This is a bit political but i feel this should be looked at. Whatever it’s on on the Lemmy instance or the Mastodon instances.
My main concern is about the concept of Embrase Extend Extinguish they could use.
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EDIT: I’ve gone ahead and posted this as an announcement on furry.engineer and pawb.fun. I’d strongly encourage our community, both here and on Mastodon please provide me with your opinions and thoughts.
Given it seems like it’s predominantly blocking Meta’s new “Project 92” initiative[1] which is an ActivityPub-based Twitter clone that could theoretically integrate with other services like Lemmy and Mastodon.
I’m personally against preemptively blocking them, despite my hatred for Facebook / Meta / whatever Mark Zuckerberg decides to call the company today. I may consider a silence action to avoid any excessive flooding / spamming of the federated timeline, especially if their rules don’t align with ours on key topics, such as advertising and misinformation.
From an outcome-oriented perspective, federating has little effect, positive or negative. Meta does not care about furry.engineer. furry.engineer is unlikely to receive not receive horrible content from Meta. Meta will benefit in small ways from being federated with furry.engineer and pawb.social because furry.engineer and pawb.social have very good content.
But on a more universal level – that is, if you imagine that everyone bridges to Meta – Meta benefits massively from being allowed to connect to the existing good content across the Fediverse. From this point of view, allowing Meta to bridge to furry.engineer is a bit like littering – yes, you’re not killing the planet yourself, and other people are responsible for far greater harm, but in aggregate people who do what you are making the planet a worse place to live in.
If you do not see that as an ethical problem, then blocking them would be a performative gesture. Even if you see blocking them as a performative gesture, I still think pawb.social and furry.engineer should do so.
Being federated with them implies that furry.engineer tolerates their online conduct. IMHO, furry.engineer has no exit from this: when you endorse someone while also disclaiming that you do not _really_ endorse them, you are still endorsing them. An individual real person with a track record like Meta’s would not be allowed to interact with furry.engineer.
On the other hand, not federating with Meta would make furry.engineer part of a collective action that sends the explicit message is that Meta is intolerable. The impact is still negligible, but in the same sense that the impact of eating less beef is negligible: by taking the action you are embodying positive characteristics and if the action was universalized, everyone’s lives would be improved. Unlike “eating less beef,” taking this action has no real cost to you.
I’ll add that the only real solution to the coordination problem in organized action is for people to take actions even when they can’t guarantee they will get the outcome they want. It’s very important for groups with rational, apolitical branding to take actions like this because otherwise people won’t act like this in daily life. This is the kind of moral thinking people need to be babystepped into if you want them to refuse to do unethical things just because their bosses told them to, or if you want them to demand raises that are commensurate to inflation.
Not only is it ethical to think this way, but people actually benefit personally by going beyond what they can justify with a mere cost/benefit analysis and taking a leap of faith when their moral compass tells them what to do, and what they deserve.
I cannot imagine federating with Meta given these tradeoffs and given what I know about the kind of social consciousness good engineers must develop to be effective in their careers.
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@crashdoom @brodokk I’m against the idea of connecting with Meta in any way, for reasons others have started far more eloquently than I can.
Please just block them. Meta is a company that’s entirely based on selling user data. The more they branch out, the more data they have to sell.
This new platform is merely another way to get data to sell.
(Edited to remove redundant redundancy)@Cybercoyote @crashdoom @brodokk
I agree with this statement 100%. Just block them.
I very much agree with the wording on the pact’s page: I believe that a Facebook fedi project, and for that matter corporate influence in general, is a real and serious threat to the health and longevity of fedi and must be fought back against at every possible opportunity.
Fedi has been my escape from corporate machinations, and I don’t want to see that erode over time. A corporate fedi project will draw a large userbase to itself, and that will make it very difficult for instances to maintain independence without cutting theirselves off from large sections of the fedi community. Corporations will try to shape fedi to fit their bottom line, and that will not be in the best interest of community members. I very much expect corporate footholds to be the start of embrace, extend, extinguish campaigns.
