Should programming.dev defederate from Meta if they implement ActivityPub?
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/
I'm already a day late and I haven't actually read all the comments because they're surprisingly a lot here. But here is my two cents, hopefully I'm not just repeating someone else.
Do you want the fediverse to be as big as possible? Or do you want it to grow in a steady manner in a healthy way with healthy discussion?
Letting on the garbage that is popular social media giants like meta, will completely and utterly overwhelm this community. They have millions of users, we have thousands. Every single one of our posts will be drowned out by them. Say goodbye to high quality discourse, we will just become what Twitter and Facebook turned into, the same way that Reddit is going.
I do not care if we have millions of users, our higher bar of Discovery and usability means that we get people who are self-motivated to learn, learn about technology, learn about our culture, learn about our rules.
Would it be nice if it was easier to discover/join the fediverse? Sure. Would it be nice if we had millions of users? Sure. But I want to grow carefully and sustainably. I would rather have a small or medium-sized community with healthy discourse, than a worldwide gigantic social media community where conspiracy theories reign supreme, and the less techy people don't understand how threads are different from Lemmy, and are constantly cross posting and are confused about what they're looking at.
I can block meta communities myself, but I can't block all the hordes of people that will jump on our threads. This is a scalability problem waiting to happen, this is a social discourse problem waiting to happen.
Lastly the only reason that I could possibly imagine that Zuckerberg wants to federate is to keep the only viable alternative to monopolistic social media conglomerates in check. The more people that can talk to us through his platform, the less people will look into and join us. If they can assert their monopolistic practices on the fediverse, they could use the EEE model to make it irrelevant. He is trying to destroy the federated social networks before they are big enough to be a real threat.
Yes
yes
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.”
Companies like Meta poison everything they touch. They are a deeply evil, psychopathic organization. They are responsible for causing extremely harmful runaway effects in human society that I’m not even sure are possible to fix. The very reason for Lemmy's recent popularity is that people are fed up with the "if something is free, you aren't the user, you are the product" situation and its consequences (see Reddit vs. /u/spez).
Their intent to federate is a blatantly obvious attempt at an "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy - I'm surprised anyone seriously considers federating with them. They need users to solve the "chicken and egg" problem and joining the fediverse would be an easy way for them to populate their service with content. Their motivations are obviously and transparently malicious and self-serving. They don't care about the goals and values of the fediverse at all, all they see is an easy way to gain initial users and content. At the first moment federation will be more inconvenient than useful to them, after they sucked all the profit they could out of it, they will drop the entire thing like a hot potato, and we will be left in the dust.
I personally like this instance very much, and I've been putting hours and hours of work into building the AUAI community since the day I joined. But I wouldn't hesitate for a second before deleting my account and never looking back if the community here decided to federate with Meta.
EDIT: another explanation of why they want to join the fediverse
Pertaining to the discussion in case you missed it https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
It really helps to hear a historical perspective on this. The issue is not a matter of, "let's give them a chance and see how it goes." It's more like, "we know this has gone very badly in the past and the incentives are clear for Meta to sabotage us."
yep. And as an XMPP networks op, I wish we had figured-out the technical measures to avoid it in the meantime. Practically, it boils down to preventing a single actor from consolidating a "greater than X" share of the network, while retaining the desirable aspects like "promoting the better services for the most users".
Really good write-up!
It persuaded me that federating with any corporation is not a good move at such early stages.
Defederate, or fediverse will be a niche satellite of Meta and not its own thing.
Yes, I think we should defederate. Don't give them free content, and don't let them monetize Fediverse.
Also, I'm not really interested in having the millions of Facebook and Instagram users here, it's one of the worst and most bland people and content internet can offer, right behind Tik-Tokers. I don't see how it would add any value, other than moderation issues.
YSK : Meta is also a threat to the privacy of fediverse users, if there are fediverse instances that remain federated with Meta.
Ross Schulman, senior fellow for decentralization at digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that if Threads emerges as a massive player in the fediverse, there could be concerns about what he calls “social graph slurping." Meta will know who all of its users interact with and follow within Threads, and it will also be able to see who its users follow in the broader fediverse. And if Threads builds up anywhere near the reach of other Meta platforms, just this little slice of life would give the company a fairly expansive view of interactions beyond its borders.
