Kev Quirk, one of the admins of Fosstodon (a Mastodon instance), destroys Meta in an email exchange.
Kev Quirk, one of the admins of Fosstodon (a Mastodon instance), destroys Meta in an email exchange.
Attached: 1 image Yeah, that's gonna be a hard pass from me thanks, Rachel. Zero interest in having a conversation with #Meta "off the record" or otherwise. Sharing this purely to be as transparent as possible with our members.
The exchange is about Meta's upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!
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On the one hand I can totally understand this reaction by Kev, on the other hand, by completely locking off all discussions like this, means that there's no way to change things for the better.
Granted, it's Meta, they're not to be trusted, but still, a discussion, if one has the time, wouldn't be too bad an idea.
I think it would be incredibly naive and foolish to believe Meta has any kind of pure motives for this.
One of the biggest corporations in the world reaching out to its competitor to try to get them to talk "off the record" about "confidential details"... Sounds like a pretty blatant scheme to get them to reveal confidential details about their competitor's product.
Or maybe Meta has broken with decades of its own conduct, and several centuries of capitalism, in order to reach out in good faith to their competitor. LOL.
Its a really immature and niave response from Kev. Information is power, he's chosen to operate without knowledge for internet points.
Meta think there is potential to enlarge their market and make money, Kev's response won't impact their business making decisions.
Kev should have gone to the meeting to understand what Meta are planning. That would help him figure out how to deal with Meta entering the space.
I don't expect he could shape their approach but knowing they want to do X, Y or Z might make certain features/fixes a priority so it doesn't impact everyone else
I think you are insinuating that because meta has money and power, he owes it to the community to hear them out. That's a capitalistic perspective that seems centered around either making money or having a larger 'market'. I wouldn't assume that this is the status quo for everyone involved in the fediverse.
Also, if Meta isn't willing to share its plans publicly, only to the owners of the largest instances online, I question their motives.
@macallik and if you scroll down the comments, Byron from Universeodon, who did take the earlier meeting, did provide some vague points from the meeting. Relating to your point about big instances, it seems likely that FB wants to throw money at them so that they won't become overwhelmed by the ensuing traffic (unlike the rest of us, I guess...) so they can demonstrate that the Instagram bridge (it's an IG product) works.
That is good to know. That doesn't negate the fact that this is the same company:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/app-developers-sue-facebook-over-alleged-anticompetitive-scheme-n1117551@macallik
Absolutely. If this is true then for the other small to mid-size instances it's not just an existential threat philosophically but technically. They're expecting Threads onboarding might just knock out instances because of the traffic. Might as well limit or block just for your own performance metrics.
Massive corporations never "throw money" at people or things without strings. I'd be very wary about what taking money from Meta would mean.
Having a larger market = having a larger network = greater network effects for content
Having Meta join with Mastodon might actually sway people off twitter and into the fediverse where it will be easier to migrate over to a different instance.
It's foolish not to hear them out, you accomplish nothing. This isn't some silicon valley episode where he has some arkane secrets that meta engineers couldn't figure out that he might leak. Meeting with them is zero risk and he would gain more information on what they're planning.
Not if they ask him to sign an NDA before the meeting, and you bet they would.
This is not a proper talk by meta that you could just "hear them out". They explicitly said off the record and confidential, there's no reason for that if it's something innocuous. There 100% would be an NDA involved.
The fediverse is all about being open, starting with an NDA is definitely not "zero risk", you can not slip up ever, or you're going to be destroyed by lawyers, this is the exact opposite of "zero risk".
This is not a proper talk by meta that you could just "hear them out". They explicitly said off the record and confidential, there's no reason for that if it's something innocuous.
They plan on showing demos of their product to them or talking about potential features it might have. Boom, they require an NDA.
I don't think you understand how the professional world works or how common NDAs are. I've signed NDAs while going through interview processes at FAANG and other large companies just so that we can talk freely about projects I might work on. Especially for a company like Facebook where everything they do will get about a dozen news articles written, they're going to make you sign an NDA for any conversation about an unreleased product.
I don't think your assumption on how well I understand how the professional world works is correct.
I understand very well that signing any NDA is by no means "zero risk", it has a definite risk attached to it. Declining it is costly in some way, but also has definite advantages.
