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Defederate. Meta would do nothing but rot the fediverse from the inside
The instance I’m on already took that step, and I was thrilled to see it.
It’s all fun and games until Facebook starts adding features, then eventually starts defining what the fediverse should do to maintain federation with Facebook.
Embrance, Extend, Extinguish. Enshittification. Call it what you will, but i don’t think this will end well for us.
This is my biggest fear. The hidden weakness of the fediverse is that the largest implementation gets to set the rules of federation
I disagree. Mastodon does not “set the rules” for federation of Kbin, Lemmy, Funkwhale, BookWyrm, Pixelfed, Peertube, or any other platform in the Fediverse. The platforms are interoperable when it makes sense, but they are designed to fill different needs and it makes no sense for them to follow some centralized “rules of federation”.
I think meta just wants to captailize on twitters demise.
I don’t see how crushing activtypub would help them in anyway.
Mastodon is already massive and many companies (and the EU) have their own instance.
Can someone ELI5 what this means for Lemmy, Mastadon, and other platforms that are federated?
I thought the point of federations was to allow server instances the ability to prevent other instances from interacting with one another?
Couldnt servers just block or prevent Threads from interacting with them?
Just reading this? I don’t understand how this truly changes anything at all. Why is everyone concerned? The API isn’t owned by Zuck but open for usage.
The fear is a practice called “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” (or EEE). It’s been used by tech companies before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
It, in theory, could work like this:
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Meta embraces ActivityPub in its tech in an attempt to garner good will and make it easy for users to transition to Threads.
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Meta extends on ActivityPub by saying "oh we’re just adding a few things that make this better for our users (on our service) but we’re still supporting ActivityPub!
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Meta then extinguishes ActivityPub support, and severally hobbles AP, after they secure enough users to be happy and think AP offers no real competition anymore.
Then the enshittification process begins, by moving the focus from users to other interests (usually advertisers) at the expense of users. And eventually to the platform owners, at the expense of advertisers. Though I guess they’ll skip the middle step, being a public company?
So after they build good will in the community and get a large userbase on their platform you think they will then pull the rug right out from under their own feet? Why would they cripple AP if their app is running on it?
ActivityPub is a communication protocol. There’s nothing stopping anyone from implementing it and then adding their own ‘features’.
Just look at how different companies have implemented the HTML ‘standard’. You end up with websites that require specific browsers to run properly. It’s gotten better over the past few years, but god damn anyone old enough to remember what a pain it was designing websites in the 90’s and working around all of Internet Explorer’s shenanigans will tell you it’s not a good time.
It’s not that they would necessarily cripple it, but they would “enhance” their instance of AP (the “extend” in EEE), “accidentally” making it incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse and thus creating an excuse to suddenly drop support for the Fediverse. At this point users in, say, Mastodon will have created some degree of dependency on users in Threads, and at that point people in there would be forced to move to Threads if they want to maintain a similar experience as before.
Sounds like people should be more concerned about just not using Threads.
They replace AP with something else internally and abandon AP. If anyone wants to keep talking to them, they’ve got to hop onboard whatever they’ve replaced AP with. This effectively kills AP (theoretically).
Why would it kill AP if there is a set of users that don’t care about those features but just their privacy?
Just don’t use Meta’s app or switch. I just don’t understand personally how this removed every other server instance using AP out of the equation if FB would just be closing themselves off even if they did build something better or useful.
We need to remember that ActivityPub and this entire fediverse is only to allow small, individual communities to live without a major corporation able to pull the plug. It’s not privacy centric at all. In fact, quite far from it.
I don’t understand that either? I thought the Fediverse was privacy first driven? I don’t really understand how it couldn’t be when you can wall off Threads if you choose to do so?
AP is just a networking protocol for communication between several servers. You should assume everything you to is 1000% public and easily gathered by everyone that wants to
Actually, apps don’t “run on” AP. AP is a federation/communication protocol, it’s only used to communicate objects, or things about objects, to other servers. Every app that uses AP can basically still work without it, since it has its own data structures and UI.
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Yes they can block threads, but they have to choose to. So some people might be on servers whose operators don’t block it. And, well, some people might actually want it. I see a lot of Mastodon accounts moving instances in the future.
Question if a server defederate from threads but is still federated with a server that federate with threads can meta get your data
Meta can get your data in any case. ActivityPub is inherently public. You should assume anything you post on Mastodon, Lemmy, or KBin is public.
It was right there in the name all along!