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-threads-privacy-decentralization/
You make a good point. My initial Reddit interactions, for example, consisted of involvement. Before the API thing it had become the same thing as 9Gag: a place to just doom scroll for the entire time spent.
The content becomes samey, or repost central.
Yes, because we already know exactly how this is going to go. Their need to constantly make more and more money means that we know TODAY what is going to happen: EEE. We know this because of Fark, Digg, now Reddit, and to a lesser extent Slashdot and StackOverflow. The profiteers aren't interested in federating, or having well-run communities; they're interested in money and nothing else. We know for an absolute fact that Meta needs to make money and they're only interested in the Fediverse because they see money in it (quite simply: because if they didn't they wouldn't be).
I completely get "we shouldn't strike pre-emptively" but if you wait until the third E it's too late. But we already know it's not pre-emptive because they've already enshittified their own communities. Ever tried scrolling through Arsebook recently without FBP and uBlock Origin? Article - article - ad. Article - article - ad. One item in fucking THREE is crap you're not interested in. That's what they want to force onto the Fediverse. We know it today. We have seen what they have done to their own stuff. So when they come sniffing round here we are completely justified in slamming the door in their face even if they promise to be nice this time, because we already know what they want.
"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it," and you don't have to look far. The influx of people into the Fediverse is directly caused by the profit-motivated enshittification of Reddit. If we don't draw the line here then we have to retreat back from Lemmy and invent something else, which they will then want to enshittify.
I've already made my view on the issue known in other comments, but I've just stumbled upon an argument that I think is really important to consider, and should make de-federation an absolute must.
Allowing Meta in goes directly against the idea of Fediverse, and we should fight it as much as possible.
This is a literal quote from the main header on https://www.fediverse.to/
The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.
Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.
Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.
I've seen a lot of comments mentioning that defederating with Meta goes against the principles and main ideas of the Fediverse, that it should be inclusive and allow people to connect. But, judging by this main selling point of the Fediverse, it sounds to me like Meta shouldn't be in the Fediverse do begin with.
Yes.
TLDR; YES.
They are just trying to pull an EEE(Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) on fediverse. Federating with Thr*ads is just putting a shotgun at the mount. Just see how Google killed XMPP
If they start to pull some EEE bullshit I'm sure 90% of the Fediverse will just nope the fuck out. I'd say give them a chance, but don't let them start to control the Fediverse protocols.
Once they start damage is already done, I'd say treat them like they're as radioactive as they are
XMPP is alive and well, you can use it, many do.
When Google and Facebook embraced it back then, the community was small and fresh, so their adoption of XMPP was quite the boost.
When Google quit and took its users there was a significant user base that disappeared.
The fediverse exists for almost a decade and it has a stronger user base. Meta can try to extend ActivityPub and we can only hope the devs don't cater to their needs above anyone else's (maybe we can learn from Mastodon's influence). When Meta tries to extinguish it'll only take their users with it.
They can already fetch all the public data they want without federating.
I dislike preemptiveness but everyone would have to be on their toes to react to any ill intent (like trying to change ActivityPub although that's not really a well-defined protocol to begin with).
I'm still on the fence but leaning towards block.
I'm unsure. A lot of people are saying yes, but they are also implying to do so preemptively which I don't agree with. I would rather wait a few weeks and see what effect it has on this instance before making a decision.
ı dont think you would want Bunch of Instagrammers here
Actually there are quite talented game Devs and Artist posting on Instagram. (But threads is not Instagram)
I find it very alerting how preoccupied people here are. How does this makes us any better?
So, are we saying we want more people to create accounts on Meta's Threads?
That's what defederation would imply: people who want to interact with Meta's folks and be in touch with Meta's community would end up creating accounts there. We'd be handing users to Meta by doing that.
Clearly, Meta has tons of resources to invest. If they have half a braincell among them, they'll be able to create some value with those resources. Given that they're launching Threads with or without federation, we now have two options:
- We let Meta enhance the value of all instances.
- We lock out Meta, and all their value created remains their own.
What are we even talking about here? A ton of people put in a ton of effort and work to create a platform where the whole point is to have different organizations be able to inter-operate without any one instance gaining too much power. As soon as someone with actual resources wants to contribute, we shut them out? Folks, if a single organization could bring down the fediverse, then the "decentralize so that no one can gain too much power" model is proven wrong, and it was bound to fail anyway.
