this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023

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Meta community. Discuss about this lemmy instance or lemmy in general.

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The Zuckiverse and you (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey peeps. By now you all heard that Zuck's meta has started and in a defederated mode. This instance has already signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact and we plan to not help improve the value of Facebook, if and when they plan to open federation.

However I am thinking we can have a bit of fun beforehand.

You see, Threads is extremely sanitized in order to be "corporate friendly". Naturally this makes their service as exciting as a bowl of plain porridge. However in order to keep their corporate partners happy, they are also extremely cautious about anything controversial and will likely defederate from anything too spicy.

So why not use this an an opportunity to make Threads defederate from us?

What would you say that we leave federation up, but use the opportunity to share with the larger threads populace some important information about filesharing? Sharing is caring after all and we have plenty of knowledge to give.

Naturally, if this doesn't work, we will defed them ourselves soon after anyway, but I expect it will. What say you all?

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think it is a good idea. We should block them immediately. Nobody knows what they will be capable of doing.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I am inclined to agree - trying to weigh things up:

Pros

Bragging rights to be able to say that we got Threads to defederate from us.
May hurt Threads' popularity in the short term.
A warm fuzzy feeling from the above two points.
Umm... that's it?

Cons

Potentially undermines the impact the Anti-Meta Pact by not immediately defederating with them, actions are usually stronger in unison.
Related to the above, any instance federated with them, even if they then become hostile, adds to marketing numbers to allow Threads to legitimise themselves as being connected to X other communities.
The "Court of Public Opinion" probably won't be too sympathetic to us if we spam mommy Meta's new social network with goatse. I suppose that shouldn't matter, but if we make ourselves too unpopular it may be a pain in the ass if more mainstream instances like lemmy.world defed from us due to making ourselves pariahs.
Potentially brings the Eye of Sauron upon us.

Weight these how you will, and please let me know if there's others to add to the list. To me the cons outweigh the pros, though I am willing to have my mind changed.-

[–] Jakeg 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No thank you, give them access to user info even one time is too many.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

they don't get access to user info anyway

[–] Jakeg 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But they would if they’re allowed to federate. This is a company that builds shadow profiles on people that don’t even use fb. You really think they’re not going to try and get what they can get their hands on by any means necessary?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They could already do that by setting up a secret spying instance, or just use a webcrawler. You have to understand that anything you post online is out there forever.

[–] Jakeg 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You know I didn’t think of this. Does every new instance created, if it chooses to, federate and download data automatically from the other instances? Like upvotes downvotes etc, or is that only possible when something like kbin or lemmy.ml agree to federate with instance x?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

When a new instance is created, its default allowing all other instances to federate. But nobody knows you exist and you don't know anyone else exist. It isn't until 2 instances interact, a "link" is established. When linked, the instance url will show up on each other's /instances page. (like lemmy.ml/instances just replace the domain with whatever) You establish the link by manually searching for a community. example: [email protected] and then a search will be conducted and withing a few minutes, it will be indexed and show up on the instance that conducted the search. Now you know each other exist, but you also have to manually search every community in order to find everything a instance has to offer. But to sync every post in the indexed communities, there must be at least one subscriber to a community.

So basically,

-Start instance

-Search for communities

-Subscribe to communities

And you're good to go.

if you want the target instance to see your instance's communities, you do step 2 and 3 on their instance using an account you created there.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What the other poster said. That information is already publicly available and can be collected without even having another instance just via the public api.

[–] Jakeg 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So I can create an instance and automatically start scraping people’s info? Or is an instance not even necessary? I understand how web crawlers and spiders will index but do they have access to the granular account data? If so how do we mitigate this?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You only have limited access to use info. You can't see emails or IPs etc. Content, votes etc you don't need an instance, you can just scrape directly.

There's no mitigation.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Sounds fun and I would love it. But we will playing with the “devil”, and you know, it has plenty more power… and resources.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't like the idea and really don't want Zuck being anywhere near the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I don't think that's a good idea. Facebook/Meta is a billion dollar company, if we start sending them piracy stuff, it could trigger a lawsuit that brings down this instance. I mean they might not win, but I mean, dude, u got money for legal fees? Because we don't. Court cases takes way to long and you'll get bankrupt before the case is concluded. If we defederate immediately, we avoid this problem.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do not support this idea. You know what they say about having a cracked tail light whilst you're driving around with a car full of cocaine.

That's a no from me, dawg. Defederate before they can suck up any data at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I don't disagree but isn't the data on Lemmy public anyways? If they wanted they could scrape it, whether we defederate or not, couldn't they?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Even though I'm a petty child who'd like to poke some fun at Meta's expense, I think it's better to block them without further ado. And this because the anti-meta fedi pact is just promised words, there's nothing binding instances' admins to commit; so if they start putting conditions such as delays and whatnot before defederating, the pact loses its meaning.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I agree, I don't think we need to wait for proof that Meta is a shitty company we want nothing to do with. That is hopefully already evident. If there was a way we could actually fuck things up for them by federating with them then it might be tempting, but I don't see how we could impact them in any meaningful way.

Also, if you think about it from a corporate risk management perspective, I think it's very likely they will adopt a whitelisting strategy and only federate with META-friendly, cherry-picked instances anyway. They aren't going to risk the embarrassment of being blocked by hostile instances.

In any event, my instinct is to preemptively block them to show solidarity with the other instances who signed up to the FediPact. Fuck Meta and everything they stand for.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I like your thought process, but this is a bad idea

It's a lot like poisoning your chickens to defend against foxes. It might work, it might not, but it only makes sense if you're willing to sacrifice the chickens to take out some foxes

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a better idea than spouting Neo-Nazi shit, but I'm not sure this is the greatest idea if your account is linked to any other accounts. They could trace it back to you and fuck you up (legally).

I for one am connected through Tor and used a new email address hosted by Danwin, so I am going to sail the high seas on here. Yo ho!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Note, I wasn't talking about doing anything illegal. But I'm sure Facebook won't be happy if people even link to the The Pirate Bay frontpage

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I need someone smarter than me to come up with all the ways this could go wrong. It sounds cool to me but I don't know anything

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

yeah I have a gut feeling it's not as simple as it looks, but I can't tell what it is logically

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Create a goatse community and ensure it's always on the front page of threads.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When they talk about an open standard, I don't think this is what they meant.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Oh it'll be open.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I'd rather just defederate from them and be done with it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As long as they don't get access to our data I think we will be fine? I'm definitely not joining threads but I don't see any issues in federating with them either.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The user data they will be able to access is the same you can see in a user profile, things like posts, username and matrix contact. I am not really sure if they will see your upvotes and down votes because I have seen a post in ysk showing you can see who votes in posts. I would like to know if this is enough to profile someone but I am not knowledgeable in that area

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

sure but they won't be able to link that data to your phone or the other apps you're using so how are they going to know who's data it is

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

What happens in the Fediverse stays in the Fediverse

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