Home of the sh.itjust.works instance.
I strongly support basically firewalling the fediverse from anything Meta/Twitter/MS/Google/ as a default behavior. They will 100%, without question make some sort of attempt to co-opt, corrupt, and monetize this ecosystem unless their interference is actively mitigated and corralled.
And sure, maybe there can be a collection of instances that do federate with Big Tech… but to be blunt, I’d look at those mostly as canaries in the coal mine.
Exactly this. It would be the height of stupidity to create this space/network that frees us from so much of the hyperconglomerate bullshit only to invite them in willingly.
In the 1990s, Microsoft had an internal strategy called Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Microsoft saw the emerging Internet as a threat to their business, so they wanted to kill it. The basic idea was:
It was working for Microsoft, and was a contributing factor in their killing off Netscape. For those too young to remember, Mozilla is the open-source "liferaft" that Netscape created before their business was destroyed by Microsoft. But, these days it's effectively controlled by Google, who provides 85% of their funding, as long as they keep Google as the default Firefox search engine and don't rock the boat.
The only thing that stopped Microsoft from destroying the open Internet was the antitrust case brought against them by the US Department of Justice. Antitrust action is the only thing that has kept innovation happening in tech. The antitrust case against IBM from 1969 to 1982 allowed for the rise of Microsoft. The antitrust case against Microsoft allowed for the rise of Google. Many people think we're overdue for strong antitrust actions against Google and Facebook/Meta.
Facebook bought out every social competitor they could: Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. They can't buy out the Fediverse, but they have to see it as an existential threat. Because of that, they're undoubtedly going to try to use their near-monopoly status to kill off the Fediverse.
The "Embrace" stage will likely be just implementing ActivityPub. That will convince a lot of people that Meta is really on their side, and are working hard to be a good Fediverse citizen. They'll probably even hire people who are current developers working on the ActivityPub standard, or who have developed key ActivityPub apps.
The "Extend" stage will probably involve adding features to "ActivityPub Alpha" which Threads uses but nothing else uses. It might involve some Meta-specific things, like embedding Instagram in an unusual way. It might involve something that is really expensive for an independent server, but affordable if you're a multi-billion dollar company, like some kind of copyright check, or flagging if something is AI-generated. The features they're likely to add won't be offensive, they'll probably be good ideas. It's just that they'll add them before going through the standards process, and so standards-compliant ActivityPub implementations will seem old and outdated. That will convince many people to move their accounts to Threads, or will at the least reduce the growth for non-Threads ActivityPub.
The "Extinguish" phase will be like when Google shut down Google Reader. Why bother having a standards-compliant way of doing things when usage is so low?
So... yeah, block Meta.
Please for the love of Internet connectivity as a whole: block anything remotely attached to Facebook, not just the instance, but in general Internet daily life.
Zuck should die forgotten.
It does not go against the point of the fediverse to do so, either. Why would the ability to do this be baked into the code if it was not the intent to use it in certain situations? This would be a perfect use.
I can see maybe certain instances wanting it for whatever reason, but I'll be packing up and moving to one that blocks it if this one allows it.
Agreed. With the nature of the Fediverse, defederating with anything from Meta doesn't really restrict access for those who actually wish to interact with them. They can simply join their next nefarious venture.
The drawbacks to interacting with a company that so obviously only chases profit above all else far outweigh any "benefits " of their content.
Ser Robin had the right idea: bravely run away.
Brave, brave sir Robin.
I won't maintain a membership on any platform that is federated with Meta in any way. That's an absolute, 100% dealbreaker. Same with Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Apple. Anything they touch turns to assgarbage.
Defederate with anything that remotely has to do with zuck
Isn't one of the points of fediverse is to get away from big tech shit?
This is just like centralised crypto exchanges. Same thing
The day this instance federates with Meta is the day I leave. They, and any other big corporations, can fuck all the way off. We have seen where that path leads time and time again.
I'm sick of Meta
I vote to defederate. If I want to see meta shit I can sign up there but I'd delete this account and go find some other instance that chose not to federate with them. I want to choose when/if I interact with meta, not end up in yet another place where they dominate everything else
(Realized I posted from the wrong account. My opinion stays the same for both my accounts on sh.itjust works and reddthat and any others I may join)
Meta has repeatedly introduced features intended to scrape larger amounts of data about our lives and tie it all into one big profile that they can sell. This area of the internet feels like one of the few remaining areas that they haven't reached, and I'd bet everything I have that's why they're introducing this. I couldn't be more strongly against allowing them a way to link my data here with the data they have from my usage of their existing products. While I understand the idea of open federation to allow disparate communities to interact, one of the lines I'll draw is letting a massive corporation in like that.
They'll still be able to scrape the fediverse and all instances without threads federating with them. Defederating doesn't stop their access to your PUBLIC data on the fediverse.
I'm curious, are there policies for usage of data on a service like this? If you federate Meta (or any instance, or this instance), is that granting them the right to use your data as they wish? Assuming the answer is yes, could the Fediverse at large implement a broad, let's call it "Terms & Conditions", that must be acknowledged upon federation, regarding how the data is used? Or, if the answer is no, what are the limitations to how data in the Fediverse is used?
