Lemmy.World

With Meta starting to actually implement ActivityPub, I think it would be a good idea to remind everyone of what they are most likely going to do.

TLDR: It talks about Google and Microsoft having a direct involvement in ending the growth of federated protocols in the past. It goes on to imply that Meta Threads is in line to kill networks like Mastodon and Lemmy.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/400702

I strongly encourage instance admins to defederate from Facebook/Threads/Meta.

They aren't some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They're a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:

• Helping enhance genocides in countries
• Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
• Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make "facebook" most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
• Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
• Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren't able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
• Even now, they're on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.

Yes, I know one of the Mastodon folks have said they're not worried. Frankly, I think they're being laughably naive >.<. Facebook/Meta - and Instagram's CEO - might say pretty words - but words are cheap and from a known-hostile entity like Meta/Facebook they are almost certainly just a manipulation strategy.

In my view, they should be discarded as entirely irrelevant, or viewed as deliberate lies, given their continued atrocious behaviour and open manipulation of vast swathes of the population.

Facebook have large amounts of experience on how to attack and astroturf social media communities - hell I would be very unsurprised if they are already doing it, but it's difficult to say without solid evidence ^.^

Why should we believe anything they say, ever? Why should we believe they aren't just trying to destroy a competitor before it gets going properly, or worse, turn it into yet another arm of their sprawling network of services, via Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - or perhaps Embrace, Extend, Consume would be a better term in this case?

When will we ever learn that openly-manipulative, openly-assimilationist corporations need to be shoved out before they can gain any foothold and subsume our network and relegate it to the annals of history?

I've seen plenty of arguments claiming that it's "anti-open-source" to defederate, or that it means we aren't "resilient", which is wrong ^.^:

• Open source isn't about blindly trusting every organisation that participates in a network, especially not one which is known-hostile. Threads can start their own ActivityPub network if they really want or implement the protocol for themselves. It doesn't mean we lose the right to kick them out of most - or all - of our instances ^.^.
• Defederation is part of how the fediverse is resilient. It is the immune system of the network against hostile actors (it can be used in other ways, too, of course). Facebook, I think, is a textbook example of a hostile actor, and has such an unimaginably bad record that anything they say should be treated as a form of manipulation.

Edit 1 - Some More Arguments

In this thread, I've seen some more arguments about Meta/FB federation:

• Defederation doesn't stop them from receiving our public content:
  • This is true, but very incomplete. The content you post is public, but what Meta/Facebook is really after is having their users interact with content. Defederation prevents this.
• Federation will attract more users:
  • Only if Threads makes it trivial to move/make accounts on other instances, and makes the fact it's a federation clear to the users, and doesn't end up hosting most communities by sheer mass or outright manipulation.
  • Given that Threads as a platform is not open source - you can't host your own "Threads Server" instance - and presumably their app only works with the Threads Server that they run - this is very unlikely. Unless they also make Threads a Mastodon/Calckey/KBin/etc. client.
  • Therefore, their app is probably intending to make itself their user's primary interaction method for the Fediverse, while also making sure that any attempt to migrate off is met with unfamiliar interfaces because no-one else can host a server that can interface with it.
  • Ergo, they want to strongly incentivize people to stay within their walled garden version of the Fediverse by ensuring the rest remains unfamiliar - breaking the momentum of the current movement towards it. ^.^
• We just need to create "better" front ends:
  • This is a good long-term strategy, because of the cycle of enshittification.
  • Facebook/Meta has far more resources than us to improve the "slickness" of their clients at this time. Until the fediverse grows more, and while they aren't yet under immediate pressure to make their app profitable via enshittification and advertising, we won't manage >.<
  • This also assumes that Facebook/Meta won't engage in efforts to make this harder e.g. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish/Consume, or social manipulation attempts.
  • Therefore we should defederate and still keep working on making improvements. This strategy of "better clients" is only viable in combination with defederation.

PART 2 (post got too long!)

I didn't realise that Meta was becoming/is already compatible with the Fediverse.

