Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

How would they even extinguish a whole ecosystem of independent instances? What does that even look like?

They could very well make some feature or requirement and demand that every single ActivityPub instance uses their version to remain compatible…

…and instance hosts can just say no, fork it and keep going unbothered.

Even buying up some big Lemmies and Mastodons is not going to get them the whole Fediverse.

from https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html :

In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway. They didn’t care about respecting a protocol they were not 100% in control. So they pulled the plug and announced they would not be federated anymore.

Basically keep people from using all the other platforms. Then stop supporting them. Similar like .docx never quite works in the open document editors. At least i refuse to believe that OSS devs are less skilled and motivated.

I’ve seen people bringing this up, but while they talk of EEE and XMPP, it seems like the analogy here is not being quite finished and formulated.

If we apply that to this, it seems like people are saying “if Meta changed the ActivityPub protocol to favor them and become incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse, Fediverse users would choose to return to Meta-owned platforms.”

And that’s what I’m questioning. Would you? Would you think others here would? I wouldn’t. I’d rather go to whatever fork Fediverse devs favor instead. If anything, all the fear being expressed every time Threads integration is brought up only emphasizes that this is not how it would play out

I hear you. During the reddit exodus i left without having an alternative and stumbled upon lemmy much later. So i am fine going back to not having social media. However, a social network only survives if there is enough content. And if we are honest, lemmy barely has enough content.

Ill give you an example: I like climbing and there is !climbing@lemmy.ml with roughly 2 posts a month and !climbing@sh.itjust.works with less. I am happy to see something about my hobby twice a month. But all my friends still are on reddit, because two posts a month are not enough to them.

If you click on my profile, you will find 4 posts. I am a natural lurker, like most people on the internet, i read, vote and maybe comment. These posts, i made them because i wanted to add some content to this platform. While facebook is federated, there will be much more content. We can see theirs, they can see ours. Sounds like a win-win, right? But it may also make lemmings dependent on facebook content. If there is always more than enough content to endlessly scroll, I don’t need to upload my stuff to the network. However, if facebook pulls the plug after a long time, that leaves barely any content here and lemmy is basically dead.

I would probably still be around: Angrily clicking on some link about random big corpo, once a month smiling because someone shared a picture doing the same hobby as i. But for sure there are still people on old XMPP instances, while motivated dev’s reinvented XMPP: Matrix

TwilightVulpine
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I hear that, but I see it the other way around.

Like you, I have some niche interests, and to be honest the Lemmyverse is still lacking on that sense. I’m here more in hopes of what it might become someday, than because it appeals to me as it is. Most communities I’d like to participate of simply don’t exist here. Yeah I know “why don’t you make them”, but I don’t have the time to cultivate and manage a community. I find myself hopping back to Reddit because as much as that place is on a decline, it has those communities.

Like you say, integration or no integration, if the communities and content isn’t there, people will not come, or they will lose interest. This is already happening. Even with the occasional exodus only a few communities manage to be self-sustaining. Facebook can’t kill the Fediverse. Obscurity can kill the Fediverse. Your disaster scenario of what maybe could happen with Facebook is something that is on the verge of happening without Facebook anyway, all that might take is that one of the handful of people keeping the little movement there is in some of the niche communities gets tired and gives up.

As much as Facebook may control their platform and integration, they don’t control the people, and I’m sure some amount of people will be like “this place sucks” and hop over because they will see there are alternatives. If Facebook sets it up and then cuts it off, there will be people who will miss it and decide to move to the Fediverse for good. A small fraction of Facebook defectors would be enough to make this place much more lively. And again, would people just give up without Facebook content? It still seems like this is underestimating the people who want to make this place thrive or wish not to be beholden by Facebook.

It really seems like we are looking at two sides of the same coin.

The coin has already ben tossed. Let’s see on which side it will land - I certainly hope it is the one you described.

@Piece_Maker@feddit.uk
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And that’s what I’m questioning. Would you? Would you think others here would? I wouldn’t. I’d rather go to whatever fork Fediverse devs favor instead. If anything, all the fear being expressed every time Threads integration is brought up only emphasizes that this is not how it would play out

The network effect can be strong. Say you’re now able to contact all your friends via your favourite Activitypub instance, you had to previously use Facebook.com or Threads or whatever but now they’re all here. You delete your Facebook and keep your Activitypub account to speak to all your friends who are on Threads.

