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’m on a fence for this one. I don’t exactly want big tech sticking their nose here, but tbh, if they really wanted, they could spin an instance that poses as normal one, and use that to scrub user data and not tell anyone.
On the other hand, it promotes fediverse, and that might lead to two things: ruining fediverse, or hopefully internet deshittification if it is more widely adopted.
Meta offers many users joining fediverse, but also meta is rather low on my trust list, so I don’t know. I will definitely watch this with interest, but also mistrust. They’ll probably reveal their cards soon enough.