The exchange is about Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!
Kinda shook at the Meta-supporting comments. They should not be anywhere near the fediverse. Meta is a business first and the users are the product. Companies now just want to maximize profits, minimize costs, and hoard wealth for… rocket ships? Fediverse itself is community-owned, independent, and decentralized.
With how new all of these controversies are, it’s kinda baffling that people are still defending this company. They’re going to continue to exploit anything and everything for profits. It wouldn’t even surprise me if the genuine reason they’re interested in this concept is because they want to take what’s open-sourced, adapt it, and commercialize it. I would imagine they’re thinking, ‘why invest in a brand new backend when we can profit off of an existing one, unrestricted.’ And this “meeting” that they’re forming is basically a free forum for them to learn and ask questions about how they can exploit the Fediverse and find any way to profit off of it. “Off the record” anything is shady as fuck.
“Reports of Meta’s Destruction Greatly Exaggerated”
OK, it’s one of my pet peeves that every fricking disagreement is headlined as X destroyed Y. Click-bait is the bane of the internet and makes everything worse. Don’t participate.
I’m glad Kev got to speak their mind, but I highly doubt this changed anything meaningful over at Zuck HQ.
A 45 minute “round table” with multiple rando masto instance admins? That doesn’t sound like enough time for the table to get very round.
It sounds more like 5 minutes introduction, 30 minute presentation by Meta, 10 minutes Q&A. But oops our presentation ran just a bit long, and I really do have a hard stop at noon so we really only have about 5 minutes for questions thanks for all of the valuable feedback we’ll be sure to circle back offline.
Ah, I see you’ve taken part in Bullshit Corporate Meetings™ before!
“We here at Meta take people’s privacy very seriously and are committed to protecting our users. Unfortunately at this time we can’t discuss what measures we’ve put in place.”
Gross, this is obviously their attempt to embrace, extend and extinguish the Fediverse.
Yep they’ll be a good actor until they’re the biggest instance and they’ll try to turn the fediverse into whatever verse they’re feeling like that week and shove it down our throats. We’ll end up right back here in 3 years of we choose as a community to federate (i.e. give free content) to Meta.
I agree with you guys, it could be problematic to work with #Meta but maybe it could be the step we need to make the fediverse mainstream. The things to discuss are the conditions but the frontal confrontation baybe will not be the answer this time.
I really hope that we’ll be able to maintain a strong resistance and fortification against Meta taking over the fediverse.
Only defense is to defederate meta and any instance that chooses to federate with meta
I agree, the decentralized aspect is a huge plus and makes this system . But I think the OP’s approach is fundamentally misguided and I have my suspicions for a few reasons.
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It’s a 45 minute meeting that provides an insight into Meta’s operations. There’s no need to contribute anything, just sit back and listen.
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There’s no reason to post about this and brag about it now. Compare this with what Christian did when Reddit tried to claim Apollo was blackmailing them. There’s no leverage now, just some internet points.
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We have one email and a response. Was there any further communication? How do we know this is all that was said? I could go further and question the legitimacy of this screencap but I’m willing to give OP the benefit of the doubt here.
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As others have pointed out, how does shutting them out completely stay in keeping with fediverse principles? This is legitimate question since, to me, it seems like despite the risks, it’s antithetical to the spirit of the fediverse until they demonstrate bad behavior here.
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To quote OP’s email, “Zero interest in having a conversation with #Meta 'off the record or otherwise.” “Otherwise” here is…on the record. So OP also won’t meet with them in a completely open meeting?
Look, I get it, I dislike Meta too. But this just seems like a misstep and bragging for zero actual gain.
- As others have pointed out, how does shutting them out completely stay in keeping with fediverse principles? This is legitimate question since, to me, it seems like despite the risks, it’s antithetical to the spirit of the fediverse until they demonstrate bad behavior here.
how much bad behavior do you want to see before accepting that MetaZuck is evil and has no go intentions?
There’s a literal trail of dead startups and bodies.
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It’s hilarious for Meta to invite some person who happens to run a server to an “off the record” conversation with “confidential details that should not be shared with others” anyway. LOL.