Now Meta pulls the federation plug, or adds some feature that makes your Activitypub server not able to fully cooperate (Maybe you can talk, but you can’t video call anymore, or you can’t post GIF/images, whatever). Now what? All your friends are over there and getting annoyed with you. So… you eventually succumb and fire up a Threads account.

That’s no worse than you started. The fact remains nobody is going to get 100% coverage of their contact list on the fediverse without Meta, so trading a Facebook account for a threads account is no different, and it ignores the benefits of that time when you maybe able to live without either.

Right? I don’t know how to express any more clearly for the people who already are here that being here right now is the proof that there are people will choose a better platform over the most popular one. Unless they are admitting they are personally one temptation away from returning to Facebook.

You mention EEE and forgetting how it works in next paragraph.

  • Embrace - facebook joins fediverse, existing users rejoice because now the user base was added with threads users
  • Extend - facebook starts adding proprietary features to their product, many users start switching, because if they use threads.net they can have the new features AND still have access to the entire network
  • Extinguish - facebook comes to conclusion that there’s not many users on fediverse anymore, and being compatible only holds them up, so they disconnect, suddenly it gets very silent on fediverse, some people will jump to threads.net, because their friends are there, others will quit completely eventually making the network even emptier

This exact thing happened with Jabber/XMPP and it was also realization that vast majority of people are not loyal to some ideals and will switch to whatever works for them. Companies absolutely hate to have product they can’t fully control.

I’m so tired of this argument. I keep hearing you guys repeating this again and again and again and again and again and it never makes sense. You take way too many conclusions for granted of how it would play out. EEE is not a cursed mantra of inevitable destruction, it’s a tactic which relies on public trends, and we are not trend chasers, we are niche users.

Extend - facebook starts adding proprietary features to their product, many users start switching, because if they use threads.net they can have the new features AND still have access to the entire network

WHY?

Would YOU really jump into Threads?

Who is this person that you imagine that dropped Facebook and Twitter, but will jump right back as soon as they so much as see it again.

Such a person wouldn’t even be here to begin with, They would already be there.

Extinguish - facebook comes to conclusion that there’s not many users on fediverse anymore, and being compatible only holds them up, so they disconnect, suddenly it gets very silent on fediverse, some people will jump to threads.net, because their friends are there, others will quit completely eventually making the network even emptier

What makes you guys so sure if a shutdown comes everyone will choose to go to Threads?

Because they got more content? Because there are more users?

Guess what, that’s HOW IT IS RIGHT NOW. With this logic, how do you even explain that we are here right now? Just because we apparently don’t get a single whiff of THE BIGGEST SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM IN THE WORLD?

It does not make sense.

Do you have so little confidence on what we have here? That nothing we offer could compare?

That’s where I disagree the most. I believe many people would like the experience they could have in the Fediverse, yet, unlike Facebook, it isn’t something widely known or advertised.

This exact thing happened with Jabber/XMPP and it was also realization that vast majority of people are not loyal to some ideals and will switch to whatever works for them.

Jabber is not a community, it’s a communication tool. A communication tool is only fit to purpose if it allows people to communicate with those they want to. Social Media is about community. There is appeal in connecting with like minded people even if not literally everyone you know is there.

And yeah, most people aren’t loyal to social media either. WE ARE NOT MOST PEOPLE. We are the people who ALREADY CHOSE ideals over convenience. Or, more cynically, functionality. Because Meta’s inscrutable algorithms suck for anyone wishing to tailor their own experience, which is why I doubt they can even meaningfully Expand to begin with.

I would bet that if such integration came and went away, the Fediverse will come out of it bolstered. I don’t doubt Facebook would try EEE, but what they stand to gain is insignificant and very debatable, and what we stand to gain is enormous.

Don’t take their complete takeover as granted. If things played out as they intended so easily we would all be on the Metaverse paying for digital replicas of street art or some other other unexplicable bulshit.

It’s silly, you’re just thinking that somehow this time will be different.

it’s a tactic which relies on public trends, and we are not trend chasers, we are niche users.

