this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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This is an interesting take on the matter, and you do have pretty good points. For me personally, I don't think that bringing in the Meta crowd would bring us much value, as I've already stated in the other comment. I'm not interested in the style of content both Facebook and Instagram provides, and I don't really like the userbase - but that's also only my personal view, and it's not something that would warrant defederation.
I'm worried that due to sheer amount of people they have, it would simply drown any content from other instances and would make it harder to find (and also really hard to moderate - Meta has significant resources to moderate that many millions of users, something smaller instances can never reach). Hot and Top would simply be filled by influencers, and it would take significant effort to just unsubscribe or block all of them (I'm actually not sure here how does the frontpage works, if you select all instances - is it like All on Reddit, or like frontpage with a set of default communities, but not everything shows there?), while also making it pretty hard to find smaller communities with different crowd - which is what I like on Lemmy as of the current state.
I don't really agree with this. It's only my own take on things, but I don't believe in the slightest that Meta wants to contribute to the Fediverse or has any of it's interests in mind. Nothing good will come out of it, Meta will only exploit the Fediverse for free content they don't have to host or pay for to kickstart their own platform, and then slowly bring users over there with QoL they have resources to implement for their instance. I'm not worried that they will bring down the Fediverse - that's where the decentralization will work as it should since other instances can defederate as soon as a problem appears, and keep their content and their userbase. What I think is an issue is that unless we defederate soon enough, Meta will exploit Fediverse for their gain only, slowly make people used to the QoL they are providing and have resources for, and when it finally gets bad enough that instances decide to start defederating from them, it will be too late, and Fediverse will loose users and content creators, because they were used to and interacting with communities on Meta's instance - which were the best choice simply due to a high number of users coming from Meta's userbase. Which brings me to
This would be even worse if we defederate later, once it turns out that Meta is trying to do something that really warants a defederation. As I've said in the previous paragraph - Meta's communities will be larger and have more content, and more people will leave once we defederate because they are used to those communities, including people that would not leave there now.
And the last issue is the fact that it serves so much data about users and their interactions right into Meta's algorithms, without them having to make any effort for it. And I really don't like that, and it's the reason why I'm avoiding anything Meta even touches. But then again - that's my personal issue.
To sum it up - some commenters said that it's a risk that we should try and take to see how it will go - I'd personally rather not risk it, and just keep Meta or any other multi-billion corporations out of this ecosystem. You can be sure that they don't have anyone's best interest in heart, and will only exploit it for monetary gain. And they have teams of experts in the field already working on strategies about how to exploit us as much as possible. I say don't give them a chance, this is something we cannot win and it will only make everything worse.
I appreciate your engaging with me on this, though you haven't convinced me yet :)
I'm in agreement with you that Meta absolutely intends to exploit "the fediverse" for their own benefit: to gain users by making their platform valuable.
But... my take on this is: so what? If the fediverse can only operate when all actors are benevolent and selfless, then it won't last very long at all. And, even if it does, it's not as valuable to me that way, so I'll be leaving. What's the value of a fediverse if it doesn't even federate with any of the major players that have the most resources?
I honestly don't think that anything ever justifies defederation, aside from technical limitations. If you want to run a gated forum, fine, but then don't call it a "fediverse". It's just a forum. Would we say that it's fair for Google to say "From now on, Gmail will not send emails to @republican_party.org email addresses because we don't agree with them"?
EDIT 1: I haven't made my point very clearly. Am currently editing this message to make it clearer.
EDIT 2: Left the comment the way it was. Am struggling to express myself properly-- this is the best I can do at the moment.
I see your point, and I think that we both simply have different views on what is more important, and there's no need to convince eachother. For me, one of the main advantages of the Fediverse is that you're not directly feeding analytics and algorithms of a large company that is trying to monetize and manipulate you through content that you see - a company which business model is literally to change your behavior (which is a hyperbole, but still a quite from Social Dillema), and it's really important for me to not give them any chance to do that. And I don't see a scenario under which we would federate with Meta (or another multi-billion company) and this would not happen - and even if they wouldn't be able to directly affect what you see in your feed, your data and behavior will still help them train their models and AIs to be better at it, even if you didn't interact with the instance. I simply don't see anything of value federating with meta would provide, that would be worth this, along with the really probable risk that Meta is simply going for EEE, as mentioned in the other comments. And I think this was the main idea of Fediverse - to have a network of community-ran instances, where you are not the product, but the actors are indeed benevolent and selfless.
But I also understand your point of view, because you are right that defederating with them by default goes against some of the principles of decentralized ecosystems, and that there is a lot of content and userbase that we would be missing on. For me, I don't really mind if the growth of Fediverse is slower, but the community has similiar values as I hold, and I'd rather see it fail because it tried to uphold them, than see it turn into, or be destroyed by, Meta. Be it planned as part of EEE, or only a casualty. But then again, that's my point of view and so I vote to defederate, but It's good that there's someone like you with opposite side of view. I also don't think that either side is wrong, we just have different views about what the Fediverse should be.
And one last thing - I don't feel like the example with email is fair, because it's comparing a private messaging service between two users, and a social network where you provide content for other users, and none of the risks there are with Meta federating would apply. I've tried comming up with a better comparison, but couldn't come up with anything for quite some time, so I'll just leave it as is. Maybe someone else can think of something.
Absolutely fair enough. Am happy to agree to disagree. I enjoyed the debate haha!
And yes, you have a good point: Meta would indeed get value through federation, and perhaps you don't want to support Meta's goals, so you don't want to allow them to proceed. Perhaps we could enhance our user/community level moderation tools to achieve these goals? Maybe you as a user could say something like "never shall any of my posts be sent to Meta's instance". Or maybe community mods could say "Meta users can't join/post/see our community". I'm even happy if instances enable such filters by default! I just don't think defederation is the right tool for the job, because it defeats the vision of a connected universe.
Yeah, but I believe the principle holds.
Again, thanks for the opposing viewpoint. Glad we had the debate. Cheers!
I've just stumbled upon something that I think makes a pretty solid argument that federating with Meta goes directly against the idea of Fediverse (because I was actually intrigued about whether I'm not just projecting my dislike for Meta into it).
Take a look at https://www.fediverse.to/ (which I'm actually not sure if it's the official main page, but it is the first search result), this is literally the first selling point, written in (absolutely hideous :D) large font on the landing page:
I think that with that in mind, there's no way how we should even consider federating with them. That is, of course, unless it's what majority of people wants.
Good point. I guess my vision differs somewhat from that quote there. Dang.
Welp, good find! I still think my idea for federation would be more resilient, but either way, we’re all wishing the best for this instance, and I really appreciate these discussions we’re having. Cheers to that!