((I’m not an expert, I’ve been reading up on things as much as I can. If there’s an error, I’ll happily correct it!))
TLDR:
- Nearly all of us distrust Meta and have the same broader goals
- We need to pick the best move to go against powerful companies like Meta
- Defederation may not be the right move, and it might even help Meta move forward (and more easily perform EEE)
- There are other options that we can spend our energy on
- It doesn’t matter for Lemmy (yet), this is more a conversation for Mastodon, Firefish and Kbin
We’ve been getting a LOT of posts on this, but the misconceptions make it harder for us to decide what to do. If we’re going to try and protect the Fediverse against large, well funded companies like Meta, figuring out the right action is important. We need to actually look at the options, consider the realistic outcomes, and plan around that.
I’m willing to bet around 95% of users on Lemmy and Mastodon CHOSE to be here because we understand the threat Meta/Facebook poses, and we want to do something about it. That’s not in question here.
So in that sense, please be kind to the other user you are replying to. The vast majority of us share the same goal here. When we disagree, we disagree on the best path forward and not the goal. Wanting to stay federated DOES NOT mean the user wants to help Meta or thinks that Meta is here for our benefit.
Misconception: Defederation will hinder Meta’s EEE
It might, but not necessarily, and it might even help the EEE. Here’s a link to some history of EEE, what it means, and some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish. I’d recommend at least skimming it because it’s interesting (and because this isn’t the only fight)
Assuming Meta is doing an EEE move, they’re in the embrace stage. That’s not about us embracing them, it’s about them embracing the protocol, which they can do whether we stay federated or not.
Defederation can tell newcomers that the defederated instance is an island, and they’re better off joining the place where they can talk to their friends and see the content they want. We saw this early during the Reddit exodus with Beehaw, where many users hopped instances away from Beehaw.
Meta can more easily embrace if more people actively use their platform. They can more easily extend if we’re not around to explain why extending is a poisonous action. Being federated can allow us to encourage users to ditch Meta’s platform and join an open one (ex. Mastodon, Firefish, etc.)
Misconception: Defederation is the only move
Defederation is the first option that comes to mind. It sounds simple, it is loud and newsworthy, and it can be done with the click of a mouse. But if it is a bad action, then what are the good actions?
- Don’t let them have a monopoly over the use of ActivityPub. Grow the other platforms: The extend stage only works when the platform gets a near monopoly over use of the standard. That brings up the first action. If there are enough users, services and resources on things like Mastodon/Lemmy, then Meta (or any other company) can’t just extend the spec without causing their users to ditch Threads to stay connected to the content they want to see.
- Reach out to organizations in your area or line of work. Help them join Mastodon or other relevant Fediverse platforms. I’m sure the for-profit companies put money into this process, so brainstorm and reach out
- Add your Fediverse accounts to the bio of your other accounts, and share posts from the Fediverse elsewhere
As long as there is a healthy community away from Meta (ex. what we have right now), then they can’t extend & extinguish.
- Protect the Standards and share why it is important
- Share posts from experts about strict adherence to standards, support regulatory and legal advocacy (interoperability requirements etc.), and educate other users about the risks.
(I didn’t want to say more here because I’m not an expert, I’m happy to edit more points in)
Misconception: We should still defederate because of Privacy Risks
Not necessarily (and likely not at all?)
Meta is notorious for gathering data and then abusing that data, so this is an issue to consider. However, the way that activitypub works, the outgoing data is publicly available. Defederating with Meta doesn’t prevent that, and federating doesn’t give them any more data than they could get otherwise.
Misconception: Lemmy instances need to decide
This is a big point: It doesn’t really matter for Lemmy right now, one way or another.
It’s more of an issue when data starts coming IN to Lemmy from Mastodon and Meta’s Threads (or out from Lemmy to Threads). See below
Edit to add: For now it might even be good to defederate from Lemmy as a symbolic gesture. My instance is defederated, and I don’t plan on trying to change that. Ultimately it doesn’t change much
Legitimate risks from Federation with Meta, and more effective ways to counter them
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Algorithmic Amplification: Meta’s history of using algorithms that prioritize engagement can amplify harmful or divisive content. These algorithms are not public like it is with Mastodon and other FOSS platforms.
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Misinformation and Content Moderation: All Fediverse platforms will have to work on content moderation and misinformation. Platforms like Meta, focussed on profit and advertising, will likely moderate in a way that protects their income. Those moderation decisions will be federated around.
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Commercialization and User Exploitation: Meta’s for-profit nature means it’s incentivized to maximize user engagement, at the expense of our well-being.
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Additional Data on how the free fediverse interacts with their platform (this one is harder to make a counter for)
Counters:
- Promote user control over their feeds, and develop USEFUL but safe and open algorithms for the feeds
- Flag content and users from risky platforms, with a little warning icon and explanation (ex. ‘Content is from a for-profit platform, and it may ___’)
- Implement features so that users can opt in or opt out from seeing content from risky platforms. In particular on explore/discover/public feeds, so it doesn’t affect content the user is following.
