Meta will kill small instances! Please read.
Meta will kill small instances! Please read.
I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.
Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.
As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:
- Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won't care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
- When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won't care. They will use Threads because its faster.
This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.
Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That's not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.
My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.
I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.
We couldn't get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.
I'm hoping that ALL admins across the Fediverse will defederate from Meta. At least we get to have our own separate platform then.
They shouldn't just defederate from Meta, they should defederate from any other instances that federate with Meta. Like a firewall against late stage capitalism
But that is a double-edged sword. What if, for example, mastodon.social doesn't defederate with Meta, but you defederate mastodon.social? Now you've just cut yourself off from a huge portion of the fediverse. Admins should defederate from Meta if their community wants to do that, but defederating from other instances that didn't do that is going a bit too far, in my opinion.
Why? If you have blocked meta shouldn't you already be exempt from seeing comments and posts by their users on other instances? Why is this punitive approach needed
Edit: (Alongside downvoting, an explanation might be better suited to change people's minds, I just eant to know the advantage of this approach since you are excluding yourself from many users and you would have already blocked meta in this scenario)
That will just drive many Fedi-users to Meta.
Different instances will make different decisions and users will go to the instances that suit their preferences. That'a how it is supposed to work and the only way it hurts the Fediverse is if we get flooded with threads complaining that other people have different preference, dammit.
I feel like this will just hurt us more then help.
I don't see why this would hurt us. But even if it did, I would rather take the blow than associate with Big Tech again.
Growth at any cost is the mindset that not only ruins anything good for profit, it is also the exact issue we are facing now in real life with the right gaining traction in many liberal and multicultural democracies.
Because everyone is being let in, without a second thought on if they even should be there, we now have massive social issues with not at all integrated subcultures in Europe that embrace values diametrically opposed to our tolerant and pluralist societies, in turn empowering the right to ruin any progress made in an effort to throw out the brown people again.
The right question to ask is not "can we accept this new member to our society?", the right question is "should we accept this new member into our society based on their beliefs and values, based on if they can contribute anything to the existing society?"
And to return to the matter at hand, this is what the fediverse is supposed to be. A bunch of communities and little realms, each with their own rules and interests but united in their belief that self determination and democratic structures make for a better and more fair internet. And then we have the meta intruder we are about to welcome with open arms, without any rules or expectations of him to adopt our values and culture, so they bring their own, corporate, centralized culture and use their money to brute force that culture into every place of importance.
It is not racist or intolerant of societies to expect newcomers to assimilate, and ignoring that fact brought us a re emerging right.
And it is not fearmongering or small minded to be extremely sceptical of Facebook trying to establish themselves in the fediverse, they are literally the OG data and privacy violating corporation, they invented echo chambers and connecting extremists. There is zero value to the fediverse in welcoming meta. The only one who wins if that happens is meta.
How is that any different from what we have now?
Threads has launched, but has federation disabled. So right now Threads is a standalone system, and it and the Fediverse cannot intercommunicate.
If Threads later adds in federation but all the of the Fediverse blocks them, we're in exactly the situation that exists right this minute. And that doesn't seem to be hurting the Fediverse at all.
Yeah, I personally don't want that. I want to be able to log in to mastodon or lemmy without needing a facebook account and be able to interact with my less tech savvy friends and family, as well as get news from journalists/bands/sports teams/etc.
I don't think so; it won't hurt 'us' anymore than we were hurt yesterday, when Threads hadn't launched yet.
I feel different
Why would that hurt us? Sorry, I'm pretty new to all this...
Big corpos don't want to take it over, they want it gone.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Damn, that's a terrifying vision of the future. I was on the fence with defederating, but we probably should.
Your comment should be top.
Absolutely. We'd have to be nuts to think they're not trying to take it over and ruin it.
I don't think XMPP comparison is correct.
First, in my personal (subjective!) opinion, XMPP died because of entirely different primary reason: it, by design, had trouble working on mobile devices. Keeping the connection was either battery-expensive or outright impossible, and using OS native push notifications had significant barriers.
As for Google Talk - it just came and went. Because they never had proper MUCs (multi user conferences, think communities), in my own (again, personal, thus subjective - not objective!) experience it was quite the opposite to how the article paints it. Whoever participated in chatrooms I've been in, and had used a Google account, hated Google's decision and moved to XMPP. I'm no fond of Google, but their impact on XMPP was not strictly negative - they contributed some useful XEPs and useful free software libraries after all. Although, of course, for those who used XMPP primarily as a classic messenger system (like MSN, AIM or ICQ) for private 1:1 chats things surely looked differently.
Now, why I think the comparison is not correct. I think Threads' situation is different because of fundamental differences in how those systems operate. And not in favor of Threads/Meta. If Threads would be Lemmy or XMPP MUC-like system (that is, having communities/groups hosted on particular servers), then it would be a complicated story, where Fediverse could even theoretically score a net win. But as I get it, Threads is Mastodon/Twitter-like thing, and their users' content will stay with Meta, entirely at Meta's discretion whenever they let other systems access it, and when they pull the plug. Given that Meta is also not likely to contribute to FLOSS Fediverse projects, their Fediverse presence is of questionable benefits to say the least.
Fantastic read. Thanks for the link.
For those who don't know, the strategy is called Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. The phase comes from Microsoft who used this to (try to) crush competing document editors, Java implementations, browsers, and operating systems. Other big tech companies employ similar strategies.
Facebook coming to the Fediverse is the Embrace phase of this process and that makes Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, Misskey, and Akkoma the competitors.
I think the issue being missed here is that Meta will ultimately aim to suck all users into themselves, and then once they feel they've done enough of that, they will go completely closed, even potentially forking the protocol itself. If any legal attempt to stop this is made they will bog it down with hordes of lawyers for decades.
