this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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I would like to know if I can feel safe here, or if I should pack it up and start looking elsewhere sooner rather than later.

If the kbin staff have already made there intentions clear, please let me know.

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[–] 0xtero@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would like to know if I can feel safe here

If you have privacy concerns, you should probably not post here for time being.

It is prototype software. Doesn't remove EXIF geotags from photos, for example and posts here are public (and indexed by webcrawlers). Treat this as "open Internet" for your safety/privacy purposes.

[–] Roundcat@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's not much of privacy I'm concerned about as much as community and visibility.

Meta is infamous for fostering insufferable users, meanwhile from what I have seen from kbin and lemmy, there is a lot more nuance and maturity in the communities here (for the most part) that I would hate to see overun by Thread users.

Secondly, it's one thing to be visible to the internet in general, but to have anything tied to Meta that they can scrape and sell is a concern to me. The fact that the fediverse is a prototype with vulnerabilities makes the likelihood of a company like Meta, who intentionally exploits vulnerabilities to harvest data, all the more likely.

Finally, almost every example of a large company joining a federation always ends with said company cannibalizing the federated networks, and I have no reason to believe Facebook won't do this. If I'm going to invest time and effort into making a community grow, I would rather not waste my time on a platform that is doomed to be consumed.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

So. In 1 day, Threads has gotten more users than all of Mastodon combined. My friends are on Threads. They're not coming to Mastodon. I've tried. I couldn't even convince my fiance to join me on Mastodon for longer than a day, and we live together.

How would you suppose I talk to my friends? By joining Meta? Or by staying with FOSS on the fediverse? Because when you say "everywhere needs to defederate from Meta" you're also saying "You shouldn't talk to your friends here, nor should your friends be able to talk to you."

Quite frankly - I really enjoy that I can both be here and still be in contact with my friends. Meta can't track me here (as much, I'm aware they can still siphon data but they could do that regardless). I'd much rather stay here if I can. But if given the chance to choose, I'm going to move to somewhere that federates with Threads. Not because I like Meta - I hate Zuck almost as much as I do Elon, which is quite a lot - but because I'd rather see and talk to my friends than be locked in with a bunch of rando control freaks jumping at shadows.

If the fedipact had it their way, anywhere that federated with Threads would in turn become defederated. This will create 2 separate fediverses. People will have to choose which one they spend time on - even if they have accounts on both sides, one will always be the "primary" account.

I posit that for many people, the "primary" account is going to be the one with their friends and interests. It's going to be the side with the influencers they follow. Simply, it's going to be the one that federates with Threads. The other side will slowly wither and die, as all the content dries up and people move to where the network effect is strongest.

You can argue that we need to defederate because of "embrace, extend, extinguish". Tell me: what is the end result of EEE? A diminished fediverse, where most people use the single app that has all the people and all the content. How is that different than the splintered fediverse caused by the fedipact?

It's really not much different at all. If Meta goes for EEE, there is no stopping them. If the fedipact takes hold and rabidly defederated anywhere that glances at Meta, then the fediverse's network effect will shatter. The fedipact will simply backfire and shoot themselves in the foot as people choose the side with the larger network effect. It's ridiculous that the idea has gotten as much traction as it has; the fedipact's best-case scenario is worse than the worst-case of EEE.

If a bunch of people want to live in small segmented communities, that's on them. Beehaw is right there if you want it; that's what Beehaw aspires for. But large, general-purpose instances shouldn't bow to the whims of a loud minority that don't even realize the repercussions of their agitations.

The fediverse is at its strongest when we federate. That's what makes this place special. We've agreed that walled gardens are bad, and the one time that we have a chance to get a bunch of "normal" users on the fediverse everyone panics because they're afraid of EEE.

The fedipact isn't going to stop EEE. If Meta wants to do EEE, they're going to do it with or without the fedipact. We don't even know for sure that EEE will happen - it's true that Meta is a business, but there are plenty of open protocols you use every day that never got hit by EEE. L

All the fedipact will do is hurt people who want to use free software to see their friends so this loud minority can exercise their control over everyone.

