Technology

I sure hope there's a large group of servers that refuse to federate with servers run for profit. I didn't come to be a product and be manipulated with algorithms.

I think among other issues would be the Gmail-ification and iMessage-ification of the fediverse. What I mean by that is open standards like email are dominated today by many people using Gmail accounts as it is popular, “free”, and comes with a ton of features. Then google started “walling off their garden” by adding features that only work between gmail accounts. Similarly, apple also took the open standard SMS and started adding on features only available between other iPhones.

What we might see is some of the coolest features the fediverse has ever seen, but it will come at the cost of most users ignoring or dealing less with "irrelevant" things not on meta ran instances.

Hope we can resist such a change, but that is what I am concerned about.

Everyone who cares about their instance and the fediverse as a whole needs to defederate and block their instances as soon as they pop up.

Meta should be considered "harmful to humankind" (the list of atrocities is long) and I personally really don't want anything to do with them.

It was only matter of time before one of the big players took interest. Too bad it had to be Meta, but I don't think the others would have been much better.

The protocol itself isn't secure, so if anyone is worried about data harvesting, better log off now and never return. Meta and anyone else can do that already (and is probably doing) without having to roll in with their own instances.

Federating with someone who might have 1.2 billion MAUs is kinda scary because most protocol implementations (like Mastodon) are huge mess of bloat and inefficiencies under the hood. Someone paying their hosting out of their own pocket or trusting on kindness of strangers should be wary of the amount of data that's going to hit them with federation.

It's probably silly to expect "unified blocklist". Some people are fixated with the idea of growth and equate mass popularity with success. Others would rather "wait and see". Let them. The fediverse used to be much more homogeneous place 3-4 years ago, but we're nearing 10M users. That's simply too many people and voices for there to be just one response.

Luckily there doesn't need to be. The protocol allows for creation of spaces that don't have to interact with Meta.

List of Fediverse admins pledging to pre-block Meta instances: https://fedipact.online

It will be possible to have accounts on multiple instances, those that block Meta or federate with Meta. Then see what happens.

I'm glad to see my server doesn't plan on federating with anything Meta hosts. I really don't like the 'wait and see' approach; Meta has shown its true colors time and time before, they have not earned their trust.

Defederate-Block-Ban

apparently some Mastodon admins got contacted by Meta and met with them after signing an NDA. I'm quite surprised how many Masto admins want to "just wait and see, maybe it's not gonna be that bad".

Meta can never be trusted for anything. This could very easily be them trying to make tools to snuff out our "rebellion".

I hate how it seems like anytime there’s an alternative to big tech, it gets immediately co-opted. Either by the far right or by corporations.

I doubt they would be willing to let people host and control their own versions of federated facebook, and I'm wondering then what would make it "decentralized" exactly. Are they just using decentralized as a buzz word because they are using ActivityPub?

What iffing a possible scenario: Meta positions itself as an instance host, like how WordPress hosts blogs. "We'll take the headache out of setting up an instance, but you control everything else!" Free? Low cost? Removing the technical hurdles of hosting your own instance could entice a lot of would be admins to go this route.

It gives the illusion of control, but Meta still back channel collects all data.

If it begins looking that way, the (m/f)etaverse could always be defederated. There's no reason we need to connect with them.

I'm personally happy to take a wait and see approach - because the whole point is that WE have the power. Meta HAVE to play by the rules, because if they don't they get defederated, and it's going to be very difficult for them to convince people to federate with them again after that. If lots of instances start defederating them, then their users are going to start complaining to them that they don't understand why they can talk to some people, but not other people. We have the power here folks.

EDIT: To add - the Fediverse is supposed to be an inclusive place.....

Absolutely! And given that they have a gazillion users they can willingly move around they can drown us out in a day if they want

I don't trust Meta with anything, no way they will do this well

Alternatively, imagine a world where the US government passed a "privacy bill of rights" and also required online platforms to be freely interchangeable via open protocols like ActivityPub.

Won't happen any time soon, and if you ask why, go read [email protected] for a little bit and come back.

Why is this a bad thing? With all the email analogies, it’s a good thing to have bigger corporations involved