Meta will kill small instances! Please read.
I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.
Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.
As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:
- Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won't care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
- When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won't care. They will use Threads because its faster.
This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.
Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That's not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.
My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.
I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.
We couldn't get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.
I'm hoping that ALL admins across the Fediverse will defederate from Meta. At least we get to have our own separate platform then.
They shouldn't just defederate from Meta, they should defederate from any other instances that federate with Meta. Like a firewall against late stage capitalism
But that is a double-edged sword. What if, for example, mastodon.social doesn't defederate with Meta, but you defederate mastodon.social? Now you've just cut yourself off from a huge portion of the fediverse. Admins should defederate from Meta if their community wants to do that, but defederating from other instances that didn't do that is going a bit too far, in my opinion.
A small price to pay for salvation from Meta.
I've already blocked mastodon.social.
Why?
Because the size of it, the sheer centralization around it, it creeps me out.
Why? If you have blocked meta shouldn't you already be exempt from seeing comments and posts by their users on other instances? Why is this punitive approach needed
Edit: (Alongside downvoting, an explanation might be better suited to change people's minds, I just eant to know the advantage of this approach since you are excluding yourself from many users and you would have already blocked meta in this scenario)
Yes, at least that's how it is explained in How the beehaw defederation affects us, Back then, beehaw.org defederated from lemmy.world.
Translated into the current context:
Conclusions:
Or what do you think, @amiuhle@feddit.de?
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !asklemmy@beehaw.org, !asklemmy@lemmy.world, !asklemmy@lemmy.ml
You'd see comments and posts from their users on other instances that don't block Meta.
It's unclear how many users you would actually exclude, I think a lot of users who are on the fediverse right now don't want to have anything to do with Meta.
As the fediverse grows, there will be different bubbles with not much interaction between those, mainly because some instances won't be moderated while others will try to create discrimination free environments.
Just so I understand, blocking an instance:
Does:
It doesn't:
Is that right? I was under the impression that defederating would block them completely, as that is how it worked over at mastodon, if it doesn't that seems like a serious oversight.
That will just drive many Fedi-users to Meta.
Different instances will make different decisions and users will go to the instances that suit their preferences. That'a how it is supposed to work and the only way it hurts the Fediverse is if we get flooded with threads complaining that other people have different preference, dammit.
I feel like this will just hurt us more then help.
I don't see why this would hurt us. But even if it did, I would rather take the blow than associate with Big Tech again.
Meta willingly under-moderated across large swaths of east Asia and Africa, leading to unchecked rumors and tangible acts of genocide. Zuckerberg has compared himself to Augustus Caesar.
I think it’s acceptable to cut off a wildfire before it spreads.
Gotta love the fact Meta contributed to how my country got a murderer and the son of a dictator as presidents. Real great and trustworthy company there /s
I'm not asking you to trust them, I'm asking how defederating accomplishes anything? They got more users than the entire fediverse in a single day. We are not hurting them by cutting them off, we are merely making the fediverse seem more like a barren hostile place for a bunch of weirdo nerds.
The goal is not to hurt meta, but to keep meta from hurting the rest of the federated sites. Like not inviting a known their to the community barbecue because they are known to have stolen tons of food from other community meals. We aren't keeping them from creating their own dinner or anything by not federating, just keeping them away from ours.
Except in this analogy, Meta hasn't stolen food before. They run the largest bbq around, and have bought out previous corporate competitor bbqs, and now they're hosting a giant bbq one way or another, they're just suggesting you put a gate in the fence so that people can flow back and forth between the small community bbq and their large corporate one.
Is that going to make you nervous since they have such a cool giant bbq that people are inevitably going to want to go there? Yeah, but again, that's the case regardless of whether or not the gate goes in.
Shilling for Meta is a bad look.
They steal people's data and don't follow data privacy laws. They draw people in with unethical business practices, not fair competition like in your example.
People are not worried about people using Meta outside of the fediverse. In your analogy Meta is already easily accessible through the internet in general and people can feel free to use both without needing a special gate.
Does it look like I care whether or not I agree with the hive mind?