I had heard, of course, that Rochko was in confidential talks with Facebook abiut something. This is disheartening. Facebook is toxic and must be kept out of the Fediverse.
Confidential is something which is not meant to be disclosed, but people gossiping call anything as such that has not been yet divulged to the public.
Partially correct. Your point?
Meta needs to be split up at this point, as do many other tech companies.
The problem with trying to break it up is that the FTC already allowed the mergers that let them get so big. They approved the purchases of Whatsapp and Instagram. Thankfully the new chair of the FTC seems to understand letting companies get this big is not good and is trying to block these things from happening in the future.
Remember what Google Groups did to Usenet? We should be wary.
It didn’t do anything. Usenet still exists and is active in some circles. It’s not very popular, but it’s as alive and well as it always was.
Usenet is still my primary source for uh…discounted media. I’ve had it for so long now I couldn’t even imagine not using it
I’ve looked into doing that myself before, but it seemed like a lot of work and research to get it set up
It’s pretty easy, especially if you have someone (me) that will let you see their setup or help out with any questions. Highly, highly recommend running your server on unRAID.
Can you recommend any good walk-throughs for noobs? I didn’t even know you needed a server lol
You only need a server if you plan to serve the content in a sophisticated way (like Plex). If you just watch movies on your laptop then it’s as simple as downloading the files and opening them.
Unfortunately, getting into usenet is actually not as technically hard as it is practically hard. First, some things to know about usenet:
- You pay for access to a usenet server, which has incredible speeds and doesn’t rely on uploaders. There are many out there, and good ones are easy to find.
- Because it isn’t P2P like torrents, there’s no way for the studios to know who’s been downloading anything. Typically the most they can do is send a DMCA to the servers, who auto-comply. Because of this near-anonymity, a VPN usually isn’t used. The corporations would need to subpoena the server to get any of your info, and they’re usually deliberately hosted in privacy-friendly countries.
- Now the hard part: knowing where the files you want to download exist on that usenet server, because even a small TV episode is often divided into 50+ smaller files. This is where NZBs come in. NZBs are small files that tell your usenet downloader where to find all the parts that create the bigger file. The usenet server you pay for doesn’t provide this service for legal reasons.
- Therefore, you need to also subscribe to an NZB indexer, which is where you search for NZBs for shows, movies, games, etc. Some are one lifetime payment, some are recurring. Good ones usually only open their enrollment during very small windows, so it can be really tough to get into one. This is the biggest hurdle for most people. Even finding out which indexers are out there can be tough, as people generally don’t blab about them in open forums, because they’re the most piracy-adjacent and vulnerable to being shut down.
That said, once you have a usenet server to connect to, and an indexer to find what you want, then it’s as simple as downloading the NZB file with a program like Sabnzbd, which will feel very similar to a torrent client. It downloads the various parts and combines them, so what you end up with is openable by windows (either media or exe). Everyone starts this way, and most users are probably content stopping at this stage too.
From there, however, some people get really advanced with it, like the person above running it on a separate server. There’s software out there that automates TV and Movies downloads based on your preferences and which shows you subscribe to, same with music and even ebooks. Then there’s Plex, which you may already be familiar with and which allows you to use your laptop or whatever to stream your content to phones, chromecast, etc., as well as share your content with friends to stream (requires paid sub I believe). It can be a little daunting to set everything up, but you’re mostly just following guides because it’s the same setup for everyone, minus changes in server URLs, username/password, etc. And once it’s running, it really is beautiful. A show that I subscribe to that airs on say, Wednesdays 8-9pm, is available on my Plex by like 9:30 typically, without me having to lift a finger. I even get a notification on my phone that a new episode is available.
But to be able to transcode streams to multiple people in the house? Requires a somewhat beefy processor. And to keep your huge library of shows for years and year? Requires a lot of storage. Even more so on both counts if you want everything in 4K bluray quality. And it probably needs to be a dedicated machine–can’t be gaming and transcoding from the same rig. But boy is it addicting building up your own enormous streaming service for friends and families haha. I hope you can see now why some people would get carried away with it.
Wow thanks that’s the best breakdown I’ve read! I’ve been torrenting for maybe 15 years and used to collect all the shows I watched until one day my external hard drive died and I lost everything :(
Nowadays I just delete a show after I’ve watched it, so Idon’t think I’ll worry about making my own server yet. I’ve had a look into it and think I’ll start off with NZB Geek as indexer and Frugal Usenet as a server. Drunken Slug seems pretty popular too but they don’t seem to be open for registrations atm
Breathe life into an almost-dead format and worked hard to retrieve as much post history as possible? Yeah, I remember what Google did to Usenet. Do you?