Their goal is not to help fediverse, it is recognising fediverse to be a threat and aiming to absorb it. Literally no different to how reddit slowly absorbed all internet forums into itself, killing the distributed internet.
Fediverse is attempting to bring back that distributed internet and they're trying to find ways to kill it. All corporations seek monopoly, it's how capitalism works.
If I wanted to see content from my racist Trumper uncle, I would just create a Facebook account. Keep Threads far away from the rest of the Fediverse. We don't need to compete with them. Who cares if they're way bigger with way more content if 99% of that content is garbage?
if 99% of that content is garbage?
Counterpoint: beans.
Serious note: I think the point of decentralized networks like this is that each instance will have to choose to federate with Threads or any other future corporate social media. If that sounds dangerous, welcome to the freedom of choice baybee! It sucks that the truth is that as long as we want this to be a free space where people can choose what and where they see content, that means some will choose to work with the big-easy-techgiant rather than take a harder approach because 99% of people aren't that invested.
Regardless of what anyone thinks about politics, nothing good will come by letting them in. I hope all current instances defederate, I know mine will.
Will lemmy.world defederate?
I run my own instance here at twisti.ca and have the full intention of defederating
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
How many things will we let them ruin before we finally learn that corporations cannot be trusted?
Practically speaking? Everything.
Agreed, you cannot trust something that has the same ultimate goal as cancer. Endless infinite growth.
One thing I don't understand is why would meta even federate with anyone outside of their own instances anyway?
Makes no sense to ever open up to allow any other instances in. Not like they are crying for users.
The fediverse just makes sense in their own bubble. Turn Facebook, Instagram, and their other apps into the fediverse and federate them all together.
I don't expect them to ever open up to the actual fediverse. Same with BlueSky. I feel like all of these companies will USE the fediverse but in a closed bubble.
On one hand, I think it could be possible that Meta is planning to federate with the fediverse with the ultimate goal of destroying it and replacing it with their own instances. Similar to what Google did with XMPP according to this article. https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
On the other hand, I also think it could be possible Meta is wanting to federate with the fediverse just so it can increase it's data collection many times quicker. Why manage servers when you can connect to other servers and suck up data as and when Threads users interact with other lemmy instances.
No idea which is more likely.
Interesting thoughts. I suppose Meta will collect what they want to collect, it's what they do, and this is all public discussion, anyone can collect it for any reason. And I don't doubt that their involvement in the fediverse is secretly nefarious in one way or another.
Where I think our current situation is different from the Google/XMPP thing, is that, a bunch of platforms are going down the tubes really quickly and lots of people are looking for the next thing all at the same time. It gives a lot of room for a good platform like this one to gain ground rapidly. As far as I'm concerned, if for example instagram federated, and I could browse some good feeds outside of meta's app & privacy permissions hell, that would be a plus for me. If they subsequently pulled what Google did with XMPP and suddenly backed out, I wouldn't react by moving to instagram exclusively and I can't really see why any user would make such a move.
It's a classic tactic, you open up compatibility with an open source platform so everyone moves to the fancy app that supports it all (threads) then they drop support and kill the platform (fediverse). They'll do it and will likely be successful unless they're blocked completely right now.
I don't see why we can't just stay on the fediverse, enjoy threads as long as meta wants to play ball, and then wave goodbye when they decide they don't want to federate anymore. Nobody's forcing anyone to move from the fediverse to meta, and I think the current demographic here is unlikely to volunteer for another walled garden experience.
Worst case scenario is we end up right back where we are now- a niche community prioritizing independence and decentralization.
Well? Apparently, they plan on making it happen. https://help.instagram.com/169559812696339
I feel like all of these companies will USE the fediverse but in a closed bubble.
Just like they did with the Internet.
BlueSky will use their own protocol, so they will indeed be a closed bubble.
As for Meta, my (totally unjustified) hunch is that they're expecting that other big names like Twitter, BlueSky, Google or Amazon will migrate or create their own ActivityPub services, and they want to be early adopters. If Threads is successful, I could see them migrating Facebook and Instagram too.
That's my assessment also. This isn't about extinguishing us, it's about the other whales. AFAICT, they want and expect us us to be do well. (Delete could use a confirmation...)
Embrace, extend, extinguish
Once they're federated they have full admin access. So they can see who liked posts, and lots of other info.
They could be doing this already, for all we know. We don't know who owns all those little instances out there. Large corporations or government surveillance just need to set up a discreetly named instance or two and start subscribing, and they'll get all the data they want. (In fact, could that be part of the reason for the explosion in silent bot accounts?)
They of course have no interest in growing the fediverse as an independent alternative, they want to use it for their own ends. They want to serve people the fediverse's free content under their own umbrella and rules (and ads of course) to monetize stuff that doesn't belong to them, or anyone else. It's all pretty straightforward greed and capitalizing on an opportunity.
We have to stick to our guns and keep supporting the small instances.
Admins needs to strike first and defederate from Meta before they do.
What good does that do the small instances? And how does that harm Meta?
All that happens is:
- The small instances won't get the extra activity that Meta users might bring
- Meta will not get the small amount of existing content on those small instances
That's more a loss for us.
Currently Reddit has significantly more users than Lemmy. Has that stopped people from signing up to Lemmy? Twitter has has significantly more users than Mastodon since forever. Has that stopped people from signing up for Mastodon? Has it killed Mastodon?
The common error I see in all the "Threads will kill the Fediverse" mania is that it assumes the same people who sign up for Threads would have otherwise signed up for Mastodon/Lemmy/Kdin/etc. 99.9% of them probably never would have. They want something that's easy and just works; and they're willing to let a company profit off their data to have it.