I deleted my Facebook account long ago, I saw what it was becoming and decided I didn't need that in my life.

What are everyone's thoughts on this.

See: this post for where I first read about it.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/400702

I strongly encourage instance admins to defederate from Facebook/Threads/Meta.

They aren't some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They're a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:

• Helping enhance genocides in countries
• Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
• Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make "facebook" most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
• Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
• Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren't able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
• Even now, they're on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.

Yes, I know one of the Mastodon folks have said they're not worried. Frankly, I think they're being laughably naive >.<. Facebook/Meta - and Instagram's CEO - might say pretty words - but words are cheap and from a known-hostile entity like Meta/Facebook they are almost certainly just a manipulation strategy.

In my view, they should be discarded as entirely irrelevant, or viewed as deliberate lies, given their continued atrocious behaviour and open manipulation of vast swathes of the population.

Facebook have large amounts of experience on how to attack and astroturf social media communities - hell I would be very unsurprised if they are already doing it, but it's difficult to say without solid evidence ^.^

Why should we believe anything they say, ever? Why should we believe they aren't just trying to destroy a competitor before it gets going properly, or worse, turn it into yet another arm of their sprawling network of services, via Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - or perhaps Embrace, Extend, Consume would be a better term in this case?

When will we ever learn that openly-manipulative, openly-assimilationist corporations need to be shoved out before they can gain any foothold and subsume our network and relegate it to the annals of history?

I've seen plenty of arguments claiming that it's "anti-open-source" to defederate, or that it means we aren't "resilient", which is wrong ^.^:

• Open source isn't about blindly trusting every organisation that participates in a network, especially not one which is known-hostile. Threads can start their own ActivityPub network if they really want or implement the protocol for themselves. It doesn't mean we lose the right to kick them out of most - or all - of our instances ^.^.
• Defederation is part of how the fediverse is resilient. It is the immune system of the network against hostile actors (it can be used in other ways, too, of course). Facebook, I think, is a textbook example of a hostile actor, and has such an unimaginably bad record that anything they say should be treated as a form of manipulation.

Edit 1 - Some More Arguments

In this thread, I've seen some more arguments about Meta/FB federation:

• Defederation doesn't stop them from receiving our public content:
  • This is true, but very incomplete. The content you post is public, but what Meta/Facebook is really after is having their users interact with content. Defederation prevents this.
• Federation will attract more users:
  • Only if Threads makes it trivial to move/make accounts on other instances, and makes the fact it's a federation clear to the users, and doesn't end up hosting most communities by sheer mass or outright manipulation.
  • Given that Threads as a platform is not open source - you can't host your own "Threads Server" instance - and presumably their app only works with the Threads Server that they run - this is very unlikely. Unless they also make Threads a Mastodon/Calckey/KBin/etc. client.
  • Therefore, their app is probably intending to make itself their user's primary interaction method for the Fediverse, while also making sure that any attempt to migrate off is met with unfamiliar interfaces because no-one else can host a server that can interface with it.
  • Ergo, they want to strongly incentivize people to stay within their walled garden version of the Fediverse by ensuring the rest remains unfamiliar - breaking the momentum of the current movement towards it. ^.^
• We just need to create "better" front ends:
  • This is a good long-term strategy, because of the cycle of enshittification.
  • Facebook/Meta has far more resources than us to improve the "slickness" of their clients at this time. Until the fediverse grows more, and while they aren't yet under immediate pressure to make their app profitable via enshittification and advertising, we won't manage >.<
  • This also assumes that Facebook/Meta won't engage in efforts to make this harder e.g. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish/Consume, or social manipulation attempts.
  • Therefore we should defederate and still keep working on making improvements. This strategy of "better clients" is only viable in combination with defederation.

PART 2 (post got too long!)

Sorry for reposting, but I think it is crucial to talk about this. Fediverse forward 🏁

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/400702

I strongly encourage instance admins to defederate from Facebook/Threads/Meta.

They aren't some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They're a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:

• Helping enhance genocides in countries
• Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
• Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make "facebook" most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
• Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
• Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren't able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
• Even now, they're on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.