You have the power to block the domain here if that's what you want to do. Please don't let your personal fears ruin the experience of others.

[–] zalack@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm okay with a small bubble of randos as my Fediverse, I don't need -- or want -- my social media to be "everybody".

I'm in a discord with my friends and that's pretty much all I need.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's fair, but I personally want my social media to be "everybody".

That's actually what brought me here to Kbin - I loved that it had Mastodon integration and connected everybody to everybody else.

I was originally on Beehaw, which is very much trying to capture that "Discord with my friends" feel. And that's totally fine; I understand that and respect it and think it's valid.

But the point is that we have options. Kbin especially is great because these options can happen at a user level; you can go in and block entire instances from your user account, and it'll be just as if that instance was defederated. Admins don't need to maintain a short allowlist or a large denylist; you can curate it to your comfort level on your own.

But I'll also recognize that it's not inherently a small community - you're taking a big community and slicing off parts of it, which isn't the same. But there are spots for that cozy feeling across the fediverse if that's what you want. I just don't think a broad flagship instance like Kbin.social should be one of those spots.

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[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The servers of the fediverse cannot handle the load of facebook. The case is closed before it even begun.

Create your own instance and ask for federation with facebook: Threads won't federate with you. Because they don't know who you are and you did not sign any LEGAL AGREEMENT before you publish on their service through federation. You really think that you can push your content on their servers before you abide to a legal agreement?

You cannot make everything about "your friends". At the end of the day "your friends" use for free an infrastructure worth billions functionning in a legal framework. You didn't think about the business problem and you didn't think about the legal problem.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Then why does Threads advertise ActivityPub support during its onboarding if it's not going to go for ActivityPub?

Can you cite your sources where Meta is forcing people to sign a legal agreement to federate, or are you just going from your gut?

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because activitypub is a buzz word. They will allow access to privileged partners who will sign contracts and legal agreements with them. Certainly not with a bunch of nerds who are here because they hate facebook. he wants us out as much as we want him out.

Can you cite your sources where Meta is forcing people to sign a legal agreement to federate, or are you just going from your gut?

No I cant. I'm going from my gut. GAFAM are all about laws, that's their only weakness. Did they talk about federating with us anywhere?

If they federate then they will host pedo content day one. Any lawyer of Zuck will warn him about that.

[–] ainmosni@berlin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@EnglishMobster @0xtero @Roundcat So what you're saying is "ignore all the horrible shit Facebook as done, they have more people and that allows them to do anything they want" ?

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm saying 3 things:

  1. Facebook is going to do whatever they want regardless. They are a business, and they are in the business of making money. I don't like Facebook. I don't appreciate Facebook. I don't use Facebook (or Instagram, or WhatsApp...). Facebook will always do what is best for Zuck, and if Zuck leans into EEE that is what Facebook will do no matter what.

  2. Right now, Facebook is giving me a chance to interact with my friends without using Facebook. That's huge; my friends don't share my anti-Facebook beliefs and are all still on there. I'd love to reconnect but want to do it on my terms. Federation allows that.

  3. The fedipact is going to do more harm than good. It won't stop Facebook from doing what they want to do, as per point 1. If Facebook goes down the path of EEE (which we can guess but is technically not guaranteed - see how the Matter protocol is taking off), then Facebook will execute EEE with or without the fedipact. But the fedipact does Facebook's work for them by inherently splitting the fediverse into a "Facebook side" and a "fedipact side". This split is not healthy and many people will choose the side with a larger network effect - i.e. Facebook. Thus this accomplishes the same thing as EEE without Facebook doing anything other than Embracing.

Facebook is allowed to do what they want because they are a business with billions of dollars. They've done horrible shit but they're also mainstream, where my friends hang out and where the celebrities are.