I don’t think those are good comparisons. The point he is trying to make is that when a user joins Lemmy and sees a two gaming subs, one on Lemmy.world and the other on a meta instance with more subscribers, that user will join the meta sub.
I do not want to see only corporations holding the keys to the majority of communities and if they are allowed in that will be their goal. Meta doesn’t give a shit if the 3dprinting sub has quality content, only that it is profitable for them. Corporations will choose profit over the users every time.
People will say “well if it gets bad or they start becoming bad actors then we can drop them” but that will just set us back to where we are right now. I would rather see us grow slow without corporations than fast with them.
The problem is that this doesn't change the outcome.
To use your example, if we federate people will join the meta instance, if we don't federate people won't even know the lemmy.world instance exists, and even if they do they would still join the meta one if it's bigger.
I totally agree with the sentiment, but I yet have to understand how not federating can change the outcome
The only way smaller instances can thrive and make a strong federation is by making the average person start to care more about privacy.
But you can't do that if you can't reach them in the first place
That's not what's going to happen. I really don't understand why people on Lemmy are so fussed about this, Meta are not building a lemmy instance, they are building a twitter clone. While yes you can access Threads content through Lemmy that doesn't mean it's going to affect the Lemmy ecosystem. Mastodon is going to be way more affected than Lemmy ever will be.
Just because they are on the Fediverse doesn't mean it will make sense to use their services through all other Fediverse platforms and vice versa. Following an entire Lemmy "sub" on threads will be a shitty experience and Threads doesn't have creation of subs as an option, the only viable equivalent features are user posts.
It's about threads becoming the fediverse by virtue of their size and resources, and then making changes to the protocols which ultimately lock out the actual fediverse. It will be 'fediverse, by Meta' where everything is hosted and run by meta.
Yep, their plan will be to take over the majority of the network, then start adding their own proprietary features and not adding features that the open source devs add, thereby taking control of the software.
EXACTLY! It only benefits us because it hugely increases the exposure of the fediverse to the outside world so people who ARE interested can merely jump over. It makes the fediverse more interesting for people like me who can "live" here and access the content I want.
two things:
have you considered that if this happens, once the fediverse's exposure grows it will be thanks to Meta's entrance, then the people that join the fediverse will do so by Meta's means (in this case, Threads. But they can make some more after)? Making them the standard way to access the protocol, gradually making other communities less and less relevant.
It makes the fediverse more interesting for people like me who can “live” here and access the content I want.
I'm not trying to be rude by any means, but honestly, if the content you enjoy is on their platforms, just go there and enjoy it. You can be both there and here.
Everyone is talking about defederating because of XMPP and EEE. But the very fact that we know about EEE means that it's much less likely to succeed.
Zuck is seeing the metaverse crash and burn and he knows he needs to create the next hot new thing before even the boomers left on facebook get bored with it. Twitter crashing and burning is a perfect business opportunity, but he can't just copy Twitter - it has to be "Twitter, but better". Hence the fediverse.
From Meta's standpoint, they don't need the Fediverse. Meta operates at a vastly different scale. Mastodon took 7 years to reach ~10M users - Threads did that in a day or two. My guess is that Zuck is riding on the Fediverse buzzword. I'm sure whatever integration he builds in future will be limited.
TL;DR below:
I don't think that FB even knows that lemmy exist, problem is they are so big they will crush us by accident.
Even back than with XMPP, Google didn't kill it intentionally. No one expected it will be smaller than before google used it. I remember watching empty list where all friends were. But it happened, and I never thought that Google wanted to kill XMPP.
Meta WILL fuck up everything they touch with an aggressive amount of ads. I do not want this future.
One of the things that I feel isn't being thought about much, is that it isn't just Meta's ideology and policies that will harm smaller instances and the fediverse itself; but the volume of data that their userbase will generate.
For smaller instances like mine running on six vcores, 4GB of memory, 512GB storage and a 120Mbps network...I feel like all it would take is a handful of users federating with them and the data flow alone would destroy our resources at the network if not disk level.
No, I don't plan on allowing my instance to see or interact with theirs; but the point applies to all small instances and part time hobby servers. We don't have the means to take on the data they could throw out into the federated network.
If that’s the case, then how will it be possible for the fediverse to scale up at all? If the goal is to replace Reddit and the like, then the goal is having millions of users regardless of if they are all coming from meta or from a whole ton of small instances.
I have some headroom for growth set aside. Since my instance is virtualized, its not too hard to scale it a bit. But there are hard limits due to other projects on the host.
For a lot of smaller instances that are currently running on cheaper VPS instances, they most likely have an upper limit to what their willing to pay for scaling up as growth happens. The only way to balance that is getting tooling in place to purge older data, but that isn't really a good idea either.
Really though, any web platform that hits the public eye is going to face these issues over time. But allowing a large company to federate with a smaller instance will accelerate the issues. You also need to keep in mind that you don't have all the control of these instances, as your users will cause you to federate with more and more content. Sure, you can purge and defederate, but that is a cat and mouse game.
Also, I cannot speak for the goals of others; but lemmon bar isn't run with the goal of replacing reddit. It is meant to be a point of access to the fediverse. No more, no less.
Everyone is really scrambling now as if they really thought up to now that the Fediverse was immune to corpo bullshit
Well we would be if everyone just blocked them like gab or truth social etc. But I guess mainly Rothko is considering federating which is why everyone is freaking out
I'm totally willing to discuss my thoughts since it seems I'm in the minority on this threads mania-
Once Threads launches it'll obviously have a lot more users than the whole fediverse combined, maybe even 90% of all users. Now let's say some instances with barely 1-2% users and small content feed defederate from it. Do people think a new user who does not care about things like open source or privacy will join the niche instance? No, people will go where the content is. Big social media giants will jump on fediverse bandwagon and instances who dont fetch their data will become extremely niche communtites (some might like that but it's not good for overall fediverse health).