My example included them buying out their competition which is not fair, it's blatantly anti-competitive. Fairness has nothing to do with anything I wrote.
And in my example the gate doesn't harm the fediverse at all, it just makes it more convenient for users of both bbqs, being my entire point. There is nothing to be lost by federating with Meta.
Meta is showing up to the neighborhood bbq to shoot the cook and buy the grill from the estate sale. There also going to call it supporting the grieving family.
FB is a known source for targeted misinfo campaigns. If I log into those services right now Im pretty much gaurenteed to have misinfo on my landing page.
why federate with that?
Defederating means not interacting with the crowd Meta brings in. I have a bunch of other reasons but that's my main one. And before you suggest blocking, you can't possibly expect me to block all 10M of their users and the domain block is bugged. I know because I tried.
Besides, this place doesn't look like much of a barren wasteland since we're interacting with a bunch of people right now. I don't mind interacting with only weirdo nerds if they're nicer people. Quantity doesn't mean quality after all.
For the people who want to interact with Threads because of family and friends, they should just make an account there. Just don't let Meta destroy this small part of the internet.
Your argument entirely boils down to "domain blocking is still buggy", when Threads doesn't even support ActivityPub yet.
Once it launches, just block their instance.
I was gonna type out a really neat itemized response but I don't think you're discussing in good faith, just like Meta and Threads. I'd rather take a nap
Your point here is that blocking all of meta's instance is too hard because instance blocking is buggy.
This is just refuting my characterization of this place as barren.
This is saying nothing other than "Meta will destroy the fediverse", again, without articulating how that would be possible.
I'm bored right now so I'll bite. I know arguing with you is bad cuz you shouldn't do things that make you angry yadda yadda. But I really want to tickle that brain of yours and what goes in it.
Why do you think Meta specifically targeted the Fediverse?
Given their history with Whatsapp and Instagram, how sure are you that they won't use EEE to kill the Fediverse?
Considering the Fediverse is what people see as an escape to corporate social media, why is it unreasonable for people to be hostile to Meta's Threads?
Why should we give Meta the benefit of the doubt when they're willing to sell out people's data even if it means destroying democratic institutions?
I saw you mention earlier about lack of moderation. How exactly would federating with an additional 10M Meta Threads user affect moderation or lack thereof?
How would the culture of Fediverse affect the sudden flood of Threads users unfamiliar with Fediverse?
Do you think Meta created Threads in good faith given the recent events with Twitter?
Your thoughts on the matter please:
The regulatory angle makes the most sense given the scrutiny they're under from regulators, courts, the FTC consent orders, etc. Also entirely possible that the product manager building the project was able to pitch the fediverse because it was the hot trendy thing (NFTs, metaverse, ai, web 3, decentral etc.)
Given their history of buying WhatsApp and Instagram? Those aren't examples of EEE those are examples of anti-competitive corporate buyouts that should be illegal but aren't. Facebook does not have a history of EEE, and continue to be a large open source contributor, maintaining multiple open source libraries, frameworks, and protocols.
Because you can just block their instance.
They're scraping and selling your data regardless, this doesn't change anything.
Sounds like a lot more potential moderators.
I dunno probably the same way that half of Reddit posts are Twitter links. It will be fine. You can stay talking to your nerdy friends in the nerdy communities.
Threads came out of New Product Experimentation (NPE), Meta's (now defunct) experimentation division that produced tons of different experimental apps to see what would stick, or in this case, to have a card to play if a rival social media network were to suddenly implode for some reason. Was it developed in good faith in regards to Twitter or creating a healthy competitive business landscape? No. Was it developed in good faith in regards to the fediverse? Yeah, they're not gunning after the dozens of Mastodon users.
Until someone can actually state how federation with Meta would harm the fediverse, I'm for it. That EEE blog post that everyone keeps circulating does not do that. Its a quite frankly dumb take from someone who loved a protocol so much they didn't realize that users didn't. XMPP never had that many users, Google Talk did. The lesson to learn from that story is not that Google killed XMPP it's that a protocol's openness does not matter compared to user experience. It's awesome if you can have both, but if push comes to shove, and the protocol can't keep up, then the better UX will always win out, even if it's closed.
