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.
@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 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
@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.
@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.
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 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.
@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.
@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.
@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.
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 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.
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.
my plan is to block facebook because they abused my trust and have done nothing to deserve even attempting to earn it back. I don’t care if this happens at the instance level or for myself, because at least I have the tools to do so
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.
@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
@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 think federating with anything Meta touches is a horrible idea.
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.
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It seems the issue is that if meta comes here one day with 10 million users it’s going to just stomp over every other instance in the fediverse. Next step will be changing AP so it benefits them, forcing other instances to either adapt or get cut off from 90% of the content (and if you are wondering what will the people choose, look at reddit), like what Google does to browser standards despite W3C. And the final step is reaching the same state as email today - if you are not coming from one of the big approved providers, you are unsafe, blacklisted and completely isolated.
In short, if meta succeeds at breaking into this new tech, they will take the reigns, they won’t play nice by the rules. Doesn’t even matter if they get blacklisted or not.
@brodokk But for Meta, proceeding with them, if we really want to do this, should be tied to “trust goalposts”: Federation only when they completely revoke the NDA (“we can’t be open unless they’re open”). No implementation of features they bring in unless most implementations have this, too. No switching off features just because Meta hasn’t implemented them (correctly) yet. And: Hold them to good moderation standards.
As much as I dislike Meta, I don’t think we have enough information on this to make a sound decision yet. If they were to participate in the fediverse following the open standards and with moderation that complies with our instance’s rules, then I can’t make any argument against it. The fact that they could just launch an instance like everyone else but instead are trying to get other instances “on board” some secretive project with an NDA really doesn’t bode well though.
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.
I have concerns and there is problems but it has the potential for growth and making the Fediverse an legitimate actual thing may be worth it.
The thing about social platforms is that they really have to reach this critical mass to really be successful. After they reach that point they begin to self feed. Reddit did a huge user dump on to Fediverse/Lemmy but with things being so spread out and disorganized I don’t think it reached that critical mass. If Fediverse didn’t your likely to see a 80%-90% return to reddit. A user dump from a company like meta would likely go far.
Proper admin tools for both the instance and the user could go far.
There will be growing pains no matter where the source of the growth is from.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 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.
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.