Instead let's say we keep federated with threads, and make posts like how YSK: other instances don't track your data, other instances are free from corpo greed, other instances are run by normal people etc etc and make users aware and let them naturally migrate. Ideally, meta will bring the eyeballs which we can help to make fediverse as a whole grow.
imo it's naive to think that us 100k users defederating will put even a dent on threads. Insta tik-tok people will join the new trendy social media and generate content. The only solution is to make people constantly aware that better alternatives to view the same content exist.
The potential problem is not us making a dent on Threads, I couldn't care less if people want to use it. The potential problem is that they do the EEE (link1, link2) on the Fediverse. It's not us trying to steal users from them, or preventing people from joining them, it's about preventing them from becoming the standard way for people to access the Fediverse, thus giving them control over the protocol's direction and giving them the possibility to, once they are the de facto standard, defederate and kill the rest of small communities.
That, and personally, I wouldn't like Meta meddling with the protocol, simply because there is no beneficial outcome for them other than gaining control of it, which would be horrible.
The content I want to have will never be on a meta server. And even if, I will not federate with them and not use them.
For the exact same reasons I also don't use Facebook.
You won't necessarily know if the person you are interacting with at say @[email protected] is being hosted by threads.
We will have block list like with ads, if necessary.
Simple as that, of some instances federate with them I will not use them.
I will continue to use Mastodon and Lemmy.
Doing my part!
yeah, i really, well and truly do not wish to be linked with meta on fediverse. it's obvious the damage it will do either way. may as well stay as we are and avoid the termoil which meta will bring us should they decide to federate.
I don't think this will matter at all. The first instance that brands itself as "we only federate with instances that exclude all relationships with Meta," is the instance I will be in and all the people who I want to hang around will be there also. Federating with Meta will be like holding a flashing neon sign that says "stay away from me."
I don't want anything to do with Reddit anymore and I haven't had anything to do with Twitter or Facebook for more than 10 years - and all for similar reasons. Huge groups of people brought together by money are fucking poison.
I don't think this looks very good, but if we want a fighting chance, we can definitely do two things:
-
We need to make using other instances of Lemmy and kbin extremely easy. Seamless. Two taps on your phone simple. Sign up with Google. All that jazz. Then the most basic user will have an easier time choosing a non-Threads instance.
-
We need to, ironically I guess, advertise our LACK of advertisements. No matter how they do it, I'd bet anything Treads will integrate ads somehow, so this is a way we can quickly stand out.
On another note, users will want to go where the content lives. Of course, that makes this much more difficult. We all know Threads will be big, almost immediately. So, should we defederate with Threads like many of us are planning? This will keep us "safe" but we'll lose all the new content. Or should we instead remain federated to keep seeing the content? Of course this doesn't stop Threads from defederating from us themselves, so I truly don't know the answer.
No matter what, I think we need to stand out to average social media users in a big way. I think my two points above are just a start, though. We need to offer more.
I don't have high hopes, but I'm planning to fight like hell for our little paradise in any way I can.
Imo the fediverse should not try to compete with the big commercial networks on their terms. It will be much healthier when it grows slow and steady with people who want to be here because it is the fediverse. A place of freedom and lack of controlling evil players who will use your data to control your behavior (to get more ad revenue or worse, to make you act against your best interests, such as happened on facebook with Cambridge Analytica).
We're not gonna win from big dollars and vested interests. Let's not play their game. Let them play their game and let us be a safe haven for anyone who is done with being a pawn in that game.
The fediverse is already a really nice place to be. You don't need 100s of millions of users to have the network effect that creates a successful platform. We've already reached that critical mass.
Threads already has over 30 million daily active users and growing fast - I'm tipping it will be over a billion in a year or two.
The fediverse has 2 million monthly active users. Sorry, but we've already lost the content battle. Like it or not, Threads is king king and Lemmy/Mastodon are ants.
Regarding "two taps and you're signed up"... that's just never going to happen. If anything, it probably needs to be a bit harder to sign up. We don't want people using throwaway accounts.
-
I see your panic and raise you a "what's the solution?"
Keep it separate, mass de-federate. The biggest lemmy instance has to make a stance.
So they have already reaching OP's first point without doing anything
Defederate the big corps immediately.
I think the solution is for each instance to decide whether to federate with Threads or not.
The only way an attempt to coopt the Fediverse wouldn't happen world be if the project failed. If this system is going to work, major players will want to participate, and they'll want to accrue power and dominate over the system. Creating tools to establish boundaries and checks is fundamentally the point, so I think we should all strive to understand and contribute to the development and administration of institutions we like. And if we do that, and also compel our governments to impose regulations on big tech they WILL come up against limits to their power.
I'll raise your "what's the solution" with a "lets avoid the problem entirely".
Prevention is better than cure.
He made it very clear.
Defederate from any instance that federated with meta.
People forget. They go for convenience. That is how we ended up in our present state. Facebook led efforts against net neutrality too in some countries. But how many know/remember that? Amongst all other things they did.
People go where the people they care about are. Path dependency is king.
I'm more concerned of them integrating new features and bullying everyone else into following to integrate them or else.
"We have to defederate or else they'll run incompatible code that won't let us federate with them"
This seems like a self-solving problem to me, I still don't understand what the hyperventilation is about.
I feel like it'd be the other way around honestly. Maybe I'm just shilling but right now the app is literally barebones as shit and it looks and feels like it was made in a week.
They’ll probably get mad that people can take their ball and go home by going to another instance without ads and signing away access to all of their personal data but get the same content. If they defederate, to me that’s the trash taking itself out.
