Defederate. Meta would do nothing but rot the fediverse from the inside
The instance I’m on already took that step, and I was thrilled to see it.
Question if a server defederate from threads but is still federated with a server that federate with threads can meta get your data
Meta can get your data in any case. ActivityPub is inherently public. You should assume anything you post on Mastodon, Lemmy, or KBin is public.
It was right there in the name all along!
It’s all fun and games until Facebook starts adding features, then eventually starts defining what the fediverse should do to maintain federation with Facebook.
Embrance, Extend, Extinguish. Enshittification. Call it what you will, but i don’t think this will end well for us.
This is my biggest fear. The hidden weakness of the fediverse is that the largest implementation gets to set the rules of federation
I disagree. Mastodon does not “set the rules” for federation of Kbin, Lemmy, Funkwhale, BookWyrm, Pixelfed, Peertube, or any other platform in the Fediverse. The platforms are interoperable when it makes sense, but they are designed to fill different needs and it makes no sense for them to follow some centralized “rules of federation”.
I think meta just wants to captailize on twitters demise.
I don’t see how crushing activtypub would help them in anyway.
Mastodon is already massive and many companies (and the EU) have their own instance.
Can someone ELI5 what this means for Lemmy, Mastadon, and other platforms that are federated?
I thought the point of federations was to allow server instances the ability to prevent other instances from interacting with one another?
Couldnt servers just block or prevent Threads from interacting with them?
Just reading this? I don’t understand how this truly changes anything at all. Why is everyone concerned? The API isn’t owned by Zuck but open for usage.
The fear is a practice called “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” (or EEE). It’s been used by tech companies before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
It, in theory, could work like this:
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Meta embraces ActivityPub in its tech in an attempt to garner good will and make it easy for users to transition to Threads.
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Meta extends on ActivityPub by saying "oh we’re just adding a few things that make this better for our users (on our service) but we’re still supporting ActivityPub!
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Meta then extinguishes ActivityPub support, and severally hobbles AP, after they secure enough users to be happy and think AP offers no real competition anymore.
Then the enshittification process begins, by moving the focus from users to other interests (usually advertisers) at the expense of users. And eventually to the platform owners, at the expense of advertisers. Though I guess they’ll skip the middle step, being a public company?
So after they build good will in the community and get a large userbase on their platform you think they will then pull the rug right out from under their own feet? Why would they cripple AP if their app is running on it?
It’s not that they would necessarily cripple it, but they would “enhance” their instance of AP (the “extend” in EEE), “accidentally” making it incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse and thus creating an excuse to suddenly drop support for the Fediverse. At this point users in, say, Mastodon will have created some degree of dependency on users in Threads, and at that point people in there would be forced to move to Threads if they want to maintain a similar experience as before.
Sounds like people should be more concerned about just not using Threads.
ActivityPub is a communication protocol. There’s nothing stopping anyone from implementing it and then adding their own ‘features’.
Just look at how different companies have implemented the HTML ‘standard’. You end up with websites that require specific browsers to run properly. It’s gotten better over the past few years, but god damn anyone old enough to remember what a pain it was designing websites in the 90’s and working around all of Internet Explorer’s shenanigans will tell you it’s not a good time.
They replace AP with something else internally and abandon AP. If anyone wants to keep talking to them, they’ve got to hop onboard whatever they’ve replaced AP with. This effectively kills AP (theoretically).
Why would it kill AP if there is a set of users that don’t care about those features but just their privacy?
Just don’t use Meta’s app or switch. I just don’t understand personally how this removed every other server instance using AP out of the equation if FB would just be closing themselves off even if they did build something better or useful.
We need to remember that ActivityPub and this entire fediverse is only to allow small, individual communities to live without a major corporation able to pull the plug. It’s not privacy centric at all. In fact, quite far from it.
I don’t understand that either? I thought the Fediverse was privacy first driven? I don’t really understand how it couldn’t be when you can wall off Threads if you choose to do so?
AP is just a networking protocol for communication between several servers. You should assume everything you to is 1000% public and easily gathered by everyone that wants to
Actually, apps don’t “run on” AP. AP is a federation/communication protocol, it’s only used to communicate objects, or things about objects, to other servers. Every app that uses AP can basically still work without it, since it has its own data structures and UI.
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Yes they can block threads, but they have to choose to. So some people might be on servers whose operators don’t block it. And, well, some people might actually want it. I see a lot of Mastodon accounts moving instances in the future.
I had heard, of course, that Rochko was in confidential talks with Facebook abiut something. This is disheartening. Facebook is toxic and must be kept out of the Fediverse.
Confidential is something which is not meant to be disclosed, but people gossiping call anything as such that has not been yet divulged to the public.
