FediPact is an Organized Effort to Block Meta's ActivityPub Platform

hedge@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 768 points –
FediPact is an Organized Effort to Block Meta's ActivityPub Platform
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I'll edit this comment when I get to my computer to link to a great article about this and a history of companies effectively killing federated services .

Edit: article here https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

But the main issue isn't the data. It's that when 99% of the users are coming through a company, they have too much power when it comes to updates. Meta can effectively control how the fediverse grows. And if they decided to defederate it's the normal Lemmy and kbin users who are forced to use meta services to keep in contact with the same people

But here's my thing with that argument, which is valid btw, but why would I want to keep in contact with the "head in the sand" people who continue using Meta's instances (or whatever monster they end up creating)? I can't imagine anything meta could offer me that would make me use their fediverse product. And the people that migrate over to them - okay? have fun supporting an evil corporation that's using you as a money printer. Sayonara.

I mean... because those people include all my friends and family? It was not a big problem to leave Twitter, which was used by only a couple of people and not exclusively. If there is an ActivityPub social media site where there is you guys and one defederated one where there's all of them... well, I'm gonna go with them.

Just so we're clear, unless you make AP no longer open, defederating from Meta if they're around here means they have the network effects, not Mastodon or the rest of the pre-existing instances.

why would I want to keep in contact with the “head in the sand” people

Forget contacts. Imagine Meta has

  • poured way more developing hours in their fork than the FOSS community ever could
  • the most effective and easy to use mod tools
  • the best search tools for finding communities, topics and everything else (by a margin)
  • free instance hosting
  • every major wish list feature implemented
  • a working feed with endless content you actually find interesting
  • a vibrant community for every niche interest you might have
  • advanced development so much that it feels a couple versions ahead

The more money they throw at this, the more people will feel tempted to join or at least try their service. It offers objective benefits. It would feel like using lemmy 0.09 when others already enjoy 0.18.