Kev Quirk (@kev@fosstodon.org)
fosstodon.org
Attached: 1 image Yeah, that's gonna be a hard pass from me thanks, Rachel. Zero interest in having a conversation with #Meta "off the record" or otherwise. Sharing this purely to be as transparent as possible with our members.

The exchange is about Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!

  • phazed09@kbin.social
    15·
    2 years ago

    Personally, I’m not planning on using the Meta service, but I’m not a fan of pre-emptive defederation either. The vast majority of P92 users will have 0 clue what federation/activitypub is, let alone actually log into Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin, etc. For them, they will forever think of themselves as @username, not @username.

    I’m totally fine with Meta releasing an app who’s posts are exposed via ActivityPub, along with being able to consume other posts via ActivityPub. If anything, I would like to think it’ll drive more people off the Meta platform and into Mastodon, as moving to a federated app doesn’t mean they have to completely break connections with their network on-platform with Meta.

    Overall, I’m more in favour of allowing a personal user to choose to defederate from specific instances, because regardless of what happens, if Meta joins, there will be other companies getting on the bandwagon, and endlessly splitting up based of which instances federate with which others will eventually lead to the whole damn thing falling apart and the big players becoming the de-jure instances anyways.

    I mean, the vast majority of Lemmy/Kbin users migrated from Reddit, as did the vast majority of Mastodon users from Twitter. I’m fine with keeping things open to help facilitate more user growth to community run instances, while also having a place for the less tech-savvy to get their feet wet.

    • grue@kbin.social
      15·
      2 years ago

      The vast majority of P92 users will have 0 clue what federation/activitypub is, let alone actually log into Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin, etc. For them, they will forever think of themselves as @username, not @username@meta.com.

      There’s an argument to be made that that’s exactly why everyone else should defederate preemptively.

      • Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        7·
        2 years ago

        Exactly. I know it’s a bit elitist, but I just don’t care what meta users have to say about anything. If you’re dumb enough to participate in their little data extraction operations then I don’t want to know you.

    • ndrew@kbin.social
      8·
      2 years ago

      I think this is the logical pragmatic take. They’ll start on day 1 with more users than the entirety of the fediverse. Defederating just allows them to ignore us and pretend they own the fediverse. We should at least try to win over those users and prevent FB adware software overtaking Mastodon as the dominant fediverse platform.

      • QHC@kbin.social
        9·
        2 years ago

        I don’t understand why people think the end goal should be one network of Fediverse instances connected to each other. We already don’t have that and never will.

        Meta adding “more users than the entirety of the Fediverse” is irrelevant. They already have more users and content from Facebook, Instagram or whatever else Meta owns is not showing up on my Lemmy or Kbin front page. How would I notice any difference if the tech behind Meta’s services is different?

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
        6·
        2 years ago

        If Meta wants a platform that’s larger than anything else they already have Facebook.

        The one and only reason Meta’s looking at the fediverse is to scrape it for content. It’s social content they risk being left out of and they want in. It’s as simple as that.

        Federate with their instances and they will scrape the shit out of yours, build shadow profiles around your users, feed all your posts and comments into their LLM, cross reference them with their Facebook data to figure out everybody’s real identity, and so on and so forth.

        • luckystarr@feddit.de
          3·
          2 years ago

          I like to think they see the rapid growth as an opportunity to grab some Reddit refugees. I’m not sure they see the Fediverse as a viable threat YET. They could hedge it though and try to snuff it out while they still can.

        • RandoCalrandian@kbin.social
          3·
          2 years ago

          Nope

          This is how they destroy competition that they can’t buy out.