If the fedipact didn't exist, I would be able to freely interact with the people on Facebook without needing to download Zuck's data vacuum. I'd be able to see my friends and talk to my friends without having to deal with all the... Facebook parts.

The fedipact threatens that because it will cause large communities (like Fosstodon, which has many open-source projects I follow) to defederate themselves from anywhere that federates with Threads. This splits the fediverse badly and in the fedipact's best-case scenario (for them) the only way I could even talk to my friends is by downloading and installing Zuck's app. I'd rather not.

[–] ainmosni@berlin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@EnglishMobster Yep, might makes right, why bother resisting, gotcha.

I'm not even saying you're wrong about the damage that this could do, but you're also ignoring how FB being here and dominating will make the fedi be a place that many just don't want to be anymore.

And yeah, great that you can talk to your friends, but I see so many people be afraid of libs of tiktok, and other hate groups entering on an instance that, according to you, should never be defederated from because of its size.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That isn't what I'm saying. You can still ban individual users here on Kbin. I don't like LibsOfTikTok either, but I can ban them from all my magazines if I wish. I can block them personally.

Are you advocating for blocking anywhere that has any kind of extremist accounts of any kind? Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works have open sign-ups; if LibsOfTikTok joined either of those would you want Kbin to defederate from all of Lemmy.world?

The vast majority of people on Threads are normal people. Extremists exist, yes - just as they existed on Twitter, and Reddit, and Mastodon.social, and Lemmy.world, and anywhere that has a large number of users with easy sign-ups. Heck, I'm sure Kbin has some too.

I don't personally think that those relatively small number of accounts is worth the harm that will be caused by bisecting the entire fediverse. And where do you draw the line? If Google got into the fediverse game, would you want to defederate from them, too? What about Amazon? Apple? Disney? Wikipedia?

If you want to get away from that, you're welcome to frequent another instance that has that moderation style. I already see you're not here on Kbin; I can't speak to the rules of your instance but I am completely fine with your instance defederating from Meta if it wants to be a small community. Beehaw is another great example of somewhere that will aggressively defederate to remain small; I am sure they will defederate from Threads as well.


As for your second point, I can give you my perspective. I chose Kbin because I want to spend all day on a site scrolling away. I don't like seeing stale content. I don't like being constrained to a small community where nothing happens.

If the fediverse splits, we will go back to 2020-era Mastodon. It will be a bunch of niche communities without much in the way of updates. You'll read your whole feed in a few minutes, and then you need to find something else to do. That's probably healthy, but it's not somewhere that will keep me coming back (there's a reason why I never use my Mastodon account).

The other half will have constant updates. A new feed every refresh. If I post something, I'll get a bunch of likes and follows and comments straight away. It's an incredible dopamine hit, each time.

If given the choice... why would I choose the slow one? The one where I'll get... maybe 3 likes from some strangers. The one that doesn't have my friends or family or anyone I actually know.

I realize not everyone agrees, but I've been around the block to know that people crave the network effect and will go to where it is strongest. It's why the Mastodon Migration failed. The only reason why Lemmy/Kbin is taking off is because Reddit's moderation team is actively ruining Reddit's network effect. And one of the reasons why Threads is taking off is because Elon just destroyed Twitter's network effect.

[–] Kaldo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sounds like you just want to be on threads then? You prioritize infinite content and scaling up, talking to your friends and centralization over not being beholden to a big corporation so why keep insisting on ruining it for everyone else here then, just go there instead? Fediverse is not going to replace conventional social media in any near future, if ever.

[–] ainmosni@berlin.social 0 points 1 year ago

@EnglishMobster IOW, yes, I can see this split ripping fedi in two, but I think you're wrong in thinking that the FB side will be the one that most of the people on here now want to be on.

It will end up just becoming another for-profit hole, exactly like the ones so many of us are trying to get away from.

[–] 0xtero@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Huh? Where exactly did I say that?

[–] ainmosni@berlin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@0xtero @Roundcat @EnglishMobster Your entire post is about how "they're going to have all the people, so resisting will be useless". So it's the classic "might makes right" attitude.

