This is the first that I'm hearing about this and I will need to read into it more. I personally am up for blocking meta instances, though this is something that I will need to consult with the community and instance users first before taking action. For the moment I'm focusing on server updates/stability etc. Once I'm happy with how everything is running I will come back and consult with everyone how we would like to approach this. I will always consult the community before making instance defining decisions such as this.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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I'm perfectly fine with blocking Meta, any megacorp really, but Meta especially. I have relatives who are still unvaccinated and afraid of 5G radio towers because of some nonsense they read on Facebook.
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I hope we do block any meta instances, it feels like having over that sketchy cousin you try to cut off cause he always steals from your house. Like no, stay away from me please
With the financial resources at its disposal, Meta is an a position to dominate the rest of the Fediverse. It is technically true that an open source project allows people to set up their own instances and migrate, but there are a great many ways in which the rest of the Fediverse could become dependent on the single largest player, especially because Meta’s closed-source, for-profit, data-mining operation is inimical to everything the Fediverse stands for. Even if people are only on Mastodon and not on Facebook, if Facebook can connect to them, it increases Facebook’s value, and it decreases the incentive to break free. In addition, money corrupts. Do I want my friends on Facebook to be able to connect with the Fediverse? Of course. But am I interested in accomplishing it by allowing ourselves to become remoras on the belly of the Great White Meta Shark? Not really. Of course, the beauty of the Fediverse is that people can choose for themselves, but I vote to defederate. Those who ride the back of the tiger all too often end up inside. Mark Zuckerberg, please go ruin someone else’s day.
I don't want Meta or the Zuck to benefit in any way from any work I do posting on the fediverse.
And defederating would prevent that because...?
Because his posts, comments and overall activity will not be shown in Meta's instance
Thanks for posting this! I had no idea. I'm 100% for blocking any and all Meta instances! Zuckerberg and his greedy hands can suck it
👍 👏
We don't need that **** in the fediverse.
I'm with you on Meta not being welcome in the fediverse. u/masquenox made a comment that explains why really well here: https://lemmy.world/comment/854031
Really liked the final comment.
I do still hold the view blocking them isn't the right answer, maybe its needless optimism, I understand the idea of meta developing it's own fork, but if you can already have this many people agreeing to blovk them I feel a condition could already be negotiated (like instances will inly federate if the code is open source) instead of blocking outright. I feel this is the nuclear option and there are still unexplored solutions.
Problem for me is that, I don't like an image of the fediverse where we just block any big service that comes our way, we all stand more to gain if we manage to get federating right, even if it requires putting up conditions for that federation to be done.
Also I don't think mastodon or the fediverse at large would not survive one of those services suddenly defederating (or violating the hypothetical condition, thus for ing everyone to block them), this is probably where my hopeless optimism comes into play, but the community already built here is pretty tech savvy and we are already at numbers capable of self sustaining, I feel the community would not die out if we loose access to whatever one of those big services was offering.
Still this federation shouldn't affect lemmy that much since it's geared towards mastodon like microblogging services right now, so I will stand by whatever this community decides.
We know what Meta is, how they operate, how they collect and abuse data, how they prioritize ad revenue over user experience, how they've abused and manipulated elections, how they center whiteness, etc. What is there to wait and see?
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb f--ks.
Like those damn dirty neutrals, I don't feel strongly one way or another. But I really love that if you hate the way our instance goes on this you're free to just move to another instance that shares your views. And you'll be doubly free when they get account migration up and running.
Long live Vlemmy, and may there always be a bounty of other options.
thank for posting about it here; I had no idea. I know the creator of this instance has been fairly laissez faire about other servers so far but I hope we join the fedipact.
I'm on the opposite side, I joined this instance because it is so averse to blocking instances as a whole, letting the users do the blocking.