          Microsoft did it with office, intell did it to amd

          Their network can’t survive a competitor, they depend on no other option existing

          Guaranteed this is about disrupting and controlling the federated network

    • redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com
      8·
      2 years ago

      along with being able to consume other posts via ActivityPub

      I read a new article that said it remains to be seen whether P92 will allow users to see posts from other site (they’ll broadcast to ActivityPub but undecided about displaying contents from federated servers): https://tech.co/news/meta-decentralized-social-media

      A source close to the project also told MoneyControl that “the plan as of now is that the MVP (minimum viable product) will definitely allow our users to broadcast posts to people on other servers”, but admitted the company is yet to decide whether to allow users “to follow and view the content of people on other servers.”

      If they only broadcast, but not displaying contents from other servers or allow their users to follow people from other server, then what’s the point of adding federated support if people from other servers can’t interact with them?

      • phazed09@kbin.social
        6·
        2 years ago

        This doesn’t surprise me. The idea then might be to allow for people outside of their walled garden to follow (likely for big name accounts, celebrities, athletes, important people) etc, but not really be a true federated instance. In which case, I think defederating is even more pointless. Just let users on an instance follow who they want to follow.

        • off_brand_@beehaw.org
          9·
          2 years ago

          At least here, if you’re not a fan of de/federation practice, it’s minimal work to change servers.

          I’m not excited at the idea of my posts on another service entirely getting shipped off to a meta server for them to reconstruct my network through that activity. It’s the same issue of as their shadow profiles, where meta knows who you and who you know by watching the posts your mom makes on FB.

          Some of this is inevitable, I know, but I’m at least here for adding more barriers to privacy theft.

          • StrayCatFrump@beehaw.org
            2·
            2 years ago

            They are important to capitalism. Not us.

            https://thefreeonline.com/2015/10/20/capitalism-is-unnatural/

            A study by the Common Cause Foundation, due to be published next month, reveals two transformative findings. The first is that a large majority of the 1000 people they surveyed – 74% – identify more strongly with unselfish values than with selfish values. This means that they are more interested in helpfulness, honesty, forgiveness and justice than in money, fame, status and power. The second is that a similar majority – 78% – believes others to be more selfish than they really are. In other words, we have made a terrible mistake about other people’s minds.

            The revelation that humanity’s dominant characteristic is, er, humanity will come as no surprise to those who have followed recent developments in behavioural and social sciences. People, these findings suggest, are basically and inherently nice.

            …

            So why do we retain such a dim view of human nature? Partly, perhaps, for historical reasons…

            Another problem is that – almost by definition – many of those who dominate public life have a peculiar fixation on fame, money and power. Their extreme self-centredness places them in a small minority, but, because we see them everywhere, we assume that they are representative of humanity.

            The media worships wealth and power, and sometimes launches furious attacks on people who behave altruistically. In the Daily Mail last month, Richard Littlejohn described Yvette Cooper’s decision to open her home to refugees as proof that “noisy emoting has replaced quiet intelligence” (quiet intelligence being one of his defining qualities). “It’s all about political opportunism and humanitarian posturing,” he theorised, before boasting that he doesn’t “give a damn” about the suffering of people fleeing Syria. I note with interest the platform given to people who speak and write as if they are psychopaths.

            …

            Misanthropy grants a free pass to the grasping, power-mad minority who tend to dominate our political systems. If only we knew how unusual they are, we might be more inclined to shun them and seek better leaders. It contributes to the real danger we confront: not a general selfishness, but a general passivity. Billions of decent people tut and shake their heads as the world burns, immobilised by the conviction that no one else cares.

          • Bloonface@kbin.social
            1·
            2 years ago

            Most people who use social media disagree, and unfortunately for you, it’s their opinions that matter most as to whether they use a given social media platform.

            I don’t really care to follow celebrities and athletes either, but I recognise at least that I am in a minority.

            • Takatakatakatakatak@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              1·
              2 years ago

              Oh I’m very much aware that the majority are not people that I want to interact with. That’s why I find this whole situation so ridiculous. This community could stay it’s current size and activity level and I’d be overjoyed with it.

