fedi, which means they’re being influenced already.

I’m extremely against this gatekeeping and want these users. That’s the whole point of social media, to communicate with people. More people is more content, which is the whole point. I don’t want to only communicate with smug users who think they’re superior to a normal person.

Elevator7009, (edited )

I’m very suspicious of Meta and its intentions. I also don’t think I’m better than a Meta user except in my choice of social media platforms, which is only even possible because I haven’t gotten myself into social groups that primarily communicate there. Not everyone is so lucky. If my social group were slightly different I might be a resentful Meta user holding my nose because I would value having a social life over avoiding a company that’s got pretty much everyone entangled anyways. I’d probably try to get people to move platforms, and probably complain about Facebook and Meta as often as I could without annoying everyone, but it’s very likely that they wouldn’t all move off the platform just because one person in the group hates it.

Meta users are welcome to come here. I want everyone to have a non-enshittified, non-corporate social media and that includes people who are currently on an enshittified corporate social media. But Meta itself is not welcome. That means no Threads, no touching us with Meta, go make a non-Meta Fediverse account first. Even if defederating them might not be the most effective, even though they can scrape all our stuff regardless of their federation status, I want to send the message that Meta is very unwelcome here. But its users are welcome. We shouldn’t try to hoard the non-enshittified place all to ourselves. Only gatekeep the place from people who will try to enshittify it—and Grandma from Facebook is not going to try to squeeze us for cash.

mojo,

So you want the users, but not them to enshittify it, but you also want them magically to come without federating because you think you have a superior sense of social media. Which reality are you in, and how do you intend for the fedi to magically become mainstream with this zero compromise dream scenario you’re coming up with? I don’t even agree with gatekeeping people you think are shitty, because there’s already a terrible fedi population out there like creepy anime instances, truth social, and kiwifarms, etc. Those are all much worse then what you’ll find on Facebook and are already on fedi. Has it ruined the network?

This is just completely idealistic hoping that wants a situation that will never happen, has already failed to happen, and is ignoring the reality of the situation. For the fedi to grow, it means also shitty people coming. That’s where the proper moderation tools become important.

Elevator7009, (edited )

So you want the users, but not them to enshittify it

What I meant by “enshittification” is this:

This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit.

The linked article explains it a lot better with a specific example in my opinion, but the example is pretty long, so I just provided the quick definition from the article.

I am very much not talking about “oh no the normies are coming, polluting our beautiful pure place with memes and innocent questions about how things work that we superior people already understand.” I am also not talking about people I think are shitty, you handle that by defederating instances with a high volume of shitty people and blocking and reporting the shitty people you still come across. I really shouldn’t have said

Only gatekeep the place from people who will try to enshittify it

because what I actually meant here was gatekeeping it from corporations who will try to enshittify it. Like Meta. I misspoke and I apologize for that.

HughJanus,

I don’t consider that a victory at all. Meta could bring the Fediverse to the masses. And allow anyone to follow and interact with their friends on Threads.

pazukaza,

Why do we need to bring the fediverse to the masses though?

Deliverance,

Because social media, by definition, only works when “the masses” use it. I don’t just want to interact with the fellow nerds currently on the Fediverse, I want decentralized social media to be the norm.

HughJanus, (edited )

So that…people will use it?

I mean the whole purpose of social media is to interact with others.

Maybe you prefer spending your time interacting with strangers. There was once a time when social media was actually about networking with friends and family and people you otherwise actually knew. That’s why I joined.

Also to get more people AWAY from the tech giants and basically reimagine advertising and business as we know it.

I mean really it’s good for everyone who’s not a conglomerate tech company.

pazukaza,

Hm, so you’re giving a new API free of charge to all the AI tech giants in the era of AI. How is this bad for them?

HughJanus,

…because people will realize there are better platforms without privacy violations and ads where they can still interact with their friends and transition.

Like Mastodon and others have basically all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks.

pazukaza,

Without ads YET. Once the “masses” arrive, donations are no longer an option.

HughJanus,

I mean they could try it but people would just migrate to a different server so there would be no point.

The main Mastodon instance has 1.5M users and no ads.

pazukaza,

Is 1.5M users “the masses” to you? Reddit has like 400M active users monthly. That’s the scale I’m talking about.

Registered users is a very bad metric too.

