How will we keep Meta out of the fediverse?
Is there any hope? Or is it inevitable that big corporations will take over what started as a way to escape big corporate platforms and to focus on real communities and discussions and replace it with a toxic shithole pumped full of ads?
The protocols and software are all free and open source. You can't stop a company from running a Lemmy or Mastodon instance any more than you could stop an individual from doing so.
The nice thing is that the system allows for free choice. Your favorite instance isn't forced to federate with a hypothetical Meta instance, and and even if it does you can choose which communities to subscribe to or avoid. Who cares if Meta runs an instance, or a hundred instances? You can simply choose not to use them.
Yeah on the whole it could be good, In the same way that it isn't a problem that google owns the most popular e-mail service, that doesn't hurt those on proton mail or any other mail service, and in fact offers benefits that they can just as easilly e-mail their friends using gmail from their preffered mail service. The real fear is the embrace extend extinguish. IE if meta encourages people to join their instance, then gradually makes things incompatible after major communities move to them, but they can't prevent us from moving back just the same even if they somehow got us to jump there.
Due to the dominance of just a few companies' big email services, it's now almost impossible to set up an independent email server. Emails from small independent servers are just not delivered by Gmail and the like. They will only accept emails from other big email providers. In this sense it is a problem that Google owns the most popular email instance. They and a few other large companies have effectively turned a democratic and distributed system into a closed loop owned by a handful of big corporations.
The real fear is the embrace extend extinguish. IE if meta encourages people to join their instance, then gradually makes things incompatible after major communities move to them
Kind of like how Facebook Messenger (and GChat, and AIM) used to federate with XMPP, and then dropped it like a bad habit once their platform took off.
I think it is really important for communities to spread out to avoid exactly this. Users can centralize, but distributed communities is what will prevent what you describe.
This "anyone is free to join any instance, you can just avoid what you don't like" kind of thinking is perfectly reasonable in theory, but I think what OP wants to know is if this also holds up in practice. You could "defederate" Google and Microsoft by blocking emails from Gmail and Outlook addresses, but the reality is that the majority of people you will need to contact use those addresses. In most cases, your school/workplace will even make you use them for your organizational email. Yes, it is possible to avoid these companies and choose alternatives, but you'll be isolating yourself from the majority of the network.
The question is not if it will be possible to use the future corporate-owned Fediverse without Meta (of course it will), but if it will be feasible for the majority of users.
My bigger worry is that they'll try and take control of the fediverse on a larger scale. Even if all of their users join the fediverse and it becomes less convenient to be defederated from the larger corporate instances you can still have accounts on smaller instances or your own and you'll be able to completely block all the corporate instances. But what if they strike a deal with activitypub? From my knowledge they're the backend of the entire fediverse. If they're able to do what they want with the fediverse as a whole then where do we go? I think that the developers of activitypub would be against that but meta can spend as much as they want to take control of this and I don't know the developers personally so I can't be sure if they'd pass on that money. I might be worrying a bit too much but big tech has a long history of taking stuff over like this.; social media and e-mail are both great examples of that.
I agree on some points, but I think it's not fair to compare it to email. People use emails for work are somewhat forced to use them pretty often. I don't know anyone who browsed Reddit for work over the past 12 years I've had an account, and I don't believe Lemmy will change that. People are not forced to use Lemmy, reaching the maximum amount of people is usually not the point unless you're advertising, and if you're targeting the Facebook crowd you can... advertise on Facebook - this wouldn't even be anything new.
The question isn't whether or not the majority of users can use the Fediverse without being hampered by the corpos, it's whether or not the core users can. Unless Meta can somehow force federation unto all instances, I will be able to choose an instance that is not federated with them.
A good analogy is Google with Gmail. They became the biggest player in email and even gained a lot of influence over for email works, but you can easily use another email provider and not be locked out of the system.
Imagine how horrible things would be if email were centralized. We really need to thank the founders of the internet for having the foresight to not let that happen.
It's funny you bring Email as an example because everyone using the same 3-4 providers effectively centralized email. Anyone who tries to run any self-hosted email with decent volume quickly discovers this fact
let's say the instance i belong too has been bought out by zuckerberg... can i transfer my data and move? or do i just lose everything like i did with reddit?
currently you lose everything. I'm hoping they add a transfer tool like how masodon(i think it was that) has with transferring accounts
Transferring is theoretically technically possible (Mastodon does it), but Lemmy hasn't implemented the option yet. There's an issue for it on their GitHub.