So I say make it as hard as possible for them to even try – and send a unified message that there are no profits to be found here.
Honestly, while I wholeheartedly support blocking Meta, I’m not in principle opposed to corporations trying to get involved in fedi. I think it’s kinda the nature of it that it’s not going to be overly corporate-friendly anyways.
It’s just that Meta have so thoroughly shown themselves to be bad actors, there’s zero reason to give them another chance. It doesn’t have to be (IMHO) all-or-nothing. We can be broadly open to companies dipping their toes in the water, while still saying “fuck facebook”.
@crashdoom all facebook instances should be preemptively defederated – throughout their existence fb has been malicious in an uncountable amount of utterly horrible ways, and should not be offered a clean slate
spaces with corporations aren’t safe spaces
I stand on the same kind of stance… I agree. I am not a fan of the company, and I am not a fan of the way they do business. I am unsure if I will like what they try to do in this space, but I think blocking them outright would be a considerable disservice before giving it a chance. I think having a big player in the ring, people will give it more of a chance than they have in the past with the complaints of “It just seemed too complicated” or “I don’t understand the concept of servers” It will be a good gateway for people to try the platform with “An Evil You Know” mindset.
Do I think it could eventually turn into Embrace Extend Extinguish… maybe, but I think it is still worth it to get more people into giving it a shot. Just look at the at protocol that people are playing with; tons of users are so excited about how they can use their own domain and such… when they see you from a different instance and actually see it working. It might drive a percentage to move off the Meta-operated instance and onto instances operated by individuals or even try to host their own instance.
I’m a bit skeptical of Facebook/Meta’s tactic; it feels like the start of an embrace/extend/extinguish campaign (to get people fleeing Twitter onto a Facebook-controlled service, and subsequently remove the ability to federate/migrate accounts from their instance in order to try and lock people into their own service rather than let them find their way to the Fediverse). Arguably, they (and Google) did the same thing with XMPP by breaking federation in their own implementations.
I do think some preemptive measure is warranted; it could be in the form of a block, a mute, or something else of that nature.
I have to agree, I just wrote a longer post on the main thread about it, but as a TL;DR I don’t support defederating from them, nor do I support some sort of “Anti-Meta” pact. I actually think having Meta introduce people to the Fediverse in a “soft-landing” sorta of way might be beneficial to us all. Rather than the hard-landing that many people had after Twitter began imploding.
My personal view is we should be reactive in our approach to such things, not proactive. Judge things by actions taken, not by what they might do. ActivityPub is a W3 consortium standard, so Meta really can’t “control” or “own” it. They can either play by the game of the Fediverse standard, or not. That’s on them, with little harm to us overall.
ActivityPub is a W3 consortium standard, so Meta really can’t “control” or “own” it.
I wish more people understood this. The fediverse isn’t owned by anyone. I’m not a big fan of Meta, but I think people overreact. It is not like Meta suddenly saw people joining Lemmy and decided to become federated. They were working on ActivityPub compliance for a while now. Twitter was too, but Elon may have laid off the people working on that.
But ultimately, it’s up to each instance to decide. I’d rather some instances federate and some instances de-federate Meta. That how all this works–each instance is different.
W3C set the protocol for websites as well, but Google has such a dominant position in the market that sites have to cater to their version of things versus the actual standard.
We give them an inch and they’ll take a mile, as these corporations always do.
@brodokk @crashdoom - I have zero tolerance for #META tom foolery. If they federate, it’s a block for me. I had high hopes for lemmy, but recent revelations on the platform, META and code developers has me significantly disappointed in the long term outlook for this project. So, count me as a 👎🏻
@crashdoom @brodokk I don’t think Zuck’s company has a credible track record at all. His company has been a malicious actor throughout the past decade or more, and I believe preemptively blocking them is not uncalled for at all.
