Technology

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

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

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.

Yeah, it's a bit naive to think this can't go the exact same way XMPP did.

Yeah, if he thinks Mastodon is mainstream, he should check again.

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.

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.

Step 1: Threads starts federating with mastodon

Step 2: mastodon users happily engage with threads, letting it become the biggest fediverse instance

Step 3: threads stops federating with mastodon

Step 4: mastodon users switch over to threads where all conversation is happening, leaving the fediverse deserted

This article sums it up very well: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

A monopolistic corporation joining a free (not gratis, free as in free software) network is always a hostile takeover.

Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. Big corporations want mainly one thing: gobble up as much value exclusively to themselves. They will take whatever means necessary to get there. The strategies to privatize public resources (XMPP, ActivityPub, etc.) are known. They look great for the public on the outside, but over the years will erode the value for everybody BUT them. In order to not let it get as far, many (including me) are of the conviction to not even give them a finger, let alone the whole hand.

Same. This was an incredibly weak defense of why this is "totally not the same" as XMPP

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

This is a great read for anyone curious about what happens when a greedy platform that grows at all costs "helps" an open platform.

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.

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:

1. Meta embraces ActivityPub in its tech in an attempt to garner good will and make it easy for users to transition to Threads.

2. 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!

3. 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?

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/