I don't exactly understand how this is going to kill small instances? I just stared with the Fediverse stuff so I might have understood it wrong:
Point 1: "Meta will unethically defederate from instances..." I'm assuming that means they'll block access to those instances for anyone that has an account on the Meta instance? I don't really see the problem with that. This won't affect small instances at all because people who want to view other instances will have an account somewhere else and people using the meta instance probably wouldn't have heard of the fediverse in the first place if it wasn't for meta. Its a win basically since they'll get introduced to the fediverse concept which is a step in the right direction. And small instances will stay as they are which is unaffected.
Point 2: If I understood it correctly they can only slow down access to other instances if one uses an account created on the meta instance? So same argument as in point 1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish you may also be interested in the story of XMPP
Thanks.
i think this is a good read on what they can do https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
From what I’ve heard the big concern is EEE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish?wprov=sfti1
I guess this will already have been said, but nonetheless:
I like the feeling of community as it is right now in the Fediverse very much.
Most of me hopes that it will not successfully federate with Meta, ever; or if it "must", in a way that will be mostly irrelevant to me (communities I wouldn't subscribe to in the first place, anyway).
I don't see how that, in turn, would give Meta any control over the parts of the Fediverse that I care about. If they want to join and contribute in good faith, fine. If not, also fine. Why should it change anything for Fediverse "centered" communities?
I never cared about size or majority, but about quality of content and discourse. And I find that in those points, the current Fediverse much outshines anything else I've seen (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, ...) in the last decade or so.
That was my first thought too, until I found this:
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
From my (admittedly, deliberately naive and provocative) perspective, what is the (possible) "added value" of Threads' ad-infested feed over the community experience straight on Lemmy?
I share your priorities, but I don't think you understand the depth and breath of how they can ruin this for us... The only guarantee is that, at some point (maybe tomorrow, maybe in 5 years), they'll ask "how can we extract value from this investment?". That's what a corporation is, it can't help it anymore than fire can choose how hot to burn
But even before then, we have misaligned goals. At best, their priority is to generate an endless stream of advertiser friendly content, extract information about users, and grow endlessly. At worst, they want to use us to help kill Twitter while ensuring federation of individuals does not become a viable model for social media
That’s what a corporation is, it can’t help it anymore than fire can choose how hot to burn
This is an excellent line.
I think you are wildly overestimating the stickiness of the fediverse. The sorts of people who will prefer Threads are going to prefer Threads whether or not it's federated. On the other hand, the sorts of people who prefer the fediverse will never switch to Threads even if it becomes the smoothest experience ever. But the latter cohort is likely much, much smaller than the former.
I think meta will dominate the space that federates with it. Hopefully none of my instances will do that... And I will be unaffected.
We have to have to remember microblogging is not the only thing that exists in the fediverse. Having access to threads from lemmy will pretty much have no impact.
"unethically defedrate"? I think you may have misunderstood how federation works, since "defederate" is just another word for "ban yourself from seeing that instance's content", if Threads defederate from a small Mastodon instance, for example, that Mastodon instance can still see all the content on Threads, but the Threads user won't be able to see anything posted by that Mastodon instance.
Also, any instance can and should be able to federate and defederate any other instance for any or even no reason, that's the entire point.
I think threads being able to make content that's a threat to them invisible to their users by "unethically defederating" is exactly what the op is talking about. What they were likely referring to is this: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Doesn't matter that users from other instances can still see threads content. It's about threads accumulating the majority of users due to better infrastructure and then silencing smaller instances they deem a threat to them by defederating. It's only been a few hours and they've crossed 30 million users.
Niche forums on the same topics still exist on the Internet, even ones with only 10 people posting regularly.
The current trend of the Internet seems more about decentralization to like minded groups instead of everybody being in the same place.
Also, Threads is feeding off Instagram's existing users, they didn't exactly start from zero.
Ehh want it becomes a problem we will make blocking them possible.
To be perfectly honest I think the one way defederation block is kind of silly.
Compared to Meta, all other instances are small.
What is the motivation for this post? Did Meta announce they will be making an instance or is the OP just thinking ahead?
I see. Thank you
In the apps introduction screen, it says it will soon integrate to Fediverse. I believe people are afraid from another, much worse "eternal September" happening. It happened to Usenet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
I am not worried about this. I think threads is going to end up like all the fascist instances. Perhaps they will have more users... Good for them. But the rest of us will defederate and they will become an isolated instance. Which begs the question, why use activity pub at all? I suppose maybe its so they can run multiple servers themselves and piggy back on the infrastructure that was laid down for free. As long as most of us defederate its not going to change much. You could get about as much data scraping timelines now as they could siphon up with federating. So small instances will continue to federate with each other and that will end up being a smaller amount of the people using the fediverse. The only way this matters is if we obsess about numbers. But honestly most of us can't afford to run a big instance anyway, so obsessing about unattainable numbers is pointless. It doesn't change the economics at all, it doesn't change the fact that small instances will federate with each other and not stuff we don't like. It may change the privacy stuff, which is something we can fix with some vigilance.
They are selling personalized domains, on ActivityPub every domain looks like a different instance. I don't know that we have the ability to block every single one of the vanity domains they will probably sell for less than a twitter checkmark.
I think this is a good use case for creating white lists for federation as opposed to black listing the blocked ones and I figured one day it might come to that. We'll have to put together some registry where new strains nstancea can sign up to be included. I know that sounds antithetical to federation, but there are solutions to the problems threads is creating.
Maybe they want to use Activity Pub so that they can influence further development of it. I don't know procedure how w3c is makeing decisions and updates to it, but I doubt someone that is not using it can have influence.
It could easily be forked if they start fucking around, but that is a real danger.
Is there a list of instances that have defederated (or announced they will) from Threads?
Thank you!
