The arguments I’ve heard about tracking etc are misguided and don’t understand the actual risks.
Firstly, posts on the fediverse are already likely being consumed by advertising platforms like Facebook & Google. It would be trivial for big tech companies to setup relays that act as scrapers.
Secondly, the value in platform’s tracking individuals is for advertising. There is no mechanism for these platforms to identify you browsing the we if your instance federated with threads. Your instance won’t share cookie sessions etc with threads. It doesn’t increase your exposure.
Thirdly, these platforms have the know how to deal with spam and they will be incentivised to share that tech with other federated instances.
Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is an evil company. But I haven’t heard a decent argument as to why them joining the fediverse is a bad thing. We always have the option to defederate in the future.
Change my mind.
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Basically this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
First they will add loads of new users and become the dominant instances. Then, they will add their own proprietary features that other instances cannot support. Finally, their extensions become the new de-facto standard, marginalizing the original implementations.
Since Meta has proven itself to be an evil company that does not act in good faith, it is better to not federate with them from the start.
Until I’ve read your comment I always thought that I would be a good idea but now I’m all against it.
Exactly this. In a federated network, the instance with the majority of users could dictate the protocol, forcing the smaller issues to continually adapt or die. See this post for a very real example of this.
But why do the current lemmy instances have to die if facebook decides to make ActivityPub+goldextra? We’ll just stay on our branch, maybe lose a few users who should know better. Facebook isn’t even making use of ActivityPub’s federation anyway, which is why we are here.
I’m actually afraid that they won’t defederate at some point but find some way to track the activities of the federated servers.
Becsuse you don’t move to the next phase until you reach a milestone. The embrace is the first step, to convert a small percentage of users of the original platform. Once you have those, you extend your features to have those users recruit more users to that specific instance or implementation, since they are more feature-rich or stable or whatever. Then once you have a critical point of users on your instance, you defederate from all others and develop your walled garden which now has all the users and the content.
I was gonna say that I never expected or wanted lemmy/mastodon to become mainstream anyway, far from it. And like dual-booting linux and windows, there are just some things I won’t abdicate in favour of convenience or having more followers/software or being on a platform with more market power.
But you know what, it’s a spectrum, from the volunteer/libre-heavy to the hideous proprietary tyrannies:
??? > FOSS > wikipedia > reddit > google > microsoft > twitter > facebook > ???
Maybe if we are able to accommodate a large fraction of the mod community of reddit and let the flexibility of federated diversity and “3rd-party apps” flourish against facebook’s top-down approach we might create a wikipedia-like oasis…
But probably not, because there is too much money to make in appmaking rather than written content creation.
Yup, exactly this for me too. Been done a thousand times before by companies like them. Plus the fact that the fediverse is not run by any company is just really nice - we don’t need them.
You forgot the biggest concern that people have.
Remember that Meta’s strategy has always been to buy out or kill competitors before they grow too big. This time, when the competitor is immune to normal methods, they’re all so friendly and cooperative. Why the complete 180, did they suddenly turn good?
Please read this: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Is your mind changed?
I just wanted to chime in here and add this lame-assed meme template to things we should retire in the fediverse.
Stephen Crowder is a bigoted chode, and using him for your meme template only undercuts whatever point you want to make.
Find a new meme for this purpose. Let’s do better.
I have no idea who Aaron Crowder is. Do you have a suggestion for a better meme template?
The Lisa Simpson presentation meme is perfectly cromulent for soapboxing.
But if you didn’t know, Stephen Crowder is a right-wing Fox News presenter and commentator (he often hides under the dubious label of “comedian”) who has been booted from YouTube several times for homophobic and racist content. The meme format is okay in itself, but I’d love to not see his smarmy mug in it.
The great thing about memes is anyone can make a new one. I eagerly await the replacement for this one, which to my nose has gotten quite stale.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth XMPP the Wise? It’s not a story the Corpos would tell you.
these platforms have the know how to deal with spam and they will be incentivised to share that tech with other federated instances.
Based on what? These private companies aren’t going to share anything because they owe it to their shareholders not to.