[–] 0xtero@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I just want to make clear that I'm in the "Defederate the shit out of them"-camp

I will, personally block the domain.

???

[–] 0xtero@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Meta is infamous for fostering insufferable users

With this I agree. 1.2bn users is way more noise than I want to experience and I will, personally block the domain. As a kbin user, you'll have the tools available for that as well.

Secondly, it's one thing to be visible to the internet in general, but to have anything tied to Meta that they can scrape and sell is a concern to me.

To think that the big companies that base their business models solely on datamining users already haven't been mining the shit out of our data is a bit naive, I think. They don't have to exploit vulnerabilities, make their presence known or launch huge products for it. All they (or anyone!) need is a $20/month linux VPS and a Mastodon installation. The fediverse does not have data privacy controls for content (beyond masking account e-mails/originator IPs).

Finally, almost every example of a large company joining a federation always ends with said company cannibalizing the federated networks

I agree. Threads got 10M signups yesterday and they haven't even launched officially yet. They're already larger than the entire fediverse.
Many people will switch to their app. And at some point, they will most likely make interoperability hard (so we have to adapt to their "bugs" instead of it being the other way around).

I just want to make clear that I'm in the "Defederate the shit out of them"-camp, but I also don't think the fediverse is a place that puts privacy first - if privacy is your concern, then my advice is to stay away from fedi. For now.

[–] asjmcguire@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Right....
BUT -

You aren't going to see ANY of those 1.2bn users, until someone on THIS server follows someone on THAT server. That's the point of federation. It isn't like Twitter - you don't just see everything that everyone over there posts. It's no different on Mastodon - there has to be a social connection before posts start showing up here.

Put another way, if hateful stuff starts showing up on the Fediverse from meta users, it is because someone on the Fediverse is following the people posting hateful stuff.

When meta eventually starts federating - you aren't going to see posts from @asjmcguire until someone here is following my account.

As for if meta makes changes that makes federating hard, that's not our problem. If they make changes that make federating with THEM hard, that's their problem. There is no reason the rest of the fediverse needs to follow what changes meta make. It doesn't hurt us if they break federation with the rest of the fediverse. Meta is in reality no different to mastodon in that regard, it's just another platform - but for example Pixelfed isn't going to bend over backward to make life easier for meta.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

But if you go to https://kbin.social/d/threads.net (obviously doesn't work yet), then you can block the whole instance, yourself, for your own account. It has the same effect as the server defederating, but it only affects you.

The only reason why that solution wouldn't be acceptable is if you believe so strongly against the very concept of Threads that you want to make that choice for everyone else. You want to forcibly hit that button on everyone's account and push your beliefs and opinions onto others.

If you simply don't like Meta, that's fine - I get it. I want to use FOSS stuff to see my friends. I want my friends to appear in my feed, and I want their hashtags to be sorted into my magazines. My wish to see my friends is just as valid as your wish to not see anyone from Threads. While Threads has some questionable people, they aren't the majority. It's much better for me to block the individual accounts that cause problems than it is for me to lose the ability to talk to all my friends.

Kbin gives you the power to go to the domain and block it yourself; this isn't Lemmy. Why do you want to take that choice away from everyone who is okay with people from Threads in their feed?

[–] asjmcguire@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't want to take away that choice. I personally don't have a problem with meta joining the fediverse, and in fact today I downloaded the app and created my account. I'm excited by the possibilities of being able to speak to my friends from my Mastodon account.

My point was more for the people who think that suddenly 1.2bn users are going to be showing up in this kbin instance.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's fair, reading it again I see I misunderstood you. :)

I apologize if I seemed hostile; I just get frustrated with people wanting to block whole instances here without cause (like the instance being primarily trolls or hate speech). On Lemmy it makes sense since only the admins can block domains (and it applies to everyone), but Kbin allows domain-level blocking on an individual level so it makes a lot less sense here.

