How will we keep Meta out of the fediverse?

You can't keep them out, but you can choose not to Federate with them. They can't take over. That's the point of having independent federated servers.

They have the right to use the open protocol, just as anybody else to build their own instance. Trying to keep Facebook out only through banning of known instances/IP addresses is a losing battle of whack-a-mole.

If you really want to stop them from EEE, make a pact to refuse to federate with any instance software stack without the AGPL-3.0 license instead, no Apache, no MIT, not even regular GPL, so they simply can't do the "Extend" bit at all.

We could collectively vote to defederate them.

You sign up on (or create) an instance that defederates from them.

If a corporation aims to purchase an instance, all the other instances would let them know they will vote to defederate it as soon as the purchase is finalized. That ought to make them change course.

I don’t have an issue with social media companies entering the Fediverse, at least on the surface, because it’s ultimately more users and it’s in line with the ideas of free exchange of information and content. My problem with it comes in when they try to buy instances, communities, or what have you. No one should have a monopoly on the Fediverse, and it shouldn’t be pay to win.

So, my answer is this: because no one can stop anyone from making their own instances, users decide whether to defederate their instances from Meta’s, or Twitter’s, or anyone else’s. Join an instance that doesn’t federate with Meta, or start your own if you have the know-how. Just like anywhere else on the internet, you don’t have to interact with content you don’t want to interact with.

Any admin worth their salt's gonna defederate them and proudly wear the Misfit Loser Zealot label[^1]. The only people who'll federate with them are the naive techbros and those who only care about how much users they have, compared to, idk, being committed to creating a good community.

https://fedipact.online is already gaining steam with the Mastodon side of the fediverse.

[^1]: Seriously the markdown guy couldn't've picked a better description if he tried.

The Mastodon instance I'm on has blocked all known Meta IPs as a preventative measure. So I imagine some admins will federate and some won't, and users will be free to join the instance that they wish to.

The protocols and software are all free and open source. You can't stop a company from running a Lemmy or Mastodon instance any more than you could stop an individual from doing so.

The nice thing is that the system allows for free choice. Your favorite instance isn't forced to federate with a hypothetical Meta instance, and and even if it does you can choose which communities to subscribe to or avoid. Who cares if Meta runs an instance, or a hundred instances? You can simply choose not to use them.

I don't see how they can really take over in a system that's open source and anyone willing can create their own instance. If they start taking control of a large, established base and pisses that base off, they can just collectively make and move to a new instance, walling the previous one off from the federation by blocking it.

I'd have to imagine that Meta would be locked within their own little bubble. I find it hard to believe that many of the current instances out there wouldn't immediately opt to defederate from Meta out of principle. I don't think it'd be difficult to find a community that's blocked all interaction with Meta.

Jesus Christ 🤦‍♂️

The entire point of federation is you can't.

Go post your uneducated meta circle jerk hate back on Reddit.