I dont think any of your points are wrong, it’s just the association with Facebook people are anti. The fediverse has a great reputation for being completely removed from profit motive driven mega corporations. Facebook joining is gonna make people question the fediverse is my understanding.
Pablo Escobar did a lot of great things in his local community. Many considered him a great guy. He’s the Facebook of Columbia. Meta is a predatory shit company that would put everyone in a suicidal depression to make a dollar. At least Escobar’s products had an up side for some people. Meta has no ethics. Only a fool invites a serial killer into their home because they like your new kitchen knives and want to have a look.
Facebook is reported to be using a shadow profile of non-facebook users. Mastodon stated that whenever you interact with a Threads user it will be recorded by Facebook. All they have to do is join a conversation as a lurker, and your data is sent to Facebook. Given a few more points such as time of day and topic they can start to narrow downwho you are. Add your profile picture, and manner of speech an AI, which they have a multitude of, can generate a probability of who is communicating. Over numerous interactions the law of six degrees of separation will have you nailed down. In some countries this is potentially a problem over data retention, but they’ll have lawyers looking night and day for a way around those trifling laws. Willingness to federate might be seen as consent by default in some cases.
This highlights my point. This attack vector exists with or without threads. Facebook and friends can already scrape fediverse posts and map them to users. Defederating Meta instances won’t solve this vulnerability. Which is my point, people don’t understand the actual risks.
Data gained through integration of an instance is far more than what’s gained in scraping. The data gained through federation will no doubt increase as Meta adds new features that require more data in order to federate with them. They have over a decade of evidence showing us they’re evil and have no respect for privacy or people. I do not understand your logic in saying it’s okay to federate, it’s like watching somebody defend an abusive partner. They’ve hurt you and communities in the past, stop giving them more rope. The devil does not need an advocate.
It’s worth saying, though, that Threads hasn’t joined the fediverse yet. They could be pulling an Apple, who committed to opening FaceTime and changed their mind. Let’s see.
Sorry, but I think you’re missing the main point.
The risk is not to be tracked, the issue is embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
They are currently competing with Twitter and Bluesky, they just need users to kickstart their new platform. That’s where the fediverse comes in. All Meta has to do is to convince the instances to give them users.
Meta has a lot of money to throw at UX, they will design a better one than Mastodon. Their instance will also be more reliable (since they have money for lots of computational resources). This will allow them to spread their influence on the fediverse (so that people follow others on Threads), growing up to be the largest instance, and then just defederate from everyone else to “stop spam”. People will then move to Threads so they keep following their friends there (because their friends signed up for meta, since it was all compatible anyway).
And only then, they will start to harvest data and put ads in front of you.
The one thing I would worry about is that a massive deluge of content from Meta would drown out anything else from Lemmy, and would effectively reduce Lemmy to just a client for interacting with Meta. Unless an individual could block Meta specifically (or any one instance) it would effectively kill the All category.
Also would the flood of new traffic make it impossible for individuals to bear the cost of small instances?
That’s just what I think anyway. I’m not totally against federating with them, but very skeptical.
Remember how Facebook bought Oculus and people thought it was gunna be great because VR was finally getting really strong financial backing but they ended up just making their own VR walled garden that requires you to sign in with a facebook account and you are only able to selectively play with PCVR players if they allow it on their app store?
How is this relevant? Meta isn’t buying the fediverse
But they obviously don’t have consumers’ best interests and rights at heart or even care about them for that matter, which they’ve demonstrated time and time again
They are anything but benign and I don’t think anything good can come from their involvement
Just the fact that they will bring so many users to the fediverse through their own locked down platform is a problem in itsself, bad intent or not because it destroys the decentralisation if there are millions of users all on one instance belonging to one company
Facebook is evil. But the fediverse should be resilient to evil bad actors, no matter who they are.
Facebook didnt buy the entirety of VR either. But they did fracture the userbase and if you cant spend so much on VR you’re stuck buying into metas walled garden now (Reverb lacks fundamental features) This sorta ground is what Meta is going to go for. They are going to target the largest, most manipulatable audience (which is a lot on here) and swallow them