Partially correct. Your point?
deleted by creator
Remember what Google Groups did to Usenet? We should be wary.
It didn’t do anything. Usenet still exists and is active in some circles. It’s not very popular, but it’s as alive and well as it always was.
Usenet is still my primary source for uh…discounted media. I’ve had it for so long now I couldn’t even imagine not using it
I’ve looked into doing that myself before, but it seemed like a lot of work and research to get it set up
It’s pretty easy, especially if you have someone (me) that will let you see their setup or help out with any questions. Highly, highly recommend running your server on unRAID.
Can you recommend any good walk-throughs for noobs? I didn’t even know you needed a server lol
You only need a server if you plan to serve the content in a sophisticated way (like Plex). If you just watch movies on your laptop then it’s as simple as downloading the files and opening them.
Unfortunately, getting into usenet is actually not as technically hard as it is practically hard. First, some things to know about usenet:
- You pay for access to a usenet server, which has incredible speeds and doesn’t rely on uploaders. There are many out there, and good ones are easy to find.
- Because it isn’t P2P like torrents, there’s no way for the studios to know who’s been downloading anything. Typically the most they can do is send a DMCA to the servers, who auto-comply. Because of this near-anonymity, a VPN usually isn’t used. The corporations would need to subpoena the server to get any of your info, and they’re usually deliberately hosted in privacy-friendly countries.
- Now the hard part: knowing where the files you want to download exist on that usenet server, because even a small TV episode is often divided into 50+ smaller files. This is where NZBs come in. NZBs are small files that tell your usenet downloader where to find all the parts that create the bigger file. The usenet server you pay for doesn’t provide this service for legal reasons.
- Therefore, you need to also subscribe to an NZB indexer, which is where you search for NZBs for shows, movies, games, etc. Some are one lifetime payment, some are recurring. Good ones usually only open their enrollment during very small windows, so it can be really tough to get into one. This is the biggest hurdle for most people. Even finding out which indexers are out there can be tough, as people generally don’t blab about them in open forums, because they’re the most piracy-adjacent and vulnerable to being shut down.
That said, once you have a usenet server to connect to, and an indexer to find what you want, then it’s as simple as downloading the NZB file with a program like Sabnzbd, which will feel very similar to a torrent client. It downloads the various parts and combines them, so what you end up with is openable by windows (either media or exe). Everyone starts this way, and most users are probably content stopping at this stage too.
From there, however, some people get really advanced with it, like the person above running it on a separate server. There’s software out there that automates TV and Movies downloads based on your preferences and which shows you subscribe to, same with music and even ebooks. Then there’s Plex, which you may already be familiar with and which allows you to use your laptop or whatever to stream your content to phones, chromecast, etc., as well as share your content with friends to stream (requires paid sub I believe). It can be a little daunting to set everything up, but you’re mostly just following guides because it’s the same setup for everyone, minus changes in server URLs, username/password, etc. And once it’s running, it really is beautiful. A show that I subscribe to that airs on say, Wednesdays 8-9pm, is available on my Plex by like 9:30 typically, without me having to lift a finger. I even get a notification on my phone that a new episode is available.
But to be able to transcode streams to multiple people in the house? Requires a somewhat beefy processor. And to keep your huge library of shows for years and year? Requires a lot of storage. Even more so on both counts if you want everything in 4K bluray quality. And it probably needs to be a dedicated machine–can’t be gaming and transcoding from the same rig. But boy is it addicting building up your own enormous streaming service for friends and families haha. I hope you can see now why some people would get carried away with it.
Wow thanks that’s the best breakdown I’ve read! I’ve been torrenting for maybe 15 years and used to collect all the shows I watched until one day my external hard drive died and I lost everything :(
Nowadays I just delete a show after I’ve watched it, so Idon’t think I’ll worry about making my own server yet. I’ve had a look into it and think I’ll start off with NZB Geek as indexer and Frugal Usenet as a server. Drunken Slug seems pretty popular too but they don’t seem to be open for registrations atm
Breathe life into an almost-dead format and worked hard to retrieve as much post history as possible? Yeah, I remember what Google did to Usenet. Do you?
I remember it filling groups with non-text posts which could not be read by Usenet clients, among other things.
LMAO, i didnt knew that its not in the eu already… Oh wait the data privacy law is something here.
Threads will just straight up kill the fideverse. Ping me in a year or so!
Honestly doubt that threads will kill anything.
I would not take that risk. If it kills it. It happens fast
XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
I love Mastodon and the Fediverse, but to pretend that we are not a nerd circle is a bit disingenuous.
Yeah, if he thinks Mastodon is mainstream, he should check again.