Maybe you are, but most people aren’t. With XMPP, I was similar, running my own server. I didn’t jump to GTalk, but it still ended up with me shutting it down after I ended up to be the only person on my rooster.

WHY?

Would YOU really jump into Threads?

I don’t, but I’m not the most people. I didn’t jump with XMPP, but it still killed it for me.

Who is this person that you imagine that dropped Facebook and Twitter, but will jump right back as soon as they so much as see it again.

Such a person wouldn’t even be here to begin with, They would already be there.

I think you believe that everyone on fediverse is for the same reason as you are. Though I even doubt that, it’s ironic, since you’re here for 9 months, so you arrived here because of the API change. Don’t you think if it was about principle you would be here much earlier than that? Add to it that you’re still quite active on reddit, so you’re lying to yourself and (at least from the outside) it looks like likely you would be one of those people.

TwilightVulpine
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First of all, gross. Cut it out with the stalker bulshit.

Second of all, you are not making the point you think you are. You just found out that my oh-so-unprincipled self posts in other places. Well, if I was “those people” you speak of, I wouldn’t be here. Isn’t that your whole point? That people will quit it as soon as anything vaguely more popular comes by? Now I ask, sherlock, what am I doing here?

Maybe you didn’t pay much attention while you were combing over some random stranger’s whole internet presence, but I literally spelled it out, I wish this place to grow so that communities that I like take root here instead of being non-existent or ghost towns. But since they didn’t yet, I hang around in places where they do exist also.

You are right about one thing, people don’t have allegiance to any platform. Which also means I can be in multiple places at once. You might have gotten that if you weren’t so engrossed feeling lemmier-than-thou.

It’s silly, you’re just thinking that somehow this time will be different.

Would YOU really jump into Threads?

I don’t, but I’m not the most people.

And so are most people who are here, that’s the difference. The people who want to be on Facebook, stay on Facebook. How hard can you slam your face on the point and still miss it?

But hey, if you want to wallow in paranoia I’m gonna stop sweating it, because trying to push back against it only got some random creep sniffing through my stuff.

I agree with you, I’m totally fine federating with them. If they choose to become incompatible with me, THEIR users will lose access to the content on the rest of the fediverse. They have an obligation to get ad revenue. If they can have someone else host the content, then use their interface to put ads and collect data on their users, it sounds like a win, as those users can still interact with me. If they really wanted to EEE and create incompatibilities, the rest of the ActivityPub instances just carry on as normal without supporting those extensions. The ecosystem already exists without the integration, so it’ll just go back to being separate again, exactly as it is now.

They don’t need to kill “every” lemmy/masto instance to kill the ecosystem. You just need to absorb enough of it that the only people left outside of your perversion of the ecosystem are certified weirdos.

E-Mail was (and still is) an open standard anyone could use. But after decades of getting EEE’d, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone using an E-Mail Not provided by the corporate giants, even like, other enterprises have rolled their e-mails into the Google/Microsoft ecosystems, and ALSO if you have an e-mail address that is outside those domains, normies who are inside the corporate ecosystem will have trouble communicating with you as your address will get autoflagged as spam more often than not.

TwilightVulpine
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…we already are all certified weirdoes. The average internet user doesn’t have a single clue what Lemmy or Mastodon is. There isn’t an Established Fediverse Institution that is household name for regular people on social media.

Meta could buy up lemmy.world and mastodon.social and they’d end up… exactly in the same place because most people who got into those got there to avoid big social media companies to begin with, and they’d jump ship immediately. This is the alternative social media movement. The people who are on established protocols are the ones who are already on Facebook and Twitter, and many don’t even like those. They only stick around on those because everything else sounds too complicated for them.

Facebook and Twitter are today’s social media GMail and Outlook equivalents. Lemmy and Mastodon are not.

People throw EEE around full of fear but it just sounds like it just became a sort of boogeyman mantra. It doesn’t apply. There isn’t some magic that can make Meta dominate a whole decentralized ecosystem like this. The only possible way for it to happen is if everyone decided to jump back there (which is what happened to GMail and Outlook) but paradoxically because Fediverse users are so paranoid of even vaguely coexisting in an interconnected vicinity, the odds of that happening are zero.