Why would Facebook bother buying out existing instances? They have the resources to create thousands of instances, and the userbase (the idea is to migrate all Instagram accounts) to populate them.
Not to mention that they're creating a Twitter/Mastodon clone, not a Reddit/Lemmy one.
I don't think so, but the fediverse is an open standard that's being actively developed, so if it's technically possible it could be added.
That said, this kind of social network account has zero lock in for me. I don't care about my history and none of this is connected to my real life so I wouldn't mind switching instances. The important thing is you can still access the rest of the network after you switch.
You can't keep them out, but you can choose not to Federate with them. They can't take over. That's the point of having independent federated servers.
The Mastodon instance I'm on has blocked all known Meta IPs as a preventative measure. So I imagine some admins will federate and some won't, and users will be free to join the instance that they wish to.
Any admin worth their salt's gonna defederate them and proudly wear the Misfit Loser Zealot label[^1]. The only people who'll federate with them are the naive techbros and those who only care about how much users they have, compared to, idk, being committed to creating a good community.
https://fedipact.online is already gaining steam with the Mastodon side of the fediverse.
[^1]: Seriously the markdown guy couldn't've picked a better description if he tried.
Upvoting because that’s a great explanation, that’s a great term that I will wear proudly (MLZ), you used a triple contraction. I love contractions
They have the right to use the open protocol, just as anybody else to build their own instance. Trying to keep Facebook out only through banning of known instances/IP addresses is a losing battle of whack-a-mole.
If you really want to stop them from EEE, make a pact to refuse to federate with any instance software stack without the AGPL-3.0 license instead, no Apache, no MIT, not even regular GPL, so they simply can't do the "Extend" bit at all.
What are those licences that you list? Please explain like I'm a non-IT.
Now Lemmy Explain: These are all open-source licenses; however, their provisions are different from each other. For this, I assume you understand what compilation is.
Companies hate GPL code since they can't legally keep modified software close sourced, which means that Facebook won't be able to develop proprietary extensions for AGPL licensed software like Lemmy or Mastodon.
Hopefully people will remember what Google did with XMPP.
If a corporation aims to purchase an instance, all the other instances would let them know they will vote to defederate it as soon as the purchase is finalized. That ought to make them change course.
I don’t have an issue with social media companies entering the Fediverse, at least on the surface, because it’s ultimately more users and it’s in line with the ideas of free exchange of information and content. My problem with it comes in when they try to buy instances, communities, or what have you. No one should have a monopoly on the Fediverse, and it shouldn’t be pay to win.
So, my answer is this: because no one can stop anyone from making their own instances, users decide whether to defederate their instances from Meta’s, or Twitter’s, or anyone else’s. Join an instance that doesn’t federate with Meta, or start your own if you have the know-how. Just like anywhere else on the internet, you don’t have to interact with content you don’t want to interact with.
Seems simple enough to me.
Meta: Do what we want or we'll defederate you!
Everyone: Fuck off
Meta: Surprised pikachu
Not only that because they are federated there will be a much higher traffic, which will come with higher cost. So a possible playbook Meta could follow is say they'd help cover the cost from their user base. Then it becomes the equivalence of being bribed. You don't do what they want they stop giving you the money and because of the growth that comes with Meta, an instance that federate with them could suddenly find themselves struggling to maintain the instance.
Here's the most interesting take I've found on this question.
https://www.timothychambers.net/2023/06/23/project-and-the.html
Good read. Onboarding and discoverability are the weakest part of the fediverse and need to be a high priority.
Apps should go as far as assigning new users randomly to a good general instance (vlemmy.net, lemmy.one, lemm.ee etc) if it means the user wouldn't have to know about instances, and integrating lemmyverse.net's functionality into lemmy would both go a long way for both I feel.
Apps assigning new users randomly to a good general instance (vlemmy.net, lemmy.one, lemm.ee etc) eithout requiring the user to know about instances,
This is a terrible idea, and the defederation of Beehaw is the exact reason why this is a terrible idea. Don't get me wrong, with the attitude of the Beehaw admins I suspect that Beehaw will constantly be defederating from a lot of instances over the course of its existence, but this comes with the consequence of people suddenly being locked out of participating in their chosen communities because "you signed up on the wrong instance."
Which is something nobody should have to experience.
Great article! I appreciate how it addresses the commonly raised reasons and points to a way forward.
I don't see how they can really take over in a system that's open source and anyone willing can create their own instance. If they start taking control of a large, established base and pisses that base off, they can just collectively make and move to a new instance, walling the previous one off from the federation by blocking it.