Yeah I only hear about Mastodon last year. Found out it’s been a thing since 2016 lol
Yeah, it’s a bit naive to think this can’t go the exact same way XMPP did.
Textbook hubris.
His blog post will be another cautionary tale to tell in the near future.
Ultimately, people are selfish.
Whatever meta promised him is worth him selling out of his scruples to the community.
I don’t hate him for that, but the dude should at least have the balls to be honest with us that that’s what’s happening here.
Meta joining the fediverse is not a good thing for the fediverse. To say otherwise is to invite ruin.
Meta needs to be split up at this point, as do many other tech companies.
The problem with trying to break it up is that the FTC already allowed the mergers that let them get so big. They approved the purchases of Whatsapp and Instagram. Thankfully the new chair of the FTC seems to understand letting companies get this big is not good and is trying to block these things from happening in the future.
This is why we can’t have nice things. It was nice to be on platforms with no corporate stink for a brief moment.
If you’re on another server, you still have that freedom. Nothing changes unless you want it to.
Interesting times, we have Elon destroying the user base in twitter, sending users to the fediverse (add in reddit), whilst his mate Mark launches Threads and starts courting the fediverse. They’re two billionaires. They both have the same vision. Monopolised control. One destroys whilst the other builds. They’re in this together. Don’t be so blind. De-federate!
FOSS is the ultimate form of software. It’s like life, it will just get copied and forked and modified, and it will continue to evolve because it’s been set free in the world.
Yeah, Facebook might embrace-extend-extinguish the Fediverse. But on the other hand, it’s not the end of the world if they do. Right now, we have a decentralized platform to post, talk and interact on. If that changes, we will create another one
To me, the most interesting part about this is that the Fediverse is even on
Facebook’sMeta’s radar. It’s tiny. Do they see it as a possible competitor?I think it could be a way to get around privacy laws.
Those laws quickly becomes difficult to apply when everyones posts are no longer on central servers owned by meta and instead is copied across thousands of instance owners.
But I think their primary objective is to take on Twitter and get people to use Meta instead. It doesn’t cost them much to start experimenting with the tech, and being first somewhere is always an advantage.
They see it as free data. Meta will always suck data wherever they can. Remember they have a LLM engine too and lots of money and lots of data to train it on – but more’s even better. They can have swarms of bots trained to spread whatever the highest bidder wants them to spread. They can PR whitewash a brand or a celebrity, they can twist events, they can influence elections.
It was free data to begin with. It’s always been free data. All those internet posts you posted from some lame message board 25 years ago are still there. It’s probably still on Archive.org.
If you’re concerned about your privacy, don’t post shit you don’t want out there on a public forum.
They probably don’t need to make a whole platform to do this, though. Couldn’t they just slurp the data right out of ActivityPub without making Threads? Either way, I’m dismayed that meta is managing to YET AGAIN convince people that this time they’ll be good
Facebook never operated misleading bots. Companies that ran those bots utilized Facebook as their delivery method.
XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
Jabber was widely used in the early 2000s and not just among “nerds.” But Rochko would have only been 7+ years old at the time so how would he know that.
The “brand recognition of Mastodon” part makes me think this has to be a joke… right?
Man who signed NDA with Meta is suddenly gushing about Threads. I know, I know, this isn’t just anybody.
He addressed a few issues very topically but side stepped a major one. What happens if Threads takes off and Meta decides to enforce a trusted partner network by defederating all but a handful of instances unless they conform to Meta’s demands?
After all, if we allow Threads to grow to a successful size, that is where almost everybody will be. It is why Lemmy was a tiny project for a long time until Reddit and Twitter fucked up too badly and for too long. Twitter sucked all the air out of the room for Mastodon. Arguably still does despite itself. And Reddit did the same with Lemmy by simply existing.
Now imagine if Reddit made a Lemmy instance, kept policies around to make it grow large, then cracked down with an iron fist once they had the dominant position?
Eugen considers what would happen if Meta abandoned ActivityPub. But I don’t think would need to happen. They just need to wall off. They can keep the standard.
Another example: Google and RCS. The RCS Android users have isn’t the open standard. Google built a layer of proprietary middleware around it. They fiercely guard API access, which is why only a few “trusted partners” get to use it. And now Google is RCS. There are no more competitors even though it is open.
Because Google sucked all the air out of the room and became the dominant player able to dictate to the rest.
And so, too, will happen with ActivityPub and this whole shebang unless we stop them from being interoperable first. I get Eugen wants this tech to grow and prosper. But you don’t do it by making deals with the devil.
The one thing that you can trust 100% in all of this is that Meta’s intentions are evil, because Meta’s intentions are always evil. They see a new community finding its footing as prey to be seduced with features and then slaughtered for profit. They meet leaders behind closed doors and make them sign NDAs. Next, they’ll start throwing around their unlimited resources to take over.