If we become an echo chamber where the only one who can be part of the "fediverse" are people without resources, then what's even the point? Who wants an email service that can't send emails to Gmail and Hotmail, but only YourFriendlyLocalInstance.com?
The way I see it, we should absolutely not defederate. I'd prefer to see Google or Twitter also join the fediverse, and have them competing amongst each other to make sure we have enough competition to keep any of them from wanting to defederate.
EDIT: Quoting this deep child-level comment, which explains my point of view better:
We care about the vision of a “fediverse”, where all instances’ users can talk to one another if they choose. If that’s what we care about, there’s no choice here: federate, or you’ve already broken the vision.
Look, no one is saying that programming.dev should promote Meta’s content on their home page. Let’s beef up our moderation/content filtering tools:
- Let users block all Meta communities and all Meta users if they choose.
- Let users set that none of their posts should federate to Meta.
- Let community mods block all posts from Meta users.
- Let community mods decide never to let Meta users see any of the posts on their community.
- Let the instance owners decide never to feature a Meta user’s post or a Meta community post on “all” or “local”. Make it so that the only way to find a Meta post/user is by actively searching for it or subscribing to their communities.
That’s all well and good.
But defederation is worse than that. What defederation really means is: “Even if programming.dev users want to see Meta content or post there, we won’t allow it. Go create an account there instead.” As soon as you do that, it’s not a fediverse anymore.
Folks, if a single organization could bring down the fediverse, then the “decentralize so that no one can gain too much power” model is proven wrong, and it was bound to fail anyway.
I'd be interested to hear how Facebook would seek to alleviate those concern, regardless of weather such concerns are realisticly founded or not, as social networks inherently deal with humans and public opinions.
- What kind of technical solution from Facebook do you think would best help appease concerned users in the Fediverse?
- Could there be a technical solution to resolve the social dilemma of (real or appearance of) power imbalance between Facebook and the rest of the Fediverse?
I'm trying to think of how Facebook could gracefully relinquish control over its platform while guaranteeing Facebook could not later subvert those concessions. Would that ever be in Facebook's best interests? I guess improved user trust and positive PR could help abate the calls for regulation and monopoly busting.
There are skeptic rumours that Facebook is hoping to leverage the Fediverse as a relief valve for regulatory pressure due to EU's DMA:
- Theory: the only reason Meta cares about the fediverse / ActivityPub is so that threads isn’t labeled a “gatekeeper” under the EU’s new “Digital Markets Act”
- https://lemmy.world/post/1105955
Well just look at what happened with XMPP and google: https://lemmy.world/comment/906346
And even if we don't defederate, I doubt anyone in threads will notice us local instance users and contribute at all to our growth. There are 30 million+ of them backed by Instagram and like what, 10k of us? They just have too much weight to throw around.
Hell I'm not even convinced reddit is going to die and Lemmy is going to continue to grow. Just look at their front page. Absolute nonsensical drivel still gets several thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments, while any Lemmy instance is lucky to get 100 upvotes and 10 comments on a popular post
I've read that XMPP article before, but it doesn't convince me.
Yes, Meta may "kill" the fediverse. That's a risk. But either we take that risk, or we "kill" the fediverse ourselves by defederating. That's my opinion.
EDIT: Besides, defederating just hands them more users. Wouldn't you rather keep the users, and allow them to see Meta content? Maybe even attract some Meta users here by inviting them? The launch of a Meta competitor is what's causing the risk to the fediverse. Federating with them is how we can mitigate that risk.
This is an interesting take on the matter, and you do have pretty good points. For me personally, I don't think that bringing in the Meta crowd would bring us much value, as I've already stated in the other comment. I'm not interested in the style of content both Facebook and Instagram provides, and I don't really like the userbase - but that's also only my personal view, and it's not something that would warrant defederation.
I'm worried that due to sheer amount of people they have, it would simply drown any content from other instances and would make it harder to find (and also really hard to moderate - Meta has significant resources to moderate that many millions of users, something smaller instances can never reach). Hot and Top would simply be filled by influencers, and it would take significant effort to just unsubscribe or block all of them (I'm actually not sure here how does the frontpage works, if you select all instances - is it like All on Reddit, or like frontpage with a set of default communities, but not everything shows there?), while also making it pretty hard to find smaller communities with different crowd - which is what I like on Lemmy as of the current state.
