Are you seeing a massive uptick in pro meta propaganda as well?

I will probably be harassed for this but I feel like I need to act.

The recent debate and decision by world to federate with threads seems to have sparked massive pro meta propaganda. Some accounts post completely one sided articles nearly every day, using carefully crafted language to shape meta as the „facilitator“ of the fediverse and some beligerent benevolent god. You dont have to scroll far in this community to find the posts I‘m talking about.

Please consider reporting these posts for the propaganda they are and asking your admins to defederate from threads.net.

To show you why meta is not welcome in the fediverse, here is a quote from the fedipact which is the reason I have defederated threads in my own instance.

THEIR LONG TRACK RECORD OF PURE EVIL

i’m just gonna paste some links here because there’s no point in paraphrasing what others have already said more eloquently

(if you’re wondering why i’m using archive.org it’s to break the fucking paywalls on these articles because fuck that, information wants to be free)

that time they helped facilitate a genocide

that time they helped try to rig an election

that time they did creepy behavioral experimentation on their users

so, yeah. there’s legiterally shitloads of precedent here. not to mention all the privacy concerns. which brings us to the need many feel to protect ourselves from this insidious megacorp…

Against one thing meta-shills often try to ascribe: we dont have a problem with the people on there but it is literally everything else.

Admins and Mods who read this, please consider signing the fedipact on fedipact.online

Thank you very much for reading and have a nice day.

Edit: wording, crossed out

frickineh,

I haven’t seen it but I also want Meta and everything to do with it to die in a fire, so I kind of wish I had so I could express that feeling to the shills. Mark Zuckerberg has singlehandedly made the world a significantly worse place. It’d almost be impressive if it wasn’t so depressing.

haui_lemmy,

Very passionate response! Thank you! I respect the shit out of anyone who subjects themselves to hate due to their advocacy.

spiderman,

Seems like this aren’t the only bad stuff they did

haui_lemmy,

yes, I’ve seen that one. They’re not the nice guys. Thanks for mentioning it though. :)

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

Years ago, back before it was totally shitty, someone on reddit posted a gigantic, comprehensive, well-sourced list of all the horrible shit Zuck / Meta have done over the years.

It’s unfortunate that long lists of damning facts can’t seem to move the needle very much. People don’t seem to care unless directly impacted.

I hate seeing Meta dig its tentacles in. Thanks for posting this.

haui_lemmy,

Thank you very much for the encouragement! The amount of hate you get on a daily basis by speaking up is insane. Glad it hasnt flooded this post yet. :)

FeelzGoodMan420,

I literally show my wife articles of Meta/Tik Tok data breaches and other shit, and she just shrugs and keeps using it. I have a friend who works in fucking CYBER SECURITY and he still has social media apps on his phone. It’s unreal.

MudMan,

But... you're on social media right now.

Gullible,

Much like Reddit, user data here is worth little outside of LLM utility. Moreover, most of your data is freely available to anyone with a bit of patience and the ability to spin up an instance. Everything is open here, but what’s open isn’t meticulously indexed information about your hopes and dreams… I hope.

MudMan,

Yeah, no, that's my exact point. It's not like data in the "fediverse" is particularly secure, beyond the fact that you can opt out of some parts of it in some applications. And it's not like it's not social media doing social media things.

I see a lot of this performative outrage or pride on being on the "open" version of social media, but social media is social media. A lot of its problems are design problems that are replicated in the federated versions, and a lot of the privacy concerns remain on paper or haven't surfaced just because this version of it is so small by comparison.

I don't think a lot of people who have made this crusade a key part of their online persona fully understand what the underlying issues are and how they work. "How can cybersecurity experts have a TikTok account" kinda reads like the "we need to ban plastic straws" of Internet dysfunction.

FeelzGoodMan420,

You’re absolutely correct. But let’s just be practical here. Lemmy isn’t the same thing as Facebook or Tik Tok. It’s a completely different beast. I’m also being careful to not post sensitive information about myself, whereas on Facebook it’s literally your name and identity and photos and private conversations.

TheOctonaut,

No he isn’t? Social media is centred on posting about yourself and following people to see what they post. This is a link aggregation site with a comments section. By the definition of “place you can go and post comments on a topic”, then Usenet is social media. Every website with a comment section is social media

The letters section of your newspaper is social media. No, the whole point and problem of social media is that people make it about themselves.

MudMan,

So by your standards Mastodon counts but Lemmy doesn't? Is Mastodon part of the problem in that read of the situation?

TheOctonaut,

Yes. Microblogging in general. It started bad with “had toast this morning” and “look at my lunch” and somehow we got influencers out of it.