Immediate and universal defederation is the only answer. It’s the only defense.
yeah, honestly, i think the optimism is somewhat misplaced. we must ensure that proprietary solutions, like threads, are not the main way people interact with the fediverse. it’s better to defederate early and continue in smaller communities while we still can, than to let them seep into every community we have, only for them to pull the plug later and lock everyone into threads.
i think it’s alright to federate with them a little bit, but we cannot allow threads to become the most popular fediverse app
I may be speaking in defense of something I don’t know, but I don’t see a direct problem with other apps (e.g., Threads, Twitter if they change up what they’re doing) to start talking with the fediverse.
The bigger problem is when they start throwing their weight around. The W3C (and groups like Mozilla) have had many strong battles with Google trying weird stuff because they’re the biggest guys in the room (e.g., FLoC).
As long as we can rally behind the loyalist FLOSS geeks, we’ll always be alright.
Yeah, it’s actually a welcome change that they’re federating. However, the way they killed off the last federation we had with XMPP was through the EEE model – they first acted friendly, joined our federation, then they ensured their client would be the best featured, capturing a majority of the people in their user base, and after that they defederated and the community collapsed in their favor. People on non-proprietary solutions had to switch to the proprietary one.
To avoid this, we need to defederate while we’re still ahead. I’d personally draw the line at 25%, but the point is just having it significantly less than 50%. If they defederate before they reach a majority, the community will collapse in our favor, and people with proprietary accounts will be the ones forced to come over here. Worst case, we’ll just exist beside each other as competitors, and in the best case we’ll snuff them out.
We need to be willing to do this to them, because they absolutely will do this to us. Threads is developed by the same Meta who helped kill XMPP a decade ago. (And “helped” only because the main culprit was Google – regardless, they’re not our friends.)
To avoid this, we need to defederate while we’re still ahead. I’d personally draw the line at 25%, but the point is just having it significantly less than 50%.
Mastodon has 13 million users. In the first few hours, Threads already had 10 million users. That battle was lost before it even started.
So how do people go about defederating? Is it just a matter of making new servers, or does it require anything else?
I’m happy to stand up against The Man, but it seems like once the masses get involved they don’t feel personally responsible to preserve what they enjoy. They seem to give general consensus to [Big Tech Company], then [hard-working FLOSS developer] comes in later to fix it.
If I’m going to get “political” here, I almost think people need to be sold more on the importance of self-reliance. One prior historical precedent was around the 1750’s about taxation, and that’s had a nearly non-trivial impact on society. People intuitively grasp land ownership, so it should translate to data ownership as well.
it’s a call to instance admins in the first round, they can just add meta’s platforms to their blocklist and be done with it. some will definitely do so, others may refuse. then if you’re not happy with their decision you may switch instances or even spin up your own
This reads as incredibly condescending, naive and duplicitous, filled with hubris.
For starters, the whole “yeah sure XMPP got EEE’d but who cares, only nerds cared about that, lol” is not only false (e.g. Jabber), but also does nothing to quell concerns.
Here’s an account by someone who was in the XMPP trenches when Google started adopting it.
Notice something? The “omg so cool!”, this is exactly the same as Rochko.
It’s the hubris when you’re a FOSS maintainer who toiled away for years without recognition and now a $700B+ corporation is flattering him by wanting to use/interact with his work.
The blog is a far cry from the anti-corporate tone in the informational video from 2018.
Then there’s the fact that Rochko is extremely tight lipped about the off the record meeting with Meta and consistently refuses to deny having received funds from Meta and refuses to pledge not to accept any funds from Meta.
There’s also the unsatisfactory answer he gave to people who started questioning some dubious sponsors and the fact that he rushed to lock the thread, killing any further discussion.
I genuinely think the dude is just so hyped for the perceived recognition, that he lost the thread.
So much so that he thinks Mastodon is untouchable.
And it’s extremely naive to think that Meta has benevolent motives here or that Mastodon will survive any schemes Meta might have.
What’s more realistic is that Mastodon will die because people will flock to Threads if their social graph has moved over.Similarly these lofty and naive ideas that people on Threads will make the switch to Mastodon once they get a taste of what it has to offer.
So now all of a sudden the “difficulty” to get started in Mastodon, that is keeping people who want a polished corporate experience away isn’t going to be an issue?
Especially when in the “extinguish” phase Meta will have siloed off from Mastodon and its portability function, having to leave their social graph behind?
It’s all so increasingly naive, one can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional sabotage at this point.
Mark my words, this’ll be the end of Mastodon especially when Meta can outspend Mastodon all day every day to add proprietary functionality.