HughJanus,

It’s 1.5M users on a single server. There are literally thousands of servers.

mojo,

What is this terrible gatekeeping mentality? We want more content, and we want more people to have freedom. Everyone deserves privacy and decentralization. This gatekeeping is toxic and conservative in nature.

esaru, (edited )

Let’s start with Facebook first, the platform that made a walled garden out of

  • messengers (went from XMPP to walled garden)
  • websites (businesses having facebook pages rather than freely accessible websites)
  • used product markets
  • online communities
  • email (sending email to a Facebook user is converted into a private message on Facebook rather than sending out the email, at least that was a thing in the past)
  • … (insert any Facebook service here)

You can’t trust Facebook, it’s about turning its users into a product for marketers, and that’s it.

nave,

Honestly this is why the whole “Meta will kill the fediverse” thing people were saying never really convinced me. They just don’t seem to care, I mean it’s been a month and they still have no real plans to actually federate.

fidodo,

It always felt like a backup plan. Or maybe that plan was before they remembered they had 2 billion users on Instagram they could bootstrap off.

barryamelton,

This is an incredible read on why Threads federating is bad news: ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-ne…

reclipse,
@reclipse@lemdro.id avatar

This is the 1004th time I am seeing people mentioning this article.

barryamelton,

I mentioned it 3 times in this last day since I read it! Maybe it is spreading.

I do it because I think it is the most important point on the fediverse. The fediverse is a tool of freedom, morals, ethics, for those that want to be connected, something that no commercial entity will offer. And it’s ok for it to not grow at all costs, or be the widespread available platform. It just needs to be present and faithful to itself.

Kes,
@Kes@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I keep seeing this article posted to scare people, but Lemmy and Mastodon aren’t in the same situation as XMPP. XMPP had barely any users outside of Google Talks, with the overwhelming majority of interactions on XMPP being between Google Talks users. Google was tying their product to a public standard that they couldn’t develop however they wanted, all for compatibility with very few users. When they pulled out of using XMPP to develop their own platform, the sheer lack of users on XMPP outside of Google Talks became apparent. This will not be the case with Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon/ect. Mastodon has 10 million registered users, and Lemmy has hundreds of thousands. The majority of both service’s users are not about to switch over to sell their soul to the Zucc, so if Facebook federates for a while before defederating, Lemmy and Mastodon will have as large and robust communities as they have now, and the services will live on unlike with XMPP

theneverfox,
@theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

Defederating isn’t the threat - the situation you describe would hurt the fediverse, but it would survive as you said.

You’re missing the far more insidious piece - changing the standards

So let’s say we have mastodon servers, threads, and maybe another player or two.

Context for my example - Lemmy and mastodon use paths, 0.<root post id>.<reply>.<reply reply>.<etc>

Facebook decides “path isn’t good enough for what we want, we’re changing the first number, always 0, and we’re going to set it to a number from 1 to 100000 that will encode topic, work appropriateness, and sentiment analysis into this value”.

Being the majority of the network, suddenly mastodon either throws out the threads content or the clients start breaking - the fix would be simple, but until that happens either they temporarily defederate or apps start crashing.

Either way, people are pissed - either their busy feed has suddenly gone quiet, or their app no longer works. It gets resolved in a few days, and now apps are able to do better sorting

The takeaway for most people is “mastodon sucked for a few days”

Now let’s say they use this sentiment analysis more deeply for the algorithm. They’ve got AI doing it, hell, they’re even being “good fediverse citizens” and running it on mastodon posts for free. Everything works better, you find stuff better, nsfw posts are better flagged, the clients add cool new features around it

Now, let’s say Facebook decides “mastodon is costing us server time, and we don’t make much off them. Let’s just show more threads content and only show replies and the top thousand mastodon posts each hour” Suddenly, mastodon users get much less engagement when they post.

Their takeaway is “mastodon isn’t as good for us as it used to be”

Maybe someone builds an open source system for mastodon to do classification. It’s much more expensive server-wise, so maybe only the top servers do it… But their posts get seen again, and everything is good again. People move to these servers or to threads so they can keep being discovered

Now, let’s say someone at Facebook goes “their classification isn’t as good as ours, and their nsfw tagging isn’t as good. Our advertisers would be pissed if they found out, let’s not sell ads on any post not classified by us just to be safe”. Someone else comes along and says “we’re leaving money on the table here, let’s show less of those posts”.

