Feddit UK and Meta
Feddit UK and Meta
Seeing as this conversation is going on everywhere right now, what's the approach to Meta going to be here on UK? Personally I'm all for defederation as soon as possible, what does everyone else think?
The Mastodon developers have posted their thoughts on Threads.
They seem quite welcoming about the whole thing, as they have been advocating greater adoption of federation by the big social media firms. However, they mention XMPP and we've been burnt by them before - once bitten twice shy?
Interesting stance. I hope they are right. Maybe it is a win for open protocols. I just feel like federating with Facebook is like getting into bed with your drunk uncle who has a history of molesting people.
Worth noting that it is also a pretty controversial stance in some quarters? I appreciate the utopian/optimistic stance and, if you feel all social media should federate and give their users the option to move, then this development should be welcomed.
However, Meta is an all-consuming amoeba and you play nice with them at your peril.
As they say they'll allow account migration, I am kinda hoping that we can poach some of their users when they realise that being on the Fediverse means you don't have to give your content to a soulless corporation for free. However, I might be being optimistic.
At the moment, they seem to have tossed out a beta version to try and capitalise on Twitter's problems but it's up in the air if it'll even work - the discussion on the radio suggested people use Twitter to follow news and current affairs and Instagram for funny dog videos and now you are going to be getting your news and current affairs from the people who make funny dog videos. Possibly a bit flippant but it's right in that Twitter has a lot of staying power because people will have carefully curated their account to deliver the information they value. That in itself makes it difficult to move.
I'm struggling to see the benefits of defederation. If we defederate from too many places, then users will make accounts to see what's on new platforms. If there is a better experience on the other side, then they will abandon these instances. If you can see content from the new platforms already then that is less of a reason to abandon ship.
I'm not buying the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish argument. It's more likely that we end up making ourselves irrelevant, than Meta somehow makes an open source protocol closed.
Philosophically, wasnt the idea behind an open protocol so that access remains open and is free from broad bans like this? Trying to keep people out en masse is not much different from having a Reddit-style walled garden to keep them in.
If we end up defederating from everything new and scary then why did we even leave Reddit?
I'm against it.
First, I fear it's an attempt to embrace, extend, extinguish the fediverse, but I dont know what blocking Threads is going to do to stop that...
Second, I want Meta to have as little data on me as possible, so if they are storing my comments and profile data, I'm not happy. Call me crazy, but I worry what big data algorithms they have behind the scenes can do to tie things together.
Third, I'm huge advocate for digital privacy, and against these large social media companies. What demand in exchange for what they provide is massively unbalanced in my opinion. I dont want to support them by giving them content I havent actually agreed to give them!
Honestly, I see no upside to them federating, other than content that I'm not desperate for.
embrace, extend, extinguish
Ayyy this again. A catchy sound bite goes a long way on the internet I suppose? Never mind that the examples are a good twenty years old and the recent MS Linux one isn't even correct. But that's cool. It sounds edgy I suppose.
I'm not arguing for Meta (they can go fuck themselves) but give people the choice and they will choose wisely for themselves. Block Meta if you want, or don't if you don't want.
I don't think that having a realistic concern that Meta may be using a well documented business tactic that is used to snuff out competitors, to snuff out a competitor.
Embrace, extend, extinguish is associated with MS, but they're not the only company to use.
I think many will see Meta entering the fediverse space as a threat to something nice that's separate from corporate greed.
Say no to Meta! They inevitably will want to Embrace, Enhance, Extinguish!
My fear is that they're going to go at it Chrome/IE style: Get big enough that their interpretation of the standards becomes the standard.
I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I don't believe they will stick with the ActivityPub outside of their initial start up period for Threads. While they are federating though it will be a fantastic opportunity to introduce users to Lemmy from Threads. If the Lemmy integration in Threads is anything like Mastodon's then I think it's more then worthwhile given that Lemmy is offering something Threads isn't currently covering.
However I think the onus should be on Meta to Federate respectfully, if they aren't willing to federate without contracts getting involved then I think that's completely against the spirt of the Fediverse and Meta shouldn't be allowed to operate in that capacity.
Read up on the XMPP experience with Google. Think the warning is don't link up with the cooperate big boys if you want your alternative to them to survive