Sure perhaps years from now a few hundred to a few thousand people might still use it, but it will be as irrelevant as XMPP is to most people, and Rochko with it.
@remindme@mstdn.social in 2 years.
Excellent post, and it is truly heartbreaking stuff. We know Eugen signed an NDA with Meta which just seals the deal for me given the other refusals to answer basic questions. I think he is probably a person who is finding validation for something he’s worked on for a very long time, and Meta is blinding him. But that’s what they do. They are emotional manipulators by trade.
Mark my words, this’ll be the end of Mastodon especially when Meta can outspend Mastodon all day every day to add proprietary functionality
This is exactly what happened with RCS. Sure, it is an open standard. But Google EEE’d it by adding proprietary functionality using their near unlimited budget and influence, then built it all around their own proprietary middleware, like Jive, to lock out others. Some of the most popular messaging apps, including Signal, had been begging Google for RCS access for years. Google refuses, because they firmly control it now. Only a handful of partners get to access the supposedly “open” standard which Google has co-opted. Sure, you could pour resources into the old, unmaintained RCS standard from over a decade ago. Before Google essentially killed it by moving proprietary and snuffing it out. But then it wouldn’t work with Google’s RCS, and Google’s RCS is what people know as RCS at this point.
Meta will do the same thing with ActivityPub specifically, and decentralized social media in general. They will EEE their way to the finish line. They will wall it all off and prevent account portability and cross-communication outside of a preferred partner network. I could see them walling it off to the Meta-owned properties as they seek ways to further tie Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp together under a common protocol which they’ve EEE’d.
Only a handful of partners get to access the supposedly “open” standard which Google has co-opted.
This is why God invented GPL. With GPL, you don’t get to do that.
For example, right now, IBM is in the process of learning very hard lessons why they don’t get to do that.
Could you explain more about IBM? I’m not as tech literate and I’ve been barely keeping up with the conversations about federation and EEE, what’s going on with IBM?
IBM bought RedHat, and recently decided to take ther code repos for RedHat Enterprise Linux semiprivate. They still have to offer the source code to people they give the compiled product to, but they don’t have to give it publically, even though it is open source. Their claim is that they didn’t like others profiting off their work by rebuilding the source an selling it. Of course RedHat seems to now be ignoring the rather large amount of open source code they didn’t write that they are selling, like the Linux kernel.
I read your comment before I read the blog post and I have to say, I am finding it hard to align it with what’s in the blog.
Aside from the hand-waving comment about XMPP, he does a great job of explaining how everything works, and based on my understanding of the fediverse and its architecture, its all true.
I dont understand what people think should happen here. If a large corporation wants to join, then there is nothing anyone can do to stop them. Its an open protocol. If you want to use Threads, join. If you dont, don’t. If you want your server to defederate, tell your admin or join a defederated instance. If you want to federate, tell your admin or join an instance that’s federated. If you want to control your own destiny completely, self-host.
There is tons of choice here and the way it’s architected, several layers of protection. I dont get this moral panic everyone has. This is quite literally the point of a decentralized social network.
At the end of the day, if a large corporation joining the network, kills it, then it was destined to be destroyed from the beginning.
Aside from the hand-waving comment about XMPP
“Aside” is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, it reeks of a nauseating amount of hubris and makes one wonder if they’re suitable to maintain the project at all if they’re so oblivious to potential threats to the project.
I don’t understand what people think should happen here
Not roll out the red carpet for starters, and not engage with the company under NDA would be a good second.
Especially for a FOSS project that receives a healthy amount of contributions from others and likes to tout that it’s co-owned by all contributors, it could be argued that it’s highly objectionable for one person to engage, essentially as a representative, in non-transparent dealings that are sealed under NDA.
It really isn’t rocket science, here’s how the admin of the Fosstodon instance handled it.
Notice the lack of red carpet, the unwillingness to participate in an “off the record” event and the abundance of transparency towards the people he’s responsible for.I’m not saying that Rochko should’ve adopted the same abrasive “lol, get rekt” tone, its up to him if he’s comfortable with that, but the points I’m hammering on about above can be achieved in respectful manner as well.
There is tons of choice here and the way it’s architected, several layers of protection.
There is no protection. As I’ve stated in a different comment, t doesn’t take more than 2 seconds of thinking to see how empty the words are that Mastodon is not at risk.