I also understand that very rarely is the phrasing ever "this conversation will be off the record", but rather some phrasing including the specific topics that may not be shared, like you say for example, product details. Blanket phrasings like this are always very sketchy.
Nah.
I think you are seriously underestimating meta here. They know knowledge is power too, and they have an enormous amount of resources to ensure that their information is shared in the way that exposes them the least and benefits them the most. Any one person is just going to be at a severe disadvantage and is much more likely to do damage than get something positive out of it.
It doesn't need to be said that Meta is purely driven by profit - that is any corporation. But Meta is incompetent and failing - yet still a behemoth. If they want to pour millions of dollars into the fediverse, then we don't we let them? They would presumably just be another site on the fediverse.
I totally support them joining on assuming it doesn't change the fundamental structure of the system.
If they want to pour millions of dollars into the fediverse, then we don’t we let them?
Because, if we do, they will destroy it.
ok i'm not saying they won't but i've asked this before and nobody seems to be able to provide some mechanism by which they would destroy it
is the system not federated? if meta starts acting up, can't everyone just defederate them? this is what i'm not getting
if someone can explain to me what exactly is dangerous, i would appreciate
ok i’m not saying they won’t but i’ve asked this before and nobody seems to be able to provide some mechanism by which they would destroy it
Read up on how they destroyed XMPP.
is the system not federated?
So was XMPP. That's why they're a huge threat to the Fediverse: they have experience in destroying federated systems.
Facebook didn't "destroy" XMPP. XMPP was a tiny messaging protocol nobody used, Facebook picked it up for a bit, stopped using it after a while, and then XMPP returned to being a tiny messaging protocol nobody used.
People are acting like Jabber was hot shit when Facebook picked it up, and its present state of irrelevance is because of big bad Zuck. No, no fucker used Jabber and it saw basically no mainstream adoption until Facebook and Google got involved, and as soon as Facebook and Google weren't involved (as it turns out that XMPP actually kind of sucks and its unique features are things end users don't care about) it returned to being a complete irrelevance. A well-intentioned irrelevance, to be sure, but an irrelevance.
Fediverse is the same, mutans mutandis. We're tiny. I know it's nice for us to psyche ourselves up and say that we're going to destroy the big bad corporate media! but in reality we are a niche constellation of social networks that has literally 0.1% of Facebook's user base and whose adoption has been, shall we say, not stellar.
Not stellar? We're having this conversation, aren't we? This place has proven to be an able replacement for Reddit, and the last thing I want to see is it become irrelevant because of Meta's involvement.
Not stellar? We're having this conversation, aren't we?
The fact that I (nerd that knows all sorts of shit about fedi and is interested in tech topics) am able to use Kbin/fedi to converse with other nerds that know about fedi and are interested in tech does not mean that the fediverse is a storming success.
I can have a conversation with one other person using tin cans and string. This does not mean that tin cans and string are the future of telecommunications.
In reality the people who I have tried to get on here who do not fall in that category were either disinterested from the start, were turned off by the complexity of how it works or stopped coming on it when it turned out there was nothing for them here.
I haven't really messed with Lemmy at all yet, but Kbin is almost exactly like signing up for/using reddit. if you can use reddit, you can figure out Kbin very easily.
I figured I'll write up a tldr on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish in case you aren't really feeling reading the articles.
Embrace: Meta builds a federated Twitter/Reddit alternative, potentially called Threads but is right now P92, that follows the ActivityPub standard almost perfectly. Various Lemmy and KBin instances federate with them and share information. Users from Facebook and Instagram flood into P92, making it one of the largest instances.
Extend: P92 starts adding nice, but proprietary features to their system. The allure of these features begins drawing users off of other instances to P92. Those instances are upset, but Meta insists it's doing nothing wrong, continues to follow the ActivityPub standard in some form, and tells the other instances to just implement the features themselves.
Extinguish: Meta announces that due to incompatibility, they are withdrawing from the standard and defederating from everyone. Most users of this software are now on P92, and thus don't mind. Meta gets a fully populated Twitter/Reddit alternative, and the remaining ActivityPub instances wither. Without user support, the standard fails, and a new open source alternative is created to replace it.
That strategy has been used to kill other open source protocols, and many people are worried it will happen again. My personal opinion is that servers should only federate with Meta if they follow the standard perfectly, and if they deviate even a little bit they should be universally defederated via software changes, but I'm sympathetic to the people that would rather be proactive than reactive.
