A simple solution would be to ask Meta to opensource Facebook, WhatApp, Instagram and whatever their federated instance would be called code and in return, they can federate with the fediverse. I think that will show their true intentions on how much love they have for the opensource community. Put the ball in their court and if they agree, they will be welcomed to the fediverse as good faith actors.
Just my 2 cents.
Or they could just build on the fendiverse because the fendiverse was created so people like you and all the other unhappy people can’t gatekeep just because you don’t like them. Can’t have your cake and eat it too.
The whole idea of it being decentralised is to stop companies like meta coming in and turning it into just another capitalism machine
Theoretically I’d hope the admins of all the bigger Lemmy instances would refuse to federate with them on account of the fact it would largely collapse the federated network into one big blob of everyone on the same server that is controlled by a corporation that’s demonstrated time and time again not to have consumer rights at heart in the slightest
Why doesn’t the article write about the actual threat to the fediverse? Embrace extend extinguish is such a common tactic it’s hard to imagine this isn’t what Facebook is doing.
Especially since they’ve already done it with XMPP
Every time a big company gets into an open source space, they try to take it over. Hopefully everybody in the fediverse recognizes that.
So hold on, is this an open source space, a protocol or “like email”? Which of the poor analogies people use to convey excitiement about AcitivityPub are supposed to apply here?
Because, you know, Google got into the Linux space, into email and into open source software and it seems those survived the experience.
Google got into the Linux space, into email and into open source software and it seems those survived the experience.
Try to start up your own independent email server instead of going with one of the largest providers. You will never be able to message anyone on Gmail.
Very much not true. All I’ve really had to do was create an SPF entry in my DNS and setup DKIM. Once that was done, it was okay.
The guys I regularly exchange email with have had no issues getting mail from my server.
Agree–keep off. Meta can just build their own Twitter.
Okay, someone explain to me cus i apparently don’t have the critical thinking skills to figure it out on my own.
What does Meta want from joining the fediverse? What is the draw for them???
This was a very illuminating view from another post
There’s a business strategy called embrace, extend, extinguish that they’ll try to use to snuff out the fediverse.
They’ll make a bespoke federated service, collect all the data of their users (and all the people on other networks their users interact with), make it all shiny and fancy and add a ton of improvements most networks don’t have yet. And if they can reach a critical mass of users, they can track a huge cross section of federated activity, and force networks to play by their rules or lose access to their entire userbase. It’s the same thing google did to email.
(and all the people on other networks their users interact with)
This reminded me of the fact that Meta creates “ghost” profiles for people who they know exist, but who don’t use Facebook
Um, isn’t everything everyone does on the fediverse public? I assume it’s all being tracked already. By search engines as a bare minimum, but anyone else (including Meta) who does any kind of research/etc. And they don’t need to be federated to do it, they can just crawl the network with HTTP.
As for “forcing networks to play by their rules” I don’t see that happening, and Google hasn’t done it with email. Gmail doesn’t have enough marketshare for that. At best they’ve forced people to make sure they have good outbound spam filtering. That’s not just google, every email provider (including small on premise office mail servers) has that policy.
I’m not saying we should federate them (personally I’m undecided) but your explanation hasn’t convinced me.
Instance owners (can) see way more info about you. A rando scraping public posts can’t tell what device a user is connecting from, what posts they’re looking at and for how long, where to most effectively inject ads, and then correlate all that with gps and sound recordings they collect via their app they’ve convinced people to install.
The social media part of social media apps has always been the secondary feature. Something like 90% of users lurk anyway, the only way they’re getting data on lurkers is a man-in-the-middle attack.
Also, Gmail is very strong in the email space. It doesn’t matter whether your server ever sends a single piece of spam, Gmail has a history of throttling mail servers’ ability to send to Gmail accounts.
Facebook will never know any of that about me, since I won’t ever sign up for their instance.
On top of that, you’ll also have to make sure that your instance admins defed with Meta
I think most people currently on lemmy would agree, but most people aren’t on lemmy. Like it or not, if Meta started a fediverse instance tomorrow, 90% of the fediverse would end up going through it. They would just make it so easy that most people wouldn’t even know they were in the fediverse (which I still believe is a better world than how it currently is).
Then your choice isn’t just “do I join a meta instance”, but also “do I interact with users/communities” on a meta-owned instance? The upside will obviously be the amount of content (ex. populated niche communities) available. The downside is that Meta will mine anything and everything they can from you. I do think lemmy is architected in such a way that they won’t have lurking data because your local instance “clones” threads for lurking by local users, so maybe it’s not that big of a deal. DMs would still not be encrypted though, and meta certainly won’t endorse communication over matrix.