- Threads federates with Mastodon instances
- Threads uses its massive engineering resources to implement proprietary functionality that’s incompatible with Mastodon instances
- A non-trivial number of Mastodon users jump over to Threads, this is the first wave of people that leave Mastodon
- Threads drops support for federation and silos itself off
- The majority of the remainder of people on Mastodon jump over to Threads because they want to be able to continue to interact with the people that jumped over to Threads and/or because they want to be able to continue to interact with normies now that they’re used to that
- Mastodon is effectively dead, safe for a select few that stick to their guns
3 and 5 will happen in a cascading manner, the more people switch to Threads, the more others will also want to switch.
At the end of the day, if a large corporation joining the network, kills it, then it was destined to be destroyed from the beginning.
Perhaps it is destined to be destroyed.
The concerns and ramifications of a large corporation, or any entity that vastly overshadows the “organic” Mastodon user base in orders of magnitude for that matter, federating with Mastodon have been brought up numerous times by many parties, with the goal of looking for a solutions.
These concerns weren’t only brought up in light of a possible EEE strategy that lead to the death of Mastodon, but also in light of a more Google-esque play where the market share isn’t necessarily used to outright kill, but instead to exert control1.
Every single time it fell on deaf ears (i.e. Rochko ignored it, if not outright killing the discussion), often shrugged off matter of factly that it isn’t a risk.
Also make no mistake, we’re talking about a layered issue here.
A network that can destroy Mastodon against its will due to its sheer size is bad enough.
Mastodon, by virtue of Rochko, facilitating this from within, adds an entirely new dimension to this.1 Google famously bypasses standardization bodies and simply implements their in-house developed standards, leaving other browser engines to get with the program and implement what Google wants, or become irrelevant
Its obvious you have some strong feelings about this and it sounds like they come from you wanting Mastodon and the fedivserse to thrive. I respect that. I’ve enjoyed my time here so far. It would be a shame if it got torpedo’d by a big corp (especially a shitty one like Facebook).
That said, I don’t think anyone has rolled out the red carpet. The FOSS guy’s response is great, but meeting with them cost Eugen nothing(except maybe your goodwill). The fact that there was an NDA is a nothingburger. People sign those ALL-THE-TIME. It doesn’t mean anything nefarious is happening and it doesn’t mean Eugen has “gone to the dark side”. It’s definitely not “rolling out the red carpet”.
I’ve also seen a lot of jumping to conclusions and fantastical strawmen at the bottom of everyone’s slippery slope arguments. A few of your numbered points would fall into that conclusion jumping bucket, and some of your other points are based on an, imo, misunderstanding of the users of the fediverse.
For instance, #3 and #5 don’t give this community enough credit. The bulk of the people on the fediverse are big proponents of free and open internet, privacy, foss, etc. Most are refugees of Twitter, Reddit, or Facebook to begin with–they aren’t just hopping back in bed with Facebook.
And to that point, why would they all of the sudden care about the social media all of their friends are on? I can almost guarantee that their “normie” friends aren’t on the fediverse. The core crowd on Mastodon aren’t going anywhere. The crowd that Threads will attract were never coming to Mastodon to begin with.
Like I said, I just dont get the outrage. Keep on trucking in the fediverse with the community thats here and stop spending so much time Chicken Little-ing.
edit: Oh for what its worth: https://jogblog.substack.com/p/facebooks-threads-is-so-depressing Thats a hilarious read about Threads and why its already pretty lame.
ts obvious you have some strong feelings about this and it sounds like they come from you wanting Mastodon and the fedivserse to thrive. I respect that. I’ve enjoyed my time here so far. It would be a shame if it got torpedo’d by a big corp (especially a shitty one like Facebook).
Of course, I wanted Mastodon and the fediverse to thrive, if only because it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to dethrone corporations that have a complete disregard of people’s wellbeing as long as it turn them a profit.
Mastodon’s figurehead in particular has squandered the opportunity and if not outright self-sabotaged himself.
My main focus thus far has been Mastodon as oppose to the fediverse as a whole, because Mastodon has a unique challenge that other fediverse projects don’t have, namely the social graph.
People visiting Lemmy don’t care and don’t know who the person above and below them is, at most they might care that they’re not straight up Nazi schmucks and preferably they’re someone who has an interest in the topic of the community they’re posting in, but that’s about it.
On a “twitterlike” the identity of the people present is of more importance. Which is why I think in particular Mastodon will suffer the most, without knowing exactly if and how the other fediverse projects will be affected by Threads.
That said, I don’t think anyone has rolled out the red carpet.
I fail to see how this is the case.
Even if we ignore everything else, ignore the severe lack of transparency from the side of Rochko, his refusal to deny that he has received funds from Meta and his refusal to pledge not to accept funds in the future, ignore what could’ve transpired during the meeting with Meta, literally pretend like we are in a vacuum and the only thing related to Meta from his hand is the blog, then the blog alone is a perfect top of the line red carpet that has been rolled out.