The only “confidential” information that’s likely to be involved in such an exchange would be some kind of bribe for the person to shut down or assimilate their infrastructure with Meta’s. It’s not like they’re going to reveal Meta’s trade secrets to someone they believe to essentially be a competitor or anything.
Fuck Meta and all they stand for.
They have done nothing to earn open community’s cooperation. On the contrary, they have not atoned for weakening democracy in countries all over the world AND distributing powerful data about its users both for money and by inadequate security.
OK, I’m just using fancy words to say Fuck You, Meta and Zuck in particular.
'Member when the Zuck assured everyone that Facebook cared deeply about their privacy, and then immediately turned around and quietly implemented features where people had to opt-out of sharing all their shit (when opting out was even an option at all), and those users didn’t even know it? And we’re not even getting into how it sells your data behind the scenes to advertisers, government entities, and anyone else with a little cash to offer.
Ah, the good ol’ days. And I don’t even resent it due to being personally affected. I’ve never had a FB account, and I just watched from the sidelines as it affected people I know and love and the broader online community as a whole.
What an absolute legend. Also, I do so solemnly swear that any instance caught federating with meta is going straight in my hosts file.
You have been warned.
So you will block Fosstodon?
That statement is refreshingly sane. Really sick of the amount of heat over this situation and the lack of light.
Oh look, a tough guy behind his keyboard.
I have mixed feelings about Facebook being a part of this, but I honestly don’t know if I’d want to get closer to Facebook. 💀
what are your mixed feelings? truly, what do you think is the positive of meta getting involved?
Not op but one positive is making their users aware of the existence of the Fediverse and providing an opportunity for non-meta servers to take up some of those same users. The question is what means are available to do that without putting the community at risk.
Idm meta joining tbh. At least this means your friends can be on something and you won’t be obligated to use a meta app to talk to them, peer pressure, etc
Until they pull an iOS sms situation, where non-iOS applications are missing their “exclusive features” and go as far as to break conversations through incompatibility, and then your friends are badgering you to “just join the 21st century and get an iphone already,” but with Meta-branded apps. There’s no way in hell Meta will play nicely with anything outside their ecosystem.
Your first mistake is setting a minimum expectation for a Meta product. They’ve not promised it will do any of that and they already have you thinking it will based on nothing but rumor.
On the one hand I can totally understand this reaction by Kev, on the other hand, by completely locking off all discussions like this, means that there’s no way to change things for the better.
Granted, it’s Meta, they’re not to be trusted, but still, a discussion, if one has the time, wouldn’t be too bad an idea.
I’m sorry, but it’s on Meta to come forward to the public Fediverse and be open with their plans, not try to organize some hush-hush meetings with Mastodon instance owners.
Connectivity on fediverse platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy rely heavily on trust between users to maintain an engaging community. Unless Meta publicly demonstrates otherwise, people are right to distrust Meta at the outset, given their past and current affairs.
Meta’s P92 should release itself on the Fediverse’s terms, rather than Fediverse catering to Meta’s terms. Otherwise, Meta should just make their own platform and see if Fediverse instances latch onto it.
I think it would be incredibly naive and foolish to believe Meta has any kind of pure motives for this.
One of the biggest corporations in the world reaching out to its competitor to try to get them to talk “off the record” about “confidential details”… Sounds like a pretty blatant scheme to get them to reveal confidential details about their competitor’s product.
Or maybe Meta has broken with decades of its own conduct, and several centuries of capitalism, in order to reach out in good faith to their competitor. LOL.
It doesn’t need to be said that Meta is purely driven by profit - that is any corporation. But Meta is incompetent and failing - yet still a behemoth. If they want to pour millions of dollars into the fediverse, then we don’t we let them? They would presumably just be another site on the fediverse.
I totally support them joining on assuming it doesn’t change the fundamental structure of the system.
If they want to pour millions of dollars into the fediverse, then we don’t we let them?
