this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
36 points (97.4% liked)

Fediverse

27922 readers
771 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ScaNtuRd@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (21 children)

I'm hoping that ALL admins across the Fediverse will defederate from Meta. At least we get to have our own separate platform then.

[–] amiuhle@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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

[–] MarioBarisa@vlemmy.net 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

A small price to pay for salvation from Meta.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Elkaki123@vlemmy.net 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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)

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (20 replies)
[–] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the issue being missed here is that Meta will ultimately aim to suck all users into themselves, and then once they feel they've done enough of that, they will go completely closed, even potentially forking the protocol itself. If any legal attempt to stop this is made they will bog it down with hordes of lawyers for decades.

Their goal is not to help fediverse, it is recognising fediverse to be a threat and aiming to absorb it. Literally no different to how reddit slowly absorbed all internet forums into itself, killing the distributed internet.

Fediverse is attempting to bring back that distributed internet and they're trying to find ways to kill it. All corporations seek monopoly, it's how capitalism works.

[–] bandario@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Spot on. Anyone cooperating with them is a fool.

[–] Sigil_Hunter@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Well on the bright side, at least the fediverse is seen as a genuine threat to current social media. Hopefully it will stay that way.

[–] menemen@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] astral_avocado@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 1 year ago

Damn, that's a terrifying vision of the future. I was on the fence with defederating, but we probably should.

Your comment should be top.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Absolutely. We'd have to be nuts to think they're not trying to take it over and ruin it.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] eee@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

I get all the hate for meta and zuck, and I agree that they would only do so for their own commercial benefit, but I don’t think we should defederate without seeing what federating means. Everyone here is instinctively panicking and running around like headless chickens without seeing what it would actually entail.

Threads is like mastodon. If federating with threads only means that threads users can participate in lemmy, I see that as an advantage for us.

If we were a mastodon instance, this conversation would be very different.

[–] janWilejan@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

For those who don't know, the strategy is called Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. The phase comes from Microsoft who used this to (try to) crush competing document editors, Java implementations, browsers, and operating systems. Other big tech companies employ similar strategies.

Facebook coming to the Fediverse is the Embrace phase of this process and that makes Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, Misskey, and Akkoma the competitors.

[–] Gerula@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Meta or any other corporation with interest in social media sphere (to be read: wanting to make profit on the back of the users) will, sooner or later, kill the fediverse if allowed to enter.

Why?

Simple because the reason for a corporation to exist is to make profit and that profit has to grow each year - so there is all the incentive in the world to milk everything from the user until they can then move on to the next "thing".

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] _cerpin_taxt_@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If I wanted to see content from my racist Trumper uncle, I would just create a Facebook account. Keep Threads far away from the rest of the Fediverse. We don't need to compete with them. Who cares if they're way bigger with way more content if 99% of that content is garbage?

[–] RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

if 99% of that content is garbage?

Counterpoint: beans.

Serious note: I think the point of decentralized networks like this is that each instance will have to choose to federate with Threads or any other future corporate social media. If that sounds dangerous, welcome to the freedom of choice baybee! It sucks that the truth is that as long as we want this to be a free space where people can choose what and where they see content, that means some will choose to work with the big-easy-techgiant rather than take a harder approach because 99% of people aren't that invested.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If they defederate from other instances, they just means Threads users won't see those instances. Those instances will still see Threads content, if they want. The content is also shared across instances this way, so their servers largely don't matter. Whenever Lemmy.World or Yiffit.net is down or having problems, I just bop over to Kbin and it's like those other two instances never actually dropped out since I can still see and interact with their posts.

I don't see how in any way shape or form Threads can or will fuck up the entire fediverse when even if they have a majority of the users, their content gets spread around the whole network and doesn't stay on shit they control.

And if you're worried about their app collecting data: then don't fucking use it. Unless you think their app, on someone else's phone, will collect YOUR data somehow, this is a completely bullshit argument.

[–] Gazumbo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there a list of instances that have defederated (or announced they will) from Threads?

[–] Goose@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

yeah, i really, well and truly do not wish to be linked with meta on fediverse. it's obvious the damage it will do either way. may as well stay as we are and avoid the termoil which meta will bring us should they decide to federate.

[–] Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I'm more concerned of them integrating new features and bullying everyone else into following to integrate them or else.

[–] bear@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"We have to defederate or else they'll run incompatible code that won't let us federate with them"

This seems like a self-solving problem to me, I still don't understand what the hyperventilation is about.

[–] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (18 children)

They won't do that until after absorbing the users. Much like how Reddit killed off almost all internet forums.

load more comments (18 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] rschecht@lemm.live 1 points 1 year ago

But... what kind of Camel milk do you like?

[–] dystop@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Everyone is talking about defederating because of XMPP and EEE. But the very fact that we know about EEE means that it's much less likely to succeed.

Zuck is seeing the metaverse crash and burn and he knows he needs to create the next hot new thing before even the boomers left on facebook get bored with it. Twitter crashing and burning is a perfect business opportunity, but he can't just copy Twitter - it has to be "Twitter, but better". Hence the fediverse.

From Meta's standpoint, they don't need the Fediverse. Meta operates at a vastly different scale. Mastodon took 7 years to reach ~10M users - Threads did that in a day or two. My guess is that Zuck is riding on the Fediverse buzzword. I'm sure whatever integration he builds in future will be limited.

TL;DR below:

[–] notavote@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I don't think that FB even knows that lemmy exist, problem is they are so big they will crush us by accident.

Even back than with XMPP, Google didn't kill it intentionally. No one expected it will be smaller than before google used it. I remember watching empty list where all friends were. But it happened, and I never thought that Google wanted to kill XMPP.

[–] LordEdubbz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Everyone is really scrambling now as if they really thought up to now that the Fediverse was immune to corpo bullshit

load more comments
view more: next ›