MudMan,

That's debatable, but fair enough. Still, you'll agree with me that's not what a lot of people around here are thinking, and probably not what the OP was thinking either. Specifically if the issue is, as he suggests, privacy and security Reddit (and so Lemmy) are no different than Twitter (and so Mastodon).

Ultimately it's the same confusion between data exposure, tracking and designed dynamics.

Scubus,

Ah, I didn’t realize that my Lemmy account is tied to my actual name, address, phone number, and all of my irl friends. I also didn’t realize that my Lemmy account has thousands of photos of me for deep fakes, and that the government can at any time request all of that for next to no reason. Thanks for enlightening me!

MudMan,

You're welcome.

I mean, my accounts in Twitter or Reddit were never tied to those things, either, and I sure see a lot of Mastodon users under their own names.

What I do know and some people don't fully realize is that public posts here are search engine indexable, as are Masto posts based on their privacy settings, so data being scraped is not conditional on anybody else federating. Although the data that requires federation to access can obviously be accessed just by spinning up an insstance privately at any point.

Don't get me wrong, the treatment of data and the monetization and social engineering tools in commercial social media aren't the same as here, but a lot of people assign a level of privacy and secrecy to their fediverse activity that just isn't there, and the same goes for moderation tools.

Hilariously once they started rolling out Threads opt-ins you could see some Threads users complain that opting in could mean that others can see their posts without their control, or that they don't have direct moderation access to federated copies of their content. And you know what? They're not wrong.

Each platform has its own gaps. I prefer the set of gaps in the Fediverse, and I'll certainly take Bluesky over Threads or Twitter these days. But social media is social media, and there are fundamental issues at the core of the concept and with every implementation of it, including this one.

homesweethomeMrL,

Yep. Almost like the mind-altering power of television should have been taken seriously instead of laughed off and supercharged into an always-on ubiquitous device we mostly equate with our actual personhood.

We could actually address it now. No time like the present, eh.

Minotaur,

I’m going to be honest, I’m kind of of this mindset.

I haven’t yet had a decent argument made to me regarding why I should personally care if TikTok or whatever has like… my age gender and what types of books I read and what apps I have on my phone.

FeelzGoodMan420,

m.youtube.com/watch?v=NNv2RHR62Rs&pp=ygULY3JjdXMg…

catloaf,

Because they use that information to draw a psychological profile of people, and they use that to subtly push their agenda with content they show.

Allegedly, anyway.

For a more concrete example, though not quite like this, look at Tencent-funded western movies. They’ve all got a Chinese side character who’s always shown in a positive light.

Minotaur,

Who is “they” in this context?

Also, how does your “concrete example” pertain to this discussion? That doesn’t have anything to do with data from social media or phones. It’s just a giant media company pushing having having some Chinese people in some movies.

Armok_the_bunny,

The concern is what other pieces of information are they collecting, and when and who do they share that information with. Does it also collect data on what places you visit, or what kind of potentially controversial information you look up. People are concerned about things like visits to a hospital making its way to their employer and insurance against their will, or a trans person being outed by the ads they are served in front of their family, or maybe that the police will knock down their door because their GPS falsely placed them at the scene of a crime. Or what if they live in an actual fascist regime, and that government comes knocking because they searched for something verboten. Even aside from all that, all this data is inherently your’s, and yet all these companies collecting it are just taking it from you without your explicit knowledge or consent and without you seeing even a dime or what a quick search tells me is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Minotaur, (edited )

Are things like that happening though? With the insurance?

I mean if the police want to come to my door and shoot me in the head or find a reason to brand me as a felon any day they can basically already do that. That goes for about anyone. It doesn’t really seem to matter if any data brokering company also happens to tag me as maybe being gay or having a 90% chance of supporting Palestine over Israel or similar

I dunno. I just feel like a lot of the argument are contingent on envisioning some imminent future wherein every Western country turns into a completely fascist police state with like concentration camps - but also they can only get their information on local demographics based off of data sold by social media companies? And foreign ones at that? And even in this situation you’re not really doing anything about it but just trying to lie low and hope no one discovers you’re an atheist or whatever until you die of old age?

It kind of reminds me of Pascals Wager. You know that one? Where it goes “ooo you have to believe in god because what if you don’t and the Christian god is real… you go to hell!?”. Like. Yeah, sure. I guess that could happen. But most people will shrug their shoulders at it, not really convinced. It requires a lot of assumptions

Armok_the_bunny,

To answer your question about the insurance thing, yes. Yes, that is a thing that is happening today. nytimes.com/…/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance…

Plague_Doctor,

If that company that has tagged you as gay sells the data that most often includes location, maybe even your face, to an anti-gay hate group that could end quite badly. It’s the same impluse that drove the red scare and the citizen made lists of " suspected communists" and they were blacklisted from their communities, harrassed or evenharmed or killed.

