((I’m not an expert, I’ve been reading up on things as much as I can. If there’s an error, I’ll happily correct it!))
TLDR:
- Nearly all of us distrust Meta and have the same broader goals
- We need to pick the best move to go against powerful companies like Meta
- Defederation may not be the right move, and it might even help Meta move forward (and more easily perform EEE)
- There are other options that we can spend our energy on
- It doesn’t matter for Lemmy (yet), this is more a conversation for Mastodon, Firefish and Kbin
We’ve been getting a LOT of posts on this, but the misconceptions make it harder for us to decide what to do. If we’re going to try and protect the Fediverse against large, well funded companies like Meta, figuring out the right action is important. We need to actually look at the options, consider the realistic outcomes, and plan around that.
I’m willing to bet around 95% of users on Lemmy and Mastodon CHOSE to be here because we understand the threat Meta/Facebook poses, and we want to do something about it. That’s not in question here.
So in that sense, please be kind to the other user you are replying to. The vast majority of us share the same goal here. When we disagree, we disagree on the best path forward and not the goal. Wanting to stay federated DOES NOT mean the user wants to help Meta or thinks that Meta is here for our benefit.
Misconception: Defederation will hinder Meta’s EEE
Not necessarily, and it might even help the EEE. Here’s a link to some history of EEE, what it means, and some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish. I’d recommend at least skimming it because it’s interesting (and because this isn’t the only fight)
Assuming Meta is doing an EEE move, they’re in the embrace stage. That’s not about us embracing them, it’s about them embracing the protocol, which they can do whether we stay federated or not.
Defederation can tell newcomers that the defederated instance is an island, and they’re better off joining the place where they can talk to their friends and see the content they want. We saw this early during the Reddit exodus with Beehaw, where many users hopped instances away from Beehaw.
Meta can more easily embrace if more people actively use their platform. They can more easily extend if we’re not around to explain why extending is a poisonous action. Being federated can allow us to encourage users to ditch Meta’s platform and join an open one (ex. Mastodon, Firefish, etc.)
Misconception: Defederation is the only move
Defederation is the first option that comes to mind. It sounds simple, it is loud and newsworthy, and it can be done with the click of a mouse. But if it is a bad action, then what are the good actions?
- Don’t let them have a monopoly over the use of ActivityPub. Grow the other platforms: The extend stage only works when the platform gets a near monopoly over use of the standard. That brings up the first action. If there are enough users, services and resources on things like Mastodon/Lemmy, then Meta (or any other company) can’t just extend the spec without causing their users to ditch Threads to stay connected to the content they want to see.
- Reach out to organizations in your area or line of work. Help them join Mastodon or other relevant Fediverse platforms. I’m sure the for-profit companies put money into this process, so brainstorm and reach out
- Add your Fediverse accounts to the bio of your other accounts, and share posts from the Fediverse elsewhere
As long as there is a healthy community away from Meta (ex. what we have right now), then they can’t extend & extinguish.
- Protect the Standards and share why it is important
- Share posts from experts about strict adherence to standards, support regulatory and legal advocacy (interoperability requirements etc.), and educate other users about the risks.
(I didn’t want to say more here because I’m not an expert, I’m happy to edit more points in)
Misconception: We should still defederate because of Privacy Risks
Not necessarily (and likely not at all?)
Meta is notorious for gathering data and then abusing that data, so this is an issue to consider. However, the way that activitypub works, the outgoing data is publicly available. Defederating with Meta doesn’t prevent that, and federating doesn’t give them any more data than they could get otherwise.
Lemmy instances need to decide
This is a big point: It doesn’t really matter for Lemmy right now, one way or another.
It’s more of an issue when data start coming IN to Lemmy from Mastodon and Meta’s Threads. See below
Legitimate risks from Federation with Meta, and more effective ways to counter them
-
Algorithmic Amplification: Meta’s history of using algorithms that prioritize engagement can amplify harmful or divisive content. These algorithms are not public like it is with Mastodon and other FOSS platforms.