If meta joins the fediverse but it's a mastodon instance instead of a service like kbin and lemmy, eith proper posts, upvotes/downvotes and the like, I wouldn't really care if the community decides to block them, but if has a lemmy like component then that would be a deal breaker for me as I don't want defederation being done by the admins of an instance. (Unless meta does something harmful to interconnectivity or is shown to have a power that they would not have just scraping information without having an instance, then and only then I could see an argument for defederation as an instance)
Eh, like in the previous hread about defederating from Burggit I'm against defederating in general. Heck I picked this instance in particular because it wasn't blocking anyone and wasn't blocked by anyone, so it gave me the most flexibility in what I could see.
I'd change my position if and when Meta makes any proprietary changes to the protocol or seemingly intentional "misimplementations" of it that impact interoperability.
Came to add exactly this! I looked at a table of instances and only considered ones that had few blocks when I was signing up. I'm not sure if I should be so quick to turn around on that principle unless there's a concrete reason too.
same, but i have to add
I’d change my position if and when Meta makes any proprietary changes to the protocol or seemingly intentional “misimplementations” of it that impact interoperability.
This implies that the problem will come after they try to change anything. However, there are many things they can do without changing the protocol.
- With their growth in population they can create centralized communities that others will follow or try to participate in. This ecosystem, once acquired, can be ransomed for favors. What happens when Facebook implies, not through an announcement but through precedent, that anyone who doesn't defederate Burggit will lose access to certain communities that are now big enough to be "core" communities?
- Other stuff I can't be bothered to type but can be summed up as "through sheer size and force, their power will grow until their reach is so deep entrenched into our lair, that our walls will turn to acid and our halls the beast's stomach."
that having been said, i couldn't give two shits about meta so i don't think we should be preemptively trying to defederate without even thinking about it thoroughly. I'm personally, similarly to you, here cuz I don't want defederations to happen. Hopefully we stay free. :)
Enjoy your corporations and hate speech then!
Why do you think I'm here if not for that? 😎😎 I come for the promise of being threatened with genocide and slavery for being a minority. If not for that I'd be on Reddit, being safe and all! No, being abused has its own joys in life and I am not one to be left out.
Same, if needed, I want to be the one doing the blocking. It's not like I'm averae to the idea of blocking, but I like being the one shaping what I can see and what I won't
The thing is a database can be used from different applications, so it can have a normal lemmy/mastodon instance working on it and other applications that only read and analyze data.
If meta is putting it's dirty hands on this it's to male profit and violate our privacy. If we federate with it it will have access to our data as well to analyze. I dont want that.
Facebook is notorious for getting hacked -- yet another reason for not federating with Meta.
I think facebook is more secure than a random lemmy instance.
But facebook + lemmy is still worse, no?
If facebook can't collect more data then they could get by web scraping (which they do), then I see no reason why we wouldn't want more people here.
I don't really understand why anyone would not federate with Meta...what is the issue? Can they gather any information they couldn't otherwise?
Yes - besides making collection of public data easier, it breaks down the walls of DM’s allowing meta and non-meta users to DM each other without friction, meaning most non-meta users won’t even notice that they’re starting to send their private data to meta. Additionally, that lack of friction allows them to collect data on who you follow from their server and who on their server follows you, including the content of those public exchanges along with the private info they have on the users on their side, which they can then pull in with your public data to make a great profile on you they will be happy to sell to the highest bidder even if the buyer is, purely hypothetically, a white supremacist cult hell bent on your death.
People don't want a repeat of what Google did with XMPP
Read this; it could happen to the fediverse as well
Sounds a lot like Blink, they fork WebKit, become the market leader and then start controlling the technology.
This sounds incredibly scary if Meta gobbles up all the new users. Interestingly XMPP seemed to go downhill exactly because they couldn’t afford to de-federate from Talk.
I am curious if the servers in OPs post can de-federate and survive.
I am curious if the servers in OPs post can de-federate and survive.
If the majority of the fediverse refuses to federate with Meta then this won't be a problem, because people on Meta's instance will never get used to interacting with people outside of it. And there will be no need for small instances to comply with Meta's demands in order to federate with them, because they won't be in a disadvantageous position if they don't.
