Meta's upcoming AcitivityPub-enabled app Threads will only come with an "import from Mastodon" option. The new network won't federate on day one.
Alex Heath (@alexeheath@mastodon.social)
Full report is on The Verge.
Importantly, posts hosted and visible on Meta's server will be subject to Facebook's content moderation rules, which means those policies will likely have a sweeping impact across the Fediverse.
Is it just me or does that sound like anything on instances hosted outside of meta's own that can be merely seen from theirs? I'm all for moderation, the stricter moderation against hate-speech is part of why I joined Beehaw. But if I'm reading that right (I hope I'm not), then it seems like they plan to call the shots on other instances as if they have any say in what everyone else does right out of the gate.
Maybe what's meant here is simply defederation of entire instances and banning of problematic users like any other instance does, ok. But it could also mean pressuring admins to enforce Meta's TOS on a case-by-case basis which feels like the start of EEE tactics.
Meta is going to be treating content on any instance in any way it suits them. They're entering this as the 900 pound gorilla and expect they'll be able to throw their weight around, naturally. They'll treat all Fediverse content as "their" content and take, take, take.
There's no way to win this. The only winning move is not too play. Defederate all their instances sight unseen.
That way when they claim to be part of the Fediverse we can say "so, who are you federating with, yourself?" and we will be able to point out it's just same old Facebook with a new coat.
How would they pressure admins? Threaten not to take their instances data and put ads on it? What leverage has Meta here?
They will very soon have the largest userbase of any instance. If your instance gets blocked by Meta, your users suddenly have a fraction of the reach because no Meta people can see your posts anymore. That would put a lot of pressure on admins I imagine.
They could threaten to defederate from them.
Wait a minute....
I was thinking the absolute worst case scenario is a bad faith use of the regulatory laws aimed at Meta but put on a firehose and aimed at federated servers who don't prostrate before them.
Things like partnering with copyright holders for automated DMCA floods for literally all images on the instance that have copyrighted content visible.
It just means they'll block users who don't abide by local site rules, which is standard practice.
Remote content is viewed locally, via mirroring, so in order for local users to see that remote content it had to be hosted on the local site. If that content does not meet local community standards, it gets removed, and the poster gets blocked.
This absolutely puts pressure on other admins to adhere to Meta's standards, because if they don't then they'll risk being defederate, but that's the whole history and controversy of Fediblock in a nutshell.
Meta won't have control over what users on other instances post. Instead, they'll just have very strong influence over the rules on instances that desperately want to federate with senpai Meta.
In a worst case scenario this could gut everything. I've had several 30 day facebook bans for morbid funny memes, like the classic with Dahmer asking, "Are you hungry? I've got Ben and Jerry in the freezer".
Nearly everything I find on imgur that I'd want to share with my few old friends on Facebook is either too dark/morbid or would be copyright claimed. Practically everything I find funny, the mods there think is "glorifying violence". It's ridiculous.
I hate everything about this. I came here to escape the Corporations damnit!
Same here....but now trying to infiltrate this space, which should be blocked, IMO
Why is noone talking about GDPR data deletion request and copyright striking them into oblivion?
Last I checked noone gave them permission to grab any of our data, much less profit off it. Let them pay fines to the grave.
By that logic though all of Fediverse is illegal and should be shut down. There is significant work to be done there, not just by Facebook but by the Fediverse community on the whole.
It is absolutely not illegal. But it is subject to GDPR, so I could send a deletion request to the admin of an instance, and they would have to delete my content on their instance.
The Fediverse doesn't require that anyone provide any personal information, though. Literally none. It's the user's responsibility to choose not to post any.
"Illegal" is a harsh term, I'd rather say "legally naive". There's no TOS anywhere saying things like "you give us the right to publish the comments you enter" which would clarify things but if you were to take an ordinary instance to court, you'd probably be thrown out with reference to you implicitly agreeing to have your comments published by, well, writing and submitting them. Licenses are ruled by contracts and contracts don't necessarily need written form.
Meta is a whole another thing, though, because now we're not only talking publishing, but straight commercial exploitation of your content. There's no equability to be seen anywhere, meta doesn't contribute to the maintenance of your home instance, it straight-up leeches your content to put it next to ads. An implicit license doesn't suffice for that, a written one might not even (because no equability), that's why all the corps have TOS.
all of Fediverse is illegal and should be shut down.
truth hits hard...
Your comments and posts are PII. It doesn't apply, at all.