Count Regal Inkwell
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I will concede on the “we are all weirdos” bit. Fair point.

because Fediverse users are so paranoid of even vaguely coexisting in an interconnected vicinity

(this is a good thing, megacorps corrupt all that they touch, actually by your own metric, if fear of Meta is what keeps the fediverse safe, than I say the best defence is for us to never stfu about it)

To a certain point I get it, but I also want more people to come over here. It’s not because I think Meta is great and totally trustworthy to hang around with, it is not. It’s because I’d like my family and friends and creators I follow to make the jump over too.

Ouch, so I’m a certified weirdo just because I don’t have accounts on GAMAM sites?

And my mail accounts not by big corpos work well regardless…

Count Regal Inkwell
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Definitely on that first one. Normies are all inside the GoogleMetaAmazonMicrosoft panopticon. If they are old they might still have a Yahoo Mail, but that’s as spicy as it gets.

As for the second bit – All evidence I have is purely anecdotal. My ProtonMail account works fine and no one ever complained about not getting mail from me, but I have heard stories of people who use mail accounts not from GMail/Outlook getting flagged as spammers and having trouble chatting with the normies ™. Or having trouble creating accounts on sites because their e-mail is considered “not valid” by whatever system they put up on the shitty-ass site.

I feel like its worth pointing out other Mastodon users can block an entire ActivityPub domain if they want. This could be a problem, but you have a great deal of control in how much reach Threads has on your account and instance.

I have accounts on both Threads and Mastodon and will keep using both.

athos77
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“I know there’s a ton of skepticism about Meta entering the fediverse — it’s completely understandable,” Cottle says. “I do want to kind of make a plea that I think everyone on the team has really good intentions. We really want to be a good member of the community and give people the ability to experience what the fediverse is.”

If I wanted Facebook shitposts and forwards from KlanMa, I’d’ve joined Facebook. And I don’t believe Meta has good intentions, I believe they want to overwhelm the fediverse, and I believe they want to make money. Middle-manager Cottle and their team may have good intentions, but corporate certainly doesn’t, and I certainly don’t trust their users.

If I wanted Facebook shitposts and forwards from KlanMa, I’d’ve joined Facebook.

I want to connect and talk to people from the Metaverse (Facebook and Threads, is it called like that?) without using their account and applications. Meta connecting to Fediverse is a good move in my opinion and what the world needs (I’m not sarcastic at the moment). In fact, I wish every company in the world offering social media would connect to the Fediverse. We have builtin ways to block other instances if we don’t like them. Hell even Reddit should do it…

Its a double edged sword. On one hand, what you mentioned. On the other, if any other instance moderated the way Meta does they’d be siloed on the Fedi.

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I can’t see anything good coming from a company that actively spreads hatred and racism. Most of came here to get away from reddit and I keep everyone saying fuck spez, fuck reddit but hey let’s invite someone who 100 worse than spez to the fediverse. Someone who has no morals at all, someone who admits he doesn’t care about privacy. Why? Just so that fediverse can grow? Is it really worth it? So you can speak with friends on threads? Make a threads account and use an ad blocker to talk to them.
I don’t mind bridging with other protocols like bluesky but I don’t not see any value in federsting with threads it will only fil the the fediverse with so much crap that we will not able to block it.
Well that is my opinion anyway

I don’t think isolationism is going to help the Fediverse thrive, or that there are no worthwhile users on Facebook platforms that could be persuaded to come this way if they get to see what it’s like.

Having to deal with toxicity from that would suck, but it’s not as if the Fediverse is this pure untainted land either. Worst comes to worst, instances can defederate them.

PrimalHero
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I am not saying we should completely isolate us. As I said I open with bridging with other protocols. But I am against fedeting with Facebook because yes we are not a pure land but in comparison to the hell that is Facebook it’s better here.
Defederating with other instances can only do so much if not everyone does it

I think in this discussion people aren’t putting in perspective that Facebook as a platform can suck but that doesn’t mean all their userbase is terrible and ill-intentioned. There’s a lot of different people there that could become good contributors in the Fediverse.

I don’t think we should invite Mark Zuckerberg to get the reins of Lemmy, but if some of the artists at Instagram and Threads decide that Mastodon is worthwhile, that’d be pretty good.