Because, if we do, they will destroy it.
ok i’m not saying they won’t but i’ve asked this before and nobody seems to be able to provide some mechanism by which they would destroy it
is the system not federated? if meta starts acting up, can’t everyone just defederate them? this is what i’m not getting
if someone can explain to me what exactly is dangerous, i would appreciate
ok i’m not saying they won’t but i’ve asked this before and nobody seems to be able to provide some mechanism by which they would destroy it
Read up on how they destroyed XMPP.
is the system not federated?
So was XMPP. That’s why they’re a huge threat to the Fediverse: they have experience in destroying federated systems.
Facebook didn’t “destroy” XMPP. XMPP was a tiny messaging protocol nobody used, Facebook picked it up for a bit, stopped using it after a while, and then XMPP returned to being a tiny messaging protocol nobody used.
People are acting like Jabber was hot shit when Facebook picked it up, and its present state of irrelevance is because of big bad Zuck. No, no fucker used Jabber and it saw basically no mainstream adoption until Facebook and Google got involved, and as soon as Facebook and Google weren’t involved (as it turns out that XMPP actually kind of sucks and its unique features are things end users don’t care about) it returned to being a complete irrelevance. A well-intentioned irrelevance, to be sure, but an irrelevance.
Fediverse is the same, mutans mutandis. We’re tiny. I know it’s nice for us to psyche ourselves up and say that we’re going to destroy the big bad corporate media! but in reality we are a niche constellation of social networks that has literally 0.1% of Facebook’s user base and whose adoption has been, shall we say, not stellar.
Not stellar? We’re having this conversation, aren’t we? This place has proven to be an able replacement for Reddit, and the last thing I want to see is it become irrelevant because of Meta’s involvement.
A good response. Civlised and to-the-point.
I disagree.
I hope there’ll be people discussing sensibly.
For example the question how the rest of the fediverse would like Meta to act, when / if they have the by far largest instance on Fediverse with Threads.
Should they Rate-Limit queries from their users to other Instances, as to not overload them? This would protect other instances, but make the federated experience worse, driving more people to threads.
Would the Fediverse rather that Meta mirrors images etc on their servers too, or pull those from the original server?
Maybe they have UX ideas that would be useful to have somewhat uniform (like the subreddit/community/magazine stuff here), and would like input on them.Of course just blocking them is an option for the fediverse, but doing that blindly seems like a missed opportunity for both sides.
More freely available content would be great, wouldn’t it?Maybe they have Ideas on the protocol, that they want to talk with admins about as a first step to gain more perspective. And certainly they are likely to be data-hungry greedy shit, but there is a chance that they are actually good ideas - there are actual people working at meta after all.
There’s tons of ways in which this could be useful, and I don’t really understand the completely blocking approach I see a lot of.
They want to use ActivityPub, that’s awesome, finally something new and big that uses an open freaking standard on the web. What are the downsides? If it sucks for communities they can easily block Meta.
Yes, Meta is not a Company working for the betterment of the world, certainly.
But maybe, just maybe, goals align here, and Meta can make money and improve the Fediverse and the Internet with it. And certainly, maybe they want to “take over” ActivityPub, and that would indeed be bad. And even then, wouldn’t knowing because they told you be much better than knowing because they’re meta?
So, if they want to change the Protocol, be very, very wary of their proposals. But even there there they could just want reasonable improvements because they suddenly deal with 100x of the next biggest instances.tl;dr: when you tell people what you’d like them to do, it increases the chances of them doing that.
This is super naive. Facebook/Meta has zero interest in “playing nice” with competitors in any field. Their intentions with the fediverse are not pure, and you’re a fool if you think otherwise.
This is capitalism, and this is one of the most profitable corporations that has ever existed on the planet. A corporation who has made those profits almost entirely from the private data of its users (and even some users that aren’t subscribed to their service. That’s how much data they have).
They don’t “work together” with competitors “for the good of everyone.” That’s a pipe dream.
Yeah large EEE on ActivityPub feels like almost a given if they start to use it.