From a general standpoint, I don’t think that any Mastodon community stands much to lose for taking a neutral stance on Project 92. Meta isn’t a threat to us because of how the fediverse works. It’s not even guaranteed that their app will be 100% intercompatible with Mastodon. It might end up being another kind of halfway there integration that affords them and for that matter, us no benefit. The whole thing might not be something worth caring about, but it might not be great to take an actively positive stance on it, because of the amount of the fediverse moving against it.
From a community standpoint, it’s possible we stand to lose more if the fediverse splinters into anti-Meta spaces, and Meta-neutral or pro-Meta spaces. What Meta coming to fedi has done is show that there is so much potential to divide up all these separated spaces into people disagreeing on points that might be irrelevant to the functionality of the platform. I personally see this nature of Meta as more dangerous than any threat they pose to the protocol. Divide and conquer. How many people are going to be upset when they end up on the “wrong” instance, for whatever their personal opinion is, and how is that going to effect smaller instances that people will learn not to trust, compared to large ones, run by corporations or large organizations. They are not taking over the fediverse, but attempting to divide it and corporatize it, along with any other large organization that wants to take advantage of it.
Either way, I don’t believe that joining any pact is the way to go. Signing onto such a thing is a community commitment whose terms may change over time, to the dissatisfaction of at least one party involved. I believe any decision should be made by this individual instance without the active association with any other. Moving as a group is what Meta and every other corporation expects us to do, leaving us in a compromised state, and though for the past decade or so, it’s how all online communities work, distributed networks allow us to question that status quo. I say no to the pact, but neutral on general defederating or silencing.
can honestly say that i am not against meta on fedi, mainly because i don’t see what’s the issue with, because like, the fediverse can’t be controlled by meta, it controls itself, and as such if project 92 becomes an invasive platform, users can just switch to mastodon or calckey and still have the same interactions as before
tbh, project 92’s idea is weird, like what’s the point for facebook to make a decentralized platform?
@crashdoom @brodokk I think just blocking them is a good idea, but I think we should be fair to the users & wait to see how it is before blocking them.
But with what I know of what Facebook users tolerate from Facebook, they might not deserve that fairness, they gave it up to Facebook to make an account!
Facebook is already a bad actor on its own platform. They are not going to be any different with the Fediverse. The meeting under NDA for a select few instance admin is already pretty fucking sus. Not just because it looks similar to union-busting tactics, but because that’s exactly how it started with XMPP before they crippled it.
And even in the unlikely event that I end up wrong, what benefit would federating with Facebook bring us? We don’t need them, and as a company their only purpose is to make profits, not to make Fedi better. There is no positive outcome possible for us, no matter how you slice it. We need to defederate before they even get a chance to do anything.
I mean, do we even know if Meta’s plan involves federation? As others have stated, ActivityPub is an open standard that allows for federation, but services don’t have to federate just to use ActivityPub. We could be getting into a fit right now just to find out they have no plans to federate - of course, they could change that at any time, but we just don’t know yet.
Of course, Meta meeting with big instance admins is concerning, especially since they’re under NDA so we don’t know what was discussed. Maybe it was the possibility of federation, maybe it was just logistics of ActivityPub. They only started this in January, they could have figured they’re at a point they should talk to the people who run this stuff.
IMO, we just don’t have enough information to act yet, at least beyond “we are actively monitoring and prepared to make XYZ actions in response to ABC behaviors.” Make it clear to the community what you’re looking for and what you’ll do in response to expected actions that are clear to all why they’d be acted on. I think a pre-emptive silence could be justified, but I think a full defederate is just really hard to argue for when we don’t know a lot just yet.
Plus, love it or hate it, even if they do federate, Meta is a trusted entity by big names and organizations. A lot of people might give it a go, and it feels unfair to them. Especially for anyone interested in federation from the comfort of a known thing just to find out half the fediverse decided they want nothing to do with Meta’s platform without seeing how it actually goes.
