I've been hearing that Meta (Facebook) intends to join the fediverse. I have some very big concerns about that, as do apparently many others. There exists a group of instances called the fedipact which will not be federating with Meta, and I was wondering if this instance would be joining. So there is no ambiguity with this post: I have no desire to participate in any instance that is federated with Facebook, and will kindly pass on another Eternal September. Hope that doesn't come off as aggressive, that's just where I'm at.
This is the first that I'm hearing about this and I will need to read into it more. I personally am up for blocking meta instances, though this is something that I will need to consult with the community and instance users first before taking action. For the moment I'm focusing on server updates/stability etc. Once I'm happy with how everything is running I will come back and consult with everyone how we would like to approach this. I will always consult the community before making instance defining decisions such as this.
I'm perfectly fine with blocking Meta, any megacorp really, but Meta especially. I have relatives who are still unvaccinated and afraid of 5G radio towers because of some nonsense they read on Facebook.
With the financial resources at its disposal, Meta is an a position to dominate the rest of the Fediverse. It is technically true that an open source project allows people to set up their own instances and migrate, but there are a great many ways in which the rest of the Fediverse could become dependent on the single largest player, especially because Meta’s closed-source, for-profit, data-mining operation is inimical to everything the Fediverse stands for. Even if people are only on Mastodon and not on Facebook, if Facebook can connect to them, it increases Facebook’s value, and it decreases the incentive to break free. In addition, money corrupts. Do I want my friends on Facebook to be able to connect with the Fediverse? Of course. But am I interested in accomplishing it by allowing ourselves to become remoras on the belly of the Great White Meta Shark? Not really. Of course, the beauty of the Fediverse is that people can choose for themselves, but I vote to defederate. Those who ride the back of the tiger all too often end up inside. Mark Zuckerberg, please go ruin someone else’s day.
I hope we do block any meta instances, it feels like having over that sketchy cousin you try to cut off cause he always steals from your house. Like no, stay away from me please
I'm with you on Meta not being welcome in the fediverse. u/masquenox made a comment that explains why really well here: https://lemmy.world/comment/854031
I do still hold the view blocking them isn't the right answer, maybe its needless optimism, I understand the idea of meta developing it's own fork, but if you can already have this many people agreeing to blovk them I feel a condition could already be negotiated (like instances will inly federate if the code is open source) instead of blocking outright. I feel this is the nuclear option and there are still unexplored solutions.
Problem for me is that, I don't like an image of the fediverse where we just block any big service that comes our way, we all stand more to gain if we manage to get federating right, even if it requires putting up conditions for that federation to be done.
Also I don't think mastodon or the fediverse at large would not survive one of those services suddenly defederating (or violating the hypothetical condition, thus for ing everyone to block them), this is probably where my hopeless optimism comes into play, but the community already built here is pretty tech savvy and we are already at numbers capable of self sustaining, I feel the community would not die out if we loose access to whatever one of those big services was offering.
Still this federation shouldn't affect lemmy that much since it's geared towards mastodon like microblogging services right now, so I will stand by whatever this community decides.
We know what Meta is, how they operate, how they collect and abuse data, how they prioritize ad revenue over user experience, how they've abused and manipulated elections, how they center whiteness, etc. What is there to wait and see?
thank for posting about it here; I had no idea. I know the creator of this instance has been fairly laissez faire about other servers so far but I hope we join the fedipact.
I'm on the opposite side, I joined this instance because it is so averse to blocking instances as a whole, letting the users do the blocking.
If meta joins the fediverse but it's a mastodon instance instead of a service like kbin and lemmy, eith proper posts, upvotes/downvotes and the like, I wouldn't really care if the community decides to block them, but if has a lemmy like component then that would be a deal breaker for me as I don't want defederation being done by the admins of an instance. (Unless meta does something harmful to interconnectivity or is shown to have a power that they would not have just scraping information without having an instance, then and only then I could see an argument for defederation as an instance)
Like those damn dirty neutrals, I don't feel strongly one way or another. But I really love that if you hate the way our instance goes on this you're free to just move to another instance that shares your views. And you'll be doubly free when they get account migration up and running.
Long live Vlemmy, and may there always be a bounty of other options.
Eh, like in the previous hread about defederating from Burggit I'm against defederating in general. Heck I picked this instance in particular because it wasn't blocking anyone and wasn't blocked by anyone, so it gave me the most flexibility in what I could see.
I'd change my position if and when Meta makes any proprietary changes to the protocol or seemingly intentional "misimplementations" of it that impact interoperability.
Came to add exactly this! I looked at a table of instances and only considered ones that had few blocks when I was signing up. I'm not sure if I should be so quick to turn around on that principle unless there's a concrete reason too.