[–] asjmcguire@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I find the other demands going around even scarier to be honest.
"I don't want to federate with meta, but I also don't want to federate with anyone else who does federate with meta"

It's so terrifying that there are whole instances that are now attempting to dictate who the rest of the fediverse is allowed to federate with. And frankly I think it's a downward spiral if that is allowed. Because if they do it once, they will do it again and again.

[–] duringoverflow@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

what you (and other likeminded people) haven't understood is that these 2 are 2 different topics. Defederating with meta is not because people don't want to be near the users of meta. It is because meta is a huge corp and it is not here to promote the idea of a federated network. It is here to make profit and to exploit the network. Allowing them to be part of the same network will just cause harm to the network itself in the end.

I suggest you reading this article https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html which is the story of how google killed XMPP, written by one of the XMPP core developers. I believe you will see the similarities.

@asjmcguire

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think misunderstand. I do understand that. I used XMPP. I've read that article.

My argument is that the fedipact, if executed as desired by the people running it, will defederate from Meta and anywhere that federates with Meta.

So now you have 2 fediverses, completely separated from one another. One side has Meta; the other doesn't. If I want to post something and I want people to see it and react to it, I will post it to the side with more people. If I want to scroll endlessly without needing to stop and refresh or wait because the feed is stale, I will look at the side with more people.

The other side - the fedipact side - will slowly become stale and niche. There will always be hardcore users - people still use XMPP - but it will fade into what it was in 2020 and 2021. My Lemmy account - @EnglishMobster - is from 2020. My original Mastodon account is even older. I've seen this place grow and blossom into what it is now, and the fedipact is threatening that growth. People will leave the side of the fedipact and join the side without it... which is to say, the side dominated by Meta.

Instead of a big wide fediverse with open source projects living alongside random PeerTube creators living alongside movie stars... we have 1 niche one and 1 dominated by a large corporation. It's literally the same result as if Meta went through with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... but done without the "extend" or "extinguish", a massive "own goal" by the FOSS community.

And worse - it doesn't stop Facebook from going through with "extend" or "extinguish" later. It literally just destroys communities for no reason, leaving us in the exact same situation that XMPP is in today.

I am fine with an instance saying "we won't federate with Threads". I'd rather it not be Kbin, of course, but I will move to an instance that does federate because my friends are important to me.

I am not fine with me being held hostage for that. I don't want to join Threads directly if I can avoid it; I'd rather use my Kbin account. But the fedipact is trying to make that impossible by saying "we will defederate anywhere that federates with Threads".

[–] livus@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If I want to post something and I want people to see it and react to it, I will post it to the side with more people

If that's the case, presumably you're in the fediverse for other reasons? If audience size is central to you, wouldn't you be on reddit and insta/facebook?

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To an extent, but morality is important to me too.

I don't use Facebook because they corrupt democracy. I don't use Twitter because Elon Musk is a wannabe fascist. I don't use Reddit because they have refused to clamp down on bad actors and have directly insulted their users.

If everyone defederates from Threads, I won't use Threads, because I don't use Facebook. My morals are more important to me than audience size.

But... as things stand, once Threads federates with the wider world, I will be able to interact with my friends without letting Zuck near me. In a most ideal world, they'd be able to follow me here on Kbin and I can follow them back. I'd see their posts in the Microblog feed and sorted into magazines, and I can like and comment and boost without logging into Zuck's website and letting him have my data again.

You can say that's supporting Facebook. Maybe. But if Threads is truly federated, then Facebook would basically be able to go anywhere regardless; in that sense I'd be supporting Threads whether I was talking to someone directly or not.

And in that sense, I totally see why people say "we shouldn't federate with Meta, they're evil and they're selfish and they're going to destroy the fediverse." I can understand why people personally would want to choose somewhere that doesn't do that. I don't think this instance should block Meta because it's large and general-purpose, but somewhere like Beehaw where that sort of thing is part of the mission statement... I get it.

