It's not just about personal data. But what will definitely happen is they're going to attempt an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. They'll embrace the fediverse, then they'll add their own features on top on their platform without giving back to the wider community. Then, when they leech as many people to their platform as they can from the rest of the Fediverse after making open projects struggle to keep up, they'll drop it and kill the rest of the network in the process.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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EEE is the risk, and surely their intent. But pre-emptive defederation from an instance that already has 1.6bn sign-ons is doing to ourselves exactly what google did to XMPP. If there are no independent instances allowing access to the mega-network, people who want the mega-network have nowhere else to go.
In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway. They didn’t care about respecting a protocol they were not 100% in control. So they pulled the plug and announced they would not be federated anymore...
As expected, no Google user bated an eye. In fact, none of them realised. At worst, some of their contacts became offline. That was all. But for the XMPP federation, it was like the majority of users suddenly disappeared. Even XMPP die hard fanatics, like your servitor, had to create Google accounts to keep contact with friends. Remember: for them, we were simply offline. It was our fault.
Mass defederation is just giving up before the fight starts. The fight may not be winnable, of course. But making the fediverse invisible to Meta users is exactly how google killed XMPP.
But making the fediverse invisible to Meta users is exactly how google killed XMPP.
It is literally not though? Google killed other XMPP services despite them working hard towards compatibility with google, not because they closed google off.
On the flip side, if we federate freely with them the result is the same (and probably worse).
First of all, if you can access all federated resources (I think it's more aimed at mastadon, and connections with the lemmy/kbin will be limited. But I've not looked at what threads is offering yet) then we've already seen what people as a whole do. Just check the flagship instances lemmy.world and kbin.social. People just flocked to the biggest servers. Well, now the biggest server will be threads.
But then the existing users. They will have friends saying "Oh you know, I signed up on threads it's great" and they can say oh, well I'm already on mastadon and you can add me at [email protected]. And now they're connected.
Since the majority of new users will be on threads, not most connections users have are on threads.
So, if and when it turns out Meta remove federation for whatever reason (there are so many they can choose from) the people still on mastadon instances (and maybe lemmy/kbin/etc to a lesser extent) most of their friends are gone. Now the fediverse people will stay. But normal users? They'll sign up for threads and move on.
I'm not convinced there's a winning route once they're in. But, maybe I'm just the pessimist.
I’m not convinced there’s a winning route once they’re in. But, maybe I’m just the pessimist.
Neither am I. But universal pre-emptive defederation just cuts to the end game without any kind of fight. Meta users won't even notice if/when they defederate because they never knew about us in the first place. And defederated instances will lose users to Meta because some people use social media in ways that only work well with bigger networks.
I'm all for some instances saying they want their networks to stay small and users who prefer it that way should have somewhere to go. But users who want a bigger network should have better options than signing up with Meta.
Kinda depressing because it's only a matter of time before it happens with lemmy/kbin. Personally after the way reddit behaved after the API business, I was just happy I could go somewhere away from this corporate anti user atmosphere.
I mean, it's plain obvious you can't run a single service that can handle twitter or reddit levels of users without trying to get some money back. But you can have hundreds, or thousands of hobbyist size instances that spread this load. I think it's a nice escape personally (looking at the traffic my instance gets, I do wonder how this would scale to real reddit numbers though).
But, the majority of people won't think like that (and that's not a criticism), they will go where the people are. Large companies with marketing budgets that are pre-established in social media will get the users.
Finally someone else sharing my stance!
I totally agree. Even if this is what Meta is planning,and it probably is, getting everyone to defederate now just means we're skipping to the "extinguish" phase.
Meta doesn't care about leeching users from us, we barely have enough users to show up on their radar. Meanwhile there are plenty of people who want to see what's happening in Threads without selling their souls to Meta, which is a perfect chance for other Fediverse instances to step in and add more users.
Yes, this is certainly a possibility, I agree. But this post was about "privacy" (look at the title). And there I don't see anything concerning. Talking about "adding features on top": they can do this even without federating (because of infinite money and human resources). I think the reason they came up with idea joining fediverse is to get as bigger userbase as possible to compete with Twitter(might be other reasons, but idk). I already tested out their app, it's really convenient for Instagram users, to move there. But their search capabilities are even worse then in Mastodon, they can only search for other accounts. No post search, no hashtags search etc. So it's kinda worse in technical aspects then rest of fediverse.
In conclusion I think their main goal is to compete with Twitter, not the fediverse. My opinion is to let them fedirate, and if they start doing some bs, block them.
when they leech as many people to their platform as they can from the rest of the Fediverse
That's users' fault. Whose responsibility is it if I go to Threads? Is it mine, or is it Meta's? It's supposed that we, users, are mature enough to know where is our place and where we're treated better, as users, as humans, and as data owners. If someone from Mastodon or another place decides to go to Threads, it's their fault (that someone's fault).
after making open projects struggle to keep up, they’ll drop it and kill the rest of the network in the process.
But are we trying to keep up? Lemmy as we know it is composed of instances run by small groups, with nowhere near the same backing that the biggest tech companies have. Meta, Reddit, whoever the company is- they can advertise, promote, bribe, and do whatever they want to boost their numbers.
I don't think it would kill the network. As long as instances like these remain honest and working, with a dedicated following, people who want to escape Meta will have somewhere to go.
And as @Ignacio said in this thread, it's the users fault if they decide to move to and depend on a platform that's bad for them.
They got 10M signups in hours. I honestly don’t think they are in this after “the rest of the fediverse.”
If they didn't care about the population on the Fediverse, they wouldn't implement it. They might be concerned about what it could be in the future, rather than what it is now.
By invading the space and outdoing the competition, they gobble up the growth our space could have had more effectively.
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So basically just as I said, they can't get any info on Fedi users. Thanks Ruud!
My main concern isn't even about privacy, but being exposed to Meta "curated" content. They'll definitely use the platform to misinform and manipulate public opinion.
Having an aversion towards corporations is very much justified at this point.
I know their intentions are not good, I do not agree with them at all and I don’t want them or their traffic anywhere near things I use.
Fuck them and I wish someone bombs their headquarters.
I'm sure gonna get downvotes for this
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