They're supposedly in talks with activitypub, the backend of the entire fediverse. If meta can get what they want with activitypub, they'll effectively have control over the entire fediverse. I don't see that happening though because the fediverse was made in opposition of major social media sites. I see them trying to take control of the software like lemmy and kbin or if that fails trying to buy popular instances or just filling the fediverse with their existing users. Luckily if the first two fail the nature of the fediverse works in our favor and the instances that want to can just defederate.
That's like saying they're "in talks with HTTP". ActivityPub is a protocol. It's an open source standard. That standard is currently under development by the World Wide Web Consortium. There is no "ActivityPub" for them to be in talks with.
I mean, I'd sell all you fuckers out for a billion dollars. So there's a chance someone sells out somewhere along the line.
ActivityPub is a W3C standard. I'm not sure how one can be "in talks" with a standard.
If they start taking control of a large, established base
We are not a large base. Lemmy+kbin have only a couple millions of users, and Mastodon 13 millions. Facebook is planing to migrate all Instagram accounts to P92 accounts. That means billions of users, flooding the whole fediverse.
unbridled aggression
Jesus Christ 🤦♂️
The entire point of federation is you can't.
Go post your uneducated meta circle jerk hate back on Reddit.
Don't be a dick. Seriously, dude posted in Not Stupid Questions and you immediately tell him how stupid his question is.
Most of the good content I see is from here.
I think the real threat comes from the larger user base they’ll likely bring. Because they’ll certainly favor their own instance’s communities, which means those communities could then grow to the point that they have enough leverage to do the bad things.
The main strategy I’ve seen is to form a pact against federating with them. I hope it works.
Class action against activitypub (or whoever has the final say of whether they're let in or not) if they allow Meta into the fediverse. They are putting all of our data and privacy at risk by doing so.
ActivityPub is from W3C and is an open protocol for anyone to use. No one to target there legally speaking. It’s up to the consumers of the protocol to reject and defederate.
That's like calling on people to sue the W3C for "letting" Meta use http.
It doesn't work that way.
The only class action we can and should take is to defederate.
They should make an instance, it would help the general public discover the fediverse. Most people I talk to at the bar don't know about the fediverse, I've explained it so many times, some people show interest, some people don't see the point, or how it's a big deal. I probably just come off as a total geek.
Once meta opens up a channel to the fediverse, people will start to stumble upon the different instances, decide they are done with meta, and move on from meta.
There are some billionaires out there who are watching whats happening, they are noticing the patterns, the trends, what people want, and what people dont want.
All it takes is one clever billionaire, who realizes they have enough money to create the next best platform and be able to fund it by other means.
We are at the point where bots can generate ad revenue, so if we just abandon the old websites to bots, they become bot-towns that generate revenue, and that revenue goes towards funding ad free servers in the fediverse.
This may be what just happens.
Being aware of your instance admins stances and what they plan to do. Bit rich coming from my kbin account (no idea the stance), but I have two other accounts already on instances where I‘m certain the admins wouldn‘t sell out to corpos. So if kbin were to federate with Meta and their stuff invaded my feed, I would move to one of those as my primary account.
What I think is going to be important here to make this less of a pain for users who get very attached to their accounts, is some ability to export and import account data, comment history and so on. I personally don‘t care (deleted a 15 year Reddit account without a care too), but I want this to succeed and for that it would be important.
Once this influx has died down and the devs got some more room for requests, I hope they can give us this ability.
Now before anyone regales me again with "Why not give them a chance, companies are our friends" stuff, I‘m gonna link a few things to read for you instead of replying to me, cause I can‘t be bothered to argue with pro-corporate people anyway and won‘t respond:
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
I'll definitely be on an instance that's not federated with Meta. Right now, I have accounts on sh.itjust.works, .world and .ee, but I'd drop any and all of them the moment I find out they'll federate with them.
I'd have to imagine that Meta would be locked within their own little bubble. I find it hard to believe that many of the current instances out there wouldn't immediately opt to defederate from Meta out of principle. I don't think it'd be difficult to find a community that's blocked all interaction with Meta.
You sign up on (or create) an instance that defederates from them.
We could collectively vote to defederate them.
How does defederation work? Is it global or is it in a per instance basis?
Any instance can choose what other instances it interacts with.
Per instance
This!
Though the participation is needed/appreciated, can we let "This!" die with Reddit?
that is already being done