But from my perspective, I am given the chance to talk to a large group of people; people who share the same interests as me; people I know in real life. People who would see my stuff - but (more importantly) I'd also see theirs. And I'm sure most people feel the same way; they're going to where the people are. This'll naturally create an audience, one that gives a wide variety of fresh content and also responds to content you give.

I'd much rather have that then return to 2020-era Mastodon where you'd be lucky to get 3 interactions to a Toot, and you'd see everything there is to see in 15 minutes (at most).

[–] livus@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think I might have misunderstood your wider point. The part where you were positing a hypothetical in which the fediverse splits and one side has Meta. I thought you were saying you will align with the Meta side because of audience size.

Which kind of implies that if Meta then moves into the Extend Extinguish phases you would end up at Threads?

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

At the Extend phase I would encourage fighting back - or at least making it clear that we are separate from Threads and shouldn't copy them.

I wouldn't leave for Threads during Extinguish; I'd stay here. But I would just sit back and mourn what could've been.

Just like how I mourn XMPP whenever I see Pidgin in software center.

Just like how I mourn when my Windows Phone had SMS, Hangouts, and Facebook Messenger all in the stock texting app.

I'll survive. I'm not going to Zuck's site. But I'll be really sad that I'm not going to be able to talk to my friends from anywhere else.

[–] duringoverflow@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i'm sorry but you're naive.

If I want to post something and I want people to see it and react to it, I will post it to the side with more people.

do you know how FB or instagram work? Do you think that when you post, your post reaches your whole audience? I believe you know how they work but for some reason you chose to ignore now.

My argument is that the fedipact, if executed as desired by the people running it, will defederate from Meta and anywhere that federates with Meta.
So now you have 2 fediverses, completely separated from one another.

So, you've read the history of XMPP. Did you understand what google practically did? Simply put, meta will create new features on top of activity pub. Open source activity pub developers will be in a constant race to adapt their own projects in a way that will be compatible with meta's project. They will have no voice but to follow whatever meta decides. Users will start getting fed up that their open source instance is not behaving as well as their friend's meta instance. People will jump project and/or when users are polarised, meta will decide that they had enough with activity pub. It doesn't cover their needs and they move to another completely closed project. Users again are forces to choose side and the open source community is just left with the project which they adapted in favour of meta, but now meta is gone because they were never in the same boat actually.

Staying away from meta is a decision in the basis of protecting the whole project. It is not because people don't want to be close to the users of meta. It is because meta is not here to promote the federated networks. It is here to make profit of it and they may even destroy it if they believe that this is the way to make profit. Siding with them is naive and will never bring value in the network itself.

[–] asjmcguire@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

None of that addresses the objection that has been raised though.

If instances want to defederate from meta that is perfectly fine, the Fediverse is supposed to be about choice.
Instances should not however be able to dictate what OTHER people on other instances are able to do.

By doing so - that part of the fediverse is behaving in exactly the same way that they fear that meta will behave eventually.

[–] duringoverflow@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] duringoverflow@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't get it. Nobody dictated anyone. People want absolutely none relation with meta and they want to be on a different network than meta. By federating with instances that federate with meta, everyone ends up in the same federated network while some pretend that they don't see each other. Meta is not here for the same values they are. Meta is not here for the values of the fediverse. Ostracizing meta is the only healthy solution if we agree that they have ulterior motives.

By doing so - that part of the fediverse is behaving in exactly the same way that they fear that meta will behave eventually.

by not doing so, is like accepting meta as friend while at the same time you're waiting for the moment they'll stab you. Fediverse and activity pub have absolutely nothing to gain by allowing this.

@asjmcguire

[–] asjmcguire@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right.... so - the long and short of it is -

A company (any company) decides to integrate with ActivityPub, and the entire fediverse has a toys out of the pram moment every time that happens, gradually closing off into smaller and smaller federated circles, that stop federating with the rest of the fediverse.

A reminder, Tumblr are supposed to be adding ActivityPub.
Wordpress has.
Discourse I believe now has.