I remember it filling groups with non-text posts which could not be read by Usenet clients, among other things.
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XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
Jabber was widely used in the early 2000s and not just among “nerds.” But Rochko would have only been 7+ years old at the time so how would he know that.
The “brand recognition of Mastodon” part makes me think this has to be a joke… right?
yeah, honestly, i think the optimism is somewhat misplaced. we must ensure that proprietary solutions, like threads, are not the main way people interact with the fediverse. it’s better to defederate early and continue in smaller communities while we still can, than to let them seep into every community we have, only for them to pull the plug later and lock everyone into threads.
i think it’s alright to federate with them a little bit, but we cannot allow threads to become the most popular fediverse app
I may be speaking in defense of something I don’t know, but I don’t see a direct problem with other apps (e.g., Threads, Twitter if they change up what they’re doing) to start talking with the fediverse.
The bigger problem is when they start throwing their weight around. The W3C (and groups like Mozilla) have had many strong battles with Google trying weird stuff because they’re the biggest guys in the room (e.g., FLoC).
As long as we can rally behind the loyalist FLOSS geeks, we’ll always be alright.
Yeah, it’s actually a welcome change that they’re federating. However, the way they killed off the last federation we had with XMPP was through the EEE model – they first acted friendly, joined our federation, then they ensured their client would be the best featured, capturing a majority of the people in their user base, and after that they defederated and the community collapsed in their favor. People on non-proprietary solutions had to switch to the proprietary one.
To avoid this, we need to defederate while we’re still ahead. I’d personally draw the line at 25%, but the point is just having it significantly less than 50%. If they defederate before they reach a majority, the community will collapse in our favor, and people with proprietary accounts will be the ones forced to come over here. Worst case, we’ll just exist beside each other as competitors, and in the best case we’ll snuff them out.
We need to be willing to do this to them, because they absolutely will do this to us. Threads is developed by the same Meta who helped kill XMPP a decade ago. (And “helped” only because the main culprit was Google – regardless, they’re not our friends.)
To avoid this, we need to defederate while we’re still ahead. I’d personally draw the line at 25%, but the point is just having it significantly less than 50%.
Mastodon has 13 million users. In the first few hours, Threads already had 10 million users. That battle was lost before it even started.
So how do people go about defederating? Is it just a matter of making new servers, or does it require anything else?
I’m happy to stand up against The Man, but it seems like once the masses get involved they don’t feel personally responsible to preserve what they enjoy. They seem to give general consensus to [Big Tech Company], then [hard-working FLOSS developer] comes in later to fix it.
If I’m going to get “political” here, I almost think people need to be sold more on the importance of self-reliance. One prior historical precedent was around the 1750’s about taxation, and that’s had a nearly non-trivial impact on society. People intuitively grasp land ownership, so it should translate to data ownership as well.
it’s a call to instance admins in the first round, they can just add meta’s platforms to their blocklist and be done with it. some will definitely do so, others may refuse. then if you’re not happy with their decision you may switch instances or even spin up your own
Man who signed NDA with Meta is suddenly gushing about Threads. I know, I know, this isn’t just anybody.
He addressed a few issues very topically but side stepped a major one. What happens if Threads takes off and Meta decides to enforce a trusted partner network by defederating all but a handful of instances unless they conform to Meta’s demands?
After all, if we allow Threads to grow to a successful size, that is where almost everybody will be. It is why Lemmy was a tiny project for a long time until Reddit and Twitter fucked up too badly and for too long. Twitter sucked all the air out of the room for Mastodon. Arguably still does despite itself. And Reddit did the same with Lemmy by simply existing.
Now imagine if Reddit made a Lemmy instance, kept policies around to make it grow large, then cracked down with an iron fist once they had the dominant position?
Eugen considers what would happen if Meta abandoned ActivityPub. But I don’t think would need to happen. They just need to wall off. They can keep the standard.
Another example: Google and RCS. The RCS Android users have isn’t the open standard. Google built a layer of proprietary middleware around it. They fiercely guard API access, which is why only a few “trusted partners” get to use it. And now Google is RCS. There are no more competitors even though it is open.
Because Google sucked all the air out of the room and became the dominant player able to dictate to the rest.
And so, too, will happen with ActivityPub and this whole shebang unless we stop them from being interoperable first. I get Eugen wants this tech to grow and prosper. But you don’t do it by making deals with the devil.