Luckily, they can't force federated access to be slow. Once you federate with them, their content is copied to your instance. It's not necessary for every fediverse user to contact Threads, it'll just be served from each user's home instance
That's a bit naive.
They can introduce latency, or server errors.
But more importantly, they can definitely
I agree. Ultimately, I think there is a real chance that there ends up being 2 major fediverses. One that is federated with Meta, and one that is not.
I think that those joined to meta will ultimately become like the losers table in a school cafeteria. They can hear all of the conversations, but nobody will engage them. I’d rather be in the not-federated camp.
Where's that Fediverse's anti-Meta treaty again? Should update em clauses by now.
Everything is gonna be alright.
A wise king never seeks out war. But he must always be ready for it.
Meta or any other corporation with interest in social media sphere (to be read: wanting to make profit on the back of the users) will, sooner or later, kill the fediverse if allowed to enter.
Why?
Simple because the reason for a corporation to exist is to make profit and that profit has to grow each year - so there is all the incentive in the world to milk everything from the user until they can then move on to the next "thing".
Well if that's the case, Fediverse was dead on arrival. But that is not the case. If you use a close sourced client and sign up to a server with bad practices, you cannot use that as an example for the whole Fediverse.
Well companies killing descentralised networks it's not something new. Please see below an example:
What a huge piece of FUD this is. Threads is already way larger then the Fediverse is. They don't need to come here and try and take users. You are afraid that Meta will hoard the content and users from the Fediverse but they are already doing that. Threads doesn't connect now so it's all there's. Why would they connect to just disconnect later? Why is the answer to being afraid of getting disconnected in the future to never connect? This makes no sense. It's complete fear mongering.
They don’t need to come here and try and take users
Exactly, they don't need to, yet they plan to. What do you think their goal is?
@SUPERcrazy3530 @peppy Completely agree. If they disconnect later we are just back where we are now - so literally no loss. Only win by connecting
Better explained here: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
This post feels like fearmongering...
Why would Meta care about small instances? I feel like Meta would only see the big instances as pontential threat.
Honestly, this could actually be an opportunity for fediverse. I don't want Meta to harvest my data, so I would never make an account there. However I am interested in content/people from Meta and I can follow that from fediverse. I believe there is large group of people who think the same way and they may join fediverse if they haven't already done that.
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I mean, we can all defederate. You're TELLING us to defederate. What makes ours ethical and their unethical??
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They cannot make our instances slower. Your browser / the server doesn't make any requests to threads when you load a page on your instance. They could send notifications less frequently, but so what.
What makes ours ethical and their unethical??
Their actual history. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.
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But... what kind of Camel milk do you like?
Could Threads essentially cause a kinda DDOS attack onto other instances or bloating other instances with data?
Other instances would just de-federate in that case. I don't think this is that much of an issue really because threads would just end up being its own ecosystem with no other instances willing to federate with it.
Can someone with a better understanding of how Federation works confirm or explain why this is wrong? I only learned about this stuff like 4 days ago after leaving Reddit.
They could, but why would they need to? They are so much bigger they work will be done for them without having to do anything
are you peppy from osu! ?
are you aku from osu!?
no sir :) i am not aware who that is.
I would imagine that the kind of people willing to use Threads were already not going to sign up for a "small instance", and a lot of admins of various sized instances have already agreed to defederate regardless https://fedipact.online/
Why does that site have to look like a Geocities site that some 12 year old girl made..?
I am trying to figure out how this will do anything but make a "threads" and a "rest of the fediverse" setup, just like we have now. Nothing will change, and this will be for the best. Meta will make a shitty version of fediverse to rival their own shitty facebook, and the rest of us will be happier for it.
I, personally, do not want to be defederated from Threads. I want to follow some of the key news orgs and political figures who haven’t made the move over to Mastodon. For me, it can be the best of both worlds. I can get the content I want and maintain the level of privacy that I want.
Honest question: What makes you think Meta will be putting that content there for you if they can't profit from you?
Meta has the best engineers in the world
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA....oh that's rich. Do you actually believe this?
Who do you believe are the best engineers in the world and where do they work?
Eh. They have really good engineers. They just work for a POS company that does some bullshit
Good engineers and best in the world are not equal.
If you don't federate with them, people will simply just go there instead of here because a larger user base.
i honestly prefer that. People can use two services and the fediverse won't centralize. Win-Win. Don't you think?
The common pattern when onboarding into the Fediverse is:
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"I just left [poorly moderated place with too many people] because of [reason only tangentially relates to the denizens]".
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"This place is a breath of fresh air! It feels like [the Internet at some previous reference time for the user that predated them being in spaces with too many people]."
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"Everyone should experience this! We need to get [the people who made the previous location a hell hole] here!"
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The fediverse not dying has yet to be proven.
Everyone on here keeps acting like they're in a position of power and the fediverse is destined for success, but here's the thing, it still sucks compared to the content that's on Reddit and FB/IG, because there's still a tiny fraction the number of users. The fediverse is only going to be the great place to have a conversation about stuff if people use it, and everyone rushing to cut off a massive source of funding / users / content while the fediverse is still trying to compete against Reddit et al seems like a huge mistake.
Nobody wants to use two services.
If an instance does off because Meta won't defederates from it, then it probably would have died off anyway.
I get all the hate for meta and zuck, and I agree that they would only do so for their own commercial benefit, but I don’t think we should defederate without seeing what federating means. Everyone here is instinctively panicking and running around like headless chickens without seeing what it would actually entail.
Threads is like mastodon. If federating with threads only means that threads users can participate in lemmy, I see that as an advantage for us.
If we were a mastodon instance, this conversation would be very different.
What is Signal?
It's a Free, Open-Source instant messaging app, the likes of Telegram and WhatsApp, which offers encrypted messaging and most functionality that WhatsApp also offers. It failed to take off as well as we'd hoped since most people resort to iMessage or WhatsApp instead, both owned and controlled by Apple and Zuck respectively.