Yes, I know one of the Mastodon folks have said they're not worried. Frankly, I think they're being laughably naive >.<. Facebook/Meta - and Instagram's CEO - might say pretty words - but words are cheap and from a known-hostile entity like Meta/Facebook they are almost certainly just a manipulation strategy.

In my view, they should be discarded as entirely irrelevant, or viewed as deliberate lies, given their continued atrocious behaviour and open manipulation of vast swathes of the population.

Facebook have large amounts of experience on how to attack and astroturf social media communities - hell I would be very unsurprised if they are already doing it, but it's difficult to say without solid evidence ^.^

Why should we believe anything they say, ever? Why should we believe they aren't just trying to destroy a competitor before it gets going properly, or worse, turn it into yet another arm of their sprawling network of services, via Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - or perhaps Embrace, Extend, Consume would be a better term in this case?

When will we ever learn that openly-manipulative, openly-assimilationist corporations need to be shoved out before they can gain any foothold and subsume our network and relegate it to the annals of history?

I've seen plenty of arguments claiming that it's "anti-open-source" to defederate, or that it means we aren't "resilient", which is wrong ^.^:

• Open source isn't about blindly trusting every organisation that participates in a network, especially not one which is known-hostile. Threads can start their own ActivityPub network if they really want or implement the protocol for themselves. It doesn't mean we lose the right to kick them out of most - or all - of our instances ^.^.
• Defederation is part of how the fediverse is resilient. It is the immune system of the network against hostile actors (it can be used in other ways, too, of course). Facebook, I think, is a textbook example of a hostile actor, and has such an unimaginably bad record that anything they say should be treated as a form of manipulation.

I strongly encourage instance admins to defederate from Facebook/Threads/Meta.

They aren't some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They're a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:

• Helping enhance genocides in countries
• Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
• Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make "facebook" most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
• Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
• Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren't able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
• Even now, they're on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.

Yes, I know one of the Mastodon folks have said they're not worried. Frankly, I think they're being laughably naive >.<. Facebook/Meta - and Instagram's CEO - might say pretty words - but words are cheap and from a known-hostile entity like Meta/Facebook they are almost certainly just a manipulation strategy.

In my view, they should be discarded as entirely irrelevant, or viewed as deliberate lies, given their continued atrocious behaviour and open manipulation of vast swathes of the population.

Facebook have large amounts of experience on how to attack and astroturf social media communities - hell I would be very unsurprised if they are already doing it, but it's difficult to say without solid evidence ^.^

Why should we believe anything they say, ever? Why should we believe they aren't just trying to destroy a competitor before it gets going properly, or worse, turn it into yet another arm of their sprawling network of services, via Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - or perhaps Embrace, Extend, Consume would be a better term in this case?

When will we ever learn that openly-manipulative, openly-assimilationist corporations need to be shoved out before they can gain any foothold and subsume our network and relegate it to the annals of history?

I've seen plenty of arguments claiming that it's "anti-open-source" to defederate, or that it means we aren't "resilient", which is wrong ^.^:

• Open source isn't about blindly trusting every organisation that participates in a network, especially not one which is known-hostile. Threads can start their own ActivityPub network if they really want or implement the protocol for themselves. It doesn't mean we lose the right to kick them out of most - or all - of our instances ^.^.
• Defederation is part of how the fediverse is resilient. It is the immune system of the network against hostile actors (it can be used in other ways, too, of course). Facebook, I think, is a textbook example of a hostile actor, and has such an unimaginably bad record that anything they say should be treated as a form of manipulation.

