Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse
Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse
What's Meta up to?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9799372
What's Meta up to?
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Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse
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Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you're following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn't available to the rest of the fediverse – as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol
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Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta's own ends
Since the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads, the most obvious ways of exploiting it – such as stealing market share by getting people currently in the fediverse to move to Threads – aren't going to work. But exploitation is one of Meta's core competences, and once you start to look at it with that lens, it's easy to see some of the ways even their initial announcement and tiny first steps are exploiting the fediverse: making Threads feel like a more compelling platform, and reshaping regulation. Longer term, it's a great opportunity for Meta to explore – and maybe invest in – shifting their business model to decentralized surveillance capitalism.
This is one of the many reasons to just defederate from Threads.
Meta can fuck right off
That is painfully accurate of what's happening if instance admins do not hard block Threads.
Yet another word that starts with an E! Thanks for the link, I added a link to the post near the end of the "Extinguish isn't the only word that starts with an E":
Either way, as Ramin Honary suggests, it's a great opportunity for Enshittification – yet another word that starts with an E!
As i suggested from the start. Defederate any instance that federate with threads. Yea I'm being Trotsky here, split can be a good thing.
Well, it makes me sad that we would have to, but that doesn't make me agree less that it would be necessary to keep a real alternative in existence.
Every instance that allows Meta should not be considered part of the Fediverse anymore, but is now Metaverse. Mastodon/Pleroma/Lemmy/... will then just become the running software, but not by default 'Fediverse' anymore, that choice will become the admin's: Fedi or Meta.
In a perfect world we can still keep the big parties out for those that choose to, though at first it will be hard, not only to keep up with instances leaking both ways, but also hard to let go of the unrelated users that had no choice in the matter and are now presented with: change server or follow the server's choice, and the second choice will be the least trouble for most. In other words: many followers will be lost and many currently followed won't be reachable anymore.
Yep, I've said for a while that if a schism with transitive defederation happens, it'll be a good thing. There are many fediverses!
If the plan for the fedivers is to associate with Meta, I will leave it in a heart beat.
...but meta is where the hookers actually are....
What I really hope is that the fediverse doesn't end up in a fragmented mess trying to catch up with Meta's eventual extension of ActivityPub... What this project needs is a slow and steady (technological) development driven by the communities instead of trying to fit in with the big players. That's what really did harm XMPP too IMHO.
My understanding of how xmpp has progressed is exactly what you think ActivityPub needs. Xmpp is still alive and still continuing to drive for further technological standards and classification.
Google essentially dropped xmpp b/c it was such a slow progressing standard that was focused entirely on the technological progress and that march towards standardization and specification.
The best paragraph is at the very bottom
speaking of Bannon and his pals, since far right social networks Gab and Truth Social are built on ActivityPub, if Threads opens up two-way federation as planned later this year they'd have a golden opportunity to try to build on the Trump campaign's successful work with Facebook on digital voter suppression in 2016, the "Stop the Steal" and coup planning in 2020, and QAnon conspiracy theory as well as Libs of Tik Tok and Moms for Liberty's work. What could possibly go wrong?
Glad you liked it, I like to put in a treat for people who read all the way to the end!
Well, threads dot net is already fully blocked on my pleroma instance, like it doesn't exist.
Any other urls I should maybe add to keep the big culprits out?
That's the only one that's currently active as far as I know. https://mastodon.moule.world/@MOULE/110586556696261405 has a bunch of resources including blocklist for other Meta domains as well.
That's a great article. I linked to it in the OP:
The same is true with Google's adoption and then abandonment of the XMPP protocol, which is also often described as EEE. I don't think that's the right way to look at it; for one thing, XMPP is still around, and thanks to adoption by Zoom and others it has hundreds of millions of users – or billions, if you count WhatsApp'a non-standard derivative version. But in any case, whether or not it was EEE, Google didn't go into it with a goal of killing XMPP. They just wanted to exploit XMPP to address a business problem of making Google Talk successful – and did so, until it wasn't useful to them any more.
I stopped reading when I saw a copy-pasted definition of the word "exploit".
This article thinks we're dumb as shit.
I didn't have that in the original draft, and half the people who reviewed it said "I don't understand what you mean by exploit". And no, I don't think people reading the article are dumb as shit, I assume that most people who already know what exploit means are intelligent enough to skip over the four lines of cut-and-paste text and read the rest of the article.