Minotaur,

What exactly do you think the anti gay hate groups are going to do?

Catoblepas,

Have you literally slept through the bomb threats being called in to children’s hospitals and schools over LGBTQ issues?

Minotaur,

And you think that will happen to gay people because they use tiktok

Catoblepas,

Ah, so you have moved from “nothing will happen” to “nothing will happen because of TikTok specifically.”

Like, good for you if you don’t have to worry about being added to a list of undesirables that the Jan 6 segment of the population would be interested in doing violence to because of your sexuality or gender? Some state governments are literally trying to obtain information on medical care provided to trans patients in completely different states, and people have been charged under anti-abortion laws based on their search history. If you don’t understand why queer people are more worried than normal about their safety and privacy go read the fucking news. So maybe sit on it and spin instead of telling people the queers are in hysterics over nothing. What are you even doing on Lemmy if you think digital privacy is bullshit?

Minotaur,

I think that if you went to a psychologist they could diagnose you with a legitimate preoccupation with this kind of thing

petrol_sniff_king,

Um, Charlottesville?
Regular lynchings from the 1800s?
I don’t really understand the question.

Minotaur,

You think that gay people will be lynched because they have Facebook downloaded on their phone.

petrol_sniff_king,

If that helps you not to think about anything being said, sure.

Out of curiosity, what do you think a hate group does with information on their particular bogeyman?

Minotaur,

You think they get it from gay people having Facebook on their phone

petrol_sniff_king,

I know, I know, it’s so ridiculous. I can’t believe these are my actual beliefs without any nuance whatsoever.

Minotaur,

Yeah, it is a little silly

agent_flounder,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

I get where you’re coming from but is he managing his risk or not?

Does he understand the risk? If yes, good. No? Bad.

Is he ignoring the risk? If yes, bad. No? Good.

Is he weighing the risks against the benefits he receives of using these apps and taking appropriate steps to mitigate those risks? If yes, then good. No? Bad.

Cyber security isn’t “lock everything down at all costs”. Otherwise I would insist you throw your phone in an incinerator along with all your computers, live in a bunker reinforced against nuclear attack with a small army to guard you, never leave it, never talk to anyone… Etc.

It is enabling one to achieve their goals with a tolerable amount of risk. That level of tolerable risk is different for everyone.

Black_Gulaman,
@Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

This is correct. Security is managing risk to a tolerable level. Not eliminating it entirely. Unless you want to live by yourself cut off from the world. People who have black and white views on security are weird.

agent_flounder,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

Well maybe they aren’t experienced info security professionals :)

Vigilante,

Hi can you share that list here or dm me ??

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

This one is several years old, but is the version I could find. I think it got updated but not sure where that one is.

np.reddit.com/r/…/facebook_2016_year_in_review/?c…

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

And here’s a new scandal to throw on the pile:

lemmy.world/post/13678760

Vigilante,

I haven’t even got through that list bruh like how many crimes can one zuck commit ? Still thanks

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

The way our judicial system works:

  • You rip off working class people = Have fun, you spicy job creator, you!
  • You rip off wealthy people = You’re going to jail, boy!
inlandempire,
@inlandempire@jlai.lu avatar

Is this list still available somewhere?

octopus_ink,

Quite a lot of it is here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_con…

en.wikipedia.org/…/Lawsuits_involving_Meta_Platfo…

Toribor,
@Toribor@corndog.social avatar

They “trust me”. Dumb fucks.

Mark Zuckerberg

TORFdot0,

Wasn’t that @PoppinKREAM?

He was here around the API debacle, don’t know if that’s his actual account or whether he’s still active here

Boozilla,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

The one I’m thinking of was on reddit, and unfortunately I did not save the link. But I’m sure others have posted similar.

ripcord,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Also named PoppinKREAM over there.

dameoutlaw,
@dameoutlaw@lemmy.ml avatar

Provide proof! I call BS. I see why more anti-Meta posts and pushing it on people. Anywhere here can search and you’ll find it. It dominates any conversations about Meta

haui_lemmy,

Nope. I‘m entitled to my opinion without providing proof. But good luck with that attitude.

thedeadwalking4242,

I’m absolutely for defeterating threads. But if you make a claim and treat it as fact and are trying to convince people of an idea the burden of proof is on you. Otherwise your argument sounds extremely disingenuous and entitled

haui_lemmy,

Listen, I have asked a question and I provided a post of a person who recently picked up pro meta posts in different stages of disguise in the comments.