I mean he hails it as a victory and ends with a tacit invitation for other corporations to do the same.
Just this quote alone is enough of a red carpet being rolled out:
This is a clear victory for our cause, hopefully one of many to come.
How much more does someone need to be inviting to be considered to have rolled out a red carpet?
I’ve also seen a lot of jumping to conclusions and fantastical strawmen at the bottom of everyone’s slippery slope arguments. A few of your numbered points would fall into that conclusion jumping bucket, and some of your other points are based on an, imo, misunderstanding of the users of the fediverse.
For instance, #3 and #5 don’t give this community enough credit. The bulk of the people on the fediverse are big proponents of free and open internet, privacy, foss, etc. Most are refugees of Twitter, Reddit, or Facebook to begin with–they aren’t just hopping back in bed with Facebook.
And to that point, why would they all of the sudden care about the social media all of their friends are on? I can almost guarantee that their “normie” friends aren’t on the fediverse. The core crowd on Mastodon aren’t going anywhere. The crowd that Threads will attract were never coming to Mastodon to begin with.
Respectfully, this is difficult to read with a straight face after having experienced first hand the effects the Threads launch have had on my Mastodon timeline.
I follow close to 2k people on Mastodon and it used to be that at any given time I could open my timeline and 400+ posts were waiting on me to peruse.
It’s completely dead now, no more than 20 or so posts showed up in total for the entire day, this after a day where there was a sea of people posting a link to their Threads profile.
Safe for a few holdouts I can count on one hand, nearly everyone created a Threads account and they’re more active there than I’ve ever seen them on Mastodon.
If anything, it seems like I gave the people on Mastodon too much credit and I’ve underestimated how strong the network effect is, since I thought it would at least take until the actual “embrace” phase of it all i.e. until Meta would be ActivityPub compatible.
And it’s not like the vast majority of people I follow are normies or anything.
About 90% of them are software engineers like myself not afraid to tinker with things and deal with the “difficulty” of making a Mastodon account.Hell, about a 100 of them run their own instance, one of which is the one I’m on and a good chunk of them are very active in the FOSS community themselves.
Sure, some of it might be because of the hype and novelty, so some might come back, but if anything that proves my point that they’ll happily jump ship if Meta does decide to nix the compatibility in the future.
And this is me being generous, like I said activity by people that moved to Threads has skyrocketed, not only did entire social graphs migrate to Threads, they were made whole again.
People that weren’t seen for ages since leaving Twitter popped up there much to many people’s delight.Most people that migrated to Mastodon wanted a 1:1 Twitter replacement first and foremost and took the ideology as a nice bonus.
These are people that built a support network on Twitter, people that built a professional network on Twitter, people that built a network of peers, in short, a network that was important if not essential to them.
If I take myself as an example, an indie iOS dev, before I left Twitter I used it to stay in touch with friends I had in my industry, other indie devs, engineers at Apple, journalists covering and reviewing apps, local organizations and affiliated people working towards social justice, national organizations and affiliated people working towards social justice and then the rest was purely to ingest information and news.
The purpose of being in touch with these people varied, from comparing notes on how to best do my work, socializing with friends, arranging collaborations on projects, keeping track of what others were working on, promoting my own work, getting help from Apple engineers when I hit a snag, helping people get a job at places that were looking for someone, staying in the loop in case I wanted/needed a job, staying in the loop about local organizing and coordinating with organizers, etc. etc.
I was lucky that I happened to work in a field that is tech savvy and so most of my social graph, but not all, transitioned to Mastodon.
Many people weren’t this lucky and even the people in my social graph that transitioned had a considerable chunk of people that wasn’t entirely enamored by Mastodon.
Personally I welcomed the change of pace, but I couldn’t deny that their gripes were valid.So to circle back to your comments about the core crowd and the crowd that Threads attracts:
The core crowd on Mastodon aren’t going anywhere. The crowd that Threads will attract were never coming to Mastodon to begin with.
Unless you by “core crowd” you refer to what Rochko called “nerd circles”, then I’m afraid you’re wrong on this.
Just as you’re wrong on the crowd that Threads attracts, because not only “were” they coming on Mastodon, they literally were on Mastodon until recently.Somehow this statement by Rochko is now even more laughable in hindsight:
Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
Not only was Mastodon already heavily slanted towards “nerd circles” at the time these words were published, but it will only become more of a “nerd circle” from here on out.
ActivityPub hasn’t even been enabled on Threads and Mastodon isn’t “where we are now”.edit: Oh for what its worth: https://jogblog.substack.com/p/facebooks-threads-is-so-depressing Thats a hilarious read about Threads and why its already pretty lame.
While a funny writing style, it comes across as uninformed.