Maybe it's trying to exploit us.
Chill mate. This is the fedi - you get to actively allow or deny what you see.
No-one can take that away from you.
Can mastadon hosts just refuse to federate with activepub? (I'm probably misunderstanding everything here but hopefully you get my drift).
Yes, Mastodon instances can indeed refuse to federate with Threads -- you're not misunderstanding anything. You can track what instances are and aren't federating at https://fedipact.veganism.social/ (the "FediPact" it mentions is an agreement that hundreds of instances have signed to block Meta). Currenntly, about 40% of instances aren't federating -- but most of the largest instances are.
Assuming you mean "Can Mastodon instances defederate with Threads?": Yes. Mastodon (and similar services) run on the ActivityPub protocol, which allows them to decide who they do and do not federate with. Many instances have chosen to preemptively block Threads, many have chosen not to. Pick what works for you.
It's okay. The rest of the fediverse will still be here when they make their stupid business decisions later on.
the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads
Is that a typo?
Meta can't even keep Facebook or Instagram functional. They get worse with literally every single update. New things are broken every time I visit. They need to take care of what they have, not go looking for other things to fucking ruin. Stupid-ass anti-trust pig dogs.
The ignorance and fear mongering around this topic is astonishing. Look at all the facts. It's pretty clear what's happening here and why it's happening, and it's not EEE. The whole point of federation and decentralization is that it can't be "extinguished". Threads can come and go and it won't matter. The fediverse will still be here. Block it if you want but I'll not be blocking it on my instance. I'll let my users decide for themselves.
I am optimistic about Meta's investment in the Fediverse. If you don't believe the Fediverse can survive the embrace of big tech, I don't think you believe in it at all. You don't want an open web, you just want to be the one in control. The goal of a decentralized internet - in my opinion - is to separate content from service. And if you believe that is the future, then you have to accept that companies are going to build new services that will try to monetize that content. But the beauty of that paradigm is you get to choose the service that works best for you without sacrificing access to the people or media you're interested in. And really, it's not much different from say, Google, being able to monetize Chrome because it can access your website. I mean... yeah, but that's kind of the point?
Yes, it is about control. Companies like meta with near infinite resources made their money by exploiting the ever living fuck out of data the vast majority of people to this day do not understand to have any value at all despite the evidence of not just one but multiple trillion dollar companies existing soley due to the exploitation of this kind of data.
I am done with being sold to, having my data harvested, being gaslit, being spied on, seeing these companies avoid the shit out of any consequences for their actions, etc.
Ooh, but it is open, if they wanted to scrape the data they just could! Yes, and it would be fucking illegal under frameworks like the Gdpr. If they join the system though? Wells then they have a legal basis again yo just keep tracking you. Not only that, they avoid further sanctioning by being able up show that they work on interoperability, without investing anything at all, simply by exploiting Foss software.
Ooh, but individuals can block instances, no need to defederate on an instance level! Sure and most people won't know about it or how to do it or just not care enough and get to enjoy being abused by these companies yet again in a space specifically chosen for not being that.
Oh, I don't see a way they could possibly exploit this or extinguish it! Cool. I bet their lawyers, psychologists, experts in every field imagineable that has anything to do with using data and driving engagement are exactly as stumped about it as a random user out here. Bet they couldn't possibly have a plan because we don't see one.
Anyone who has even an ounce of trust that meta and all these other exploiters will not find a way to ruin activitypub, has not paid attention in the last 20 years of internet service development.
Activitypub as a technology will survive this. The fediverse as an alternative to these utter monsters of companies might very well not.
The problem is that in its current state, there are inherent flaws which a corporation can abuse to destroy what to a lot of people on it consider to be the purpose of federated social media, which is lack of corporate control.
Consider that a company with the resources of meta could create hundreds of thousands of instances across all federated social media to the degree that you cannot tell what they own and what they don't until it is a statistical likelihood that your account is on a corporation controlled instance.
Consider that existing instances which are privately owned and operated could sell their instance to a corporation and no one would necessarily be any the wiser.
So you are right, in its current form, I do not believe in federated social media for the future, because it has no preventative measures to avoid such a thing outside of hosting your own personal instance, which a lot of people do not have the resources to do.