Signal is an encrypted messaging app that got popular during the whole Whatsapp privacy fiasco few years ago.
the secure messaging app that whatsapp is based on. ad-free, facebook-free and encrypted. all the pleasure, none of the pain
Imagine what the fediverse will be like when 90 year old daisy gets on it.
Grandma is about to learn about vore in church.
I just spit my coffee but... thank you xD
I think I laughed so hard I damaged my spleen. Thank you.
Imagine those old conservatives shock when lemmygrad contents show up on their federated feed.
Why would the most active lemmings stay on meta owned and controlled instances?
Meta or any other big player that looks to ride on the fediverse space ultimately gets nothing that's not already available publicly, and can't push their ads or data-scraping apps on the users of the fedi. In effect they'll either play nice and maybe a few people interact between them, or they don't and things continue as they are today. There have been a couple posts out there of the history with Google/XMPP and now the statement by Mastodon. Private hosting of open protocols has always been a threat to the big players. In the end with the Google affair, XMPP still exists, I used to use it for my household chat, but found other options like RocketChat and now NextCloud Talk more to my taste and easier to maintain. Meta can't kill the ActivityPub system, only the users walking away from it can do that, or, I guess ISPs if they did some sort of shady blocking en-masse but that's another matter all together.
I have no use for Meta in any of their forms, and would certainly push others to use the OG version of things that doesn't scrape all their data to sell them the latest bullshit they don't need, but there's little reason to fear them either.
The instances defederating Meta will shrink and collapse into their own seperate Defediverse. The debate shows the risk of so many hobbyist instances and admins powertripping their view who the users are allowed to talk to, that a corporation is perhaps more reliable. It hurts the users, hampers communication channels and people will flock more to the Mainfediverse further accelerating more power to fewer instances.
If you were looking for a network seperated from the outside general world, you perhaps should have joined a closed instance, network and forum. It goes against all what the Fediverse tries to be, a multi-purpose communication tool across communities, corporations and cultures with the possibility to create seperated and shielded communities.
The current fediverse is like a small mall or downtown with local shops and unique things to do. Meta is like Walmart coming in and overwhelming the existing businesses and running them out of business through unethical practices.
It isn't like people won't be allowed in the fediverse if they also use threads. The desire is to avoid threads using the fediverse to drive everything's else out.
The fediblockers are only driving themselves out. Your analogy is wrong, they cannot run Mastodon out of business. Should Meta decide to be feature incompatible and itself defederating a significant portion will leave. The fediverse itself is so alive, because of the rotten smell of Twitter, reddit and Facebook. Meta will fail with Threads, if they try to extinguish others.
Can small instances handle the traffic that Threads will be generating? I imagine small instances may get overwhelmed by bandwidth / cpu constraints, due to not having the budget that Meta has. Smaller instances that get bogged down might find people migrating to Threads simply because it will be able to handle the load.
And the effects will be
While the effects you list don't seem entirely implausible, you're stating these hypothetical situations as if they are already fact and we have evidence to indicate that. I agree with @substill in that I don't see Threads being a threat to small communities.
This is much a better argument than the XMPP comparison.
Thanks for the post!
I really don't understand this logic... There is literally absolute no advantage by not federating with Meta.
Why would users prefer the free Fediverse MORE if it's not federated with the "big and good" Metaverse? If anything it just drives them away into Metas arms, because the non-Meta instances are small and all the stuff is on Meta anyway.
Defederating is just the worst case result, but instantly from the beginning... How does that do any good???
thats what ive been saying, atleast use em for a while to get some of the user base to switch over.
Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.
Well, that hasn't been my experience so far, and they are not even federating yet :-D
Love the dialogue here but you always have to follow the money trail. The best way to keep what we love is to bankroll our instances to keep them running and scalable to additional users without ads. Remember, if you aren't paying for the product then you become the product. Meta has nothing without selling ads or monetizing user data. That's their business model. As long as we chip in we can always maintain our independence. I'm fine with never seeing or interacting with content from Threads.
Meta is already a multi-billion dollar company that is built like an unstoppable content monetization and tax avoidance machine. If they wanted to, they could probably float an unprofitable Threads dot net until the heat death of the universe. Threads doesn't need to be profitable for it to succeed, it just needs to crush Twitter, BlueSky, TikTok, Reddit, Tumblr, and the Fediverse under foot. That's it... that's the win condition they're going for, not profitability. This is David verses Goliath moment and, in the real world of monopolistic capitalism, Goliath usually wins.
Honestly, I don’t see how this is a threat to “small” instances. Why would Meta target defederation with some dude’s 5 user instance that barely registers on anyone’s radar?
The moment that you/a person on your instance engage with threads, it'll likely use up your storage quota at an unprecedented rate.
You're not gonna be downloading the entirety of threads when you interact with them. I don't see how interacting with threads would fill up your storage any faster than interacting with another instance.
What does upping the storage quota mean?
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When smaller instances thrive and attract a dedicated user base, they can challenge the dominance of larger platforms like Meta. This poses a threat to Meta's business model, which relies on maintaining a large user base and monetizing user data and engagement.
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Elon suspended accounts of Journalists. Do you not see that the lizard king can do the same with small instances. And this will happen silently and the users on Threads will be unaware.
Why would Meta target small instances, though, instead of larger, more popular ones? And how does it matter if Meta blocks small instances or if small instances block Meta? The result is the same.
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If we were to take parallel with how big email providers handle federation, there is a good chance that meta will make it a lot harder for smaller instances to federate in the name of combating spam later down the line (throttling activitypub traffics, requiring certain nonstandard antispam technological measures to be added in their instance, etc).
