The Agora

If meta wants to harvest data they would just create boring no-name servers to pull down the data that they want. De-federation isn't going to stop that.

The goal isn't to create a system where there are no corporate instances. The goal is to create a network that doesn't rely on corporate instances.

This idea that we use use de-federation like a weapon will cause the Fediverse to fragment and then we're back where we started: 50 different social media services and a fragmented social media experience. De-federation isn't a super downvote button, its use should be limited to boring server-related things (spam, complying with laws, etc).

The strength of federated social media is that it is all available for everyone at all times via one account. Breaking the network into small chunks or having some central group decide who gets to have access to social media is the exact thing that the ActivityPub protocol is suppose to help people escape from.

I came here to make a post like this one after reading about Meta's project92 on the Verge

I would be against federating with meta and would be for signing the anti-meta pact.

Here are my reasons:

Demand for social media alternatives is high right now because existing networks like facebook (instagram/ meta) and twitter have failed spectacularly to serve the people using them, and instead have sought to exploit them.

There is a rare migration taking place. This is a rare moment of opportunity. Meta seeks to once again establish an exploitative relationship by piping fediverse content into their 'wrapper', which they can then profit from.

The content is the valuable part. Not the wrapper they put on it to drive eyeballs to their advertising partners. So, We should withold content from them in all ways possible.

Additionally, people are motivated to learn new behavior right now - like how to work with federated content - specifically because there's a lack of content easily available on reddit. Withholding content from meta incentivizes more people to abandon their networks, which shrinks meta's influence, which is a good thing.

I would absolutely support keeping Meta away.

The known downsides far out weigh the potential benefits.

I'm less worried about data harvesting - the fediverse is already public - and far more worried about Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, in which they cooperate at first but then start to use their influence to add proprietary extensions and push the rest of the community around (or even cut us off), or otherwise coopt the movement towards federated social media and reassimilate it back into their obscenely dominant and centrally controlled network >.<

Edit: My understanding is that they've already done this with XMPP, I don't see any reason to think activitypub will be different. I say defederate.

It's like the sharks sensing blood in the water - Reddit is bleeding and so they assume it's weak enough to go for the kill.

I would say it's shameful or deeply unethical behavior, but it's Reddit's own poor behavior that got us here in the first place.

It seems that it requires a constant and great deal of effort from ordinary people to continuously fight and stop the enshittification of the Internet.

It goes without saying, but Fuck Meta/Facebook. This is what free speech is all about.

Meta will infiltrate, harvest and manipulate everything if we don't stop them.

https://fedipact.online/

Shitheads lol, I love it.

You would have a yes from me on keeping that BS out of our instance for sure

I would vote aye to defederate any meta/facebook instance, and probably any tech giant instance for that matter.

Defederating absolutely seems like the best move here, since meta cannot be trusted to not poison the fediverse. We know their trackrecord of sucessfully killing platforms, and there is very little to gain from federating with them.

Well, you got a strong yes from me.

Here's the thing.

It isn't really meta that's the problem. As others have said,, if they want to throw money at it, defederation isn't going to stop them from causing trouble.

It's who comes with them that's the problem. Go look at facebook and instagram. That's what would come with meta if they federate in one way or another.

I don't do Facebook/Meta and I don't support any products that do.

I'm not sure? I went to the magazine and read through the magazine and the gist of the arguments for defederaton are basically

1 - it's Meta. They're a privacy nightmare, actively abuse their users and (some of their) employees, and are playing an active role in the enshitification of the Internet. I'm relatively new to the fediverse, to what extent does federation open up non-users of the Meta instance to their tracking? I suspect it's quite a bit, but what's stopping these big companies from scraping fediverse data already?

2 - Meta platforms have moderation issues, abuse, hate speech, and incitement of violence is a problem on their existing platforms, and a similar cheap approach to moderation will occur with their fediverse attempts as well. I have reasons to be a bit more familiar with Meta's moderation but can't really discuss because I'm not sure my NDA has expired yet... it's not an ideal situation and everyone already knows that. But this instance is currently federated with instances that embody the same awful shit Facebook is currently known for, and an argument in Facebook's favor is that their platform isn't explicitly encouraging that kind of nastiness even if they use algorithmic methods to ultimately end up in the same place.

Meta getting into the fediverse presents an opportunity for some good communities to show some small positive sliver of what exists elsewhere in the fediverse and could be a way of gaining users that otherwise wouldn't have seen what exists here. But, while I see some upsides to federating with the Meta instance, ultimately I don't think the opportunity presented here to grow the fediverse is worth Meta's inevitable exploitation of the users and community as a whole.

I think there are really great points / angles being presented on this issue. If you Shitheads want to de-federate, I'll stand in solidarity; However, I very much concur with a lot of the salient nuance being presented in this thread, along with the linked threads.

At the end of the day, this particular community should take action in defense of the plural. Those who feel otherwise, revel in the utility of freedom-of-exit that the fediverse grants us -- yet, I hope your new community will stay federated so we can continue to share ideas.

There was a really good thread on it by this person over on Calckey.social

[https://calckey.social/notes/9g6tq8dysxqagm4n]

[https://calckey.social/notes/9g6vg02klbez9ft0]

I guess I've been living under a rock because no, I had not heard of this. I believe it can be a huge opportunity for the protocol and instances shouldn't insta defed them, however we should also be wary of mega corporations getting too big of an influence over the Fediverse. In the future, not respecting Facebook's (or any other giga platform's) TOS might be a death sentence for growing instances, and that would in turn spell the doom of ActivityPub turning everything back into a centralized mega site.