The Verge article is paywalled for me, but the screencaps Alex shared in his toot don't really support his summary. The article mentions that Threads can import content from Mastodon as an example of the sorts of things ActivityPub supports, and that's about as close as it gets.
And then there's this:
The company is planning to create a roundtable for administrators of other servers and developers to share best practices and work through problems that will inevitably arise, like Meta's server traffic putting strain on other, smaller servers.
Emphasis mine. How would Meta's server put strain on other, smaller servers if it's not federating with them?
I'm fully willing to believe Meta wants to EEE ActivityPub, but this particular claim doesn't seem to check out.
Paywall. Can you copy the text?
I'm only thinking how meta can scrape analytics.
So basically they're just going to be a leech. Blech.
Eventually it will be "embrace, extend, extinguish".
Hunh. ya know- I wouldn't be surprised if many of those "bot accounts" are infact, from meta, planning a takeover of everything here.
Wouldn't surprise me, either.
I don't know why everyone's all doom and gloom right now. Yes, this is a massive issue, but they're not even federating right off the bat, just allowing accounts to be imported. Who's to say Threads will even take off? While they may take a bunch of new users, I can't see a ton of people currently using Fedi services switching to Facebook (I refuse to call them Meta).
Yes, we need to be on our guards, but don't forfeit the battle before it even begins.
Every instance and user should block meta's shit ASAP!
Anyone operating an instance should defederate from this shit immediately. This is exactly the kind of corporate overreach that isn’t welcome here. This will end very poorly for the fediverse I think.
So... let me see if I've got this right: Meta is going to start a Twitter-like instance on the fediverse that will be marketed to Instagram members and will be subject to Facebook's content moderation rules, and Mastodon users who want to will be able to transfer their accounts to Meta's instance, in which case they will be subject to Facebook's content rules.
I keep trying to see what all of the fuss is about, but no matter how often I look at it or from how many different angles, all I see is Meta and Zuckerberg doing yet another faceplant.
It's as if Walmart announced that they were going to open a chain of art house cinemas and market them to Walmart customers.
They’re going to try to pull a Microsoft: embrace, extend, extinguish.
Yeah... you know, I've seen this EEE thing so many times in the last couple of days that it's starting to feel like astroturf.
Here's a funny thing - I was actually on Voat when it came apart and I watched it happen, and what happened there is, I think, very much relevant.
It wasn't always a toxic right-wing cesspool - it was actually quite a bit like this in the early days - just people posting.
But then there was this sudden push to get people all wound up about an external threat - in that case, Reddit "powermods," and especially the SRS brigaders. The hue and cry was that they were going to destroy the free and open forum unless we did something about it.
Sort of like how Meta is going to destroy this free and open forum unless we do something about it.
But the thing is that the constant fanning of the flames just led to increasing paranoia and hysteria and infighting and harassment and brigading and general ugliness, and when the dust all settled, the toxic right-wing authoritarians had shouted down, alienated, stifled and ultimately driven away everyone else. All in the name of "protecting" the site.
Not saying that that will necessarily happen here (especially in that particular way, since if nothing else the tankies aren't going to give in to the righties). Just saying that I've already seen a forum destroyed by an obsessive fear of some bogeyman, and I'd rather not see it again.
The fediverse is gonna be like 2 servers that act like they care about privacy in a few years
The first step to fixing a problem is identifying it. If we know the threat is coming, all we need to do is not do that thing.
I'm shocked! SHOCKED! Meta isn't playing on an equal playing field? There's no way I could have ever seen that coming!
If this fediverse thing works like its advertised to, whatever meta does won't have any effect on the rest of the network
As expected, no Google user bated an eye. In fact, none of them realised. At worst, some of their contacts became offline. That was all. But for the XMPP federation, it was like the majority of users suddenly disappeared. Even XMPP die hard fanatics, like your servitor, had to create Google accounts to keep contact with friends. Remember: for them, we were simply offline. It was our fault.
People keep posting that, but where that specific example breaks down is that xmpp requires network effects to work. You need your friends to use the same system and it's more person to person interaction.
They have a lot more leverage because if you want to talk to your friend, then you have to use their setup.
Link aggregators, forums, reddit, and lemmy/kbin work differently. Your friends use them but you probably don't interact directly.
It's about the community.
And I'm not really sure how Meta changes that. They are creating a thing for their Instagram users (using activitypub protocol??) and they are planning on allowing people to move their mastodon accounts over to their thing. Their thing that doesn't federate. It's a walled garden.
