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@panos@calckey.social on the Fediverse & Meta's Threads
(calckey.social)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I don't disagree, but if it takes off there's going to be a selective pressure on instances to engage with meta's activitypub stuff and that's going to let meta scrape data. I think that being able to engage with a wide variety of users, especially on platforms like mastodon or other similar offerings, is going to be a good thing, but the protocol needs implicit ways to protect its users outside of just blocking out other instances, whatever that looks like, so that decentralization can be granular and not just "how much do you want to give your data to meta"
I agree - my main reason for sharing with this post in particular is because the tie-in it has with Beehaw's recent decision to, at least temporarily, defederate with .world and sh.itjust.works; I just found the framing about decentralization, esp. the fact that the Fediverse is not a monolithic entity mandating a uniformly aligned approach, useful.
On the whole, I do think either ActivityPub's protocol spec would need some kind of privacy revision, seeing as it's already been a Problem where microblogging admins have had to block access by servers dedicated to mirroring Mastodon posts which don't delete their copies after posts are deleted by the user, or the software itself, Lemmy in our case, will have to make adjustments to its implementation of federation like you said. Of course, I'm mostly just conjecturing here and I don't actually know what either of these might look like 😅
The main part of this which I problematize are the people who are sticking their necks out for Meta and suggesting instances shouldn't be quick to defederate because this is, supposedly, a good opportunity to bring federated social media into the mainstream. Yet, in my opinion, they're not making enough of the fact that, even with their open-source contributions, Meta's software manufactures discord and bigotry on a massive scale. Letting them federate with an instance opens floodgates on that and for the stealing and selling of Fediverse participants' data.
So, on one hand, yes. absolutely agreed, on all counts.
On the other hand, the point of social media is to engage with people. What if your mom has an account on meta's new activitypub platform? Is the interoperability of these platforms not also a huge feature? What if I want to follow my mom on mastodon when she's on facebook whatever, but not give meta my data? These all work best when we can protect ourselves and engage responsibly, and defederation/blocking at a server level, while a WONDERFUL emergency button, also rejects a lot of the funcitonality and beauty of the fediverse. And I think there's probably room to find a middle ground that protects users well while still letting them have that sort of engagement?
Mom doesn't necessarily have to be on Meta. If she wants her son to engage with her on a platform, she can be on kbin, lemmy or any other FOSS alternative once it reaches maturity.
Not being tied to a giant corporation should not mean "obscure" or "unusable for normal people".
People figured out email, they can figure out the fediverse, it just needs time.
Two things--
My point is that we need time and patience, not interfacing with Meta. Whether they use ActivityPub or something proprietary shouldn't matter to us and I'm not convinced matters at all in this context.
Meta already didn't wait - they have Facebook, Instagram etc. There's Twitter. We already exist in a space with big competitors, and somehow it works. Inviting them to our space sounds risky (risk of centralization, ads, bots, rage bait for engagement...).
If our thing is better, more wholesome, with less ads and bots, it's going to attract the people we want on our platform, regardless of whether or not we federate with Meta.
Plus, as was already said, fediverse success should not be measured by how many people use it. If enough do to produce good content and engage with, that's great on its own :) Small communities have benefits.
Gmail happened because they were giving away email for free, below cost, so that they could use their customers' data.
That isn't legal any more in the post GDPR EU.