I would like to know if I can feel safe here, or if I should pack it up and start looking elsewhere sooner rather than later.

If the kbin staff have already made there intentions clear, please let me know.

  • wagesj45@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    If you’re truly worried about federating with Meta, you should probably also avoid all the other products they have their fingers in.

    This includes all their web properties:

    • Instagram
    • WhatsApp
    • Onavo
    • Oculus VR
    • Beat Games
    • Kustomer
    • Lofelt

    But this also includes many web technologies that are ubiquitous around the web. Meta has either created or contributes code and resources to:

    • React.js
    • MySql
    • Memcached
    • HHVM
    • Cassandra
    • Scribe
    • Hadoop
    • Hive
    • Apache Thrift
    • Varnish

    I suspect you’ll have a hard time finding any website on earth that doesn’t use at least one of these technologies.

    • livus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Sorry if tbis is dumb of me but why should we avoid ever using any web tech that has been associated with Meta, just because we are worried about E-E-E affecting Activity Pub?

      • EnglishMobster@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Are you worried about EEE coming for those techs?

        It’s the same thing. Why are people treating them differently?


        A more likely explanation for Meta’s actions is that the Digital Markets Act is forcing them to adopt the fediverse: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en

        Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:

        • allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
        • allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
        • provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
        • allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform

        The interoperability is the big one. The fediverse gives a way for Meta to be in compliance. EEE that breaks the wider fediverse will cause the EU to come down on them.

        • livus@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for the explanation. I guess I’m not as worried about the ubiquitous technologies because I’m ignorant about whether/how they could shut down the aps and sites I use.

          I don’t go anywhere near the list of websites and aps if I can help it. I do have to use WhatsAp sometimes and it really bothers me that Meta has hold of it now. I wish my wider society would adopt something else instead.

          • EnglishMobster@kbin.social
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            1 year ago
            • React.js

            React is a JavaScript library that was created by Facebook.

            It makes webpages pretty, basically. It makes things load really really fast while still looking clean and modern.

            Dropbox, Paypal, Discord, Slack, Netflix, AirBnB all use React.

            • MySQL

            Facebook didn’t create MySQL, but they have contributed to it.

            MySQL is a way of efficiently storing large amounts of data. Users, passwords, credit card info, anything that needs to store a lot of things will have at least considered MySQL.

            Other places that use MySQL are Twitter, Pinterest, GitHub, YouTube, Spotify, and so on.

            • Memcached

            Memcached was originally developed for LiveJournal, but Facebook has contributed to it.

            It’s a way to quickly store arbitrary data, and reduces how many API calls you need to make. This in turn makes running a large website cheaper, since you can just look up the data in your own memory rather than needing to make an API call.

            YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest all use Memcached.

            • HHVM

            HHVM was created by Facebook.

            HHVM is what executes the Hack programming language (also made by Facebook). Hack is based on PHP (the same thing Kbin runs on), but is optimized in a different way and is more flexible than traditional PHP.

            Slack and Wikipedia are the biggest users of HHVM.

            • Cassandra

            Cassandra was created by Facebook.

            Cassandra works basically as an alternative to NoSQL (mentioned above). It does much of the same job, but works a bit better making sure there’s no single point of failure.

            Uber, Netflix, Reddit, Spotify, and Twitter all use Cassandra.

            • Scribe

            Scribe was created by Facebook.

            Scribe aggregates logs from many many servers and helps engineers find problems in large networks.

            The name is a little generic so it’s hard to find examples, but I know that Dropbox uses Scribe internally and other large companies probably do too.

            • Hadoop

            Facebook did not create Hadoop, but has contributed to it.

            Hadoop is meant for solving problems that take a lot of data. Machine learning (ChatGPT etc.) is the classical example, but really it works well any time you need to process a lot of data.

            Uber, Pinterest, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, and Slack all use Hadoop.

            • Hive

            Facebook created Hive.

            Hive lets you query the results of work done by Hadoop (above). It provides an interface that is similar to MySQL but lets you access Hadoop data.

            Uber, Pinterest, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, and Slack all used to use Hive. It’s largely dying out now because it can’t keep up with modern data sets.

            • Apache Thrift

            Thrift was created by Facebook.

            It connects programs that were created using different programming languages. They can all share a data format through Thrift, which lets them talk to each other.

            Thrift is used by Netflix, Evernote, Twitter, Uber, and reCAPTCHA.

            • Varnish

            Facebook did not create Varnish, but has contributed to it.

            It dynamically figures out what to load when you’re on a website, so you can have a lot of stuff on one webpage but have it still load quickly.

            GitLab, Pinterest, Twitch, and Udemy all use Varnish.


            Literally you could not use the modern web without using these technologies. Meta has a loud voice in most of those techs, and outright controls a handful of them. That’s been the case for most of the 2010s into the 2020s.

            While I don’t think Facebook necessarily has good intentions - they’re a corpo, corpos are never your friends, Facebook especially has proven to be evil - they have proven to be good stewards of open-source technologies for over a decade now.

            I wouldn’t say I trust them with the fediverse. But I’m also not so quick to jump to EEE because they do have a fairly solid track record when it comes to web tech.