So who exactly is it that gets to decide which companies are and are not allowed to be part of the Fediverse?

It's all very very much like a dictatorship, whether you want to accept it or not - that's exactly how it is being operated.

[–] be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Absolute strawman from the very first paragraph. Some people might complain about any company, but this uproar is specifically about facebook. Let's not pretend they are just any other company. They are among a short list of companies who have demonstrated just how awful a big tech company can be if allowd.

They have at no time in their history demonstrated any capability to be anything other than an example of all the worst things that Stallman or any of the OG greybeards would ever have warned us about. They are corporate greed exemplified, nearly to the point of parody.

[–] be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So now you have 2 fediverses, completely separated from one another. One side has Meta; the other doesn't. If I want to post something and I want people to see it and react to it, I will post it to the side with more people. If I want to scroll endlessly without needing to stop and refresh or wait because the feed is stale, I will look at the side with more people.

I'm waiting for the part where you explain the problem.

Just like today the folks who want to interact with the quality of discussion you get on facebook will be able to do so, and those who don't, won't.

I have scrolled this thread quickly so maybe I'm misattributing, but I feel like you've commented on how you and others will go to instances with "more users" more than once - as if this is some universal success metric.

I will go to the side which has quality discussion, and I'm exceptionally doubtful it's going to be the part of the fediverse that federates with meta. More users does not equal better discussion. I would argue that past a certain critical mass it almost guarantees lower quality discussion.

The fact that there CAN BE two fediverses seems to me a feature, not a bug.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you want "quality discussion", why are you on here and not Tildes? Tildes' whole purpose is quality discussion. Shouldn't you go for the place where that's being optimized for?

Tildes is a great example, actually. They're small and quiet and want to be quiet. They don't want to take off. You can get through Tildes in an hour.

That's why I get bored of Tildes easily. I don't want to just be one-and-done with a site. I want to constantly be discovering new things. I want to see number go up (to an extent). I want to read a bunch of comments, some insightful, some dumb.

If I'm going to post something, I don't want to post it to Tildes. I'll get a slow trickle of comments and replies, people replying to a week-old post with something I've long stopped thinking about.

I worry that if defederation comes and severs the fediverse in two, engagement will go down. Mastodon.social isn't part of the fedipact, and likely won't be. Everywhere that relies on content from Mastodon.social - which is a lot of them, non-techies don't want to find a specific instance - will have a lot less content, very suddenly.

People like me who love refreshing feeds will see the torrent of posts slowly... come... to... a... stop. People like me will get bored - where are all the posts? Why can't I see the creators I really like?

"Well, they're on a server that federates with a server that federates with Meta."

So you'll just be left with those in the fedipact. People who are used to the fast-moving feed (like me) will get frustrated. There's a reason why I left Mastodon in 2019ish and why I left Lemmy in 2020 - they got boring quickly (well, Lemmy was also full of tankies). I left Tildes because it got boring quickly too.

I'm in this sort of industry. I'm not going to reveal much about what I specifically do, but I know that most people want something that is new and exciting and moves fast. It draws them in and causes them to spend most of their time there.

When that feed slows down, they spend less time on that site. When they have enough experiences of "opening the app just to close it again", they'll eventually remove it from their home screen (or bookmarks). Then it gets forgotten about.

When the user forgets about a site, it gets less content. In turn, that makes the content even slower. In turn, that drives more people away, except for the die-hards who love slow discussions (like Tildes or 2019-era Mastodon).

Where are the people who left going to go? Well, they might go to where their creators were - somewhere like Mastodon.social. Or they'll leave entirely, or they'll move to Bluesky or Threads.

A lot of those options aren't healthy for the broader fediverse, so you'll just have this one branch that is dominated by Meta and the other which slowly dies as people leave due to increasingly stale content. If they were united, they might've stood a chance against Meta if/when Meta made an anti-competitive move... but divided they're a lot easier for Meta to scoop up and slowly extinguish, XMPP-style.

