The arguments I’ve heard about tracking etc are misguided and don’t understand the actual risks.
Firstly, posts on the fediverse are already likely being consumed by advertising platforms like Facebook & Google. It would be trivial for big tech companies to setup relays that act as scrapers.
Secondly, the value in platform’s tracking individuals is for advertising. There is no mechanism for these platforms to identify you browsing the we if your instance federated with threads. Your instance won’t share cookie sessions etc with threads. It doesn’t increase your exposure.
Thirdly, these platforms have the know how to deal with spam and they will be incentivised to share that tech with other federated instances.
Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is an evil company. But I haven’t heard a decent argument as to why them joining the fediverse is a bad thing. We always have the option to defederate in the future.
Change my mind.
Basically this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
First they will add loads of new users and become the dominant instances. Then, they will add their own proprietary features that other instances cannot support. Finally, their extensions become the new de-facto standard, marginalizing the original implementations.
Since Meta has proven itself to be an evil company that does not act in good faith, it is better to not federate with them from the start.
Until I’ve read your comment I always thought that I would be a good idea but now I’m all against it.
Exactly this. In a federated network, the instance with the majority of users could dictate the protocol, forcing the smaller issues to continually adapt or die. See this post for a very real example of this.
But why do the current lemmy instances have to die if facebook decides to make ActivityPub+goldextra? We’ll just stay on our branch, maybe lose a few users who should know better. Facebook isn’t even making use of ActivityPub’s federation anyway, which is why we are here.
I’m actually afraid that they won’t defederate at some point but find some way to track the activities of the federated servers.
Becsuse you don’t move to the next phase until you reach a milestone. The embrace is the first step, to convert a small percentage of users of the original platform. Once you have those, you extend your features to have those users recruit more users to that specific instance or implementation, since they are more feature-rich or stable or whatever. Then once you have a critical point of users on your instance, you defederate from all others and develop your walled garden which now has all the users and the content.
No amount of extension will force instances to change. I think your point assumes instance owners will want to have access to those users from threads for some reason.
I would only be worried about the EEE thing if meta assigned a team of developers to work on the Lemmy codebase full time.
Meta has blown 10’s of Billions on the their failed metaverse and you’re wondering if they will have a team of devs on Lemmy? They already do - it will start with the protocol first, not the UI, but you’ll start seeing PRs there too.
You’re probably right, we need to borrow the Linux model with some ahole at the top cutting out crap before it takes over.
No offense Linus, love your work.
I’ll give you an ELI5 answer:
Have you ever been playing with your same age friends and then a bunch of older kids come by and ask to join? You say yes and then they take over the field and ball and start playing the game they want and dominate the play. Pretty soon it’s the older kids’ game and you’re sitting on the sidelines.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth XMPP the Wise? It’s not a story the Corpos would tell you.
Sorry, but I think you’re missing the main point.
The risk is not to be tracked, the issue is embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
They are currently competing with Twitter and Bluesky, they just need users to kickstart their new platform. That’s where the fediverse comes in. All Meta has to do is to convince the instances to give them users.
Meta has a lot of money to throw at UX, they will design a better one than Mastodon. Their instance will also be more reliable (since they have money for lots of computational resources). This will allow them to spread their influence on the fediverse (so that people follow others on Threads), growing up to be the largest instance, and then just defederate from everyone else to “stop spam”. People will then move to Threads so they keep following their friends there (because their friends signed up for meta, since it was all compatible anyway).
And only then, they will start to harvest data and put ads in front of you.
While I agree with all of that, I wonder if it’s not a good thing regarding users.
Lemmy right now feels like the reddit I joined a decade ago, content and user wise.
And these are the people I want to interact with. While reddit today, like Facebook and Twitter, have a very large user group I don’t want to interact with. Mostly memes and boomer talk, nothing original.
But that’s not all Reddit has; think of the more niche communities, like DIY, knitting, rock climbing, game-specific subs, basically anything hobby-related. Also many of the city-related communities. Those are the places people here generally miss from Reddit, and those are the places where Meta will try to make their community the largest, and will use to pull people to their instances.
Like yeah, losing /r/trebuchetmemes is no great loss. But there are other communities where the larger userbase is beneficial, and losing those is a great loss.
Agreed.
You forgot the biggest concern that people have.
Remember that Meta’s strategy has always been to buy out or kill competitors before they grow too big. This time, when the competitor is immune to normal methods, they’re all so friendly and cooperative. Why the complete 180, did they suddenly turn good?
Please read this: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Is your mind changed?
No, because they can’t buy the fediverse. We’re immune as we can defederate at anytime.
I appreciate what you’re saying though. This smells like Facebook it’s realizing where the future of social media is and they want to be a part of it. The difference this time is that they can’t own the social media.
Edit: typo
I’m gonna try just a bit more.
Meta can’t buy the fediverse, like Google couldn’t buy XMPP. XMPP userbase was consumed regardless. My main point is that if allowed to grow into the largest or one of the largest instances, Meta has the ability to cause a lot of damage.
What can they do? They might add new features, such as custom reactions, or new types of post embeds, or something. Developers now have to choose between having broken posts, or trying to catch up Zuckerberg’s nonstandards, like if it were the browser wars.
When the average user sees broken posts or can’t follow their favourite people anymore because of defederation, they just have a reason to move to a better instance (Threads or some other instance that hasn’t defederated). Defederation works if done early. If it’s done too late, only the hardcore Meta haters will be left.
That’s the worst case. Given their track record, they will use an opportunity to backstab us. I don’t know what I will say if people just let Meta pull an EEE that everyone saw from a mile away. In any case, I consider Meta a massive risk for not much benefit (do we even want a wave of Meta users?).
When the average user sees broken posts or can’t follow their favourite people anymore because of defederation, they just have a reason to move to a better instance.
This is where I think the EEE argument falls apart. Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter are all currently defederated instances with far better features and more people to follow and interact with. The EEE argument doesn’t affect the existing fediverse users. Maybe if Twitter federated there would be users moving between Facebook Threads and Twitter but not from the existing fediverse.
