A growing number of instances (mainly of Mastodon so far) are signing an ‘Anti-Meta Fedi Pact’, pledging to block any instance owned by Meta in the fediverse.
I don’t know how big this will get or how effective it will be, but if you run a fediverse instance, you should take a look at this https://fedipact.online/
I won’t claim to defend Meta, but wouldn’t at least give them the benefit of the doubt until there’s details of the project a saner approach? We literally know nothing about it except it’s in the works.
Give Meta an inch they’ll take a mile. No quarter. No wait and see. No half measures. We don’t literally know nothing; we know Meta is involved. That’s enough for me to say no.
They’ll follow the Microsoft route, pretending to be for open standards, then extending the standard for only their apps and sites, and with sheer numbers and money they’ll grab a bunch of users who will come to expect the features and implementations they provide and then bam. No more fediverse.
Not. One. Inch.
Well yeah, but there isn’t any indication that they’re modifying the standard at all. ActivityPub is still it’s own thing that they will be presumably tapping into, what I get from the current info is they are just creating a kbin/Mastodon competitor which should be its own thing entirely.
there isn’t any indication that they’re modifying the standard
There is an indication they are Meta.
Any other info is superfluous. Their being Meta is an adequate reason to preemptively shun them.
Give meta the benefit of the doubt? Are you joking? We literally know exactly how awful they are in every area they touch.
I avoid their services like the plague, but not everything Facebook does is inherently evil. For instance, they did zstd, React, and Ent (I’m not a dev, so I may be wrong about the last two being good, but React at least seems to be very popular). They’re also in the top 10 of employers contributing to the Linux kernel from 5.16 to 6.1.
No. Meta is a known bad actor. They have a history of not being good for protocols and communities. They are already guilty. Just not here yet. Preemptive banning is appropriate. There is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.
After they roll out their project, then it can be assessed to see how much harm, if any, it will bring. At that point let them in or not, as evidence dictates. It is entirely possible that they will be a good fedi citizen, if the reason for doing this isn’t profit. And that is actually possible in this case. Because having some services that use Activity Pub is a way to get get certain regulators off their backs. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but it is possible.
@Mr_Jabroni
Considering the well-known privacy violations and surveillance practices of Meta/Facebook, it’s not hard to imagine that one of their future actions, possibly sooner rather than later, would involve cross-referencing accounts in the fediverse with their own platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and others. In Mastodon, users have the option to block instances, ensuring that those instances cannot access their data. However, we don’t even have that level of protection here.
@LollerCorleone
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they can already do that since all of the info in the Fediverse is public, they do not need their product for it.
@Silejonu shared this link with the posture a Mastodon instance is taking, which is what makes the most sense to me: https://hub.fosstodon.org/facebook-fosstodon-fedi
@Mr_Jabroni they can get data without a context, what is a big problem for the integration. For instance, to coreference accounts in different platforms, they cannot do it based on the name, but they can do it building a graph of interactions and learning from it… just as an example. Of course everyone can do the same, the problem is that Meta has not only the skills and resources, but that it is a substantial part of their business model.
I don’t claim that the Anti-Meta pact is a solution, I am far to know how is possible to go ahead with the situation. A first step is that the user should be allow to decide which instances cannot access her/his data, something that in Mastodon is already possible.
An additional problem is that after some representatives of big Mastodon servers took part in a meeting with Meta under NDA, I have a big problem of trust.
@LollerCorleone @Silejonu
No. Facebook. For me it will always be Facebook (company, not platform).
“Meta” is nothing more than an attempt to clean their image.
Unfortunately Meta has proven itself to be untrustworthy. Over their entire lifespan they’ve shown through their actions, and their statements by the CEO time and time again, that their main objective is to make the most money possible by exploiting their user base by any means available.
They’ve long ago lost the credibility to be given the benefit of the doubt. They’re terrible, they know it, and they like it that way.
You are appealing to reason, the people that are in favor of defederation are doing so based on emotion (because they simply can’t have enough information, because no one has that right now).
I’m not saying either approach is inferior, sometimes it’s better to use reason, sometimes it’s better to use emotion, I don’t know what is better in this case (there’s a component of future prediction to it, how you can even do that properly, I don’t know).
But I don’t think appealing to reason works in this particular case. People that are willing to act on emotions aren’t going to change that for rational reasons, they’ll change it for emotional reasons. You’ll have to give them emotional messages instead.
the people that are in favor of defederation are doing so based on emotion
No, they’re in favor of defederation because they know Meta’s history, and I suspect that you don’t. Read up on Facebook and XMPP, then comment.
Consider that three common core values of the Fediverse, and open software in general, are a propensity towards transparency, privacy, and decentralization. Literally everything Meta stands for is in opposition to that, including their lackadaisical approach towards moderation. If you look at our value profile, Meta is a threat actor in that regard.
We aren’t trying to find out what something new is going to do. A cancer that metastasizes in every host it’s ever had is likely to keep doing so, you don’t take a wait and see approach. You excise the malignance.
In this case, you surround it with walls until it dies on it’s own.
Amusingly enough, your assertion here is functionally identical to the one you’re criticizing.
Your assertion is that it’s not worth engaging with those who advocate for preemptive defederation because their fundamental nature makes it such that you cannot legitimately expect a positive outcome.
And that’s EXACTLY the position that those in favor of preemptive defederation have taken regarding Meta.
they simply can’t have enough information, because no one has that right now
Wait, are you saying there’s a chance Meta isn’t Meta?
Because I’m at least 99.9% sure of that information, and if accurate there is no need for any further information.
If you have reason to suspect that Meta somehow aren’t themselves, but candy unicorns, please tell me. That kind of intel would be pertinent.