As much as I wish it was the shitshow as depicted in that blog post, I’m sad to say that those were for all intents and purposes just placeholder posts, as soon as you start following people you won’t really see those anymore.
Call it Chicken Little-ing, call it FUD, call it whatever you want.
My timeline is dead and pretty much my social graph is happy they’ve found their precious Twitter replacement, so other than a very niche group, I’d say Mastodon is dead.
I might not like it, but I’m not gonna pretend like the blog you linked is based in reality while I stare out the window at the cool kids having fun like I’m Squidward
The problems I personally have with Meta are:
- Data scraping Meta is an ad company and tries to collect as much data from anyone. They are known to make shadow graphs of people not even in their network to try and know as much about as many people possible. This is their business model so they will do it to the fedi.
- Moneyed interests They are going to compensate instances that federate with them, which turns people that run instances from volunteers into business owners. From there they can try and dilute admins further into showing ads etc.
- Sucking users from the fediverse They will make it easy to get in (import with history when mastodon does not support it), hard to get out (if you go, you can’t take your posts) and will hold your connections hostage against you (we will stop fedarating with the other instances now, so if you want to connect to your friends you have to have a threads account, sorry not sorry).
That and basically all the shit big corps do like make people angry and hacking people’s brains to stay on the site for as long as fucking possible. Which they are 100% going to try to do here regardless of our intentions.
They can, and are probably already doing, #1 right now. As are Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Apple, DuckDuck, OpenAi, etc. All of the comments and profiles are public information which means literally anyone on the web can see it and do <insert nefarious or not nefarious thing here> with it. As the blog post says, they don’t get anything else though like IP or email–only your home instance gets that. Everything else they can already get with their webcrawlers.
#2. There is no evidence that they plan on doing that. This is a slippery slope argument (which is a logical fallacy). And so what if they do that? Don’t join that instance. Migrate to a different instance. Ruud could add ads to lemmy.world today.
#3. Then let those users go. How does that impact you or the fediverse? Are all of your friends on Mastodon or Lemmy now? I seriously doubt it. Do they all need to be? If people leave to go to Threads…then what? They could go to Tildes, Bluesky, or any other service right now. If the service is more appealing and aligns with their values then they’ll leave for it (or join it as well). Who cares? The value proposition of the fediverse is that no one entity controls it and you have nearly infinite choice to do whatever the hell you want. Threads may never federate at all. Part of me wonders why they would. Why would they care about the 12M people on mastodon right now vs the 2.3 BILLION instagram users? If they convert 10% of those into Threads users, they’ll dwarf Mastodon, so what incentive would they have to federate? It seems like it would be more of a headache for them than a benefit.
You can tilt at every windmill you see or you can enjoy the fediverse and make it a place you and your friends want to spend time.
Ultimately the fediverse is still an experiment. It clearly works, and in isolation many of the services (Lemmy, Matrix, etc.) work well enough on their own.
I’m not optimistic about anything at this point. The fediverse might die; it might not.
There could be huge incentives for them to convert Mastodon users over to Threads, based on their internal analytics, in which case the headache would be worth it.
Meta won’t be dead anytime soon, but it’s clear that they’ve made some risky plays, which means their decisions are going to continuously be less risky.
Can’t make money with the information that is public, they need the social connections to people that will see ads. They want to know our interests, and the interests of all the people we interact with. They don’t give a duck about IPs or emails, they can’t monetize those. So they will keep databases on all users and their connections and their interests all so they can show more appropriate ads. If they’re on the connected fediverse they’ll keep all that too, just in case. And any government can get this info if they ask for it.
#2 there is evidence of them wanting to do that. I’ll look up the thread on mastodon later (I’m on mobile rn).
#3 is a difficult one. I really don’t know why they even want this. I suspected it was to get active users on their initial timeline, but I guess that wasn’t that important to them after all. But there is a real chance of them stopping the growth of the fediverse or even minimizing the size and influence, simply to remove a competitor. Everything is better to them than having users calm down in a relaxing social media environment that is non toxic and could make them all obsolete and kill the whole social media industry’s MO
couldn’t they data scrape without creating a new social network platform
Far too many people in this thread seem to not understand that everything they post here is on the open, public internet, and it’s infuriating.
The data is already public. The cat pictures are already public. Those pictures of food you posted on Instagram are public. All of those posts you put on Facebook with your real name and political beliefs and pictures of your family and social security number are public.
It’s only not public if you choose to lock it down with permissions, but all that does is make it public to the corporation you don’t trust. The Fediverse doesn’t have that feature because they already know it’s fucking pointless. Everything is a third-party server and nobody should trust any of the servers they post on.
If you don’t want it to be public, don’t post the message!
The sanest comment here.
