With rumors Meta wants to federate with ActivityPub instances, what say you about instances having Terms of Use policies preventing use of volunteer contributed content being monetized (for example)?

varsock@programming.dev to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 105 points –
programming.dev

I am not one for policies restricting choice but I fear the situation where Meta sets up instances that become big, say like Lemmy.world. Then one day when their instance is popular, they decide to charge other instances to federate with Meta's instances.

Big corps like YouTube, twitter, Meta, etc are known to offer services at a loss to grow their service and then drop the hammer and demand payment to use what people already rely on.

I feel a policy that prevents federated corp instance from profiting early on from FOSS, self hosted, and volunteer federated servers is something to think about - though I do not know the best approach.

I like what Open Source software does with their licensing approach where you are free to view, use, and contribute but if you take you must distribute the source code to others. Some outright ban usage for profit without a license.

Obviously licensing applies well for software to prevent abuse, and I would like a discussion about what Terms of Use policies can prevent volunteer work from being abused - if any are desired.

see the following cross-post from: https://programming.dev/post/427323

Should programming.dev defederate from Meta if they implement ActivityPub?

I'm not suggesting anything, just want to know what do you think.

Here is a link if someone don't know what Meta's Threads is: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

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simple, don't federate with meta

Meta: you have to give us money to federate with us.

Every other instance owner: coolio, don't care. Fuckity bye

I absolutely hope it will be exactly like this. And then they lower the prizes and eventually make it free but then no-one wants that anymore.

Are there already domains available to add on my defederation list?

Not yet. The rumors are confirmed by Meta reaching out to a Mastadon admin, Kev, from fosstadon.org. He kindly made public the email.

Mail from Meta to Kev, from fosstadon.org, and reply

Not everyone has strength of conviction he does. Companies look for the weak link, how can they buy off or stroke the ego of.

Adding some T&C's in as OP suggested could be a good idea. Sure they can ignore it, but it'd be good to put in as many road blocks as possible to prevent the enshitification attacks that will eventually come in the distant future.