If I don't believe the fediverse can survive the embrace of big tech, I don't believe in the fediverse? What? Makes absolutely no sense.
Meta doesn't want to separate content from service. They want to lock users into their own services using their enormous wealth and marketing. It's the opposite of the open web you are talking about. They will be compatible with the fediverse to influence it and try to control it, by adding features you can only get if you are on their platform. Their goal is to make most people prefer the Meta version of the fediverse.
by adding features you can only get if you are on their platform. Their goal is to make most people prefer the Meta version of the fediverse
Why is this a bad thing? This is the system working as intended: a company forced to make a service people want, rather than just taking users for granted. You resist enshittification because you're not being held hostage through access to content, so the company is forced to make the service good. And this will attract other companies to produce competing services.
And besides, most people already prefer the Meta version... they already have the user advantage. There's already way more users locked in their services than there is on the rest of the Fediverse.
I just want to say I completely agree with you. If we want to withstand the companies at the helm of the Internet right now, we have to make it impossible for them to extinguish us. I think that's what we've essentially done with ActivityPub, and frankly I don't see any way they can try to take us down by normal means.
I mean, what are they gonna do? Pull the VERY loyal people from kbin.social or Lemmy.world into Threads? Or the people from Mastodon?
It's safe to say the people who have been here 5 months (or even more!) are not really keen on using Facebook 2.0, and we aren't really the demographic they're targeting. We also aren't exactly the biggest demographic, with the Fediverse being a couple million people afaik.
I think if anything we have the most to GAIN from federation. People will know about our little public ad-free corner of the Internet. It's downright silly to throw up pitchforks just because "Meta bad" because - at the end of the day - HOW will they destroy the Fediverse?
The playbook is like this: first leech off the community and good will spirit of highly active content creators on the fediverse. Those are only 1% of the total user number, but they have most of the attention of the others and thus drive advertisement revenue.
They will try to lure them over if they can, but otherwise benefit from advertising to remote followers from their platform. Once Threads is basically synonymous with Fediverse as far as normal users are concerned, make it increasingly difficult to stay off Threads for the content creators as well.
At that point AP is dead as a dodo, even if technically still existing.
with the Fediverse being a couple million people
Yes thank you as I never see this being mentioned around here. I believe the last monthly active users was 300k? While it's not nothing, meta doesn't give any shit about a one time acquisition of 300k users who don't want to use their platform.
We aren't even "worth" extinguishing right now. These decisions are being made at a level far above us. We just don't know why yet. I'm expecting them to use ActivityPub as a tie in for Threads/Insta/FB.
Exactly the free and open internet is just what it says: open for all. Bad actors, big corpos, governments, propaganda and disinformation included. We should find ways on how to make the blocking as comfortable and easy as possible for the users so that everybody can filter out the stuff they don't want to see. But building own walled gardens? when has this helped anyone at any time?
Many others are optimistic as well. In general I think Meta's arrival will be positive for the fediverse (and I just edited the post to make that clearer). In any case I think the fediverse will clearly survive.
And anything beyond the fact that threads will increase our user base is pure speculation. Will they kill the fediverse? What will happen next? I'm sure we will always find a way to reach our goals.
Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you’re following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn’t available to the rest of the fediverse
That's already available to Threads users regardless of whether or not they federate.
as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol
kk, then defederate from them when that happens.
Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta’s own ends
This is a nonsense sentence that says nothing and makes no actual tangible point.
This is nothing but more hysteria.
Try reading the article, others seem to understand the point I'm making (whether or not they agree).
It's hard to get someone to understand that which they're paid to not understand. Seems there's all kinds of Facebook shills up in this thread.
Edit: oh, and would you look at that? Right out of the gate with the exploit stage in full effect ."Threads" has been an internet term for these forum discussions for as long as the internet has been around, but now zuckerfuck wants it all to himself. Now a billion upon billion different forum posts are going to inadvertently mention his stupid-ass platform.
So much fear mongering.
So many people with no experience of big tech taking over and killing things. You know some of us are older than 20 right? We have seen this many times before. Maybe listen instead of speak and you may learn something.
Oh, believe me, I do listen, and I learn about things that I use on a regular basis. Based on my understanding of the ActivityPub protocol, I sincerely believe that concerns about Threads are exaggerated. It's very cult-like, with talk of "pacts" and tendencies towards prophecy and a "purity" mentality.