I’d change my position if and when Meta makes any proprietary changes to the protocol or seemingly intentional “misimplementations” of it that impact interoperability.
This implies that the problem will come after they try to change anything. However, there are many things they can do without changing the protocol.
With their growth in population they can create centralized communities that others will follow or try to participate in. This ecosystem, once acquired, can be ransomed for favors. What happens when Facebook implies, not through an announcement but through precedent, that anyone who doesn't defederate Burggit will lose access to certain communities that are now big enough to be "core" communities?
Other stuff I can't be bothered to type but can be summed up as "through sheer size and force, their power will grow until their reach is so deep entrenched into our lair, that our walls will turn to acid and our halls the beast's stomach."
that having been said, i couldn't give two shits about meta so i don't think we should be preemptively trying to defederate without even thinking about it thoroughly. I'm personally, similarly to you, here cuz I don't want defederations to happen. Hopefully we stay free. :)
Same, if needed, I want to be the one doing the blocking. It's not like I'm averae to the idea of blocking, but I like being the one shaping what I can see and what I won't
The thing is a database can be used from different applications, so it can have a normal lemmy/mastodon instance working on it and other applications that only read and analyze data.
If meta is putting it's dirty hands on this it's to male profit and violate our privacy. If we federate with it it will have access to our data as well to analyze. I dont want that.
Yes - besides making collection of public data easier, it breaks down the walls of DM’s allowing meta and non-meta users to DM each other without friction, meaning most non-meta users won’t even notice that they’re starting to send their private data to meta. Additionally, that lack of friction allows them to collect data on who you follow from their server and who on their server follows you, including the content of those public exchanges along with the private info they have on the users on their side, which they can then pull in with your public data to make a great profile on you they will be happy to sell to the highest bidder even if the buyer is, purely hypothetically, a white supremacist cult hell bent on your death.
Sounds a lot like Blink, they fork WebKit, become the market leader and then start controlling the technology.
This sounds incredibly scary if Meta gobbles up all the new users. Interestingly XMPP seemed to go downhill exactly because they couldn’t afford to de-federate from Talk.
I am curious if the servers in OPs post can de-federate and survive.
I’m curious what the downside of being federated with an Instance run by Meta is? By federating with the network, Meta won’t miraculously gain some authoritarian control over the entire thing. In fact federating with Meta may well provide the largest opportunity ever to bring new users over to sites like Lemmy and Mastodon by way of exposing them to the potential perks of those sites over Thread.
Not to sound elitist but one of the main reasons I want nothing to do with it is the almost guaranteed influx of normies and casuals. Additionally, Meta does not want to see the fediverse or any other social network grow, they want everyone to use their network and pay them.
I must say, your first reason is kind of asshole, I can understand wanting some communities to remain niche to an extent, but for the whole service just because casuals would join... I don't know, it feels like useless gatekeeping, especially if those people were still bringing content.
I still use XMPP regularly to this day. It exists and is even a standard now. Whether or not Google uses it. One of the smaller virtual world services that I use has an XMPP backend to allow you to receive and send instant messages into their grid even when you aren't officially logged in.
I'm reading that Google chose XMPP to their Google Talk product, then later decided to drop the support of Google Talk in favor of Google Hangouts that wasn't using XMPP. This affected Google Talk users who were using 3rd party clients to use Google Talk as they were forced to start using bloated Google Hangouts. But how did all this affect people using XMPP protocol for other than Google Talk?
I'm also seeing potential for growth here for services using activitypub, mainly for the microblogging service Mastodon, as that's apparently a similar platform to Threads, or the other new player BlueSky, which also is going to use activitypub protocol.
I'm not a microblogger, but I'm seeing and clicking links to interesting tweets on chatrooms and websites I visit, and if they are going to be appearing through threads or bluesky in the future, and I am able to view them without having to access a bloated threads or bluesky app/website I see it as a good thing. If they one day defederate from mastodon instances for example and I can't view them from the outside anymore, it sounds like it's what happened with Google, then it's just back to where it was before they came along, unless the whole show managed to draw people from mastodon (mostly) to threads/bluesky which I doubt.
They will have the money to run more bigger faster severs. The risk is the majority start to use those severs as home, then communities end up there, then Facebook end up controlling the communities.
So the threat is Meta offering a better service that draws a user base? Is that flexibility not the entire thesis of fediverse platforms?
Further, if Meta is able to provide a service that users see as so fundamentally better, then they should get a large portion of the population. That’s the nature of a competitive market.
Not taking a stand is an appeal to default, and because of the weight effect Meta will have thanks to money and resources, this will directly translate to letting Meta harm others.