              Once you invite the majority to any platform, it’s ruined. The choice is quite clear to me. Meta have shown quite clearly who they are and what they are interested in. Any idiot left on their platforms at this point is not someone I care to interact with. I’m not sure why there’s any interest at all in what they have to say.

      • nzodd@beehaw.org
        4·
        2 years ago

        Indeed, what is the point? It may be as simple as them trying to coopt the movement to get ahead of it and steal mindshare. Think Hitler and the intentional naming of “National Socialism”.

        “Oh, ActivityPub is the hot new thing, let’s check it out,” says clueless user #39,728 as they click on the first link in their Google search, which coincidentally now happens to be Facebook.

    • ExtraPartsLeft@kbin.social
      7·
      2 years ago

      My thoughts are similar to yours, I don’t think instances should be defederating unless there’s a serious issue with the content of another instance.

      Good instances should be winning over people by being better than whatever Facebook’s ad ridden, algorithm driven, instance ends up being.

      • phazed09@kbin.social
        4·
        2 years ago

        I mean worst case you’ll see @meta.com accounts in your Federated feed in Mastodon (which for pretty much every instance is already a complete mess), I don’t even really see how it’ll affect Lemmy or Kbin, as they’re community driven rather than user driven. I follow users with Mastodon, I follow communities with Kbin.

        I dunno, maybe I’m being necessarily optimistic, but I do have friends and family who are posting on Insta/FB, and I basically maintain an account there to keep up with them. I’d love to be able to keep that connection without having to actually be locked into Meta’s platforms. And I do think at least a few of my tech savvy friends would be willing to give a client like Ivory a go if they’re able to do the same.

        • luckystarr@feddit.de
          6·
          2 years ago

          Their idea is likely to eventually present themselves as the “better part of the network” and make migrating to their servers very easy.

          This must be prevented at all costs.

          • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
            2·
            2 years ago

            I was talking about this with someone here the other day, and this seems like the logical direction for them. They’ll create a cloud of instances that users are able to utilize and create their own communities with relative ease compared to compiling the code and doing the base level software management, and also develop Meta-specific featuresets on those servers to lock people onto their platform. Oh, you want to break away from us and manage your own instance? Have fun doing it the hard way, and without features XYZ that are only available from us!

        • RandoCalrandian@kbin.social
          2·
          2 years ago

          That is not the worst case, by a long shot

          And you’re not just being optimistic, you’re being naive

          Since you clearly didn’t read the article the commenter linked I’ll sum up the important point:

          Corporations routinely infiltrate and integrate with open source in order to destroy it.

          Meta will implement federation, then they will “extend” the specification with a bunch of new features that the other places of the fediverse can’t put out as fast, making anyone talking to a meta user at a disadvantage, just like how Apple calls out non-iMessage participants in a group text.

          They’ll also likely implement a different specification than they publish, so that anyone implementing the meta features fails due to bad instructions

          It’s been done multiple times before, for decades

          Ffs, I’m just waiting for Microsoft to start pulling shit with the Linux foundation now that they have majority seats

          these corporations are not your friends, they are not on your side, they don’t even see you as slaves, you are livestock

          • StrayCatFrump@beehaw.org
            3·
            2 years ago

            I’m just waiting for Microsoft to start pulling shit with the Linux foundation now that they have majority seats

            A majority?! Fucking hell!

          • phazed09@kbin.social
            1·
            2 years ago

            Using the iMessage analogy, we’re currently in a state where green bubbles can’t interact with blue bubbles at all. Nobody should be expecting full interop with a corporate platform, but for the long run I’d rather have partial interop at arms length.

            Embrace extend extinguish only applies if platform is so focused that it cannot sustain itself without the extend phase, and the extend phase cannot happen without something to embrace.

    • Kushi@lemmy.ml
      7·
      2 years ago

      XMPP suffered a lot from what Google and Facebook didto it, so I understand people’s fears regarding Meta’s take on ActivityPub.