There is one argument I’ve seen missing in most of the de/federation discussions, that I think should be mentioned, and warrants it’s own discussion.
I’ve seen a lot of people mentioning that defederating with Meta means we have broken the promise of Fediverse, that you can use one account to interact with whatever service you choose, and that it should be inclusive.
But I don’t agree that’s the main idea. There is something that’s more important, and to make sure I’m not misinterpreting it, I’ll just directly quote various websites about the Fediverse I’ve found (I was just taking top results for Fediverse on DuckDuckGo, but I did select only the parts that are the most important point for me personally). But I do concur, I was not able to find a single source of truth, and I’m not really sure how credible the resources are, so please disagree with me if it’s wrong or I’ve chosen some no-name site that just matched my rethorics.
https://www.fediverse.to/ has the following sentence as the main hero header:
The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.
Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.
Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.
Another search result is for fediverse.party, which has the following quite in https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/ :
Fediverse (also called Fedi) has no built-in advertisements, no tricky algorithms, no one big corporation dictating the rules. Instead we have small cozy communities of like-minded people.
The page also mentions some link for knowledge about the fediverse. Some of them are only tutorials about how to join, but there’s also https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_the_Fediverse%3F , with the following part:
How does it compare to traditional social media?
…
Morals
- Traditional social media is neither social nor media. It is not made for you, it is made to exploit you and it is full of misleading ads and fake news.
- This is because the aim of traditional social media is to make a whole lot of money.
- The aim of the Fediverse is to benefit the people.
- The aim of traditional social media is to control and steer the users.
- The aim of the Fediverse is to empower the users to control the Fediverse.
I wasn’t able to find more websites directly about the fediverse, and I did not want to quote random articles. But for completion sake, here is a list of FAQ/About sections of websites that are about the Fediverse, but don’t directly support or imply the point of view I was trying to make (one that can be best summarized by the Morals in the last quite):
- https://fediverse.info/frequently-asked-questions
- https://fedi.tips/what-is-mastodon-what-is-the-fediverse/
- https://framatube.org/w/9dRFC6Ya11NCVeYKn8ZhiD
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
- https://the-federation.info/
The split seems to be 50:50, but at least for my DuckDuckGo search results, the https://www.fediverse.to/ is the first result you find, and that one is pretty clear about what Fediverse should be. I wanted to start a discussion about what do the users here see as a main selling point of the fediverse, and whether morals and non-profit nature of the instances is important to most of the users as it is to me, or whether you’d rather have interconnectness and inclusivness.
Decentralization to me is instance to instance communication. I don’t see it as necessarily being anti-corporate, just lacking centralization. Sites like Twitter and Reddit are popular because of the content, not the site themselves. With decentralization, content is more powerful and I can access it from any instance. Even if I’m federated with a big corp website, it gives me more content and it pulls more people and community into decentralization. I see it as a win-win. More users are better to my, I really don’t care the instance, I just want content.
I agree that decentralization isn’t anti-corporate. I would even say that it has nothing to do with your motives for doing it. But I’m hoping that the consensus that is reached about what Fediverse should be will include focus on being anti-corporate, and stay in the realm of community-owned and non-profit. Actually, I don’t mind being for-profit, or even ads that are respectful, as long as it’s not manipulating with users in any way based on their data, for example though the content they are shown. DuckDuckGo would be the best example - you get static search results, nothing is “personalized”, and the ads you get are related to your current search only. No ML models exploiting you as much as they can. That’s what I imagine under “privacy-centric”
And unfortunately, this disqualifies almost every larger company.
There is no “should be” when it comes to tools. Only what people use them for.
The bits about “ad-free” were clearly because who the hell would’ve thought Facebook of all companies would pop into the ActivityPub scene? I’m sure they would adjust that statement now.
But fediverse isn’t only a tool, but also a network and thus, a community. And a vision is pretty important for communities. So the question about what should be the main values and ideals behind the fediverse are important. If we would be only here because the fediverse is a tool - a social network - then there is a lot of better alternatives, with more content and better user experience. I mean, unless you want to talk about some super-controversial topics that would get you banned, there’s not really that much of a difference in how limited are you in the way you interact with Reddit, Facebook or Twitter, apart from the UI being a little bit more difficult.
And letting any other big player into the fediverse will only lead to them eventually bringing the difficulties in, as has been already mentioned in other posts - by extending ActivityPub, and using their teams to create difficult to implement but really handy features that any FOSS will have difficulties with implementing, causing them to be inferior and bringing people over to them.
The idea of the fediverse to me is a multiplicity of policies allowing users to pick a community that behaves as they would like. It allows for experimentation by communities and users.
Just like having many states under one Federal government, where people can travel and immigrate between them without walls, but which each have their own way of doing things.
This isn’t “for” or “against” federating with Meta. It’s for providing each community the option to choose this for itself, and to not require the other communities to do the same.
One of the things that’s very funny to me is when free speech absolutists confidently assert that defederation, a standard practice and indispensable tool of the fediverse, is inherently tragic and destructive, and that people who don’t want to be in federation with the worst people and entities imaginable should leave and start their own protocol. (It would actually make more sense for those folks to leave and start their own platform where it’s impossible to defederate.)
The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.
If thr Fediverse really is decentralized and open-source, then all of those other things are just suggestions. Nothing is stopping Meta (or me, or you) from launching an instance that has ads, investors, and sells all its data to people, whether that data comes from that instance or is discovered through federation.
But this will be a test of the protocols that underpin the Fediverse. I’ve read that the devs were extremely paranoid, and made sure that a bare minimum of personally identifying information is exposed between servers. The whole point of this is posting publically, after all, so some info needs to be exchanged. Meta already has access to our public posts just by scraping the instance, they don’t need to federate to do that. But is there anything more leaking out through Federation? We’re about to find out.
Nothing is stopping Meta (or me, or you) from launching an instance that has ads, investors, and sells all its data to people, whether that data comes from that instance or is discovered through federation.
You are right, they are only suggestions. But suggestions I would really like to se enforced, and that is exactly what defederation is for. If we want to uphold the values mentioned in the quote, and not let our content be monetized through federation, then defederating with those who don’t uphold the values is the solution. It’s as simple as that.
Meta already has access to our public posts just by scraping the instance, they don’t need to federate to do that.
While they don’t have to federate to do that, federation makes it a lot easier, because the content is served right to them. It also legitimizes them monetizing and stealing our content, because after all - that’s how the protocol works. While scraping for content is much more effort and grey-zone, since then they also have to somehow show it to the users - by impersonating us? By using fake accounts or bots? Probably, but that’s still more effort. And that’s what I take issue with. Meta would decide how is our content shown, they would be monetizing it and they would be using it to manipulate with their users (because as far as I know, the instance you are on is in full control of the UI, and the order in which content is shown and how), or watch and analyze how users interact with it. And I want no part in that, in spirit of the above mentioned suggestions.