No, I wouldn't add them or interact with them.
I trust that they will do what they say want to do, which is to try and get a lot of users and make money advertising to them.
Now, I've answered 10 of your questions and I'm still waiting to hear what the problem with federating with them is that's not just someone blindly regurgitating that same blog post, or making vague accusations that they're so intrinsically evil we'll be cursed if we look at them too long.
So we don't get a space at all?
-A Weirdo Nerd
Lemmy is run by a bunch of tankies and the entire fediverse is under-moderated.
Cutting off a ton of users and content from the fediverse is stupid and everyone in here just keeps coming up with vague generalities because they're scared of Meta rather than have actually thought through what will happen and be able to articulate any actual harms.
People have articulated all kinds of actual harms, including two possibilities in the OP, but frankly they're irrelevant.
We know what Meta's goals are, and we know they have absolutely no moral standards whatsoever. Exactly how they try to accomplish those goals doesn't matter. We shouldn't give them the opportunity to try anything.
We should be scared of Meta, and we should keep them as far away as possible. Anything else is reckless and stupid at best.
No, they didn't. The harm listed was that Meta will make a shinier platform that will syphon away users, that is happening regardless and is not a harm that is a result of federation, it's a harm that's a result of meta having more money to build a better platform.
There goal is to launch a twitter competitor with a lot of users and make money off advertising. Nothing about that conflicts with the fediverse.
Like I said, this thread is filled with a bunch of people shaking in their boots about the company who must not be named rather than actually providing sober rational assessment of what's likely to happen.
Yes, it is. Read this: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
They can do that without integrating with the fediverse. The reason they're going to integrate with the fediverse is to embrace, extend, and extinguish.
Yeah, I've read that, and it's not an example of a corporation killing a decentralized network through federation, it's just a normal example of a corporation killing a decentralized network by having more money to make a better app.
XMPP did not die because Google used that protocol, it died because people preferred using Google Talk over any of the XMPP apps. That would be the case regardless of whether Google used XMPP or not.
Yeah, you think they give a shit about the fediverse? They're using ActivityPub because it's easier for them. They're not going to want to EEE us, because there's not enough of us to matter to them.
It's not easier for them, and once there's enough people to matter then it's too late to kill it. The fediverse is growing, and they want to stop that before the fediverse is big enough to matter.
"Boo hoo tankies bad, but big corpo run by billionaires who spread misinformation and intentionally act to topple legitimate governments in favor of their fascist agenda are akshually good"
Arguing with people like you (corporate shill) is a waste of time, so I'd rather have fun instead.
The reactions you are seeing are based off of Metas history. We will see how it works out.
i have no reason to believe anything will be different going forward, the same person is in charge and they have already stated they have the same plans here that they did on thier other projects.
why pretend its going to be "different this time"?
I didn't mean to pretend that this will be any different. My hope is, that there will be some people who will see that there is an alternative to big tech and maybe drop Threads in favour of a real fediverse instance.
if they bomb the federation with misinfo as FB produces then its going to be interesting getting thier notice and bringing them over without turning the open network into a pit of questionable assertions. maybe airlock federations? oneway sync?
Real life is not speech and debate, and it isn't an ad hominem to look at Meta's past actions and to expect that they will continue in the same way.
We don't have to have a crystal ball and be able to detail exactly what will happen and when to know that this is bad news. Expecting random internet users to outthink a mega corp and send an accurate and verified copy of their plan is absurd, and it seems like a bad faith attempt at discussion.
why shouldn't people be scared of meta
Do people think socialists or communists are bothered by this term tankie? It's like called a white person cracker. It's not really the effect youre hoping for, I promise.
Growth at any cost is the mindset that not only ruins anything good for profit, it is also the exact issue we are facing now in real life with the right gaining traction in many liberal and multicultural democracies.
Because everyone is being let in, without a second thought on if they even should be there, we now have massive social issues with not at all integrated subcultures in Europe that embrace values diametrically opposed to our tolerant and pluralist societies, in turn empowering the right to ruin any progress made in an effort to throw out the brown people again.
