Over the past 48 hours, we've received a lot of discourse regarding the upcoming "Project 92" platform created by Facebook and the anti-meta fedi pact.
While we're still in early days of the request for comments, a clear pattern has emerged that users of Pawb.Social services unequivocally do not want their data to be abused by corporate interests, such as those of Facebook.
Over and above the corporate interests, Facebook has also demonstrated a repeated failure to enact meaningful moderation changes to avoid abusive content on their platform, especially misinformation.^[^^1^^][^^2^^][^^3^^]^
"I do wonder if this discussion is a little academic, because I feel like Meta instances are very likely to get defederated for some reason under the current rules, like poor moderation, spam, or generic abuse." ^[^^4^^]^
As pointed out above, excluding the corporate interests, the discussion is somewhat moot due to the concerns regarding moderation which would lead to a Facebook operated instance being inevitably suspended.
For these reasons, Pawb.Social (including furry.engineer and pawb.fun) will suspend any and all Facebook owned, operated, or affiliated instances in the interests of protecting our users and communities.
sources and references
[1] Emma Graham-Harrison and Alex Hern; The Guardian. 2020. "Facebook funnelling readers towards Covid misinformation - study." Retrieved June 19, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/19/facebook-funnelling-readers-towards-covid-misinformation-study
[2] Wes Davis; The Verge. 2023. "Meta is rolling back its covid-19 misinformation rules in the US." Retrieved June 19, 2023, https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/17/23764429/meta-covid-misinformation-rules-facebook-instagram
[3] Kris Van Cleave; CBS Evening News. 2021. " CBS Evening News Internal Facebook documents detail how misinformation spreads to users." Retrieved June 19, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-documents-misinformation-spread/
[4] Cyrik (@CyrikCroc). 2023. Comment on topic "Join or ignore the anti-meta fedi pact". Retrieved June 19, 2023, https://pawb.social/comment/239407
Given the consensus trends towards blocking right now, if the community does change its mind down the line and Facebook demonstrates a level of change that trends towards improved moderation and moral business practices, we would be open to reconsidering this decision.
Does anything prevent unblocking them if they do in the end turn up to be good actors? The thing is, they've got a history of real bad behavior, so blocking first with an option to unblock later is both protection for the open Fedi, while incentivizing Meta to make amends and improve... assuming they even want to. And if they don't, we're better off with them blocked in the first place.
So, I find it hard not to firmly back the decision to preemptively block here.
There’s no reason we couldn’t reconsider in the future if they show signs of meaningful change and that they would be good actors in the Fediverse.
I just want to trend towards caution given their previous track record and that appeared to be the trend I was seeing in the community as well.
@crashdoom
Okay, so first everyone is gonna block the meta instance. Then they will judge how the meta instance behaves towards other instances? You are literally building a brick wall around them. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Potentially, it's also a catch-22.
Preemptively stating we'll block them is on the expectation that their moderation practices will follow to this new platform and will inevitably lead to the same issue a lot of users opted to leave Facebook and Twitter for: Transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, misinformation, and an unwillingness to moderate such away.
Not blocking them has the opposite effect, we end up with content flooding from this new platform drowning out users with abusive content, having to go through deleting it with the small team we have, and inevitably blocking them.
While I don't think Facebook would knowingly or willingly host illegal content, immoral and toxic content that is a detriment to our community is their bread and butter which we have a clear-cut policy of not tolerating.
Facebook is a known toxic entity that is unwilling to moderate, in the same way as Gab or Truth Social, and we don't want to expose users to that. If I end up with egg on my face and being wrong, and Facebook does completely change their tune, I'll own up to my preconceptions being incorrect and apologize.