Embrace, extend, extinguish. Only proven way to destroy decentralized, free, open source solutions.
First stage embrace might not even be malicious, but with corporations it will eventually lead to someone thinking: how can we monetize our position. It is just nature how business works.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Unpopular opinion but defederating Meta is a terrible idea. What are people thinking will happen? Allow them to federate and you'll have mastodon users able to view and interact with posts from Threads without needing to be concerned about ads or tracking, without giving over any more control of privacy than they would to any other fediverse instance, and without needing to possess accounts homed within the Meta infrastructure.
Defederate them, and anyone who wants to interact with anyone on threads will most likely need to maintain a presence on both and handover more personal data to Meta than they otherwise would.
Defederating is actively hostile to fediverse users.
Big corpos don't want to take it over, they want it gone.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
i'll join the voices saying this is bad for the fediverse, and bad for users in general. there are LOTS of normie users who are joining threads who will be shut off from learning about all the cool other servers if everyone blocks them. this will mean users who want to interact with them need to sign up on Threads, which is what we don't want.
what we want is that users on Threads see other servers, learn that they're better, and migrate over.
don't block Threads, show them how much better we are.
Big corpos don't want to take it over, they want it gone.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Threads being in the Fediverse is a plus for me, not a negative. It means I could follow regular people and friends who would never in a million years join places like Mastodon or Lemmy while I still get the benefits of being on those platforms, all while being shielded from Meta’s ads and data harvesting. The only issue is I don’t actually believe Zuck will go through with it. They’ll either never federate or severely limit it if they do.
Mastodon themselves have put out a post outlining how this will affect them (it won’t) and how EEE is not a threat. If Meta does eventually opt out of ActivityPub then cool. It’s not like that’s why Mastodon users were there in the first place.
This is Microsoft's playbook, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish, it was use by Google to kill off XMPP - https://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2013/05/did-google-really-kill-off-all-xmppjabber-support-in-google-hangouts-it-still-seems-to-partially-work.html, now it will be used by Facebook to try to kill the Fediverse.
Why is this not more widely talked about? Please share this.
Spontaneous idea of how to use copyright law for keeping Meta out of the Fediverse (more for fun):
Introduction: Parts of the Fediverse, including Mastodon, are software licensed under the APGL license. This license is a great choice because it forces the ones running the software to grant users access to the source code. GPL for example would allow to run proprietary services based on GPL code. The AGPL does not. Companies like Meta and Google will likely not use AGPL code because it might force them to also publish their proprietary systems behind the scenes. However, this does not help much for keeping the Fediverse save. They simply implement their own software which will not be open source.
Therefore we may need another approach. Defederating is the simplest and in my opinion currently the best. It's easy and keeps people in control.
However, there could be some 'automatic' approach using copyright law. It's a hack which allows to use existing law to regulate the way instances can federate.:
- instances would Federate only if the other side can provide a certain piece of information called X
- X is protected by copyright law, therefore by default, instances are not allowed to provide X
- However, X is released under a license which for permits to copy and distribute X under certain conditions
- The conditions allow to tune who can legally federate
- Conditions could be
- The server software must be AGPL licensed
- The instance must not be owned by a company with a certain amount of annual revenue
Open question is, who owns the copyright of X?
I'm not worried at all about Zuck taking over Mastodon at all, they'll try but they are just so incompetent, because literally every single product idea they have they either stole or bought from somebody else. Great tech, terrible products, zero originality is the Facebook mantra and that is because they have a delusional CEO that they can't fire, because Zuck has delude himself into thinking he's an "ideas" guy like Jobs instead of an "executions" guy like Bezos that he really is, and until he realizes that, he will always fail.
(also, delusional for actually thinking Ready Player One is a good book)
If making a TikTok clone didn't get people to switch from TikTok, why would they think making a Twitter clone is going to get people to switch from Twitter?
The only way I see Facebook being a threat is when they give up on making their Twitter clone and start providing easy subscription service hosting for Mastodon/Lemmy to EEE. THAT would be the time to worry.
Is there a way for a Lemmy user to block content from Meta's instance? If so, I'd love to.
Bear in mind that this blocks you from seeing Threads posts on your profile. Unless you private your profile, this changes nothing as far as what they're able to see/pull from your account. Their official documentation states that the block only prevents users from seeing or retrieving content from those servers. You'd probably have to be performing some DNS-level filtering on incoming requests or web firewalling from the host level to prevent their incoming requests.
So I'm on Threads (occupational hazard, I have Instagram for work) and it's a surreal experience. It's like if everyone you know on Facebook and Twitter joined you on a muted Tumblr overlay. Someone's already @'d Zuck to ask for a "home feed that's just your follows." So... like Mastodon.
exaggerated_eye_roll.wav
For kbin users to unilaterally block content from threads:
- Go to /d/threads.net
- Click the block button next to the subscribe one
The only drawback is that it will only start working after the first piece of content from threads.net has been shared on your instance - for now it returns a 404 not found.
Edit: Mileage may vary, depending on how Threads solves its fediverse integration.
So we're all pro federation and decentralization, until we aren't... I think this is a very preemptive and paranoid measure, but thankfully it will work out just as the technology was built for, some will block, some wont, everyone will make their choice, and be happy in their corner of the internet.
I'm just gonna bully the shit out of them, like the blue checkers on twitter.
Sign up for a real instance, fucking nerds.
You are a hero among men
What I heard some people said about the fediverse was that before email was controlled by big corporations you can host your own email and no issues. Nowadays its much harder for a regular person to do this because big corporations took control of the federated email. So to my understanding even this social networks are in danger of the same thing happening. Please anyone correct me if I am wrong.
How likely is a federated threads going to be used to harvest data for whatever advertising or AI purpose meta has?
Aside from ensuring their launch product has immediate content, the only reason meta would do this is for that $$.
That said, it could be a symbiotic relationship with instances who's users aren't super worried about that & find value from the addtl content it will surely bring.
I really don’t have a problem with Meta creating a federated social media. I feel like it’s a benefit to the fediverse overall.
I 'member XMPP
Neat trick.
_... longing look across from Lemmy. _
This is Microsoft's playbook, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish, it was use by Google to kill off XMPP - https://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2013/05/did-google-really-kill-off-all-xmppjabber-support-in-google-hangouts-it-still-seems-to-partially-work.html, now it will be used by Facebook to try to kill the Fediverse.
Why is this not more widely talked about? Please share this.
This issue is going to divide the fediverse. You've got instances defederating from Threads, and instances defederating from instances that won't defederate from Threads. I feel like there are going to be two clearly divided and disconnected sides to the fediverse now.
Wait, their server is online already?
Thanks!
lol you’re all so dramatic and pretentious no wonder mastodon never took off. Threads will have more users than the entirety of Mastodon on ONE instance. They can stand entirely on their own and offer a superior content experience than a bunch of angry nerds yelling at the clouds. Mastodon is just a bunch of people mad at other platforms. That’s 90% of the content.
Would defederating make things worse? I would want to see posts from these users and blocking them would force users to use Meta's app and in turn more likely for users to switch over and create accounts on their app.
I understand its a big scary corporate business but the fedaverse should be open. Closing off a potential big userbase does not seem to be the smartest move and it opens up the rabithole of instances starting to block each other left and right, ruining the entire point.