Also, how useful is my data to them anyway, if they can't target me with ads? Certainly there are uses, but isn't the primary end-game just selling me something? If I'm on an independent instance, I'm not sure how much I care about them having access to my data.
Edit: Mastodon founder Eugen touches on some these questions here. This is specific to Mastodon, I have no idea how much of this carries over for Lemmy.
Will Meta get my data or be able to track me? A server you are not signed up with and logged into cannot get your private data or track you across the web. What it can get are your public profile and public posts, which are publicly accessible.
the whole reason im on fedi is to get away from megacorp social media and seeing them starting to creep into the space is kinda sad. I will drop any server that would federate with them, but hoping that is still a viable option and not just me turning off my router forever.
It's so insane, Twitter gets destroyed, reddit is fucked, and now just as I moved away from all that these cucks want to move here? Fuck off.
We should only federate with entities acting in good faith, and we cannot trust an entity such as facebook to act in good faith.
"I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place…"
Federating with Meta is different from federating with individuals. It's like letting corporations be treated the same as natural persons for the purposes of voting in political elections and exercising other civic participation rights.
Natural persons may have a variety of motivations for federating. Corporations have only one: to increase profit.
And please don't say "federate now, revisit later if needed." Recall the fable about the scorpion and the rabbit facing a raging flood. Said the scorpion, "oh please, rabbit, let me ride on your back as you swim across." Rabbit said "no, you'll sting me and I'll die." Scorpion said "no I won't; we're both in danger; I have children at home; we both want to live." Rabbit said "okay, if you promise not to sting me." So scorpion climbed onto rabbit's back, and halfway across the flood, scorpion gave rabbit a lethal sting. Rabbit asked why, and scorpion shrugged; "you knew what I was when you let me onto your back."
fuck the zuck and all his instances. block the fecesbook and its nine other names
I just joined this place this week, fleeing reddit of course. So my vote may not be worth much. But if this place becomes meta-adjacent then I'll see myself out. I have no desire to interact with Mark "move fast and break adolescent girls' self esteem" Zuckerberg.
Defederate unequivocally.
I am reposting my answer from another thread : Nothing good will come from meta ( or any other Gafa Microsoft included), ever. They will alway look for a way to corrupt any social media to their favor in order try to dominate the Web. At this point of the internet history anyone giving a speck of trust to them is dream walking into a disaster waiting to happen. There are already trying to bring Insta and activityPub service lol , and they didn't haven't started yet.
A good read about that with an historical perpective : https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
An important reminder of the right play here. If we are to keep the fediverse out of the hands of enshitification, we need to stay away from letting corporates play the game. Don’t federate.
I've been having a few back-and-forths in this thread about how it'd kinda suck from a user's perspective if my instance defederated from Threads, but after reading those historical examples, I'm more amenable to instances defederating. I saw a bunch of people talking about how Meta was gonna "ruin" the fediverse, but not really elaborating past that. Your link explains that better than anyone else has.
I'll have to ruminate on that some more to see how I truly feel about it, but those examples are compelling.
I came to the fediverse to get away from Meta and Twitter and Google and the like.
So personally I'd prefer if they stayed out of here.
I'm all for it. Ive heard arguments for and against interacting with meta instances in this way, and I won't pretend to fully understand all the details.
Still, Meta has proven that they aren't trustworthy time and time again. I'd really just prefer to remove myself from them as much as possible.
I'll put it this way:
Or, to translate for those of us who don't speak "asshole":
There are good arguments for blocking Facebook as a whole on the web, such as cookie tracking. I don't like Facebook, but I guess I would consider any people who have made the jump to federated platforms as potentially missing out on interacting with their forever-facebooked-friends. Seriously, why can't people just try another thing alongside Facebook? Why do they have to be ride or die facebook-fiends? I digress..
I don't think the comparison to react makes a ton of sense - Facebook created react as an open source project, but once you download react, you have a copy of it for yourself and you don't need to check in with Facebook any further. They don't own your react app or its data.
I may be misunderstanding, but it sounds like threads will not be like that: they will be using an open standard that they did not create for a social network that will track you and gather your data every time you use it.
(I am for defederation)
Do not federate with anything Meta
From a post on Mastodon comparing privacy policies. Meta gonna pillage the village.
https://mastodon.social/@llebrun/110664586216685040
Ok dear gods whyyyyyyyyyyyy does a social media app need access to all that. Burn it down. Burn it all to the ground
Don't federated with Meta
I am 100% OK with defederating everything run by Meta: They are a blight on the Internet.
The zucc better keep his sticky fingers away
I dont think anyone should be federating with threads.meta. They dont have good intentions and are either just using the activitypub protocol because it was there and they needed something fast to take advantage of twitter quickly or because they actively are trying to take over and destroy the activitypub protocol. Either way the fediverse gains nothing from federating with them.