And kind of like this, these little decisions made with little malice would slowly choke out mastodon. With a dominant player, the little guys don’t need to be targeted - Facebook just has to put themselves first. And if you think a company would consistently pass up on profits or savings for a vague promise as years go by, I don’t know what to tell you

If threads is a more stable experience, only privacy minded people would pick mastodon. Even people that refuse to use threads on principle would be less likely to be active on mastodon

In reality, the decisions and side effects would probably be more subtle than this… But it doesn’t take much. They just have to occasionally make the fediverse feel buggy or unfinished in comparison, and it’ll forever become a place for enthusiasts and never as a serious option by the public at large

TwilightVulpine,

Comes to mind that personally I had no commitment to Jabber or Pidgin, it was only a means to talk to people I wanted to talk, which I remained able to do after they were dropped. But Lemmy and Mastodon are communities, it takes more than tinkering with the protocol to kill it.

They would have to convince people who are here because they are already sick of Big Tech social media, that going back to Meta, of all places, is the right move. If they can do that, then it’s not a matter of EEE or whatever, it’s that we failed to maintain a compelling community.

I believe in this place more than that. Which is why I believe that if integration came to pass, it’s more likely that we would gain users, who would peek through the Meta windows and notice that we are having a better experience.

barryamelton,

Our content will be drowned by the amount of content a mainstream Meta can output.

And if you would like for users to notice the free fediverse among that content, they would need to ignore all Meta/commercial communities. That’s not practical. It also amounts to defederating with Meta, which is practical, and what is suggested anyways. If people are curious about the free fediverse they will hear about it and find it.

TwilightVulpine,

Only if people consistently choose to subscribe to Meta creators and communities over the ones on the Fediverse. It’s not like people here will be auto subscribed to whatever infiniscroll algorithmic slop Meta is serving. Meta can’t forcibly implement that into other instances.

If Meta means to use the ActivityPub as a selling point, they need to show at least some of it to their users. But if they give up entirely, then there’s no need to worry about defederating anyway.

That said I’m not naive and I expect that Meta will try to play dirty, but it seems to me like the extent of what they can do is pretty limited by the decentralized structure of the Fediverse. They can’t just take other instances over, unless they downright buy the admins, and that’s a whole separate matter than federation. If they do, still, it’s trivial for users to jump into another instance away from Zuck’s scaly hands.

But even then, if it’s so easy to attract people away from the Fediverse, then it means that there is something it is lacking, and that’s not going to be solved by being reclusive and trying to stay beneath notice.

nave,

I think the u/Kes put it really well. People on fediverse platforms are already staunchly opposed to big tech so they have no reason to leave for platform made by Meta of all people.

theneverfox,
@theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

A month isn’t very long, they haven’t even figured out their basic features - this was more a “maybe later this year” timeframe. It could be done quickly if they decided to start by reproducing mastodon and going from there, but building something that federates but is highly monetizable takes time - honestly they were probably pleased by the numbers and decided to go for monetization first

Making it clear they are unwelcome was the point though.

It seems they’ve put the idea on the back burner after we largely made our position clear, but it’s not unlikely that they try to quietly federate down the road… Every time they think about it, we have to make them believe this would be more trouble than it’s worth

nave,

I personally believe that Meta never intended Threads to be support Activitypub and just chose it so they could do the bare minimum to comply with the EU digital markets act.

Ne10,
@Ne10@mastodon.online avatar

@nave @theneverfox believing is not knowing is speculation is not helping

theneverfox,
@theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

I mean, this is my area of expertise. Sure, it’s speculation, but it’s educated speculation. I’m intimately familiar with activity pub and the way large projects are brought into existence

Plus, following my recommendation if I’m wrong would at most be a slight amount of wasted effort, but ignoring it if I’m right could be a huge problem.

I’d call that helpful

jochem,

Given how evil they are, this definitely seems plausible (although threats isn’t available in the EU and they are actively preventing usage in the EU). Another option is that they’re still out to kill the fediverse. That one honestly seems more likely to me, given how they’ve acted in the past (buying up platforms before they could outcompete them).

BeardedPip,
BeardedPip avatar

If I don”t want something to happen, I”d much rather a corporation say “a long way out” than “never going to happen”. Something on the back burner of a corporation is as good as dead. Something an exec said no to just needs a change in leadership to make happen.

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