-
Misinformation and Content Moderation: All Fediverse platforms will have to work on content moderation and misinformation. Platforms like Meta, focussed on profit and advertising, will likely moderate in a way that protects their income. Those moderation decisions will be federated around.
-
Commercialization and User Exploitation: Meta’s for-profit nature means it’s incentivized to maximize user engagement, at the expense of our well-being.
Counters:
- Promote user control over their feeds, and develop USEFUL but safe and open algorithms for the feeds
- Flag content and users from risky platforms, with a little warning icon and explanation (ex. ‘Content is from a for-profit platform, and it may ___’)
- Implement features so that users can opt in or opt out from seeing content from risky platforms. In particular on explore/discover/public feeds, so it doesn’t affect content the user is following.
- Develop strict community guidelines that can get Meta (and other companies) sent into the ‘blocked by default’ bins mentioned above.
Final point: Evaluate things critically. Don’t even just take my word for it. I doubt Meta or other groups care enough about Lemmy yet to spread disinformation here, and every post I’ve seen promoting defederation feels like a good faith attempt for something they believe in. But it’s still worth thinking about what we’re supporting.
Sometimes what feels like a good move might not help, and could even make things worse.
What you fail to mention here is that this goes both ways; it also allows Facebook to “encourage” users to switch to Threads.
“All your friends are on Threads, why do you keep using that weird Mastodon thing?”
“Oh, Threads has this cool new feature where you can use (insert current NFT AI tech bro grift here) but it doesn’t work with Mastodon.”
But yeah you’re right, the last time a tech giant embraced an open federated protocol, everyone and their mom started using the open platform instead. No wait, XMPP is fucking dead after Google did the third E.
How tf do you expect that to work when they will start out with a 98.5% “market share” in the entire AP network?
Might aswell call it “Facebookverse” at that point because the entire rest of the Fediverse as we know it would be a drop in the bucket.
That’s right, in a world where the broader Fediverse federates with Facebook, Facebook’s starting conditions would be market dominance; a monopoly you might call it.
Good luck having a decent conversation with two people when there are hundreds of people screaming about irrelevant trifles in the same room.
Facebook: We will muddy the waters around this upcoming competitor that could destroy our entire business model and drown it in noise. Users: Share posts from experts about strict adherence to standards, support regulatory and legal advocacy
Facebook: Oh no, not the expert posts! Ok, we will stop.
It is not. It is only available to federated instances and even to those it’s almost always a subset because not every user/community is followed. Due to Facebook’s sheer size, they would probably receive pretty much everything from any instance federated with them.
If they were defederated, they’d have to scrape every instance’s API to actually export everything. Not a real blocker but much more difficult, expensive and legally questionable. (See the recent popularity in imitative statistical algorithms aka. “”“AI”“” or “Copyright condoms” as I like to call them.)
Additionally, this opens up Fediverse users to Facebook tracking in things like DMs. I’m aware they’re not E2EE and you should therefore not expect secrecy from them but putting them into a known bad actor’s hands is quite a lot worse.
…that’s precisely what defederation is about. You can’t stop someone from scraping your API but you can stop their toxic waste from flowing into your healthy platform.
Moderation is a problem with our Fediverse platforms already, how tf do you expect us to do the work for Facebook’s platform in addition to that when it’s like 100x the size of the entire Fediverse?
There is no such thing. The only reason our current feeds aren’t full of shit is because the general signal to noise ratio is still quite high. Refer to the conversation in the room example above.
Fair points, I’ll have to look more into some of it especially this bit
I’m still torn on the other bit. Even if it’s a losing battle, it feels like we have a better chance if we keep the alternative available. Otherwise they can do pretty much all of the above anyways
That’s precisely what the mass-defederation is intended to do. From my PoV, defederating Facebook is the only way to keep “the alternative available” as otherwise it’d be drowned in shit and/or EEE’d.
Fair point, and it’s something I’ll be keeping on my mind as well to think more about.
I’d also like to say I appreciate that you wrote out the long response and addressed the other points. I didn’t say that earlier but thank you
Totally agree. Back in June I wrote about the reasons the FediPact was good strategy and started it with