I‘m just not letting anyone talk to me this way. No need for you to send me to school, I know how this works. But I decide if I want to cooperate with someone. this person was rude and I brushed them off.

If you disagree and dont see an increase of pro meta (or as it now is „ambiguous“) posts, please say so and ask for clarification in a constructive manner and I will happily oblige.

Have a good one.

Ultragigagigantic,
@Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world avatar

You don’t defeat meta by calling out shills.

You can’t stop data collection by keeping the fediverse “pure blooded”.

That involves a digital bill of rights. Positive rights legislation.

That won’t come until we introduce competition into our voting system by making third parties viable by switching away from First past the post voting.

We can change how we vote at a state level (for now), so we don’t need to pass something federally. We don’t need to beg for representation, we can just reach our and take it. Alaska and Maine have already done away with first past the post voting, so why not yours?

If you are not convinced this is the way, Republicans are moving to ban alternative voting systems in states they control. Do you really want to use the voting system republicans prefer?

What’s the excuse blue states?

haui_lemmy,

I agrree that the US voting system needs a complete overhaul. I would try to help with that but I dont live there. I‘m doing my part by fighting against megacorps where I can because they‘re what I perceive as the largest issue. They donate to the politician and push their narrative down our throats.

I‘m the change I wanna see. Feel free to join !anticorporate

Sunny,

Thanks for shedding light on this!

haui_lemmy,

Thanks for the support! This means a lot. Have a nice day.

GlitterInfection,

Sometimes people have different opinions on tech stuff so I’m hesitant to block people for opinions I disagree with…

But I also saw some posts that you’re talking about OP. You linked one up thread that had come to mind. That user’s post history is super suspect. With people pointing out their shill-like qualities 6 months ago in response to Meta propaganda links.

haui_lemmy,

Exactly. The wording in these article is very sus as well imo. I would actually suggest everyone report them so we can get actual „opinions“ in here and not manipulative double speak.

Little course in marketing speak

It is what we use in sales and marketing (I did this for 20 yrs before i went back in IT). This language is hard to pinpoint if you dont know what to look for. Something is off about it if you take time while reading. Like a soliciter coming to your door but as text.

Its basically actively being biased and just ignoring every counter argument while shaping words to suggest more than they actually say. Its one of the reasons I went back to IT since its soulcrushing if you dont have a real ethical product. And even then it sucks that you have to do it since worse competitors will otherwise win. Thats also why I despise ads. Imo, they should not be allowed to appeal to emotion. If your product does not win on facts, it should not win at all.

pewgar_seemsimandroid,

mark Zuckerberg is a robot coded by a lizard

slumberlust,

Stop spreading rumors; he himself is the lizard.

willya,
@willya@lemmyf.uk avatar

I browse new on the regular and haven’t noticed any of what you’re saying. I see them being shit on though all the time.

eugene171,

Same. I guess my instance isn’t federated with the places they’re shilling to.

slurpeesoforion,

I have not seen any uptick. But then again, I’m not looking for it.

If anything, all the extra traffic concerning it will persuade me to be proactive about it.

Viking_Hippie,

decision by world to federate with threads

…anyone know if I can block threads so I won’t have to abandon the instance or be subjected to Meta poison?

Danterious,

You can block any posts coming from threads.net by going to settings and doing instance blocking but long term it probably is better to just move to a different instance that better aligns with your values.

Aviandelight,
@Aviandelight@mander.xyz avatar

Haha I took your advice and went to my settings to block it only to find out I already had done it. 😂

GlitterInfection,

Instance blocking is, I believe, the reason stated that our instance hasn’t signed the pact that OP linked.

That aligns with my values, honesty, because it lets me make the choice for myself.

I find the pact-shaming to be kinda gross. But Meta as a company is truly disgusting, so I at least understand it.

grue,

Are you seeing these pro-meta articles on Lemmy or on Mastodon? I haven’t seen them, or much negative effect yet from Threads in general despite my instance being federated, but I assume that’s because I only use Lemmy.

(For the record, I would prefer if lemmy.world and mastodon.world defederated regardless.)

haui_lemmy,

Both but I was referring to lemmy. The articles in question are posted from few accounts too iirc.

catloaf,

Can you give examples of what you’re referring to as propaganda? I haven’t seen anything but people bitching about Threads.

Emperor,
@Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

Me too.

haui_lemmy,

lemmy.giftedmc.com/post/329846 this for example

The Fediverse will soon have power on the social web to shape its future, but only through and in the interaction with Meta. This is the reality the Fediverse has to start arranging itself with.

First sentence literally.

Meta and the Fediverse are heavily intertwined: both are dependent on one another for their success.