PrimalHero
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No we take that into perspective but the good does not outweigh the damage that all the toxic people will do.

The Fediverse has no lack of toxic people, entire toxic instances, and we can handle them just fine.

(hi ya!) Yes, totally understandable. The thing is, I am not inviting spez or suckerburg, but the users. They don’t take control over Fediverse and we have the ability to block any instance or person we want. It’s not just that Fediverse can grow, but so that it becomes the standard protocol to communicate with others. Fediverse isn’t a specific platform.

( Edit: This paragraph is just an analogy in other areas, where bringing them together benefits the users, just so they can communicate and interact with each other. ) It’s basically asking for every game company open to cross play games or that Windows users can write with Linux users through web technology, with their favorite applications, accounts and servers.

Finally we have an universal protocol that can be adapted by anyone, similar to what HTML became for websites. I understand the concerns, and there is also a reason why I left Facebook over 10 years ago, don’t use Twitter and Reddit.

PrimalHero
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I get what you say but Facebook is full of toxic users it’s not suckerberg the problem. And defederating will not help because you will have to defenderate also with instances that want to federate with Facebook or else the messages will eventually come through. At least that how I
understand federation works. So eventually you would have to fediverses.
I would love to have a unifiying protocol but I really don’t think it will work. It will split people eventually someone will fork the protocol so that it can not federate with Facebook, splitting it.

Yeah, that would zuck, if it works like this and we cannot de-federate effectively. This problem needs to be solved off course, but that is something that can be integrated later. The important part is, let the users federate if they want, let them decide. That off course should only happen if the system is working correctly (such as entirely federating, like you suggested). Edit: Too many But(t)s removed.

And if someone truly creates a fork of the protocol, then it would most probably be compatible. And you could switch to it if you truly want to. That’s the point of it, which people and we don’t get with Facebook. I do not want to use their spyware and not be part of it, but I want to talk to people using it (like family).

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I am not sure it can be fixed because that is just how federation works else the activity pub would have to rewriten from scratch.
I don’t see the fork being compatible because that is the reason to fork it in the first place, people not agreeing with what should be federated or not.

Yeah, I love the idea of the fediverse because it creates a democratized community where anybody can choose to listen to who they want. Unfortunately this attracts very clicky users that feel like they own the fediverse and want to push others out. I’ve seen it a couple times already with people clambering to defederate other instances they don’t like. Thankfully we can just choose to not listen to them, lol.

I don’t like Facebook and I understand the concerns that Facebook will sort of take over the fediverse from the inside like a parasite. But at the end of the day you can just spin up a vanilla instance and connect with anyone willing to do the same. That’s what’s great about the fediverse.

FiveMacs
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You have just made a solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

If you’re talking about the problem of someone acting like they get to decide who is allowed and what happens on the platform, I agree in principle, but that’s why the fediverse exists.

I’m not particularly worried about it. I can block them if they annoy me. And on the bright side, their large user base may help make the Fediverse mainstream enough to topple the tech giants.

You can’t topple a tech giant with tech giant tech users. The fuck?

Network effect. Users need the ability to connect to most other users, in order for them to start leaving the tech giant.

FfaerieOxide
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Users need the ability to connect to most other users

They can leave meta and do that right now.

Are you sure? How does one connect to users on WhatsApp and Messenger from outside of Meta?

FfaerieOxide
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How does one connect to users on WhatsApp and Messenger from outside of Meta?

You mail them a fucking letter saying, “Leave meta.”

You call them on the phone and say, “Leave meta.”

You visit them in person and say, “Leave meta.”

Hack into a defunct spy satellite and carve “LEAVE META” in the countryside using its lasers.

People exist outside of meta. They breath, they eat, they shit. Find that pile of meat that exists outside of zuck’s servers and get a message to it.
Shit, how did people communicate before facebook?

how did people communicate before facebook?

Depending on how far we go, they’d have a scribe write down what they wanted to say.

We don’t live in those times anymore, and a good chunk of people would sooner not talk to you, rather than move a finger to change their ways.

Hence, the network effect.

deleted by creator

Agreed.

Lad
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Yes. I will never trust anything that Meta or anyone associated with it say. They can try to spin whatever bullshit they like with their PR speak, but fundamentally they are out to make money.