Those people, if they move, are required to follow Facebooks terms of service. Well no shit? You just moved to Facebook.
What's being forced on anyone?
If they "enhance" the protocol and attract people to their service...then what? You can't stop people from using a different service. Tildes could take off and pull people from the fediverse. Tildes could offer a service to import your account. How does that impact the rest of the fediverse??
Just keep using this. Build your community and carry on.
EXACTLY!!
That didn't take long. Welp, the fediverse was a good idea. We are in the darkest timeline.
'Member when Facebook chat was federated with Jabber?
Pepperidge Farm remembers!
There is already a list of instances which have pledged to not federate with Meta. The landscape is going to splinter into two networks.
I'm confused by this - there are various things Meta might want from the Fediverse (free content, more data, more people to serve ads to), but new users can't be one of them. No one from Mastodon is likeky to migrate to Meta's platform; the people who want to use Meta are already there.
Should we be surprised at this, after the whole Anti-Meta Pact thing got so much traction? Like on one hand we don’t want to federate with them, but on the other we’re unhappy when they won’t?
From a product side, I think most meta users who are looking for microblogging are happy enough with Twitter. So I think it will be tough to get a lot of initial buy-in.
In regards to the embrace, extend, extinguish concerns: I can't, off the top of my head, think of any feature adds that would outweigh fediverse peoples distaste for ads or corporate social media. I mean, are flashy ai filters enough to split the user base of a reddit-alike or twitter clones? Is anyone clamoring for vr group-chats to improve their link-sharing threaded convos.
I'm not saying there's nothing to worry about, but I think the feature-poor nature of these types of services (that really aren't significantly different than old bbses) insulates at least those corners of the fediverse to some extent.
Plus, feature-creep is something people usually hate, or are uninterested in with big social media before this all started to pop off? Remember Foursquare check-ins, deals, credits, crypto, live audio...
Is this like when they let AOL onto Usenet
@giallo yeah, this is blatant embrace, extend, extinguish strategy.
I thought defederation is what people on Mastodon wanted?
Before everyone freaks out, this has zero impact on our communities. Chill.
They can already do this by bringing content from Mastodon to Meta platforms via links and screen grabs, this only speeds up the process.
Personally, I love that they're not federating day one. Because I don't want any instances I use to federate with them, I don't want to be connected to a Meta platform unless I deliberately go to a Meta platform to use it.
To expedite the process, Mastodon instances should just defederate from them entirely. Don't let them access that data through ActivityPub. They can build their own platform on the Fediverse and we can have our network of smaller connected instances.
Them doing this does not affect our communities unless we let it. Defederate from them and we can go on our merry way and they can have their own ad laden instance that's not connected.
Everyone, relax. Continue building your communities here and ignore Meta in their unconnected instances.
There’s a lot of evidence to be worried about this.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
I've seen that article and no, we still don't need to be worried. Just defederate and that's all. As evidenced by the final paragraph:
Just keep using it as the community building tool it is, defederate and protect those communities and we're golden.
Everybody relax.
I just read this article and what Meta is doing then triggered all the alarm bells!
From the Wiki (quite enlightening):
This is a great read, I'll definitely bookmark this for when someone says it won't be problem.
When Twitter had an exodus to Mastodon and a lot of new instances popped up, several were quickly defederated because they were scraping data from other instances, which made a lot of people uncomfortable.
There were also a few far right instances that spun up that were also defederated and blocked within 24 hours so the communities ability to respond to situations like this is very much there and I'm sure that the vast majority will not want to have a single thing to do with meta
@DeeImaginarium At this moment I am more un-relax with your insistence of telling me to relax.
@giallo
@DeeImaginarium @giallo I wish most Mastodon instances were planning to defederate from Meta by default but sadly that's not the case. Meta reached out to the admins of some of the big instances and a whole bunch of them don't plan to. One of the admins shared this — https://fosstodon.org/@kev/110592625692688836
Some admins are going for a "trust but verify" approach. These are the only instances which have agreed to defederate from the start —https://fedipact.online/
why does their conversation have to be "off the record" with an NDA when they are discussing a public federation? They will never get the idea of public social media because they can't understand the point of anything except squeezing the last drop of revenue from their decaying monolith.
Ok I can get behind the "fedipact" as an idea but who the hell designed that website, nobody is gonna take it seriously if you're greeted with bright pink background and floating hearts. Who's leading the fedipact project anyway?