Whether or not the intention is malicious, it'll effectively discourage people to "spread out" and run their own instances for their community, and fediverse citizens will slowly but surely migrate to the big operators because of less hassle and that's where everyone hang out.
I mean, isn’t that good? Small instances thrive because they run faster without the overload of a bunch of users. I don’t want every asshole from Instagram on the instance I’m on.
Then let's warn people against using anything Meta and by doing so drive people away from it.
If they defederate from other instances, they just means Threads users won't see those instances. Those instances will still see Threads content, if they want. The content is also shared across instances this way, so their servers largely don't matter. Whenever Lemmy.World or Yiffit.net is down or having problems, I just bop over to Kbin and it's like those other two instances never actually dropped out since I can still see and interact with their posts.
I don't see how in any way shape or form Threads can or will fuck up the entire fediverse when even if they have a majority of the users, their content gets spread around the whole network and doesn't stay on shit they control.
And if you're worried about their app collecting data: then don't fucking use it. Unless you think their app, on someone else's phone, will collect YOUR data somehow, this is a completely bullshit argument.
@peppy my instance has been getting dos for a couple months now.
I seriously don't understand this mindset! If meta manages to make a better product it will definitely have more users, it's just how everything works!
Users will have the option to pick between convince of meta or freedom of smaller instances. Who are we to decide for everyone?
Apt username, Problematic Consumer.
Meta is cancer. You don't let cancer grow and see if it ends up maybe causing issues or killing you. You cut every trace of it out as soon as it's detected.
Meta has never done anything to show it is a corporation that acts in good faith. In fact it has proven time and time again it is actively acting in bad faith, against people, community, and privacy interests in order to drive profit with no regard for anything else.
Kill the cancer before it kills you.
Meta and other big for profit players in social media have a bad history. Privacy, ads, profits at all cost. The people concerned about this early on are basing it off the previous behaviors of these companies.
I feel like it's a good and early immune response.
Not everyone just accepts “how everything works”. If you don’t understand yet that not everyone here is a liberal capitalist (or a specter of a tankie), buckle up buttercup!
For real, freaking out about defederating so early is going to become a real problem if we do it every time someone new moves in.
Also do people really want Twitter to remain the only mainstream option for microblogging? Mastodon is great, but more competitors is only a good thing.
"Someone new" moving in is very different from "monopolistic mega corporation who have intentionally acted to harm users, invade privacy and spread misinformation" moving in.
Big corporations staying out of the Fediverse is the best outcome.
Sorry but I think what will most likely happen is people who tire of farcebook's censorship, once they realize there are alternatives they will jump and the traffic will be spread around. Some smaller sites may not handle it but they can become niche sites.
#ChickenLittle
That is called competition. If you cant compete then you deserve to die.
Not sure if stepping on ants is considered a fair fight.
Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.
They absolutely have limits. For example Threads isn't in the EU yet, because of strict controls that severely limit what Meta can do.
As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user.
Small instances are already undesirable to the general public and always will be.
Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them.
No they can't. The EU will only allow them to "ethically" defederate.
When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved
If Threads is slow, people will switch to another service that is fast.
This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.
If they ask their best engineers to do something evil, most of them will quit. Why work for an evil corp when you can work almost anywhere you want?
Also they don't have the best in the world - those already left (or refused to work there in the first place).
Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That’s not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.
At least on iOS, that type of cross app tracking doesn't work anymore (unless the user opts into it, which nobody ever does). Apple's change to how tracking works is costing Meta billions of dollars... and protecting the privacy of about a billion people. Yay Apple.
But more to the point, people who are worried about privacy will only install Threads if it's the only way to reach thier friends/family. Since Threads will be federated, they won't ahve that reason.
I have Facebook and Facebook Messenger on my phone and once Threads is federated I will be enouraging all my friends to sign up for Threads, so I can reach them. If my Mastodon instance defederates Threads, I'll be leaving that instance (Lemmy, on the other hand, I might not care so much).
My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp.
Better in what way? One of my metrics is being able to contact people who will not sign up for Mastodon.
I love the fediverse specifically because it allows me to reach people on other instances. Defederating should be limited to harmful content (and I don't see any evidence of harm in Thread).
We couldn’t get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.
Even I won't use Signal. Talk to me when I can install it on both my phones, instead of just one of them (using the same account on both phones).
Finishing on a more positive note - Threads is going to be full of ads. I think a lot of people won't be OK with that... and if threads is federated, then people will sign up for small instances like this one. I think we'll be fine.
If they ask their best engineers to do something evil, most of them will quit. Why work for an evil corp when you can work almost anywhere you want?
Same reason Microsoft engineers stuck around despite antitrust, anticompetitive behaviors, EEE attacks. Same reason people are still working at any evil company.
Also, I'm sure a large portion of their engineers are on a work visa, so they really can't just up and leave.
Honestly, I still have more hope for Signal compared to Lemmy/fediverse. As much as I like it here, Signal is just so much more user-friendly and explainable. I am also slowly making people around me set it up.
Sure, but Signal is more of just a replacement for WhatsApp and the likes. It can't be compared to this type of platform really.
No, I also wouldn't compare them if the post and the comment above did not mention Signal. Anyway, I can still make the point that worse ease of use is more difficult to sell.
This is just a replacement for Reddit.
Signal : Whatsapp is the same as Fediverse : Reddit, they can very easily be compared
Are you talking about Signal the private messaging service? I'm waaay out of the loop. Would appreciate a TL;DR or a ELI5.
Yes, they mean that one.
Comparing Signal to the fediverse is pretty silly. That's like comparing fire to water. Signal is all about private messaging and the fediverse is all about public messaging.
Were you previously messaging everyone you know through reddit?
Do you understand how a comparative analogy works?