Fediverse

I believe you that Meta is a bad company with a clear track record of perpetrating harms any time there's profit to be made. I am not, however convinced that small independent services blocking communication with them is a net positive for the world. Instead, I think there's an opportunity to get their users to migrate away.

That's not to say that some servers shouldn't block them. For a tightly-moderated server, the scale of moderation problems it could bring is argument enough. There are good options for those who are looking for that sort of thing.

I don't want my Lemmy server to block Threads unless it actually does become a moderation nightmare. I don't intend to block it from my self-hosted Mastodon server either. In fact, I haven't blocked anything there yet. I will if I run into anybody being a jerk, but it seems like bird photos and flashlight reviews don't attract that sort of thing.

You don't defeat meta by calling out shills.

You can't stop data collection by keeping the fediverse "pure blooded".

That involves a digital bill of rights. Positive rights legislation.

That won't come until we introduce competition into our voting system by making third parties viable by switching away from First past the post voting.

We can change how we vote at a state level (for now), so we don't need to pass something federally. We don't need to beg for representation, we can just reach our and take it. Alaska and Maine have already done away with first past the post voting, so why not yours?

If you are not convinced this is the way, Republicans are moving to ban alternative voting systems in states they control. Do you really want to use the voting system republicans prefer?

What's the excuse blue states?

mark Zuckerberg is a robot coded by a lizard

beligerent god (sic)

You mean beneficent?

Provide proof! I call BS. I see why more anti-Meta posts and pushing it on people. Anywhere here can search and you’ll find it. It dominates any conversations about Meta

I think this is generally a valid point of view. However, what I don't like is to frame it as a easy-to-make-point, something that is basically obvious. Because it isn't, mainly, because of network effects.

Not opening up to Meta means prevent the Fediverse from becoming a global thing. Not opening up to Meta means not to shape the future of the social web.

If you have this opinion, you implicitly say that you want the Fediverse to stay small. However, I think we can all agree that it would be good if the Fediverse became big. And the only possibility to achieve that is through the growth through Meta, which doesn't mean working together with it, but profiting from it and cutting in its growth (which admittedly, will not be easy as well and, as you pointed out, also comes with its own moral drawbacks, which have to be thought of, too).

Meta is not cool. But it won't help to hide away in a shelter until the whole thing has blown over. Because it won't. All that will happen is that the part that opened up to Meta will grow rapidly and the other part will stay small and become less relevant. In this sense, now is the best time to drive change in the social web, until it is again dominated by Meta. Now we still have the choice to join and work against Meta in the social web.

Just because you federate doesn't necessarily mean that you work together with it. But if you hide away, you leave the whole field of action up to Meta without even trying. Apart from the fact that it's barely explainable to anyone outside the Fediverse. They will and already do blame us of double-standards: why create an open protocoll if the ecosystem wants to stay small anyways?