A small part of why I keep Twitter around (outside of artists and streamers who haven’t made a presence here, at least as far as I know) is because I follow some local government orgs. I would love to get that on my local timeline so I have another reason to cut back on Twitter more, and Meta’s platform might be the best way I can get that right now.
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@crashdoom @brodokk
I saw a fairly long post that summarizes my personal thoughts on this subject pretty clearly:https://calckey.social/notes/9g6q2a37hu9kt84t
the short bit:
> What’s important to acknowledge here is that it’s not we, the Fediverse, who have conceded. It’s Meta.
> It’s Meta who have given up ownership of their own corporate-owned network effect in order to join the Fediverse.@crashdoom @brodokk There’s a few other folks that have said things to the effect of “I don’t want my data elsewhere.” Short form is, that’s impossible under ActivityPub (it’s a copy-on-read architecture)
If you don’t think Meta is scraping the output of every federated feed already, you’re sorely mistaken.
The fact of the matter is that Meta’s content is going to get into the rest of the fedi and they’re going to get our content. The only ones that won’t isolated themselves away from fedi.
@crashdoom @brodokk would say we should probably avoid the new zuck platform considering what facebook (the content and the people, not even mentioning other concerns related to the company itself) would bring, i got a negative approach on this but still would leave it to the time while avoiding
On principle, I think that if they are allowed at all, that a an annual review of their policy compatibility be conducted (or whenever they change their policies). Honestly though, a profit-driven platform is going to behave differently than the federated community that you’ve nurtured here.
Are there some questions as to the role of businesses participating and communicating in this community? Of course! Is Meta one of them? Of course not! They have a horrible record.
@crashdoom @brodokk I don’t think a discussion of whether or not they will attempt to/successfully EEE the fediverse even matters. We already know what Meta’s track record is for moderation - I came here to avoid that, and I think that’s going to end up being reason enough to cut them off. It just seems like it’s going to be impossible to manage otherwise. I suspect that at the very least silencing them will be necessary.
@crashdoom I would prefer my data not to be collected and sold, hence why I’m prominently in the fedi. I’m in favor of preemptively blocking, because data is their business model to make money and I’m not for sale. Them integrating is not for the human or social aspect, it’s purely for the profits.
Commenting with this as context: https://merveilles.town/@lrhodes/110555014534253768
Project 92 wouldn’t fit in with the Networked Communities philosophy that I use Fedi for. Normally that would just call for a silence, but given Meta’s extremely poor stewardship of people’s data in the past, especially those who didn’t opt into the data collection in the first place, I think a preemptive full-defederation is warranted rather than a silence. It seems like a Rule 6 matter, too.
I’m not asking for Meta to be chased out of the fediverse or for there to be a widespread fediblock. In fact, I think Project 92 could fit in just fine with masto.soc and all the other general-purpose instances, provided that they’re better data stewards moving forward than before. That’s just not why I’m here, and I don’t want them to feel entitled to my data, even if there’s no technical way to stop them from getting access to it.
@crashdoom This will be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think a defederation / block is warranted - yet. I’m of “a certain age” when I was on the internet when AOL joined in and thus started the slur of AOLers who were considered subhuman. Completely unwarranted, and sure some were noobs, but weren’t we all?
Not everyone has access to the same level of technology, and for them, using a service like FB is the simple way to interact.
Let them join, participate, and let’s see what happens.
@crashdoom On further reflection and reading, block their asses.
I’m a bit late but: strongly against pre-emptive blocking
defederation should be a poweful & last-resort moderation tool (since it’s taking agency away from users). obviously it is justified in some cases (gab, truthsocial etc), but we’re nowhere near the point at which blocking meta seems justifiable.
the data-harvesting justification just seems confused (meta care about building profiles of people they can show adverts to, they dgaf about people on other fedi instances)
Not late! We’re still reviewing new comments as they come in to determine if the sentiment remains the same or changes within our community. I did go into more detail on our rationale for stating we’ll defederate from them at https://pawb.social/post/111692, but it boils down to the rampant abuse Facebook permits on their existing platforms that would inevitably boil over for our team to deal with.