I’m curious what the downside of being federated with an Instance run by Meta is? By federating with the network, Meta won’t miraculously gain some authoritarian control over the entire thing. In fact federating with Meta may well provide the largest opportunity ever to bring new users over to sites like Lemmy and Mastodon by way of exposing them to the potential perks of those sites over Thread.
Not to sound elitist but one of the main reasons I want nothing to do with it is the almost guaranteed influx of normies and casuals. Additionally, Meta does not want to see the fediverse or any other social network grow, they want everyone to use their network and pay them.
I must say, your first reason is kind of asshole, I can understand wanting some communities to remain niche to an extent, but for the whole service just because casuals would join... I don't know, it feels like useless gatekeeping, especially if those people were still bringing content.
Say that to XMPP which Google basically killed
I still use XMPP regularly to this day. It exists and is even a standard now. Whether or not Google uses it. One of the smaller virtual world services that I use has an XMPP backend to allow you to receive and send instant messages into their grid even when you aren't officially logged in.
I'm reading that Google chose XMPP to their Google Talk product, then later decided to drop the support of Google Talk in favor of Google Hangouts that wasn't using XMPP. This affected Google Talk users who were using 3rd party clients to use Google Talk as they were forced to start using bloated Google Hangouts. But how did all this affect people using XMPP protocol for other than Google Talk?
I'm also seeing potential for growth here for services using activitypub, mainly for the microblogging service Mastodon, as that's apparently a similar platform to Threads, or the other new player BlueSky, which also is going to use activitypub protocol.
I'm not a microblogger, but I'm seeing and clicking links to interesting tweets on chatrooms and websites I visit, and if they are going to be appearing through threads or bluesky in the future, and I am able to view them without having to access a bloated threads or bluesky app/website I see it as a good thing. If they one day defederate from mastodon instances for example and I can't view them from the outside anymore, it sounds like it's what happened with Google, then it's just back to where it was before they came along, unless the whole show managed to draw people from mastodon (mostly) to threads/bluesky which I doubt.
But how did all this affect people using XMPP protocol for other than Google Talk?
Google had custom patches to their XMPP implementation. In theory, every XMPP user can talk to every Google user now. In practice, this wasn't true. Google eventually abandoned XMPP, but that left a sore feeling in the XMPP user base. Basically, people felt like "XMPP just doesn't work, it's s*it". If you're coder, you'd know that's not true, but not everyone is, so it basically left XMPP with a bad name.
In short, XMPP would have been much better off if Google never laid hands on it. Now, no one want's to touch the code base to actually make a better version, cuz then you'd have to write in the readme that it's based on XMPP, and again, no one will wanna touch it. That's why people are reinventing the weel about many of these technologies, because no one wants to take on burden that XMPP carries with it.
I'm also seeing potential for growth here for services using activitypub, mainly for the microblogging service Mastodon, as that's apparently a similar platform to Threads, or the other new player BlueSky, which also is going to use activitypub protocol.
Take a look at the telemetries Threads gathers and everything becomes evident. You're signing away your privacy basically. I wouldn't wanna be near that thing if it was the last social media platform on earth.
Thanks for explaining!
About the Threads telemetry. I wonder how does the telemetry they gather from the users of their app ("The Threads app can collect data related to your health, financial information, contact information, browsing history, location and purchases, among other things.") affect users who interact from other instances (for example some mastodon instance) with thread users posts/replies.
I learned from #mastodon irc channel that in Mastodon for example, the instance owner/maintainer has the following extra information on users of their instance: "IP addresses, email, when they connect, what toots they browse and when". So this information is not available to Meta, if you are interacting with threads user for example from a mastodon instance that is federating with the threads instance. I'm not seeing how they are getting extra information on you as they can collect all the metadata and your mastodon behaviour already by just creating another anonymous mastodon instance that gets federated with other mastodon instances and then collect the data that can be gathered across the instances. Or maybe you can even scrape the data from mastodon without running an instance even? I'm just trying to learn as I go and my information may be wrong. Please anyone correct/fix if there are mistakes here and inform me more thanks :)
I wonder how does the telemetry they gather from the users of their app ("The Threads app can collect data related to your health, financial information, contact information, browsing history, location and purchases, among other things.") affect users who interact from other instances (for example some mastodon instance) with thread users posts/replies.