They were bleeding users so they want some ways to tap into existing user pool and they think it is easy to get that by simply federating, but they are about to find out the hard way why it won’t go the way they want.
Meta apps have a couple billion users. The fediverse has maybe ten million.
I really don’t think that’s the reason they’re considering ActivityPub.
I assumed over the years that users count would have been evaporated, so do we have current user counts for it?
Why would you assume that? I think Facebook has reported a loss of users maybe one quarter, ever? They’re flirting with 3bn these days, as far as I can tell.
Just that I don’t bother to care about them for years until now that they are trying to mess with Fediverse.
Well, like we’ve said elsewhere in this, they are orders of magnitude larger than the fediverse. Absorbing users or data is almost certainly not their motivation here.
Interesting that it doesn’t mention how Vantablack is gatekeeping FediPact and keeping certain instances from joining because she doesn’t like them
Meta is that annoying little sibling that wants to be a part of everything when nobody wants them around. Except instead of a sibling, it’s more of a disease.
Yea I mean, I don’t think anyone could actually believe that Meta is acting in good faith here, or even capable of acting in good faith in general. As much as it’s exciting to think about plugging a billion new users into the Fediverse, it would no doubt be done in a way designed to enrich Meta at our expense.
they would have to prove that they are in good faith to be able to gain our trust in federating with them. but with their past bullshit, its hard to do so.
It’s been detailed already and obvious that Meta plans to financially compensate and federate with the largest instances while shutting out smaller ones and instituting a “reputation based” system to federate with them so it’s pretty clear that the goal is to incorporate the largest Mastodon instances and then slowly buy them out while cutting everyone else off.
I don’t see what there is to gain from this, I don’t want mega-corporation in my social media anymore. especially not after what has been happening to their platforms. if their users want to join the fediverse, the account creation process is always open as long as they can follow the rules!
And of course there’s always the fact that their end goal will not be good for any of us, no matter what it is there is a 0% chance our interests align
Am I living in a different planet from the rest of the commenters here? We have much more to gain from this than they do.
Not really no.
The process of “embrace, extend and extinguish” has been used multiple times to destroy FLOSS projects from the inside.
Of the top of my head:
- Kerberos
- Office formats
- XMPP
I’ve just got back from a run so my brain is not fully connected, so others can give other examples.
Meta do not want to join the party for fun. They want to join because it is the only way they can smother it.
Can you elaborate on them? Stating just the names requires you to already be aware of how they were taken over.
I recommend checking this article out https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
@ericflo@lemmy.ml as well
Look up what happened to XMPP (Jabber) when Google “integrated” with them.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Basically the sequence of events as claimed by the author is that:
- XMPP small niche, small circles
- Google launches Talk that was XMPP compatible
- Millions joined Talk that could coop XMPP in theory
- The coop worked only sparingly and was unidirectional, i.e. Talk to XMPP ✅ but XMPP to Talk ❌
- Talk sucked up existing XMPP users as it was obviously a better option (bandwagon effect + unidirectional “compatibility” with XMPP)
- Talk defederated
This demonstrated exactly the importance of reciprocity. If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature. Also frankly it is Meta that has more to lose than the fediverse at this moment as the bulk of users and thus the content are with Meta.
If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature.
HARD disagree. Meta has been fighting dirty since their inception. There is no reason to put even the smallest bit of trust in them, and every reason to do the opposite. Everything they touch turns to shit, it follows then that you should never allow them to touch that which you hold dear
If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature.
These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore. If you let them gain that much ground, it’s too late to isolate them without doing even more harm to your own network.
Also Meta is not a startup with unknown reputation. Meta plays dirty, that’s a given.
Does anyone know what there business model could be here? Technically they could get access to all federated content, just as regular instances do. But legally they don’t own that content nor do they know what country it origi ated in. This sounds like a legal nightmare to me. Would they even be allowed to process content in any form created by EU users under GDPR?
It’s not about any business model. It’s about killing competition. https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
I think fighting this will be a mistake. Instances ran by the likes of Tumblr and Meta can only bring more people into the fediverse, and when they’re in it will be easier for them to move around.
The great thing about AcitivityPub is it lets the people who want to be in larger more centralised servers connect to those who don’t fairly seamlessly.
Your sentiment though well placed seems to be incorrect, there is a big risk.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