Also, from recent news, it seems that Facebook won’t even allow outbound federation initially anyway, so we’re really unsure if we’ll even need to end up blocking them in the first place.
@crashdoom I have no interest in using any Facebook services but also see no reason to fediblock.
Give them the opportunity to be good neighbor and only take actions if they are having moderation problems. Defederating should be kept as a last resort.
My entire motivation for joining the fediverse was to escape as much corporate influence as possible; as such, I have no desire to interact with an instance run by one of the most egregious ‘problems’ in the social media space. That said, I’m also not here to push my views on other people, and if the instance decides not to defederate with them, I can just block their communities and everyone can be happy.
I’m of the opinion that we should defederate right away from Meta’s service. I don’t see any advantage to giving them a chance as their whole modus operandi is collecting and harvesting user data. The whole NDA stuff really rubbed me the wrong way.
For those who don’t know, Meta reached out to big instance admins and invited them to some kind of meeting:
https://mstdn.social/@stux/110567524159195690
Stux didn’t go but was invited, and confirmed this. Those who went were made to sign an NDA.
Yeah, I say block based on this experience alone.
Yeah, I don’t like devs using the term “fediverse stakeholders”. Big big red flag.
The fact all these big admins went to a facebook gathering, were made to sign an NDA, and now refer to themselves as “stakeholders” is more than sus. This is a clear EEE attempt. Reinforcing my vote of pre-emptive block. Keep this data-stealing corporate nonsense out of our spaces.
Meta’s entire business model is to mine data from its users and sell that data to companies and governments. In light of this, I fully believe this project is a trojan horse being used to connect to as many servers as possible in the fediverse and cache all it’s data to give them an additional vector to mine it.
Preemptively blocking will keep our data safe here, at the very least, and limit their reach across the federation. They deserve no goodwill.
The Fediverse isn’t private though. It’s already indexable from the open-web, and the ActivityPub standard itself isn’t designed to be private either. So Meta gains no extra information from being on The Fediverse than they do being off of it.
The actual actions, i.e. who upvotes/downvotes what, initial posts and mod log (where removed posts live) all contain a treasure trove of data that is way easier to mine passively if you’re federated versus having to scrape off an index. Some of that isn’t visible outside of the federated data feed, only the final state is on the post/comment.
Why should we give any massive corporation, especially one run by Mark “I don’t know why the dumbfucks trust me with their info” Zuckerberg, the easy route to mine all that?
I think it’s more open than you realize. I need to look into this further, but there’s no reason to assume, even a bit, than anything posted here or elsewhere on the Fediverse is private. It’s not supposed to be, nor was it designed to be. Also, if meta simply wanted that data, they’d setup instances and just keep quiet about it, and start following accounts across the Fediverse.
Sure but I reiterate, why make it easy for them? What has Meta/Facebook/whatever done to deserve easy, immediate access to my data when I’m not using their services?
Over on the beehaw thread about this very subject, folks have brought up that they’re ostensibly (in part) responsible for the ongoing genocide in Myanmar because they pushed anti-muslim posts through their algorithms without having any moderators that spoke the language to understand what was being boosted until after it had reached beyond a critical threshold.
They don’t deserve a moment of our time, effort, or support.
I have my concerns about letting a company like Meta into the Fediverse, BUT I don’t think we should block them. Instead just have tools available so individual fedi users can block them effectively; that should be enough.
A mainstream company like Meta entering Fediverse can cause problems, but it can also open it up to a wider pool of users, which can benefit artists and other creative types who want to do business on Fedi. The biggest complaint about artists who tried to move from Twitter to Mastodon was that they could no longer reach as many people. Mainstream support of Fedi can help with this issue, we just can’t let it get to the point that the corporate-types are calling the shots.
I would block Project92 on principle. I don’t trust Meta to just be a participant in federated social media, I don’t trust them to respect the privacy and security of the userbase, and I don’t trust them to not try and take over everything.