As soon as someone with actual resources wants to contribute, we shut them out? Folks, if a single organization could bring down the fediverse, then the “decentralize so that no one can gain too much power” model is proven wrong, and it was bound to fail anyway.
I don't really agree with this. It's only my own take on things, but I don't believe in the slightest that Meta wants to contribute to the Fediverse or has any of it's interests in mind. Nothing good will come out of it, Meta will only exploit the Fediverse for free content they don't have to host or pay for to kickstart their own platform, and then slowly bring users over there with QoL they have resources to implement for their instance. I'm not worried that they will bring down the Fediverse - that's where the decentralization will work as it should since other instances can defederate as soon as a problem appears, and keep their content and their userbase. What I think is an issue is that unless we defederate soon enough, Meta will exploit Fediverse for their gain only, slowly make people used to the QoL they are providing and have resources for, and when it finally gets bad enough that instances decide to start defederating from them, it will be too late, and Fediverse will loose users and content creators, because they were used to and interacting with communities on Meta's instance - which were the best choice simply due to a high number of users coming from Meta's userbase. Which brings me to
That’s what defederation would imply: people who want to interact with Meta’s folks and be in touch with Meta’s community would end up creating accounts there. We’d be handing users to Meta by doing that.
This would be even worse if we defederate later, once it turns out that Meta is trying to do something that really warants a defederation. As I've said in the previous paragraph - Meta's communities will be larger and have more content, and more people will leave once we defederate because they are used to those communities, including people that would not leave there now.
And the last issue is the fact that it serves so much data about users and their interactions right into Meta's algorithms, without them having to make any effort for it. And I really don't like that, and it's the reason why I'm avoiding anything Meta even touches. But then again - that's my personal issue.
To sum it up - some commenters said that it's a risk that we should try and take to see how it will go - I'd personally rather not risk it, and just keep Meta or any other multi-billion corporations out of this ecosystem. You can be sure that they don't have anyone's best interest in heart, and will only exploit it for monetary gain. And they have teams of experts in the field already working on strategies about how to exploit us as much as possible. I say don't give them a chance, this is something we cannot win and it will only make everything worse.
I appreciate your engaging with me on this, though you haven't convinced me yet :)
I'm in agreement with you that Meta absolutely intends to exploit "the fediverse" for their own benefit: to gain users by making their platform valuable.
But... my take on this is: so what? If the fediverse can only operate when all actors are benevolent and selfless, then it won't last very long at all. And, even if it does, it's not as valuable to me that way, so I'll be leaving. What's the value of a fediverse if it doesn't even federate with any of the major players that have the most resources?
This would be even worse if we defederate later, once it turns out that Meta is trying to do something that really warants a defederation.
I honestly don't think that anything ever justifies defederation, aside from technical limitations. If you want to run a gated forum, fine, but then don't call it a "fediverse". It's just a forum. Would we say that it's fair for Google to say "From now on, Gmail will not send emails to @republican_party.org email addresses because we don't agree with them"?
EDIT 1: I haven't made my point very clearly. Am currently editing this message to make it clearer.
EDIT 2: Left the comment the way it was. Am struggling to express myself properly-- this is the best I can do at the moment.
You've officially changed my mind.
Up until now, I've been harping on the concept of "controlling interest" in which a single entity is large enough to control the direction taken. But I hadn't considered that the new direction might be one that limits the potential for a negative result.
Personally, I think that a sufficiently large instance does represent a major risk. But now I think it's a risk we have to take. If this federation experiment fails, then what is learned can be used in the next experiment.
Now to track down and add a note to all those comments I made...
Personally, I think that a sufficiently large instance does represent a major risk. But now I think it’s a risk we have to take.
If we had to white board a decision matrix on Facebook federation, what would be the number of risk's and rewards for either approach? How would you weight or quantify them? Just trying to approach this from a little more of an analytical angle, given most of us are developers anyway.
I appreciate your reconsidering your position! Thanks for taking my argument in good faith hahaha. I was worried I’d get some hate for it.
Cheers!