The right question to ask is not "can we accept this new member to our society?", the right question is "should we accept this new member into our society based on their beliefs and values, based on if they can contribute anything to the existing society?"
And to return to the matter at hand, this is what the fediverse is supposed to be. A bunch of communities and little realms, each with their own rules and interests but united in their belief that self determination and democratic structures make for a better and more fair internet. And then we have the meta intruder we are about to welcome with open arms, without any rules or expectations of him to adopt our values and culture, so they bring their own, corporate, centralized culture and use their money to brute force that culture into every place of importance.
It is not racist or intolerant of societies to expect newcomers to assimilate, and ignoring that fact brought us a re emerging right.
And it is not fearmongering or small minded to be extremely sceptical of Facebook trying to establish themselves in the fediverse, they are literally the OG data and privacy violating corporation, they invented echo chambers and connecting extremists. There is zero value to the fediverse in welcoming meta. The only one who wins if that happens is meta.
Exactly. Facebook is a known bad actor. There is absolutely no reason to believe their intentions are anything but evil. Pretending Threads is just another instance is both naive and dangerous. It is a cancer. If allowed to federate, it will metastacize.
Facebook is not evil, advertising is.
The people at Facebook aren't sitting there plotting to make the world worse, they're just sitting there figuring out how to make the numbers go up and since they're an advertising driven business, that means engagement metrics, which leads to the vast majority of their resultant evil. The advertising / engagement driven business model is what is actually evil and what could actually be addressed by legislators.
Well said.
How is that any different from what we have now?
Threads has launched, but has federation disabled. So right now Threads is a standalone system, and it and the Fediverse cannot intercommunicate.
If Threads later adds in federation but all the of the Fediverse blocks them, we're in exactly the situation that exists right this minute. And that doesn't seem to be hurting the Fediverse at all.
Yeah, I personally don't want that. I want to be able to log in to mastodon or lemmy without needing a facebook account and be able to interact with my less tech savvy friends and family, as well as get news from journalists/bands/sports teams/etc.
Do you really want the Instagram crowd to interact with us...?
I've been on Instagram for 3 years trying to build up an art profile, sharing my artwork. I think it's not Us vs Them, all sorts of people are spread out everywhere online.
I'm happy to be here on the fediverse with my fediverse accounts, not threads. I'm extremely despondent about threads existing.
No reason to be despondent until they actually make the leap to the fediverse and we discuss what the plan is to federate. Threads will not automatically federated with everyone. We will have a long time to look at what threads is and what kind of content they will bring
At least there would be people and content to interact with.
Based on your posts so far my friend, its becoming clearer why you think there's no one to interact with.
Lol, ironically my comments in this thread going against the hive mind have gotten more interaction than any others
If I was interested in those people and their content I could go there. I'm here because I absolutely do not want to see any of it.
I assume you only subscribed to text based subreddits then? Never once clicked on an image or gif that came from IG / Tiktok /etc.?
My god stop being such a gatekeeping judgemental douche. Tons of reddit content was on subs like r/aww and /r/animalsbeingderps that was exactly as trite as the stuff posted on IG, if it wasn't directly copied from it.
I am on TikTok and was on Reddit. I like my FYP on TikTok. I go on Instagram to see what old friends are up to and the suggested content is awful and mean spirited. Same with Facebook. I don't want that crap here
I am finding plenty of content to interact with here. It just might not be my first choice, but I'm getting along fine. It's still early
quality != quantity
How exactly will it hurt us to not be usurped by an evil megacorp?
How will not federating with them prevent that?
If we federate with Meta, we will be immediately drowned out by the huge user numbers of the Meta properties. They already have more users on day one than the entire fediverse.
I mean, if they actually subscribe to threads and discussions across instances, and isn't that kind of the point of a social network? For users to use it? Also odd that half the arguments against it are that it will kill the fediverse and half of the arguments are that it will provide too many users to the fediverse.
I don't think so; it won't hurt 'us' anymore than we were hurt yesterday, when Threads hadn't launched yet.
Why would that hurt us? Sorry, I'm pretty new to all this...
I feel different