this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
889 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37742 readers
498 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Can you give any reasonable by means in which they could do this and succeed?
So much of this stuff just sounds like infeasible conspiracy theories. If, hypothetically, Meta did do such a thing (somehow, still not clear how or frankly why?) all that it would mean is that anyone who disagreed could defederate from Meta, or would be defederated from Meta... which given half the servers in existence seem to want to defed them up front anyway, doesn't seem to make any odds.
It's all just very confusing hearing about these lurid ideas for things Meta could do with the fediverse that simply don't make a lick of sense either in terms of motivation or implementation.
Great read. Those who don't know their history indeed...
For some reason, your link doesn't work.
The second part of your comment doesn't answer my question, nor would "they want our data!!!" explain why Meta would want or need to create an instance in order to get it, or how the "data" (what data? Your posts? The ones that ActivityPub syndicates to hundreds of other servers automatically? Do you know exactly which servers your posts are on at the moment?) of other users on other fedi instances could somehow be "monetised" by them.
OK, I've read that link and it still doesn't really explain how exactly Meta intends to monetise other peoples' posts - "collect data from and monetise", how exactly are they going to monetise other peoples' posts on other instances, when they have no ability to e.g. serve ads to those people?
I don't think anyone is questioning your cynicism of Meta's intentions or motivations, but the nature of the Fediverse is specifically designed to make it very difficult (if not impossible) for any one party to control the entire thing. It's a question of how not if.
The worst thing I could see is something like the development of React where FB has an overwhelming advantage in sheer resources and ends up having a major influence on the direction of software trends. But that would still just be a popularity thing and would not actively stop anyone from doing their own thing. Maybe there is something in the license for ActivityPub that would let them pull a Google-vs-Oracle reverse engineering, but again that won't stop other instances or developers from ignoring them if they wanted.
Here's the rundown:
What? Defederating doesn't fix that.
The solution is 1: to make sure users understand that it's a bad idea to flock to meta's instance, and 2: to implement that feature in the fediverse if everyone likes it so much they're willing to leave. The solution is not defederating now because of the posibbilty that they do that in the future.
But meta cannot claim all the fediverse as accesible content. Therefore making it akin to using facebook and reddit. Separate services that serve different demographics
It's not cynicism if the other party has a track record of behaving in an anti-competitive manner. The Fediverse became a competitor once it showed non-negligible growth.
It's not cynicism, it's weariness.
Read up on what they did to XMPP, an earlier federated protocol.
Spoiler: embrace, extend, extinguish.
Because it’s what we’ve come to expect from large corporations suddenly joining the table of any FOSS project that is adjacent to their financial stakes. Coexistence is possible if they can profit from the software without assimilating it, but it also stands to reason that they will be pushing for new interoperability standards that benefit their own business model at the expense of users in some way.
The lowest hanging fruit would be something that allows them to associate Fediverse accounts with users whose marketing data already exists in their database, or providing a service to third parties that helps them tie their own databases back to Fediverse users. This would require some sort of hook that encourages the users to either associate their Fediverse accounts to an existing Meta service, or otherwise volunteer common PII such as email address that can be cross referenced. Maybe some kind of tracking cookie that accomplishes the same.
Keep in mind that this is just an example, it is not necessarily the exact angle they are pursuing. I’m not in the automatically defederate camp, but a healthy amount of skepticism is definitely warranted.
——
Edit: Also worth a read: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/83284/How-to-Kill-a-Decentralised-Network-such-as-the-Fediverse
If fediverse admins come back to us saying that they have figured out a safe way to federate with Meta, then we will know that Meta got to them (financially). Maybe that's why they want an off the record meeting?
The proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Wow so in your view anyone who just says "I think this isn't a big deal and it'll be fine" has been paid off?
Regardless of the fact that's something with absolutely no evidence?
And you're supposed to be the rational one here?
Some people on this thread have lost their damn minds.
Dealing with an enormous corporation with an extensive track record of exploiting similar scenarios and acting on bad faith...
Yeah, it's pretty rational to believe this time will also be reflective of their general modus operandi.
You've mounted an emphatic defense of Facebook based almost exclusively on the fact people in this thread don't know exactly the technical details of what fuckery they'll be up to this time. I'm left wondering if you have any understanding of people, history, or... context as a concept.
You have provided a good sounding board for others to illustrate just what the risks involved are. So, thank you for that.
Yeah, I'm "defending" Facebook by pointing out that people keep letting 2 + 2 = 57845789478945 and that many of the "risks" being talked about are simply imaginary, technically impossible and/or do not require Meta to start an instance to materialise.
The technical details rather matter when people are coming up with random nonsense and/or don't actually seem to understand the nature of the platform they're coming to the defence of.
I don't trust Meta. I don't like Meta. That doesn't mean I need to also accept as true random confabulations about people being paid off and data being scraped for ends that don't make any sense. There's been a whole heap of heat around this subject and basically no light.
Imagining Meta wants to expand into another platform isn't a conspiracy theory. For one, Meta could paste ads into more online spaces. They could also replace twitter without having to develop their own platform or pulling a Musk. Both of these would, yes, allow them to be more profitable.
Let me give a hypothetical: Meta makes their own nice, QoL-rich instance that could integrate with Facebook/Instagram. They could also add in analytics and ads and allow that to federate with other instances. They could allow other people to host their own version of this Metadon. If it gets adopted (because it "just works" or otherwise), they could cut support for the instances not running Metadon, taking a large portion of the userbase with them. They would have their own twitter clone (complete with users), they hardly spent time developing it beyond loading Mastodon with their crap, and they would have other people also hosting Metadon (and their ads) without Meta paying a dime.
If Meta does get a sizable userbase then they can absolutely leverage that to force other instances to play their game or defederate.
This part could actually be enough on its own, TBH. Imagine that there's one Fediverse instance where you can interact with the rest of the Fediverse and interact with FB and IG, but it doesn't propagate stuff between the two networks (i.e. it doesn't allow people on Beehaw to see what someone on FB posts, and vice versa). Now there's a reason for everyone to migrate to Meta's instance, and a built-in way for Meta to advertise the migration to everyone in the FV. Once it sucks up enough users, it just de-federates from everything else and goes on its own way.
So they can overwhelm it, when they become the majority of the users they become in charge with the loudest voice. Then they steer it their way or make sure it dies.
I mean, look at EEE like Microsoft did in the 90s.
Personally, I'm also scared about Linux after Linus dies. They are on a lot of the board as well
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Someone else just posted this explanation. TLDR is essentially, one of these giant corporations can destroy a network by joining and then later walling off their own part of it. And it's been done before.
I have read that and been linked that multiple times.
I responded to it here: https://finecity.social/notes/9gcoisoofl
tl;dr: Facebook and Google didn't "destroy" XMPP. XMPP was used by basically nobody before Facebook and Google picked it up, and after they dropped it again XMPP is still used by basically nobody. Its spec also doesn't include support for features that consumers expect to have in messaging software, which is part of why nobody uses it.