I do not want my posts from anywhere on the Fediverse on FaceBook.
I have have seen people express worry over FaceBook posts showing up on the Fediverse. But, what about our posts showing up on FaceBook.
If Meta federates with the Fediverse, do my Mastodon posts (e.g.) show up on FaceBook?
As someone who is cautiously optimistic about Meta’s ActivityPub adventure, my main disagreement with the author is over
I’d like to see ActivityPub and the Fediverse at large succeed, that is actually gain significant adoption among the average user, people that don’t care about freedom, decentralization etc. I disagree with a very common take on the Fediverse which seems to be “we don’t want to succeed, we want to make our happy little garden, it doesn’t matter if the overwhelming majority of people stay on centralized social media” because I think widespread adoption of federation (for social media, but also for code forges etc.) and open, interoperable protocols (matrix!) is important for society: less reliance on American tech giants, more resilience (services just shutting down as they run out of VC money impacts less content/users) and so on.
I only see widespread adoption happening through commercial entities setting up instances, the model of donation-supported admins simply doesn’t scale. The risk of EEE is very real though, but Meta making an ActivityPub move will hopefully be a signal for others to follow, and the best way of ensuring Meta doesn’t subvert ActivityPub development is by having other stakeholders that are just as important to counterbalance its influence, not by having 5k-10k-users instances de-federate from Threads because their admin (rightfully!) doesn’t like Meta.
I am one of those people who does not want massive widespread adoption. Then we just turn into something else to be monetized with no privacy or security. If someone wants that, there are plenty of godawful social networks they can go to.
I see this in the Linux ecosystem as well. Everyone who wants it to overtake Microsoft or Apple is more than willing to sacrifice what makes Linux better in the first place just for what? Numbers? I would rather have the greatest thing in the world that has a steep learning curve so only twenty people use it but who appreciate it than sacrifice everything about it that is great so 20,000 people can use it.
Same with Signal. People complained about the devs getting rid of SMS support because now Memaw won’t use the app anymore, despite the devs stating that to keep SMS support would make the app inherently less secure, which is the entire point of the app.
I’d say it like this: In general, I have nothing against growth as long as it happens of its own accord through clear advantages over centralised and closed systems and not for the sake of growth. Growth must never happen at the expense of principles.
Yeah I can agree with that
I am also not sure how EEE is supposed to work with decentralized platforms. In the end, everyone can say “that it’s all too much for me and I’ll build my own network with like-minded people, just like at the beginning of the fediverse.”
Sure, you can always go back to having a federation of a 1000 users in the same way that you can still host teamspeak servers or IRC and maybe get someone to join them. Some of us want a more widespread adoption though so we actually have people to follow and talk to - in that case meta coming here, taking over the users and then gimping or maybe even ditching the rest of the fediverse is not a good outcome.
So waht you are saying is
I’m not saying it’s impossible, but in my opinion it’s very unlikely. The fediverse, unlike XMPP, does not consist of a single service but of a multitude of platforms. To shut down the fediverse, you would have to destroy all of these platforms and create your own platform that can do all of this and also flexibly integrate new services, as is currently happening with git hosting sites. I don’t think even the biggest companies will be able to break this power of the community.
It’s really not what I’m saying. They won’t “destroy every single instance in the fediverse”, I’m saying they won’t care about the 1% of old fashioned techies that remain here after they establish a monopoly on users and content elsewhere.
Besides, XMPP didn’t consist of a single service either, it was just a protocol. It still exists and can be used today. Good luck establishing a community with it though.
It was a protocol used mainly for text communication. The fediverse is far more than that already. It’s not the instances that matter but the services that the fediverse offers. It is a unique tool on the internet to connect different platforms. I don’t know of any alternative that can do it that way.
Also I wouldn’t say that XMPP is dead it’s just that less people want to use it anymore. but that depends on us users and no one else. I, for example, still offer to switch to XMPP for my communities and recommend it to others.
The article linked above describes how Google killed a federated service by EEE. If you are interested how it can work I’d recommend it.
After EEE is done the fediverse would be irrelevant and lack users. But course it doesn’t stop people from making their own servers and federating into small communities. But the vast majority of users would use the meta version which was eventually made incompatible with the fediverse. That made 99% of users go there. And I if you ask someone to join your fediverse groups they’ll wonder why you are not on the meta thing instead.
As I stated in another comment it is not impossible that they may leech the fediverse to death but I think its highly unlikely. The fediverse is much more than just a decentralised platform. It is an amalgamation of many platforms with different userbases and different goals. In order for the fediverse to collapse, everything would have to be replaced together as well as the flexibility to continuously integrate new services, as is the case here now.
In the case of XMPP, the community became a passive spectator of google’s advance and was eventually replaced by it. But as long as the community does not become dependent on the big corpos in any way and regards their contributions more as a nice bonus, something like this will not happen. It is this self-sufficiency that allows the freedom to go one’s own way and to keep the power decentralised in the community. I have to admit, however, that this can be a big challenge, but one that is nevertheless manageable.
Im on the other end of this. As a recent reddit refugee and general anti capitalist i am strongly opposed to association or integration of tech giants with this fledgling infant of a democratic social network. Time and again corporations have shown that they will inevitably ruin a good thing for their profits. It happens all the time, your food gets more expensive while quality and quantity only decline. Everyday goods are now subscriptions, everything becomes a commodity. Buying a home is a fever dream for the average citizen because commercial entities buy anything and everything even over market rate just to corner the market. And to use some more recent tech examples, look at streaming services. Piracy was a thing, then Netflix came and made it obsolete through convenience and a fair price. Now greed has not only ruined Netflix but also spawned a dozen subpar clones because everyone makes their content exclusive out of greed, devaluing each other. And just these last weeks we can watch what short sighted bullshit happens to social media when billionaires (or spez) feel their fortune is in danger.
Fuck right off with yet another corporation quasi monopolizing internet communities. Any instance that associates with corporations is an immediate quit and block for me.
1000000% agree, you said it perfectly.
I especially get so pissed about houses. Houses are for living in, they are not speculative investments. In my culture, a family builds a house and then their descendants live in it for hundreds of years. The house is part of the family and is considered a living entity with its own god. When I visit Western so-called “developed” countries, all I see are shoddy houses thrown together by the lowest bidder and meant to last 50 years tops, within which time they’ll have been bought and sold a dozen times by people who don’t even know one another. Capitalism ruined Westerners’ connection to the land and one another.