I don’t have a strong feeling about the pact. I think there are good arguments both for and against acting preemptively. I support whatever decision the mods make there.
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. Like, Facebook already has a moderation team and practices. They already allow all kinds of transphobic and queerphobic posts. They just explicitly said you can post Covid misinformation too. I don’t see any reason they would moderate their Fediverse servers differently, and I can’t imagine that’ll fly here. But again, I understand if the mods want to see that actually happen before they take action.
Meta is an enemy. It’s not about their misuse of user data, that’s already public. They have a track record of promoting the growth of facism, misinformation, conspiracies, etc. with their algorithm, targeted advertisements, and moderation policies. It’s not worth the server load allowing them to federate with us for even one second. I don’t see what could possibly be gained by letting some generally right wing normies interact with a furry instance. I wouldn’t touch whatever they’re doing with a 20 foot pole.
Whatever form Meta’s fediverse project takes, it should be opposed at every opportunity because it is in our best interests for their project to fail.
I definitely do not think we should support them, in any way. Meta is just…fundamentally corrupt, greed-driven, with no concerns for the harms they cause. They go beyond just the normal level you expect from big companies. I don’t trust them not to mine data from other servers. They’ve already shown they’re more than willing to play fast and loose with legalities around data. They’ll do anything they think they can get away with, or can afford the fine for, and sell that data to any devil that can pay.
Like, sure, any other server could do the same thing. But anybody walking by you on the street could knife you, too, right? But the vast, vast majority won’t. They wouldn’t even think to, let alone have to choose not to. The difference with Meta is that we know that they are actually willing to. Eager to, if there’s money to be made.
I would support an outright block. I don’t have any real feelings about ‘formally’ signing onto the pact. There’s no reason not to just quietly block, if you rather. Anybody who wants to join fedi can just as easily do it on another instance. For the ones who don’t want to stray far from meta…well, I’ve long since left Facebook behind. I’ve already said I don’t care about losing them.
I am not a big user of these sites yet and so I’m just voicing my opinion here, I’ll not make a big issue either way. That said Meta is a corporation it exists to make money for it’s shareholders that’s all. I imagine they will use any method they deem legal or that they can make legal to accomplish that goal. I would not trust them to let any independent site that could become profitable alone, either to acquire it or get it shut down.
Originally I was going to allow them and see how they operated and felt, but in light of recent events I’m not going to touch them with a 10ft pole.
I don’t want to see this platform EEE’d like the big five have done so many a time to other platforms. It’s clear to me atleast that they already intend to do just that.@brodokk
I say give it a shot and allow them in. If you see an uptake on spammy content or bad users, then go ahead and blacklist them.My take: They’ll get the data whether or not they are federating. I’ve seen what “data teams” do, and what they will do to get around any lack of cooperation.
So in the defeatist perspective that blocking them or not blocking them has a net zero impact, what other reasons are there to deal with?
Then comes possible abuse. Which may come in the form of a gang of people going against one person on a server. The targeted person should still be able to exercise a block against a whole instance, in this case, meta.
For the server as a whole, it may create additional load. But until we’ve seen what it looks like, I am unsure.
Would not sign any NDA, or pact, or formal agreement.
I don’t think allowing federation with a Meta project is a good idea.
To me, whether we welcome corps in general onto the platform is a separate issue. Meta specifically has a bad track record, and I don’t think we should let them waltz into this space. I think their motives are incredibly suspect. Meta does not benefit by making ActivityPub any more usable or popular.
It’d be interesting to see how much of Mastodon’s source code they actually end up using for this, because that would significantly cut down on their ability to embrace extend extinguish. I think there’s also rumours that Tumblr are looking into ActivityPub as well, which would also keep them in check.
IMO it’s too early to really get upset about this, and I don’t think “big company uses X” is sufficient reason to block them. But I’m not an instance admin or anything, so my thoughts are just rambling.