The one thing that you can trust 100% in all of this is that Meta’s intentions are evil, because Meta’s intentions are always evil. They see a new community finding its footing as prey to be seduced with features and then slaughtered for profit. They meet leaders behind closed doors and make them sign NDAs. Next, they’ll start throwing around their unlimited resources to take over.
Immediate and universal defederation is the only answer. It’s the only defense.
This is why we can’t have nice things. It was nice to be on platforms with no corporate stink for a brief moment.
If you’re on another server, you still have that freedom. Nothing changes unless you want it to.
XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
I love Mastodon and the Fediverse, but to pretend that we are not a nerd circle is a bit disingenuous.
Yeah, if he thinks Mastodon is mainstream, he should check again.
Yeah I only hear about Mastodon last year. Found out it’s been a thing since 2016 lol
Textbook hubris.
His blog post will be another cautionary tale to tell in the near future.
Ultimately, people are selfish.
Whatever meta promised him is worth him selling out of his scruples to the community.
I don’t hate him for that, but the dude should at least have the balls to be honest with us that that’s what’s happening here.
Meta joining the fediverse is not a good thing for the fediverse. To say otherwise is to invite ruin.
Yeah, it’s a bit naive to think this can’t go the exact same way XMPP did.
don’t know about you folks but this sounded so arrogant to me:
There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
Same. This was an incredibly weak defense of why this is “totally not the same” as XMPP
Totally sniffing their own farts. The “brand recognition of Mastodon”, someone might want to look at the scoreboard before saying they’re going to win the game.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
This is a great read for anyone curious about what happens when a greedy platform that grows at all costs “helps” an open platform.
It’s weird to hear someone say “Google Chat killed Messenger apps” when it is so very clear that cell phones did that all on their own.
I respect this person’s passion, but his history is slanted, to say the very least.
That era was still too early for widespread self-hosting and people were barely discovering all that internet tech. So what Jabber/XMPP offered was still neither appealing nor user-friendly enough.
Moreover, it was Whatsapp that fixed your mobile number as your username that ruined Jabber’s momentum, not Google. Google Talk or Chat had never reached a notable market share.
Yea, I don’t think the original poster understands why google hurts XMMP, because by that logic once google left XMMP is also let at where it is at before google joined.
The issue with cooperations joining federation is they almost always have better infrastructure, they will siphon users out of the wider network with convenience. Then eventually they will forcibly leave the network with its users, because that makes them more money, at the cost of their user and everyone else on the network as we get less connectivity.
Interesting times, we have Elon destroying the user base in twitter, sending users to the fediverse (add in reddit), whilst his mate Mark launches Threads and starts courting the fediverse. They’re two billionaires. They both have the same vision. Monopolised control. One destroys whilst the other builds. They’re in this together. Don’t be so blind. De-federate!
LMAO, i didnt knew that its not in the eu already… Oh wait the data privacy law is something here.
Threads will just straight up kill the fideverse. Ping me in a year or so!
Honestly doubt that threads will kill anything.
I would not take that risk. If it kills it. It happens fast
FOSS is the ultimate form of software. It’s like life, it will just get copied and forked and modified, and it will continue to evolve because it’s been set free in the world.
Yeah, Facebook might embrace-extend-extinguish the Fediverse. But on the other hand, it’s not the end of the world if they do. Right now, we have a decentralized platform to post, talk and interact on. If that changes, we will create another one
To me, the most interesting part about this is that the Fediverse is even on
Facebook’sMeta’s radar. It’s tiny. Do they see it as a possible competitor?I think it could be a way to get around privacy laws.
Those laws quickly becomes difficult to apply when everyones posts are no longer on central servers owned by meta and instead is copied across thousands of instance owners.
But I think their primary objective is to take on Twitter and get people to use Meta instead. It doesn’t cost them much to start experimenting with the tech, and being first somewhere is always an advantage.
They see it as free data. Meta will always suck data wherever they can. Remember they have a LLM engine too and lots of money and lots of data to train it on – but more’s even better. They can have swarms of bots trained to spread whatever the highest bidder wants them to spread. They can PR whitewash a brand or a celebrity, they can twist events, they can influence elections.
It was free data to begin with. It’s always been free data. All those internet posts you posted from some lame message board 25 years ago are still there. It’s probably still on Archive.org.
If you’re concerned about your privacy, don’t post shit you don’t want out there on a public forum.
They probably don’t need to make a whole platform to do this, though. Couldn’t they just slurp the data right out of ActivityPub without making Threads? Either way, I’m dismayed that meta is managing to YET AGAIN convince people that this time they’ll be good
