Should beehaw defederate from meta?

sleepybisexual@beehaw.org to AskBeehaw@beehaw.org – 76 points –

I think it should. Has it defederated and does it plan to?

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No, it should not. IMO, defederation is toxic for the fediverse. One of the major advantages of the fediverse is that you don't have a walled garden. Don't try to make one.

If meta joins the fediverse it will take control very fast

It could not, that's the point.

i think you've been mislead somewhere along the line. the fediverse is not infallible-- no decentralised network is immune to any attack vectors. this has happened in the past with XMPP. google took a leaf from Microsoft's book and implemented the "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy. some more details on that and specifically how it relates to the fediverse can be found at the link below.

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

but aside from XMPP and the fediverse, even major decentralised networks like email have succumbed to this. you would be surprised how infected email has become. small independent mail servers often struggle to even get mail into the inboxes of people on major domains like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc.. some more details on that can be seen from the link below, but this issue on an email level is far more expansive than just this.

http://www.igregious.com/2023/03/gmail-is-breaking-email.html

Meta is no stranger to anti-consumer practices and is definitely no stranger to devouring smaller projects in order to expand its' own influence and userbase. all for the purpose of squeezing every bit of data they can from its' userbase to sell to advertisers. i encourage you to learn some more about the weaknesses of decentralised networks, and about Meta's history of disgusting business practices.

i don't know why you joined the fediverse, but for me, this is directly against the ethos of what this platform is for.

One of the major features is defederation. While you don’t have to have a walled garden, your instance gets to choose who it joins to. And I’d rather not join to threads as we’ve seen what Mets does with open protocols.

Defederation is not toxic, it's an essential tool. The ability to choose what kind of contents and account you can see is one of the best part of decentralised social networks.

The ability to choose what kind of contents and account you can see is one of the best part of decentralised social networks.

Sure, but that's why the user can choose to ignore instances/communities...?

There are limits to defederation at a user level. Hard defederation can only be done at a server level.

And server owners have the responsibility to keep their place safe from bad actors

How do they do that? By defederating servers that contain and promote that type of people and content.

A place like Beehaw that calls itself a safe space for marginalised groups cannot federate with anything owned by Meta, which openly allows racist, ableist and anti queer rhetoric on their platforms.

They already block a long list of alt-right servers, why would threads (that has already whitelisted alt-right propaganda groups like libsoftiktok) be any different?

When I choose this server I did because I knew they would defederate from any server promoting alt-right/"free speech" rhetoric

One of the major advantages of user controlled communities is that your community can decide on what is allowed, like having rules about not tolerating intolerance. How is that toxic?

Also its pretty easy to join multiple instances and have a few accounts if you want.

Also its pretty easy to join multiple instances and have a few accounts if you want.

Sure, but if you need several accounts just to be able to participate globally, how is that better than non-federated networks?

The answer was in the comment you replied to.

your community can decide on what is allowed, like having rules about not tolerating intolerance.

I think those wanting to participate globally are in the minority.

you've made a few comments on this post now, but none of them are addressing the point of contention. you're getting caught up in these hyper-specific details. this is just one tiny component of a larger issue.

would you say that drowning isn't possible, because you don't drown when you shower? you're missing the rest of the information.

there are several comments here, including mine somewhere in reply to this thread, that address why this is life-threatening to the infrastructure of the fediverse. please understand those points and understand that this is a cumulative pressure. hyper-focusing on these details (which could be debated, but it's unnecessary as it's not relevant) will only make you miss the bigger picture.

To me the most significant advantage of the fediverse is that it isn't run by sociopathic billionaires and I'd like a wall to protect me from them.