- Develop strict community guidelines that can get Meta (and other companies) sent into the ‘blocked by default’ bins mentioned above. (edit: There’s a good point here that if Meta’a Threads is full of hatred or poor moderation, then blocking them is the right move)
Final point: Evaluate things critically. Don’t even just take my word for it. I doubt Meta or other groups care enough about Lemmy yet to spread disinformation here, and every post I’ve seen promoting defederation feels like a good faith attempt for something they believe in. But it’s still worth thinking about what we’re supporting.
Sometimes what feels like a good move might not help, and could even make things worse.
Maybe keep reading the rest because there IS nuance to this. I hate Facebook and think that sticking our heads in the sand will help them win. If those other platforms that died to EEE just blocked and ignored the incoming threat, they’d have died even faster.
I didn’t write out ‘bullshit’ because I’m on mobile now and it was a fewer letters
No, there isn’t. This is the clearest case of black vs. white you’re going to experience all week. Blocking Meta is not “sticking our heads in the sand.” There is literally no benefit for us allowing them to integrate with any of our explicitly non-corporate platforms. But there is a huge (and in their eyes profitable) benefit for them. If there weren’t, they wouldn’t try. So answer me this, what do we actually stand to gain?
Bots? Misinformation? Having our content redisplayed on Threads for profit? Ads? Corporate accounts spamming us incessantly? Corporate moderators, corporate instances, corporate communities where all the messaging is controlled? Having our content used to train AI’s? This is all the crap we escaped when moving here, rather than using the existing social media network products. What, is Mark Zuckerberg going to cut instance operators a check to help with their overhead expenses for all the content he’ll steal? Don’t make me laugh. You can see posts that were made on Threads? If anyone actually wanted that, they’d just use Threads to begin with.
The argument is that Meta integration will allow the Fediverse to become “mainstream.” Well, Lemmy and Mastadon are already doing just fine without Meta. They will continue to do just as fine without them in the future, barring any catastrophic reddit style administrative fuckups on any major instance(s). Meanwhile, there is enormous risk in allowing Meta to have their way with us, our platform, and our content. None of the other hot air matters one bit no matter how it’s phrased. It will be much healthier as a whole for Fediverse platforms to grow organically without corporate (and frankly, evil) influence. And if that means they remain smaller communities now or even forever that’s okay.
The openness of the “open web” stops precisely before bad actors are allowed to co-opt it for evil purposes. Companies like Meta always have as their end goal a closed walled garden for their users remain trapped in to have profit extracted from them. Well, let them have it – on their own, without us. We need to set the precedent that those of us who give enough of a shit to use Fediverse platforms in the first place cannot be bought or sold. They’ll talk about “openness” now but I guarantee you the design is for that to be a one way street.
No means no.
Never means never.
No Meta means no Meta.
Nothing else needs to be said on the subject.
Source?
Again, source? "If there weren’t, they wouldn’t try. " is a bit weird, when the reason is so painfully obvious and relates to EU regulation and wanting to pre-empt any issues by showing interoperability and an open protocol. If you know of profit-based use cases beyond that, do share the sources please.
What are the benefits?
Of providing sources? Generally that whatever argument you’re making cannot be trivially discarded because it is based on unproven assumptions and hypothesis. That doesn’t mean the argument is making a wrong point, rather that the argument is invalid as an argument.
That is to say, defederation might be the right conclusion, but as OP hints at, not for the reasons commonly stated around Lemmy or Mastodon because those make assumptions about what Meta is doing, why they are doing it, and more importantly, how being defederated affects them.
What are the benefits of letting Meta stay federated?
This is a dangerous type of question as it implies we need a reason to add federation. Instead of being federated being the default state, hence the question would be about benefits of defederation.
And like I said above, it’s not like there isn’t potential benefits to that. But it’s important to keep in mind that not only might we be misinterpreting why Meta is adding federation (I’ll stick to my explanation, it’s not about the actual federation it’s about pre-empting regulation) we might end up making their use-case stronger (“we tried to add interoperability, no one else was interested, so that’s why we aren’t doing it” might be a valid excuse to lawmakers).
On a bigger-than-just-meta picture, it’s also important to keep in mind that should the concept of federation take off, Meta will not be the only commercial company pushing into federated applications, especially if lawmakers start pushing into that direction in the EU. In other words, defederating Meta would merely delay the inevitable, and it might be less of a waste of time to focus on how to ensure the protocol itself works against bad faith actors gaining too much power - which, might I add, can also exist on a smaller scale. If you only got 100 users, a 90 user instance controls 90% of the federated space, and can just as well exert pressure onto the protocol itself, we just trust instance owners to not do that right now, in particular the really big ones.
Again, note that I do not list benefits. Like I said, that’s the wrong direction to inquire in.
Meta is one of the worst, if not the worst, bad actors on the internet. That would be like inviting serial killers into your home so you’ll know how to handle a loud neighbor next time they’re loud.
Okay, name one besides an influx of too many users and no content.
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