So, recently some fediverse admins (mostly Mastodon) and the founder of Mastodon, Eugen Rochko (Gargron), where contacted by Meta/Facebook for an NDA meeting. We know nothing about it, but we’re pretty sure that it was about this project92 thing that Meta/Facebook is creating to “compete” with Twitter.
So a lot of Mastodon admins already singed a pact to immediately block any Meta/Facebook activity in the fediverse as soon as it comes up. My Mastodon instance, fosstodon.org hasn’t singed that pact and I’m pretty worried.
The following image is an screenshot of Gargron and dansup (creator of Pixelfed) talking about this. These posts were deleted, even from the wayback machine.
Facebook’s algo is a deliberate choice. If the only problem was with what the humans who use the service did, why doesn’t reddit, tumblr, instagram, or previous to Elon, twitter have the same level of drivel constantly circulating their top posts? On other corner of the internet, trolls like Dan Bongino don’t get any real traction because they don’t hold any views that most people actually have. On FB, at least around the last time I cared about looking, 5-8 of the top 10 posters on FB would be extremely niche on any other social media sites, and should be even more niche on facebook since they represent an extremely tiny piece of the real world and facebook has a far larger sample size than just about any other company.
Also, re: messenger encryption and not looking back with hindsight, another messaging app also came out in 2011 with E2E - iMessage. WhatsApp added support for E2E in August of 2012. Why did it take facebook so long?
On Facebook’s nefarious practices creating your social graph - I deleted my facebook account in like 2016. During the pandemic I, admiittedly, compromised my moral position on facebook and created an account to use marketplace. How, without me telling Facebook just about any real info, do you surmise they were able to suggest to me people I know IRL that I didn’t even know when I had a facebook account previously, while also using mostly fake info (slightly changed name, I think the only thing I used was my phone number and even that had changed since I’d previously used FB.)
Re: photos and “just don’t use facebook.” There is not really a way in modern society to really do that. I upload nothing to FB, but it’s already extremely difficult to not get people you know not to include you in pictures uploaded to social media, and tbh I don’t try because it’s just the default for most people these days, much less people you don’t know or don’t know well.
I don’t think discussion of Meta as a company can really go too far without turning into ragebait, and deservedly so. They’re basically the Ma Bell of the modern age, we just don’t have regulators with the stones to do anything about it these days.