If they really wanted to, they can make it work. Maybe add spyware through a security hole in Lemmy no one's discovered yet. And since instances are federated, they just spread the disease to one another and it's users. Anything is possible. If a human made it, it can be broken.
One thing I've learned thus far is to never trust a platform/software owner that has a financial interest. RHEL is also a perfect example of that. The latest changes basically do exactly what MS did 20+ years ago when FOSS and open source was at it's infancy - shared source. It's a company that deals with FOSS software for more than 25 years, yet they decided to do this. After you see things like this, you really start to reevaluate things. Many people are scared to donate code to companies now, that's why projects like Arch and Void thrive nowadays. People finally said "f it, I'm not contributing code to a company that might wanna sell that some day, better donate it to community projects".
Mastodon for example, the instance owner/maintainer has the following extra information on users of their instance: "IP addresses, email, when they connect, what toots they browse and when".
That's perfectly normal, Lemmy admins have that info as well. Forums also have that info... you can't hide everything, that's nuts, you at least have to have an IP to browse the internet.
So this information is not available to Meta, if you are interacting with threads user for example from a mastodon instance that is federating with the threads instance.
Well, kinda, but not exactly. In order for a post or a comment to be saved on Lemmy (and I presume the same is true for Mastodon), 2 copies of the post are made. One resides on your instance (that's called the original) and the other is saved on the instance on which the community you posted in resides (that's the copy). Both copies share the same info, date, time, username, post content, original instance (the one you've got your account on), etc. Even if the IP is only available on the user's instance, that still gives meta (or anyone else) a lot of info to manipulate with. They know my username, post content, date and time of post. That info can easily be exploited by people who know what they're doing. As I said previously, all it would take is a piece of malware that could grab data from the instance's database and send that to Meta, or whoever. People think that this is really hard, it actually isn't, coders do stuff like this for fun every day.
I'm not seeing how they are getting extra information on you as they can collect all the metadata and your mastodon behaviour already by just creating another anonymous mastodon instance that gets federated with other mastodon instances and then collect the data that can be gathered across the instances. Or maybe you can even scrape the data from mastodon without running an instance even? I'm just trying to learn as I go and my information may be wrong. Please anyone correct/fix if there are mistakes here and inform me more thanks :)
They could do that, but with thousand of instances in the fediverse, that's just not viable. Even if you do it only to the larger instances, you still have to automate the process, which can get tricky if you don't actually use the fediverse'es biggest downfall (and it's biggest strenth at the same time) - everyone is connected to everyone else. Sure federation is clanky ATM, but that will pass. Eventually, everyone will in fact be connected to everyone else. It's a lot easier to spread malware that way.
I don't know the exact details, But apparently, Google implemented xmpp wrong (possibly maliciously?) in a way where Google Talk users could see other xmpp servers' content but those servers users could not see Google Talk content. Which meant that Google forced the Libre servers into obsolescence.
They will have the money to run more bigger faster severs. The risk is the majority start to use those severs as home, then communities end up there, then Facebook end up controlling the communities.
So the threat is Meta offering a better service that draws a user base? Is that flexibility not the entire thesis of fediverse platforms?
Further, if Meta is able to provide a service that users see as so fundamentally better, then they should get a large portion of the population. That’s the nature of a competitive market.
That is the “embrace” part of embrace, extend, extinguish. It is great at first, but once they have that base all in one place it will be monetized and there will be none of the smaller sites left.
But the nature of the federated platforms is that they will always be able to have new instance created that can still access the content of the largest, without explicitly needing that community to move over.
being netural is the best approach, this can backfire
Not taking a stand is an appeal to default, and because of the weight effect Meta will have thanks to money and resources, this will directly translate to letting Meta harm others.
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