Meta can introduce their signature rage farming to the Fediverse. They don’t need to control Mastodon. All they have to do is introduce it in their app. Show every Threads user algorithmically filtered content from the Fediverse precisely tailored for maximum rage. When the rage inducing content came from Mastodon, the enraged Thread users will flood that Mastodon threads with the familiar rage-filled Facebook comment section vomit. This in turn will enrage Mastodon users, driving them to engage, at least in the short to mid term. All the while Meta sells ads in-between posts. And that’s how they rage farm the Fediverse without EEE-ing the technology. Meta can effectively EEE the userbase. The last E is something Meta may not intend but would likely happen. It consists of a subset of the Fediverse users leaving the network or segregating themselves in a small vomit-free bubble.
Some people asked what EEE is:
So many knee-jerk reactions.
This is an open protocol with complete freedom to create apps and scripts. If this becomes an issue users could block certain interactions in a granular manner, for example block replies from certain instances.
XMPP being thrown around as an example makes me think people who do it weren’t there to witness it. XMPP by itself wasn’t really used by many but there were also many more popular messaging platforms at the time. XMPP wasn’t killed because it wasn’t ever alive other than short golden era when it was mostly a way to open itself to third party clients (Gaim, Trillian, Adium etc) which was very nice.
Next year EU is going to make all tech giants open in this way again. Mastodon can EEE Threads too by being a better implementation. It has no commercial pressure and Activity Pub and formatting tweets is not as complex as a web browser engine or a word processor document format which are way better examples of successful EEE.
If you defederate you’ll end up exactly where XMPP is.
I agree with the sentiment, I’m not a fan of preemptively blocking meta on instance level, especially when everyone was touting about how the fediverse is corporation resistant and by design it is resilient because of it’s horizontal nature, but at the first sign of threat they resort to the nuclear option.
Having said that, Lemmy specifically lacks tools on the user level, especially blocking instances. If a user doesn’t want to associate at all that is understandable (privacy concerns, not wanting to interact with hate groups, etc) but right now they can only block communities and users individually, which would make it impossible to block meta.
Lastly, I feel there are avenues that haven’t been properly explored, like forcing them to open source if they want to federate. (On the grounds of privacy concerns and security) In practice that would be the same as blocking them, but it would laid out a good foundation for new companies that want to enter the space without having to discriminate on a case by case basis.
Problem is that blocking is the nuclear option and everyone blovking before something comes out, which no one knows the danger yet like a hate speach platform would entail, goes against the spirit of the fediverse.
My reason for preemptively blocking Threads is much simpler - Lemmy exposes a TON of data from all instances. I simply don’t want to feed the data hog any more than absolutely necessary.
But a counter is that much of that information is already public and can be scraped, they aren’t gaining much on outside meta users that they aren’t already able to do.
Best advice at the end of the day is that for social media, unless advertised on privacy, never post anything you dont want to be public. And for cases like lemmy, expect even metadata to be available for anyone interested.
I understand the wish to not interact with meta, even if its for privacy concerns.
But Im a firm believer that it is the user first who needs to make that decision, not the instance. But as I said, Lemmy being the only one of the big fedi platforms right now that doesnt have a feature for instance/domain blocking user level kinds of screws this up.
I don’t think Mastodon allows user blocking instance either but I don’t see why that can not change in the future.
I’m not sure forcing open source on other instances is the right way to go. I imagine that in the future there could be instances that offer more polished experience, maybe a really nice proprietary app, that are commercially funded. As long as we have open alternatives and interoperability then we should be fine. In terms of privacy it’s a matter of regulations.
I also fully respect choice of some instances to defederate from commercial platforms but in a rational environment it would be akin to subset of Linux users opting to use free software only with no binary blobs and things like that. Perfectly reasonable thing to do if that’s what your ethics / philosophy dictates. Just don’t think it’s something that is a net benefit to average person.
Good points. I’m sure there are other potential solutions to reduce the fear of EEE taking place here. I don’t really think EEE would work, since instances are supposed to be small and operate horizontally, it is kind of impossible to kill Lemmy as long as we understand that we need to spread out a little bit (otherwise huge instances being defederated hugely impacts the user experience)
One thing though, Mastodon does allow for blocking domains. I just tried it over Mastodon.online and also through the fedilabs app, both are working. Kbin also has that feature, wish they implemented it to Lemmy so that we can empower users to customize their experience without needing to self host.