But should you block people from embracing a good thing, just because you’re scared they’ll try to extend and extinguish?
no one is preventing people who have facebook or instagram accounts from joining the fediverse by blocking meta. what they are doing, is preemptively taking action to ensure an immoral company doesn’t do exactly what it has shown itself to be in it’s nature to do.
That’s nice and all, but before we get to any of this there’s a fundamental incentive schism to overcome first. People flock to the fediverse because they are tired of being treated like cattle. If you are not the paying customer, you are the product. And you will never–NEVER–be catered to. That’s the bottom line here.
I agree. The Beautiful thing here would be that people sick of Meta could still go to fosstodon, and they could still talk to their niece on Metas Threads.
I can’t help but see that as a win for the people not on metas software.
How is it a win for me if I specifically signed up for a fediverse account to get away from data-hoarding, money-driven corporations like Facebook? I don’t want Facebook to have access to my account information, posts and comments. I think you’re missing the point about who this company is and the extent to which it is willing to go to get people’s data.
Fucking thank you. Are people really this gullible? Maybe I have a different perspective because I’ve been free from Facebook for like 15 years now, but do these people really think that Meta/Facebook wants to be nice to its competitors? Suddenly they’re going to give up the business model that has made them one of the biggest, most profitable corporations that has ever existed on this planet, and do the exact opposite of what they did to get there? LOL.
I’m honestly questioning if TheYang is reading our comments or if they are just spewing the same talking points regardless of the arguments presented to them. It’s baffling to see people so willing to embrace a corporation that has done nothing but exploit its users and their privacy.
If Meta wants to make an app that is competitive with other fediverse apps and is actually good, I don’t see the problem. If they want to harm other fediverse instances then I do. How much harm could they do to the fediverse? Would they then block off all other apps when their app is the biggest essentially?
“If Meta wants…” My concern is that the only conceivable motivation Meta could have for investing money in such a project is making more money. If, in the process, Meta destroys the eco-structure of the Fediverse, so much the better—less competition, more money for them.
That’s exactly it and there’s no reason to pretend otherwise. Meta is a financial instrument to turn money into more money. The only reason Meta would engage with any third party is to make their commercial products more attractive to advertisers. Play with Meta and before you know if they’ll be writing all the rules about how you’re allowed to run your instance.
they could make their own custom version of the fediverse, slowly diverging from the core open source version, then push the actual fediverse into obscurity, the same way Google Chat killed XMPP. Imagine a new Meta-controlled “fediverse” where you can only have an instance if you use their code and their rules.
You don’t have to use it though?
I found this article interesting and relevant: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
this was an excellent article. I’m old enough to remember being impacted by these events.
I’m not in Munich, but I remember trying to embrace OpenOffice, and telling my wife how pissed off I was that Microsoft wasn’t following it’s own open source document standard.
I remember Google killing XMPP, and there’s also the more recent examples of what Facebook has done to WhatApp, Instagram, and the other potential competitors that got buried.
To create an Instagram account, your identity has to be validated. I prefer anonymity. Once Meta gets their foot in the door, I guarantee they will try to bully the fediverse into doing things their way. Hard pass for me.
Once Meta gets their foot in the door, I guarantee they will try to bully the fediverse into doing things their way. Hard pass for me.
Can you give any reasonable by means in which they could do this and succeed?
So much of this stuff just sounds like infeasible conspiracy theories. If, hypothetically, Meta did do such a thing (somehow, still not clear how or frankly why?) all that it would mean is that anyone who disagreed could defederate from Meta, or would be defederated from Meta… which given half the servers in existence seem to want to defed them up front anyway, doesn’t seem to make any odds.
It’s all just very confusing hearing about these lurid ideas for things Meta could do with the fediverse that simply don’t make a lick of sense either in terms of motivation or implementation.
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For some reason, your link doesn’t work.
The second part of your comment doesn’t answer my question, nor would “they want our data!!!” explain why Meta would want or need to create an instance in order to get it, or how the “data” (what data? Your posts? The ones that ActivityPub syndicates to hundreds of other servers automatically? Do you know exactly which servers your posts are on at the moment?) of other users on other fedi instances could somehow be “monetised” by them.