Again, the fedipact is doing Meta's dirty work for them.

[–] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm in this sort of industry. I'm not going to reveal much about what I specifically do, but I know that most people want something that is new and exciting and moves fast.

Well I mean first of all, it's not "most people". It's "most people in the influencer industry".

Second of all, fuck those people. They don't care about corpos running their lives. We don't need them or their content in the fediverse.

And thirdly, you're in that category too. You're a shill for big corpos but you want a veneer of respectability. Just join Facebook and get it over with.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many times must I say that I disagree with Facebook on a moral level? How does that make me a "shill"??

My point is largely:

  • The fedipact is self-defeating. Nobody has refuted this point, they all seem to ignore it to focus on personal attacks. It won't stop EEE; it will simply divide the fediverse and make it a worse place when it's still new and fragile.

  • This is a general-purpose instance. As such, it shouldn't sign the fedipact or defederate from Threads. If you're running a niche instance - that's fine, you can sign if it's important to you and you wish to stay niche. But a loud minority shouldn't speak for the entirety of one of the largest fediverse instances out there (which is what kbin.social is).

  • People may have legitimate reason to communicate with people on Threads, and because they may disagree with Facebook on a moral level (like me), you shouldn't force them into Zuck's slimy fingers. I'm not going to use the service if I have to go through Zuck's gateway to do so. There's an opportunity to use FOSS stuff and stay away from Zuck, but people who ostensibly agree that Zuck is bad are telling me I can't do that? For reasons they can't even vocalize. So me not wanting to join Threads makes me a corporate shill, somehow. Okay.

[–] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People may have legitimate reason to communicate with people on Threads, and because they may disagree with Facebook on a moral level (like me), you shouldn't force them into Zuck's slimy fingers.

By opening up the fediverse to Facebook, you're already in Zuck's slimy fingers. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too. Doesn't work like that. Those who federate with them will get eaten by them.

And here's a point for you to consider:

Why don't you just host your own instance? Federate with Threads AND the rest of the Fediverse? Why are you trying to convince us to federate with Facebook at all??

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here's a point for you, then:

Why must you force your beliefs onto communities with tens of thousands of people, many of whom don't agree with you? The status quo is that kbin.social federates with basically everywhere, as it should since it's a general-purpose flagship instance. Why do you want to change the status quo because of your personal beliefs?

Instead of trying to force Kbin.social to change, maybe you should host your own instance where you can block Meta and everywhere that federates with it. Or you can join a Kbin instance that already does so: https://kglitch.social/

But there should still be places that allow for federation if that's what they desire. That's how Kbin.social is currently set up. I am defending the current status quo, and you are trying to argue for changing it. There are instances that already agree with you; you don't need to stay here and fight everyone who disagrees.

[–] Kaldo@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

then you can block the whole instance, yourself, for your own account. It has the same effect as the server defederating, but it only affects you.

Factually untrue, it is not the same at all. It is also a kbin specific feature that someone on lemmy doesn't have access to, for example.

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This thread is specific to Kbin, which is why I mention it.

Lemmy doesn't integrate well with the rest of the fediverse at all, period. It's one of the many reasons why I left.

Threads users won't be able to make articles here on Kbin anyway (IIRC); they'd make microblogs. So blocking them would effectively remove them from your microblogs, and if they reply to anything in here I don't think you'll see that either.

[–] Kaldo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Blocking a domain through kbin only blocks threads from appearing on your feed. You still see users from that domain and their comments, and they see you and anything you post since it gets sent to their server.

I think I've seen people comment on threads from mastodon, and maybe down the line threads implements... threads... as well, nothing's stopping them really.

edit: also, as for

This thread is specific to Kbin, which is why I mention it.

We're all part of the fediverse meaning someone from lemmy might want to participate on kbin magazines too. Not considering them when making decisions like this is a bit selfish.

[–] Kaldo@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Blocking the domain will not block the users, so in that regard there is nothing you can do about 1.2bn users coming here.