Edit 1 - Some More Arguments

In this thread, I've seen some more arguments about Meta/FB federation:

• Defederation doesn't stop them from receiving our public content:
  • This is true, but very incomplete. The content you post is public, but what Meta/Facebook is really after is having their users interact with content. Defederation prevents this.
• Federation will attract more users:
  • Only if Threads makes it trivial to move/make accounts on other instances, and makes the fact it's a federation clear to the users, and doesn't end up hosting most communities by sheer mass or outright manipulation.
  • Given that Threads as a platform is not open source - you can't host your own "Threads Server" instance - and presumably their app only works with the Threads Server that they run - this is very unlikely. Unless they also make Threads a Mastodon/Calckey/KBin/etc. client.
  • Therefore, their app is probably intending to make itself their user's primary interaction method for the Fediverse, while also making sure that any attempt to migrate off is met with unfamiliar interfaces because no-one else can host a server that can interface with it.
  • Ergo, they want to strongly incentivize people to stay within their walled garden version of the Fediverse by ensuring the rest remains unfamiliar - breaking the momentum of the current movement towards it. ^.^
• We just need to create "better" front ends:
  • This is a good long-term strategy, because of the cycle of enshittification.
  • Facebook/Meta has far more resources than us to improve the "slickness" of their clients at this time. Until the fediverse grows more, and while they aren't yet under immediate pressure to make their app profitable via enshittification and advertising, we won't manage >.<
  • This also assumes that Facebook/Meta won't engage in efforts to make this harder e.g. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish/Consume, or social manipulation attempts.
  • Therefore we should defederate and still keep working on making improvements. This strategy of "better clients" is only viable in combination with defederation.

PART 2 (post got too long!)

Earlier today there was a post about rejecting Meta's intrusion in the fediverse, some don't see the danger in it or think it's unlikely that Meta can do any damage to the fediverse.

Someone posted this in the comments and I think it's extremely relevant and it deserves its own post so all can see it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/601520

Bu yazı birkaç gün önce birçok toplulukta paylaşıldı. Benim sormak istediğim şu. Eğer x şirketi bir server kurarsa ve gerçekten server güzel yönetilirse ve kullanıcıların büyük çoğunluğu bu servera geçerse ve sonra bu server diğer serverları defedere ederse topluluk darbe yemiş olur. Olay federasyondan çıkıp tekrardan merkezi yönetime sebep olur. Bu konuda düşünceleriniz nedir? Serverlara kullanıcı sınırı koymak fikri aklıma geldi. Bu şekilde kullanıcı sınırı olursa tek bir server aşırı büyüyerek merlezileşemez gibi geldi. Sizler ne düşünüyorsunuz? Federasyonu bekleyen tehlikeler ve önlemleri nelerdir?

This post was shared in many communities a few days ago. What I want to ask is this. If company x sets up a server and the server is really well managed and the majority of users switch to this server, and then this server banishes other servers, the community will be hit. The event leaves the federation and causes the central administration again. What are your thoughts on this? The idea came to my mind to put a user limit on the servers. In this way, if there is a user limit, it seems that a single server cannot grow excessively and centralize. What do you guys think? What are the dangers that await the federation and what measures should be taken against these dangers?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/571039

I saw this in another thread on /c/Showerthoughts. I think it's important for this to be circulated widely so that the broader Fediverse community is aligned. We don't want admins second-guessing their decisions when users start infighting. We should be united in our thinking and ready to protect our platform.

This is getting annoying and it gets more and more to the "future" distopia. cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/571039

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/571039

I saw this in another thread on /c/Showerthoughts. I think it's important for this to be circulated widely so that the broader Fediverse community is aligned. We don't want admins second-guessing their decisions when users start infighting. We should be united in our thinking and ready to protect our platform.

Why YSK: If we want to keep the Fediverse in the hands of its users and prevent "enshittification" (search it), it's good to know how corporations kill grassroots projects like this.

I saw this in another thread on /c/Showerthoughts. I think it's important for this to be circulated widely so that the broader Fediverse community is aligned. We don't want admins second-guessing their decisions when users start infighting. We should be united in our thinking and ready to protect our platform.

[ comments | sourced from HackerNews ]

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/719121

This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance

Il y a quelques jours @[email protected] a parlé de la volonté de la [https://lemmy.world/post/374880](volonté de Meta d’arriver sur le Fediverse). Voici un article de ploum qui parle de comment Google a presque tué XMPP.

How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.