this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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I saw a while back that facebook is opening a twitter competitor which will use the ActivityPub protocol, and thus will be able to federate with other fediverse instances, I also saw they invited some fediverse instance admins for an "off the records" meeting in their HQ.

Question is, what is the general stance on this? Because I despise facebook with every fiber of my being, and would very much like to NOT have facebook lurk around these parts, as I understand there is an option to de-federate them like what happened with the exploading heads instance.

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[–] MindCap 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I'd assume any actions by Facebook are hostile and are attempts to Embrace, extend, and extinguish

The strategy's three phases are:

  • Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard.
  • Extend: Addition and promotion of features not supported by the competing product or part of the standard, creating interoperability problems for customers who try to use the "simple" standard.
  • Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions.
[–] mokoshark69 9 points 1 year ago

Same thing happened with google and xmpp as another user linked to, this is why i dont want facebook involvment, we cannot allow them to interact with lemmy or mastodon, their scummy tactics will force instaces to interact with them, and then meta will try to shut them down

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

Yeah. As much as Meta could say it will be a good fedeverse community member, that will likely change over time.

[–] what_is_a_name 16 points 1 year ago

They are welcome to use the is core software. But they should be defederated immediately. We have seen this before. It’s never different.

[–] Ginjutsu 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I'd say wait and see how it plays out. I'm all for making the fediverse more accessible to the general public, as long as Facebook/Meta doesn't try anything funny, which does seem unlikely, but we shall see.

[–] mokoshark69 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Meta not trying something is extremley unlikely, they live to monotize everything they touch, which I bet will include the fediverse.

In this "off the records" meeting they wanted to discuss monetization strategies with the mastodon and lemmy instances admins they invited

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's no way this ends well. I can tell you exactly what would happen:

Meta creates a new fediverse app with their branding. Facebook users (and the general public) will start to see this as the fediverse. Like the official app/server/whatever. If it takes off millions of users will join on Meta instances and only hang out there (with some slight content influx at the start from other instances).

The moment they have enough content on Meta servers they'll defederate from everyone. The Meta users probably won't even notice, they are on massive Meta instances and 90%+ of the content is there.

Gratulations, you got Facebook 2.0, the rest of the fediverse dies.

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

Why does the rest of the fediverse die in this hypothetical scenario? Presumably other instances are still alive and offering an alternative that excludes whatever shit Facebook's instance would have.

[–] shrugal 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think federating with an instance that actually wants federation to die (have a monopoly) is a very bad idea. Meta would use its leverage to actively undermine and harm the Fediverse, because it's not in their interest to split the userbase between multiple servers they don't own. Imo they only want to use it to bootstrap their own service, after that they'll do anything to control as much of the users and content as possible. That's the complete opposite of what the Fediverse is supposed to be!

Ever heard of the phrase "democracy without democrats"? That would be Meta in the Fediverse.

[–] mokoshark69 3 points 1 year ago

That is also why I do not want meta on any fediverse instance, I hope that as a user I will be able to block meta's instance, and wont have to rely on my instance (lemmy.world) to do it

[–] Cabeza2000 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe I am missing something but it seems that they are going to use ActivityPub to create a Twitter competitor (akin to Mastodon) and not necessarily a lemmy instance.

I am new to the fediverse so maybe I am missing something.

Source: https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/11/meta_twitter_rival/

[–] mokoshark69 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You can interact with mastodon from lemmy, it depends on the instance if im not mistaken

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

It's just more embrace, extend, extinguish crap. Meta absolutely shouldn't be trusted, especially with their track record so far. Most (though not all) instances I know are defederating.

[–] bappity 6 points 1 year ago

they should stay out.
usually if corporations try to get on things like this, they try to convert users to their platform then seriously limit or degrade the experience when interacting with anything outside of their stuff.

so in the end, everyone is trapped in their ecosystem.

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

I hope any fediverse instance I use defederates with them.

[–] RomanRoy 5 points 1 year ago

If they keep allowing fascist bullshit or fill it with ads because it simply brings them money, they will be defederated and that's it

[–] berkeleyblue 4 points 1 year ago

Well if they wanna lurk around they can, that’s just how federation works. The good thing is that they don’t control anything other than their own instances in that case which makes it harder for them to spy on you. You and other instances can also just block their instances. Not sure Metas business Model is functional on a platform like this.

[–] Jackolantern 3 points 1 year ago

I wonder how this would affect the server load seeing as they might bring in a lot more traffic. However on the other hand, they might popularize fediverse and open up lemmy for more people

[–] njordomir 1 points 7 months ago

Facebook/Meta and the like have proven to be untrustworthy. If they were a person, would you let them federate with your friend group? I wouldn't. I hope they're not invited to the party because the things that brought me here are the things that drove me away from there.