Meta/Instagram launched a new product called Threads today (working title project92). It adds a new interface for creating text posts and replying to them, using your Instagram account. Of note, Meta has stated that Threads plans to support ActivityPub in the future, and allow federation with ActivityPub services. If you actually look at your Threads profile page in the app your username has a threads.net tag next to it - presumably to support future federation.
Per the link, a number of fediverse communities are pledging to block any Meta-directed instances that should exist in the future. Thus instance content would not be federated to Meta instances, and Meta users would not be able to interact with instance content.
I’m curious what the opinions on this here are. I personally feel like Meta has shown time and time again that they are not very good citizens of the Internet; beyond concerns of an Eternal September triggered by federated Instagram, I worry that bringing their massive userbase to the fediverse would allow them to influence it to negative effect.
I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place, and I’m eager to hear more opinions. What do you think?
Defederate with anything that remotely has to do with zuck
The day this instance federates with Meta is the day I leave. They, and any other big corporations, can fuck all the way off. We have seen where that path leads time and time again.
I’m sick of Meta
Well said, and same.
I think the majority are against federating with meta so we’re probably safe but same.
Meta has repeatedly introduced features intended to scrape larger amounts of data about our lives and tie it all into one big profile that they can sell. This area of the internet feels like one of the few remaining areas that they haven’t reached, and I’d bet everything I have that’s why they’re introducing this. I couldn’t be more strongly against allowing them a way to link my data here with the data they have from my usage of their existing products. While I understand the idea of open federation to allow disparate communities to interact, one of the lines I’ll draw is letting a massive corporation in like that.
I’m curious, are there policies for usage of data on a service like this? If you federate Meta (or any instance, or this instance), is that granting them the right to use your data as they wish? Assuming the answer is yes, could the Fediverse at large implement a broad, let’s call it “Terms & Conditions”, that must be acknowledged upon federation, regarding how the data is used? Or, if the answer is no, what are the limitations to how data in the Fediverse is used?
Also, how useful is my data to them anyway, if they can’t target me with ads? Certainly there are uses, but isn’t the primary end-game just selling me something? If I’m on an independent instance, I’m not sure how much I care about them having access to my data.
Edit: Mastodon founder Eugen touches on some these questions here. This is specific to Mastodon, I have no idea how much of this carries over for Lemmy.
Will Meta get my data or be able to track me? A server you are not signed up with and logged into cannot get your private data or track you across the web. What it can get are your public profile and public posts, which are publicly accessible.
They’ll still be able to scrape the fediverse and all instances without threads federating with them. Defederating doesn’t stop their access to your PUBLIC data on the fediverse.
Anyone can access the public data, but that is not a good excuse to invite them in through the front door. Defederating, at the very least, sends the message that they are not welcome to participate here.
And not being welcomed is going to stop them?
The guaranteed way to fail is to not even try to succeed.
I mean, we have nothing more to lose if they are hypothetically going to succeed. What does it cost us to just try? Why are so many people against even trying, despite it requiring absolutlely zero effort from most of us? Why rush to submit to bad things before they happen?
I strongly support basically firewalling the fediverse from anything Meta/Twitter/MS/Google/<insert Big Tech here> as a default behavior. They will 100%, without question make some sort of attempt to co-opt, corrupt, and monetize this ecosystem unless their interference is actively mitigated and corralled.
And sure, maybe there can be a collection of instances that do federate with Big Tech… but to be blunt, I’d look at those mostly as canaries in the coal mine.
Exactly this. It would be the height of stupidity to create this space/network that frees us from so much of the hyperconglomerate bullshit only to invite them in willingly.
Please for the love of Internet connectivity as a whole: block anything remotely attached to Facebook, not just the instance, but in general Internet daily life.
Zuck should die forgotten.
It does not go against the point of the fediverse to do so, either. Why would the ability to do this be baked into the code if it was not the intent to use it in certain situations? This would be a perfect use.
I can see maybe certain instances wanting it for whatever reason, but I’ll be packing up and moving to one that blocks it if this one allows it.
Agreed. With the nature of the Fediverse, defederating with anything from Meta doesn’t really restrict access for those who actually wish to interact with them. They can simply join their next nefarious venture.
The drawbacks to interacting with a company that so obviously only chases profit above all else far outweigh any "benefits " of their content.
Ser Robin had the right idea: bravely run away.
Brave, brave sir Robin.
Playing devil’s advocate a bit here:
Considering that I rate Facebook as evil as Google, would you support “defederating” Google Mail from other mail services?
In my opinion, the fediverse/ActivityHub is just the underlying protocol to enable people to connect to each other just like SMTP and whether I want to contact someone using a service provider that I don’t like is my choice and should not be the choice of my service provider…
would you support “defederating” Google Mail from other mail services?
Not OP, but yes. They have entirely too much control over email traffic. You have to play ball with Alphabet or not at all if you want to host an email server today - I don’t want that to be the fate of the fediverse as well.
Don’t you see how that would make e-mail worse for everyone that uses e-mail?
Imagine having an e-mail address but you couldn’t send an e-mail to your friend because for whatever reason your e-mail server decided to not block Gmail. That makes e-mail worse for everyone.
It’s the same here, we’re trying to get away from social media silos and move towards a protocol that lets everyone participate. The kneejerk reaction here is to just create a new silo that has different owners instead of just being part of a network that shares a protocol.
My understanding is that the main problem is allowing them to get any foot in the door in the first place. They are not in it to be nice, they are in it to beat out and absorb the competition for their gain. The fediverse is about giving users a place to go that’s not full of ads and algorithms. They only see us as untapped revenue streams.
While that’s true, other instances will eventually also need to find a way to make money. And unless you’re on the Facebook instance you shouldn’t see their ads (unless they inject those ads as posts).