I understand the concept of embrace extend extinguish
i just don't see a significant chunk of fediverse user giving up on open source instances and flocking to Meta's instance. I can't imagine what kind of features they could add that could accomplish this. Sure, they could make a site that's more polished but if Meta enters the game, we're going to be seeing a huge influx of both users and development. open source alternatives will likely be very close in parity
i think when considering this whole situation we need to calculate the potential positives and calculate if it's worth the risks - and those positives include huge amounts of money and people. this could be enough to push the fediverse to the next level of adoption.. the dream of having a decentralized social media system could become the standard in such a future.
So, because us laymen can't think of exactly how they would do it, that means it's not possible?
The best (and often only) indicator of future behavior is past behavior. And if we go on that, I think we all know how Meta looks.
you reduced my comments and favorited your own. lol
look - nobody has given me a concrete mechanism by which they could do damage. neither on here nor on mastodon where I've had similar conversations. @thesanewriter was the only one who attempted to give some sort of method - and his was that Meta's platform could become so popular it steals users. That to me isn't really unique to the fediverse
I'm not gonna hop over to Meta's platform just because it's nice and shiny.
But look at the potential benefits of Meta investing heavily into the fediverse.. we're talking millions and millions of dollars in development. i say milk meta for all they are worth, they're a failing company anyway, this is a desperate attempt on their part
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
This blog explains really well how destruction from the inside would work. And personally I'm not excited to have all Facebook users on here, most of that website is extremely toxic.
That article has been posted several times and does not explain how Google "destroyed" XMPP - it assumes that XMPP was some hot shit everyone was using before Google and Facebook picked it up, when in reality it was used by next to nobody, most people who used it with Google or Facebook were just using it to talk to other Google or Facebook users, XMPP doesn't support a lot of features that consumers now expect in messaging, and since Google and Facebook dropped it it has returned to being a niche FOSS thing - only now its advocates blame Google and Facebook for its failure rather than the fact it's not a very good protocol and nobody uses it.
Sitting to an off the record coveraation will be used as a hook agaiant you in the future.
They have enough lawyer money to bleed you dry, and your attendance (probably sign some NDA) will be used as basis.
Granted, it's Meta, they're not to be trusted, but still, a discussion, if one has the time, wouldn't be too bad an idea.
It feels like Meta has to pay like a billion dollars in fines every few weeks in europe for violations. And they don't seem to plan on stopping (based on the fact that it happens every few weeks). Even faintly hoping that you could even have the smallest chance of moving even the smallest gear in Meta by appearing in such a meeting is complete delusion.
You would still know what Meta is thinking of doing on the Fediverse, and adjust course accordingly. Now we 1) know nothing, and 2) have closed off an avenue to gain information.
Curious if you have a rough example of what type of positive information that will be gained from the secret, closed-off meeting, and how it could benefit the community?
How do you think we could frontrun one of the largest tech companies in the world?
They chose to close off that avenue by making it a closed, off the books, invite only meeting. And as other posters have already mentioned, its likely that the people that do show up might have to sign NDAs or something similar. So we might not have learned anything anways.
But if he attended he wouldn't legally be able to share what he learned - or do anything that reveals details of the meeting without facing the wrath of Facebook's legal department.
You would also be under NDA, which severely limits your options. Meta is not stupid.
Who would know that? Surely not the average user, since we weren't all invited to this meeting, and everyone who was would be under NDA...
You would only ever know what Meta would be willing to tell you anyway. Also, there's the whole NDA thing.
Meta intends to harvest content and kill off competition before it poses a threat.
I'm sorry, but it's on Meta to come forward to the public Fediverse and be open with their plans, not try to organize some hush-hush meetings with Mastodon instance owners.
Connectivity on fediverse platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy rely heavily on trust between users to maintain an engaging community. Unless Meta publicly demonstrates otherwise, people are right to distrust Meta at the outset, given their past and current affairs.
Meta's P92 should release itself on the Fediverse's terms, rather than Fediverse catering to Meta's terms. Otherwise, Meta should just make their own platform and see if Fediverse instances latch onto it.
Off-the-records convos w/ repeated bad faith actors seems like a liability.