Next year EU is going to make all tech giants open in this way again
Can you expand on that?
Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:
- allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
Example of the “don’ts” - Gatekeeper platforms may no longer:
- treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper’s platform
- prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms
- track end users outside of the gatekeepers’ core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising, without effective consent having been granted
Ok WTF does “EEE” mean? I’ve seen people throw it around as if it’s some totally common abbreviation. Even if I google for it, all I find is some horse virus.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
Embrace an open standard by using it yourself, start extending it at a pace competitors can’t (preferably obfuscating how it works), leave everyone behind.
A good example is Microsoft Internet Explorer back in the day. Web technologies like HTML and CSS are open standards and at the time fairly straightforward. Once Microsoft hit critical mass by bundling IE with Windows they took leadership from Netscape and started adding more and more proprietary crap like ActiveX which some sites opted to use because everyone was using IE anyway and people using other browsers were forced to use IE. This was also a major issue for Linux users at the time.
It took years of regulatory / antitrust pressure, tremendous effort from Mozilla and their browsers, as well as big players like Google and Apple embracing KHTML (later forked into WebKit and then Blink engines) to unscrew humanity from that depressing era of internet history.
Web browsers working slightly differently is still an issue without anyone breaking compatibility on purpose. It was just so much worse when someone did it maliciously.
And that’s precisely why so many people are calling for everyone to defederate immediately from anything facebook-owned. The only way to prevent this is to not even let them get started.
Yeah imo this is the only way. Fediverse should be completely user-owned, we need to isolate any corporation that tries to get involved.
Either we have an open system or we don’t.
It’s sort of like open source encryption algorithms versus security by obscurity. One is totally open because it’s foundation is strong. The other is hidden because it is actually weak.
Which are we going to be?
Encryption standards are open, but would you give your private keys to someone untrustworthy?
We are going to be open. Open to the idea that a bucket of shit does not have to be forced upon us. Open to using the tools to get rid of said bucket.
This feels very close to the paradox of tolerance, honestly. To achieve maximum tolerance, you can not tolerate those who are intolerant themselves, or they will destroy you from within. I think something similar applies here. To achieve a maximally open system, be open by default, but only to those who actually share the goal to keep the system as open as possible, and defend vigorously against those who don’t.
The corporate power structure is the problem. Non-profit status is like a negative head start to corruption. Ubuntu is taking step after step of microsoft like action for example. Also, wikimedia is dead. They have a massive Mormon style of excess funding that they put on the casino stockmarket while still begging and harassing for donations.
I agree with the sentiment but with a caveat:
Just like with email, I think the future of the Fediverse will involve institutions and companies running their own instances for discussion related to their niche.
For example, universities might run their own servers for campus-related discussion, and game companies (Paradox Interactive comes to mind) might run a server for discussion around their games and by their members.
Running a server is expensive, and in the long run I think the sustainable future will be for established institutions with large budgets to put a tiny part of that forward for instance hosting, rather than individuals self-hosting instances that actually lose money even when buffered by user donations.
Running a server isn’t that expensive. Someone did a breakdown, and found the cost is around $0.20/user/year. Their math might have been a little off, but it’s in the ballpark based on the back of the envelope math I use to see if something scales
That’s well within casual donation amounts.
But, that assumes admins and mods are volunteers- maybe they get a few bucks now and again, but their time is a far bigger factor than server costs
Pretty stupid to want to defederate an instance over one Trump troll, but not defederste Zuckerberg, the emperor of trolldom. Yes, pls do everything possible to keep Meta away.
The moment I start seeing Meta content here is the moment I leave. People are being very, VERY naive in thinking that the Fediverse is immune to corporate interest. Judging by the Mastodon response, we are already seeing that it’s not.
The whole point of open protocols is that anyone can use it. Just block any instance you don’t like and you’re good!
In email world, gmail became so successful that now its a problem when they decide to blacklist any other email domains that Alphabet don’t like. We should never allow profit driven entities get their foot in the door. We should develop a strong immune system against such profit seeking groups/companies etc. We should remain open to people, non-profits, universities and the likes only.
They can just pin Reddit users against reality. That will do the trick.
They already have been lol. The whole fedi is up in arms about it and it’s already dominated the conversation without any algorithm!