Gamma
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I’m glad there were emojis in the headline so I knew how to feel about it 🥴

🤣

MentalEdge
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Opt-in only?

Also only really discusses outbound federation, how is inbound content going to work?

Meta will probably be pretty cautious and strict about what inbound content is allowed, since they have a global quagmire of laws and regulations to comply with and cannot just open up the firehose without significant legal risk. I’d imagine they’d only accept content from vetted instances that agree to some amount of common policy.

The whole thing is a preemptive move for EU laws requiring “gatekeepers” to allow interoperability with their ecosystem. Facebook is likely to accept any EU registered instance that is also subject to EU laws… and they may not bother with instances from regions that don’t require them to do so.

To be fair, it is understandable decision, as it would copy and connect data / posts to other servers automatically. On the other hand most people don’t care or understand what this is about and probably never enable it. Still better than nothing in my opinion. Hopefully all new users get a notification and popup to ask if they want to join the Fediverse too. And new user account registration will probably show an option too at registration time.

Seems unlikely. This is Meta’s malicious compliance with MDA or whatever from the EU.

How is it “malicious”?

We don’t know yet the full answer to that but I’d say being “opt in” without any sort of prompt ( especially when every other fucking Meta feature is “opt out” ), or having unidirectional federation would qualify as malicious.

At what exactly do you refer to? Meta does not need to federate with the Fediverse. I am not aware of any law that would force Meta doing this.

Lionir [he/him]
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The DMA (Digital Markets Act) has clauses that force big companies that are considered “gatekeepers” to allow interoperability with other services.

Good to know! I guess that’s why Apple is forced to communicate with Android.

Yes, also why Apple is going to allow sideloading (even though they also are complying maliciously) and also MS now allows you to uninstall Edge.

All of this, of course, only applies in the EU.

@clgoh@lemmy.ca
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That’s the future. All networks connected, but I can control what’s in my feed.

blargerer
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Its basically also the past right? RSS feeds.

How do you reply to a RSS feed?

Email?

@clgoh@lemmy.ca
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I mean public reply.

@jarfil@beehaw.org
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Mailing list bot publishing everything on a web?

https://lkml.org/

Just saying, but mailing lists predate the web itself, and so do Usenet news.

My instance will most definitely not be federating with this. It’s Meta. Untrustworthy to the core. I didn’t spin up my own Lemmy server and pay out of pocket monthly just to loop bullshit social media companies back into it.

With all the hate towards Facebook, my prediction is there will be two fediverses: one that federates with Facebook and the other that doesn’t. We’ll see how that plays out.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

sab
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Well, the ones that federate with Meta will still be federated with those who don’t. So it’s really no different from what the Fediverse is already: Fragmented by design.

What I mean is that non-facebook fediverse will also transitively disconnect from facebook: if you federate with facebook or allow any instance in your federation network to connect to facebook --> disconnect. Effectively 2 networks.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

There are well over 10 “fediverses” already:

  • Federates with Lemmygrad
  • Federates with Hexbear
  • Federates with LemmyWorld
  • Federates with NSFW
  • Federates with hardcore NSFW
  • Federates with piracy
  • … etc.

One more won’t change a thing, it’s working as intended.

You may have a point 🤔 Hadn’t considered that. Well, it’s fine. That’s the freedom provided by the protocol. Might as well embrace it.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

AutoTL;DR
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🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

During the FediForum conference on Tuesday, Meta’s Peter Cottle showed off a brief demo of how users will eventually be able to connect their accounts and posts to the fediverse.

As you can see in the video below, which FediForum shared with The Verge, Cottle can navigate to his Threads account settings and toggle on an option called “fediverse sharing.” Meta will then show a pop-up explaining what exactly the fediverse is, along with some disclaimers Meta will flag to users so they know what they’re getting into.

First, Meta notes that users will need to have a public profile to toggle on the feature, something Instagram head Adam Mosseri has already mentioned.

In other words, your post may still be visible on, say, a linked Mastodon server, even if you decide to delete it with Threads.

“I think this is a downside of the protocol that we use today, but I think it’s important to let people know that if you post something and another server grabs a copy, we can’t necessarily enforce it,” Cottle says.

