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Should programming.dev defederate from Meta if they implement ActivityPub? (programming.dev)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/meta@programming.dev
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I'm not suggesting anything, just want to know what do you think.

Here is a link if someone don't know what Meta's Threads is: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

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[–] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

I appreciate your engaging with me on this, though you haven't convinced me yet :)

I'm in agreement with you that Meta absolutely intends to exploit "the fediverse" for their own benefit: to gain users by making their platform valuable.

But... my take on this is: so what? If the fediverse can only operate when all actors are benevolent and selfless, then it won't last very long at all. And, even if it does, it's not as valuable to me that way, so I'll be leaving. What's the value of a fediverse if it doesn't even federate with any of the major players that have the most resources?

This would be even worse if we defederate later, once it turns out that Meta is trying to do something that really warants a defederation.

I honestly don't think that anything ever justifies defederation, aside from technical limitations. If you want to run a gated forum, fine, but then don't call it a "fediverse". It's just a forum. Would we say that it's fair for Google to say "From now on, Gmail will not send emails to @republican_party.org email addresses because we don't agree with them"?

EDIT 1: I haven't made my point very clearly. Am currently editing this message to make it clearer.

EDIT 2: Left the comment the way it was. Am struggling to express myself properly-- this is the best I can do at the moment.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I see your point, and I think that we both simply have different views on what is more important, and there's no need to convince eachother. For me, one of the main advantages of the Fediverse is that you're not directly feeding analytics and algorithms of a large company that is trying to monetize and manipulate you through content that you see - a company which business model is literally to change your behavior (which is a hyperbole, but still a quite from Social Dillema), and it's really important for me to not give them any chance to do that. And I don't see a scenario under which we would federate with Meta (or another multi-billion company) and this would not happen - and even if they wouldn't be able to directly affect what you see in your feed, your data and behavior will still help them train their models and AIs to be better at it, even if you didn't interact with the instance. I simply don't see anything of value federating with meta would provide, that would be worth this, along with the really probable risk that Meta is simply going for EEE, as mentioned in the other comments. And I think this was the main idea of Fediverse - to have a network of community-ran instances, where you are not the product, but the actors are indeed benevolent and selfless.

    But I also understand your point of view, because you are right that defederating with them by default goes against some of the principles of decentralized ecosystems, and that there is a lot of content and userbase that we would be missing on. For me, I don't really mind if the growth of Fediverse is slower, but the community has similiar values as I hold, and I'd rather see it fail because it tried to uphold them, than see it turn into, or be destroyed by, Meta. Be it planned as part of EEE, or only a casualty. But then again, that's my point of view and so I vote to defederate, but It's good that there's someone like you with opposite side of view. I also don't think that either side is wrong, we just have different views about what the Fediverse should be.

    And one last thing - I don't feel like the example with email is fair, because it's comparing a private messaging service between two users, and a social network where you provide content for other users, and none of the risks there are with Meta federating would apply. I've tried comming up with a better comparison, but couldn't come up with anything for quite some time, so I'll just leave it as is. Maybe someone else can think of something.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Absolutely fair enough. Am happy to agree to disagree. I enjoyed the debate haha!

    And yes, you have a good point: Meta would indeed get value through federation, and perhaps you don't want to support Meta's goals, so you don't want to allow them to proceed. Perhaps we could enhance our user/community level moderation tools to achieve these goals? Maybe you as a user could say something like "never shall any of my posts be sent to Meta's instance". Or maybe community mods could say "Meta users can't join/post/see our community". I'm even happy if instances enable such filters by default! I just don't think defederation is the right tool for the job, because it defeats the vision of a connected universe.

    I don’t feel like the example with email is fair, because it’s comparing a private messaging service between two users, and a social network where you provide content for other users

    Yeah, but I believe the principle holds.

    Again, thanks for the opposing viewpoint. Glad we had the debate. Cheers!

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    I've just stumbled upon something that I think makes a pretty solid argument that federating with Meta goes directly against the idea of Fediverse (because I was actually intrigued about whether I'm not just projecting my dislike for Meta into it).

    Take a look at https://www.fediverse.to/ (which I'm actually not sure if it's the official main page, but it is the first search result), this is literally the first selling point, written in (absolutely hideous :D) large font on the landing page:

    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.

    I think that with that in mind, there's no way how we should even consider federating with them. That is, of course, unless it's what majority of people wants.

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