Uncompromising idealists of a non-corporate social web, potentially origin of radicalisation and toxicity.

And so on and so forth. The language is shaping the story in one direction as if nobody has a chance to change something about it.

Pronell,

That’s all fair.

But it’s also heavily down voted and refuted.

Some people are gonna be shills and some are gonna be naive. But I’m not going to be a part of any platform Meta is trying to subvert.

Zak,
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

I believe you that Meta is a bad company with a clear track record of perpetrating harms any time there’s profit to be made. I am not, however convinced that small independent services blocking communication with them is a net positive for the world. Instead, I think there’s an opportunity to get their users to migrate away.

That’s not to say that some servers shouldn’t block them. For a tightly-moderated server, the scale of moderation problems it could bring is argument enough. There are good options for those who are looking for that sort of thing.

I don’t want my Lemmy server to block Threads unless it actually does become a moderation nightmare. I don’t intend to block it from my self-hosted Mastodon server either. In fact, I haven’t blocked anything there yet. I will if I run into anybody being a jerk, but it seems like bird photos and flashlight reviews don’t attract that sort of thing.

haui_lemmy,

I get your point and that is your right. I still dont agree and that is my right. There have been countless examples of underestimating a bad actor until they were already in the space.

Zak,
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

That’s why there are many servers with different federation policies.

haui_lemmy,

Exactly. And that is also why posts like mine exist. Have a good day.

blue_berry,
@blue_berry@lemmy.world avatar

I think this is generally a valid point of view. However, what I don’t like is to frame it as a easy-to-make-point, something that is basically obvious. Because it isn’t, mainly, because of network effects.

Not opening up to Meta means prevent the Fediverse from becoming a global thing. Not opening up to Meta means not to shape the future of the social web.

If you have this opinion, you implicitly say that you want the Fediverse to stay small. However, I think we can all agree that it would be good if the Fediverse became big. And the only possibility to achieve that is through the growth through Meta, which doesn’t mean working together with it, but profiting from it and cutting in its growth (which admittedly, will not be easy as well and, as you pointed out, also comes with its own moral drawbacks, which have to be thought of, too).

Meta is not cool. But it won’t help to hide away in a shelter until the whole thing has blown over. Because it won’t. All that will happen is that the part that opened up to Meta will grow rapidly and the other part will stay small and become less relevant. In this sense, now is the best time to drive change in the social web, until it is again dominated by Meta. Now we still have the choice to join and work against Meta in the social web.

Just because you federate doesn’t necessarily mean that you work together with it. But if you hide away, you leave the whole field of action up to Meta without even trying. Apart from the fact that it’s barely explainable to anyone outside the Fediverse. They will and already do blame us of double-standards: why create an open protocoll if the ecosystem wants to stay small anyways?

Illecors,

Ecosystem doesn’t want to stay small - it doesn’t want to have moderation, among other things, dictated by facebook.

haui_lemmy,

You’re manipulating, but you probably know that. You’re telling me what I’m saying instead of taking what I said. You’re putting a lot of effort in excusing them and it shows. It is very obvious.

Maalus,

And let me guess, he is the one you report from propaganda because you don’t agree with his views.

Sunforged,

I strongly disagree meta’s involvement is necessary for the fediverse to grow and become big. Snowballing is a very real thing and as long as growth continues to happen, that will encourage more growth.

The threat of meta is a huge jump in growth, and communities that then centralize around those users. Once popular communities are established on meta servers, they have control. If they choose to split or defederate those communities on the non-meta side of the fence would be back to square one building from scratch. That is the problem and if we don’t see it for what it is we will be left with nothing.

blue_berry,
@blue_berry@lemmy.world avatar

I strongly disagree meta’s involvement is necessary for the fediverse to grow and become big.

To a certain degree, yes. But that growth has its limits because of network effects. Most people want to be where their friends are.

If they choose to split or defederate those communities on the non-meta side of the fence would be back to square one building from scratch.

But they are already there. Also, companies like Flipboard and Medium will continue to join the whole thing. It will be nearly impossible to convince ALL of them to leave this big growth potential behind and instead join the old Fediverse, which is much smaller.

I think in any case, there will be three new big factions on the Fediverse: Meta, non-Meta which federates with Meta and the Fedi-Pact-Fediverse. I think there is not much either of us can do about it. But I’m more symphatizing with the second group because I think ActivityPub was developed as an open protocoll and its the only way to make the Fediverse big (doesn’t mean btw that the federation-policy regarding Meta cannot dynamically change over time, this way it becomes a tool against Meta; just permanently defederating doesn’t make sense in my opinion).

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