The FediForum is an online event that gives developers the opportunity to show off what they’re working on in the fediverse.


Saved 66% of original text.

@inmatarian@beehaw.org
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My concern with this (and other attempts like it) is that the initial integration will of course be done with good intentions by a team who shares the values of the community. And then they will get promotions or move to other jobs within two years and leave the technology to whims of revenue-generating part of the organization who will be merciless with it.

In terms of damage to the community, it’ll be impossible to talk to the people you want to with ten thousand spamming robots separating you.

MxM111
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Is there a real problem there? One can always find an instance not federated with Meta.

My concern is that the toxic culture from Meta’s platforms will be imported here, and the only way to get away from it would be to not only defederate from Meta but to defederate from anything federated to Meta (essentially creating two fediverses). I hope it doesn’t come to that, but that’s my worry.

Replace “Meta” with “Hexbear”, “Lemmygrad”, “Lemmy World”, etc., and see how the multiple fediverses are working right now.

It’s definitely a nicer experience around here if you block certain instances, I won’t mention names myself. The difference is that Meta’s instance is big enough to completely drown out everyone else which can’t be said about the above.

Can’t drown out anyone who doesn’t federate. The names are examples of shards of the current state of the fediverse; there was a website with a federation graph, that made it more visually clear; we are experiencing a “fragmented” fediverse right now, and it’s a feature not a bug.

In which case you essentially return to the status quo right now, where the Fediverse is a small group of somewhat-ideological tech enthusiasts.

There’s a good argument for keeping it small and focused. Massive all-encompassing social networks are relatively new and not a good thing in my opinion.

ɐɥO
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and I like it exactly like that. The lemmyverse at least feels big enough

@inmatarian@beehaw.org
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Yeah but, we did already. Right here. I’m assuming that if you’re already a fediverse user, it’s because you left behind facebook, twitter, and the rest. They’re following us and the expectation is just that we’ll keep moving as they make the next thing shitty?

Yup, me on the fedi running away from big tech platforms, now meta stalking us even here bro wtf

520
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Right now, sure. Will that always be the case?

FaceDeer
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Well, at least we’ve moved from “Meta is Satan! Defederate!!1!” to “They may mean well now but they’ll turn evil later.”

Well, at least we’ve moved from “Meta is Satan! Defederate!!1!”

No we haven’t. I never stopped screaming that.

I scream it now. Fuck Meta.

We who? Speak for yourself please

Schwim Dandy
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I think it will be very easy to find a host that federated from them, making it easy to mitigate the damage.

@inmatarian@beehaw.org
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By moving to fediverse, we already left them behind. We’re being followed.

Binthinkin
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Meta is a shitbag company and I hope we can block their shitbag posts in our feeds.

katy ✨
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why sad faces. it looks awesome and i love how excited they are about activitypub embracing open standards should always be encouraged

Rimu
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It’s quite disarming, isn’t it?

But the nice happy guys coding the thing now are not the ones who are going to make the decisions later which will bring about the extend + extinguish phases, the ads, the crypto or whatever form the enshittification takes.

Flax
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That means you can interact with your friends on threads without using their app and seeing their ads. It’s a big win.

I want to be a good enough friend to encourage my friends to stay away from Meta. I don’t want to enable them.

Until meta starts to slowly block small instances and we end up with the next email. Technically federated, but controlled by a few large corporations that dictates the block lists. Let us block them first so we get to define what the fediverse should look like, not them.

Flax
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Then we’re back to ActivityPub as it is now. I hardly see Mastodon people jumping to threads. And governments might prefer having their own instance.

I’m sure the vast majority of people on Mastodon hate Meta enough to not jump ship. Why would you move from Mastodon to threads anyway? Instagram integration?

This is what I don’t get about the anti-Meta paranoia. Their worst case scenario is… exactly the same as we have now. They can’t make every single instance hand them over their whole userbases, that’s not how federation works.

I get why they don’t like Meta, but I have friends who use Facebook and Instagram, and maybe it would be nice if they could get a taste of the Fediverse experience. We might end up gaining more than Meta.

Flax
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I agree. The best thing we can do is take advantage of their federation by making a significant enough portion of their userbase on the fediverse, to the point that it relies on them. Many currently on the likes of Mastodon would probably rather die than use Threads.

