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
I won’t say I approve, but that choice is up to the instances to decide. I’m hardly a fan of Meta and don’t use their services, so it ultimately impacts me very little, if at all. Just don’t tend to be a fan of pre-emptive judgment on such things.
It’s not really preemptive - Facebook is a massive company. The way they’re built is just like we worry with AI - they have a fundamental misalignment with the needs and wants of humanity
Facebook will try to control and extract wealth from the fediverse. Even if their intentions were entirely pure (and I’m pretty sure their goal is right just data harvesting and hedging their bets), it can’t help it - it’s what a company is
It doesn’t matter if no one at Facebook wants this to happen, it’s inevitable. Once a company grows to the point you have people making decisions who barely know each other, the system starts to show emergent behaviors.
As revenue is the most important and most easily tracked metric, there’s a selection pressure to get promoted up the ladder for people who push just a little further past the average to squeeze out more money. Competitors need to do the same, and so the system shifts towards slowly pushing the boundaries - not fast enough to get backlash, but there’s a constant incentive to go the furthest without crossing the line
There’s only so much opportunity for growth after all, and there’s always people climbing the ladder. And even as opportunities for big wins become more rare, the numbers competing for them increases
And that’s why you can’t trust a corporation. It’s like trusting a river not to wear away the rock. It’s not a matter of good or evil, that’s just the nature of what it is - it doesn’t matter what the water wants, so long as it’s part of the river it’ll be pushed and pulled along
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