The Facebook crowd can only assimilate us when we switch to their instance. I see a point where new users would prefer a bigger, i.e. Facebookey instance over smaller ones when they don’t know anything about the fediverse.
No. I disagree. They already used to keep tracking metadata on non-users (admittedly, I’m beyond sketchy on the details here), they’re not at all welcome here.
They already know too much about me
That’s fair but there’s a difference between getting donation money to keep the server running (Wikipedia) and trying to get every cent you can from user data and targeted ads.
If they get large enough, they will be able to force protocol changes.
Sure, if you hate it so much. Join a service that’s excluded.
The people here now largely don’t care about content from Meta. I don’t even care personally if people don’t want to switch from Meta to the fediverse.
I get being able to keep access to friends and their content, but a big draw of having this account is not being tied to me at all beyond my content and comments being semi publicly known to be from the same person.
The idea of federating to me seems to be being able to have one account with access to everything. That’s not necessarily a benefit.
If the fediverse gets big enough it won’t matter if they’re able to access Meta content. The grass gets too green here to feel like you’re missing out.
I don’t even think them being cut off from the 'verse completely is the intent either. I personally don’t want to be attached to them, so like I said, if this instance decides to that’s fine. I will move to one that’s not for myself. It doesn’t have to be that big of a thing.
Just like your example, of you personally don’t want to connect with Gmail, you join a network that’s not connected. Everybody’s happy.
I don’t want to touch their content, and I feel like I’m large part the people that have moved here already mostly agree in not seeing value in a connection to Meta.
This will not always be the case, and for them that’s fine.
I’m starting to get rant-y here, so I’ll cut it off.
But back to the original point- if you don’t want Google stuff, then yes, join a place without it. That’s ok, and kind of the design of this setup.
I really believe the content here will surpass anything they can possibly contribute, and then making an account over on this side shouldn’t be an impossible hurdle.
I just joined this place this week, fleeing reddit of course. So my vote may not be worth much. But if this place becomes meta-adjacent then I’ll see myself out. I have no desire to interact with Mark “move fast and break adolescent girls’ self esteem” Zuckerberg.
“Move fast and shatter democracy”
In the 1990s, Microsoft had an internal strategy called Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Microsoft saw the emerging Internet as a threat to their business, so they wanted to kill it. The basic idea was:
- Embrace: Develop software compatible with an existing standard
- Extend: Add features that are not part of the standard, creating interoperability issues
- Extinguish: Using their dominant market share, snuff out competitors who don’t or can’t support the non-standard protocol
It was working for Microsoft, and was a contributing factor in their killing off Netscape. For those too young to remember, Mozilla is the open-source “liferaft” that Netscape created before their business was destroyed by Microsoft. But, these days it’s effectively controlled by Google, who provides 85% of their funding, as long as they keep Google as the default Firefox search engine and don’t rock the boat.
The only thing that stopped Microsoft from destroying the open Internet was the antitrust case brought against them by the US Department of Justice. Antitrust action is the only thing that has kept innovation happening in tech. The antitrust case against IBM from 1969 to 1982 allowed for the rise of Microsoft. The antitrust case against Microsoft allowed for the rise of Google. Many people think we’re overdue for strong antitrust actions against Google and Facebook/Meta.
Facebook bought out every social competitor they could: Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. They can’t buy out the Fediverse, but they have to see it as an existential threat. Because of that, they’re undoubtedly going to try to use their near-monopoly status to kill off the Fediverse.
The “Embrace” stage will likely be just implementing ActivityPub. That will convince a lot of people that Meta is really on their side, and are working hard to be a good Fediverse citizen. They’ll probably even hire people who are current developers working on the ActivityPub standard, or who have developed key ActivityPub apps.
The “Extend” stage will probably involve adding features to “ActivityPub Alpha” which Threads uses but nothing else uses. It might involve some Meta-specific things, like embedding Instagram in an unusual way. It might involve something that is really expensive for an independent server, but affordable if you’re a multi-billion dollar company, like some kind of copyright check, or flagging if something is AI-generated. The features they’re likely to add won’t be offensive, they’ll probably be good ideas. It’s just that they’ll add them before going through the standards process, and so standards-compliant ActivityPub implementations will seem old and outdated. That will convince many people to move their accounts to Threads, or will at the least reduce the growth for non-Threads ActivityPub.
The “Extinguish” phase will be like when Google shut down Google Reader. Why bother having a standards-compliant way of doing things when usage is so low?
So… yeah, block Meta.
I am reposting my answer from another thread : Nothing good will come from meta ( or any other Gafa Microsoft included), ever. They will alway look for a way to corrupt any social media to their favor in order try to dominate the Web. At this point of the internet history anyone giving a speck of trust to them is dream walking into a disaster waiting to happen. There are already trying to bring Insta and activityPub service lol , and they didn’t haven’t started yet.
I came to the fediverse to get away from Meta and Twitter and Google and the like.
So personally I’d prefer if they stayed out of here.
Don’t federate, they are a terrible company.
Isn’t one of the points of fediverse is to get away from big tech shit?
I won’t maintain a membership on any platform that is federated with Meta in any way. That’s an absolute, 100% dealbreaker. Same with Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Apple. Anything they touch turns to assgarbage.
I am 100% OK with defederating everything run by Meta: They are a blight on the Internet.
I’m all for it. Ive heard arguments for and against interacting with meta instances in this way, and I won’t pretend to fully understand all the details.
Still, Meta has proven that they aren’t trustworthy time and time again. I’d really just prefer to remove myself from them as much as possible.
A good read about that with an historical perpective : https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
An important reminder of the right play here. If we are to keep the fediverse out of the hands of enshitification, we need to stay away from letting corporates play the game. Don’t federate.