The only real benefit I can see threads having over the rest of the fediverse is Instagram integration, which the convenience of that might be enough to have people prefer it enough to give them a market

Rikj000
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Hope my and other instances will de-federate from Threads/Meta.

We don’t need that spyware giant in the fediverse…

Nia [She/Her]
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deleted by creator

Rikj000
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Thank you for sharing that link.
And man happy to be on tchncs lately! :D

Jesus some of the names of the blocked instances are disturbing as hell

HeartyBeast
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This will probably be enough for me to convince my organisation to quit Twitter and spin up their own Mastodon instance if Incan te them that they will be able to reach Threads users

Lemmy users be like „I fucking love decentralized freedom“, until someone joins they don’t like.

I think you’re conflating a couple things here.

Firstly, the notion that Lemmings are xenophobic is false. While there’s evidence to support this claim, on closer inspection you’ll see the issue isn’t about embracing new platforms, but the type of platforms. This attitude goes beyond the Threadiverse and is in fact one of the fundamental attitudes of the fediverse, as exhibited with corporate instances getting fediblocked on mastodon.

To suggest that everyone is petty because they’re not embracing corporations is a giant stretch.

Counter to the outright lie that’s being peddled here is the excitement about NodeBB and its ActivityPub implementation.

Secondly, people hate Facebook and rightfully so.

Thirdly, BlueSky is still a corporation who, doesn’t implement ActivityPub and have built a platform that pretends to give people power while hoarding all the real power for themselves.

@Kichae@lemmy.ca
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Also, corporations aren’t “someones”.

If I wasn’t trying to get away from Meta I wouldn’t be on fucking lemmy I’d be on facebook. The whole point of me being here is I am trying to get away from them and other big tech platforms :)

You come to the fediverse for a reason.

I don’t wanna be that guy, but Lemmy has had, and continues TO HAVE a very noticeable problem with tankies that does impact its reach. None of the people I know want to hang out here because its married to the hip with tankies.

Tell them to join an instance that doesn’t federate with tankies 🤷

520
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It ain’t about people they don’t like, it’s about a powerful corporation known to be abusive, psychologically manipulative and unafraid to break laws so long as it benefits them.

You wouldn’t want such an entity under your roof either

No, but I would like to bring some of my friends and family members who use Facebook over to the Fediverse, and I believe it’s easier if they can already see what it’s like.

520
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Then give them a URL link to a good instance.

Do you really expect Threads to provide a fair, uncompromised experience of the Fediverse when it’s actively against their interests to do so?

If you think just linking an URL is enough to persuade people to join, either you are surrounded by exceptionally tech savvy people, or you never actually tried. Getting some people to make a Mastodon account is harder than pulling teeth.

But if they were already peeking from the window, maybe they just might.

You have a point Threads will definitely try to skew the experience in some way, but if they make it too bad, they will be the ones looking bad for it, because the average Meta user doesn’t even know what the Fediverse is. So they need to show some good stuff too.

And really, I don’t know who is it that y’all are imagining that dropped Facebook and Twitter for ActivityPub, but they’ll jump back in as soon as they get a whiff. I actually tried Threads. It sucks. Why would folks give up on the Fediverse for it?

It’s not the freedom of federating. It’s the freedom of being outside corpo.

PrimalHero
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Freedom doesn’t mean tolerating racism and hatred.

Lemmy users be like „I fucking love decentralized freedom“, until someone joins they don’t like.

No, especially when someone joins that we don’t like. The ability to defederate is the freedom that comes with decentralisation. If there were no bad actors decentralisation wouldn’t be so important.

Absolutely. The Fediverse has some gross ass places I don’t want to touch with a 10-foot pole.

@Kichae@lemmy.ca
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This.

There’s no “fediverse” to join. It’s not an actual place with boundaries and codified rules, beyond those imposed by the communication protocol.

It’s a free association content sharing network, and free association includes the freedom to not associate.

free association includes the freedom to not associate.

Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the aliens campaign for the US presidency, and can’t figure out why “abortions for all” and “abortions for none” are both unpopular opinions.

In other words, it’s about freedom of choice, not mandatory association.

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