I don't really think I see why everyone is so up in arms about #meta starting up an activity based server and joining the fediverse.
Other than being owned/controlled by a corporation rather than she rando, how is their server going to be any different?
It's not like they can just take everything over. If you don't want to federate, you, or your instance admins, have the power to block. So why is this such a big ordeal?
@dredmorbius I get your sentiment. It's hard to combat big money influence.
But again I'll say, at the end of the day, it's open source software. Can't prevent corporations from using it. Contributing to it.
But we do have the ability to block and control our experience here. Including forking projects to ignore their contributions. Maybe I'm being a little naive. Idk.
@finner There was a long-standing false trope about free software development that conflated the potential for anybody to contribute to the code with anybody can contribute to a codebase.
The licence permits redistribution, modification, and by extension, forking. The project administrator however exercises control over what goes into their branch of the project. As Linus Torvalds has often said, his main job (for a few decades now) has been to say "No". As in "no, that patch is not entering the kernel*.
This gets more complicated when a single large entity can control and direct both development and specification. The capacity to empty dumpsters full of cash on developers to do what you tell them to do ... is an effective mechanism for control over a project, and if you happen to own a money-minting machine (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, IBM), then you're going to have an outsized influence on development. Indeed we've seen Linux affected in this way to an extent, Chrome (and with it the HTML/CSS/JS specs) immensely by Google, and various communications protocols by numerous entities (chat, email, voice, social media, video).
In the case of ActivityPub and the Fediverse, I see two main concerns:
FB swamping the cultural dynamic and information flows. Even conservatively FB are at least 1,000x larger than the present Fediverse, and I suspect that's an underestimation.
FB hijacking aspects of the protocol and clients themselves. There are plenty of extant examples of this, and it might be possible even without malicious intent. Mastodon has (/me checks Github...) 830 contributors, and I'd suspect that a power-law distribution holds, with a small fraction of those dominating. FB have > 58k employees, and even if only 10% of that is engineering, that's approaching 10x Mastodon's development team. Keep in mind that non-engineer contributors can also provide useful roles (PMs, QA, etc., etc.)
The fact that both the comms protocol and the development licence are open in no way whatsover compels other Fediverse instances, or the Mastodon project itself, to accept traffic or code from FB. And the harms which might come from doing so, based on historical precedent, are huge.
#meta #metablock #project92 #p92 #barcelonaproject #facebook #mastodon #fediverse #FreeSoftware
@dredmorbius I understand all of that.
My point was never lets not bother trying to keep them out of all of this. My point is that it's probably going to be nearly impossible to completely keep them out all of this. Because of the money, and all the associated details you mention.
We should still try, but at the end of the day, even if we were to succeed in this. It still doesn't solve the underlying issues with these corporations. But that's probably more preaching to the choir.
@finner I've addressed the why at length in an earlier toot: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/110567869250237510. TL;DR: Manifest trust failure at the greatest possible level and significance.
The how is another question, though my point above suggests at least one evident option: increase the costs above Facebook's value threshold.
Simply being told "you are not welcome here" is one prospect, and should give ... some pause.
Defederation means that FB would be in much the position Gab was earlier: it's running the protocol, but not interfacing with the network.
Fediverse instances might respond to all FB content with an invitation to leave FB and join the Fediverse proper. This is one of several sabotage / response concepts which suggest themselves.
Fediverse instance could attack revenue streams, most critically advertising, in some way. How this might be done isn't clear, but FB-based brand channels would likely be sensitive to this.
Mastodon devs could gaslight FB with false leads, slow responses, and more. (Possibly challenging on a FOSS project, but ... not impossible.)
It's time to put on your Simple Sabotage Field Manual hat, peeps. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/CleanedUOSSSimpleSabotage_sm.pdf (PDF)
#Sabotage #Factbook #Meta #metablock #p92 #Project92 #FuckFacebook #Zuckerberg #MarkZuckerberg #FuckTheZuck
@[email protected] **If US and EU antitrust / competitiveness authorities cannot secure compliance from Facebook and Zuckerberg for *existing and longstanding* orders, what makes you think a rag-tag bunch of Fediverse admins will fare better?** Facebook are manifestly bad-faith and untrustworthy actors. Preblock, now. > Facebook is a repeat violator at the FTC. There was a consent decree that goes back close to a decade, which the FTC in 2019 found that they violated. The recent news suggests that they may have also been in violation of this latest consent order. And that is really prompting a step back and a close look at: What does it take to make sure that firms across the board are actually complying with the law? ... I think when you have companies that are repeatedly before a law-enforcement agency, you need to ask serious questions about whether these companies are recidivist and whether they have a challenge in abiding by existing laws. -- Lina Khan, Chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, interviewed by Kara Swisher,15 May 2023 <https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/on-with-kara-swisher-ftc-chair-lina-khan-on-ai-and-musk.html> At the very least, a precondition for any cooperation would be full compliance with existing antitrust actions, sanctions, consent orders, and the like, for a period at least as long as noncompliance (so, at least **ten years** in the case of the order found in violation in 2019). **Edit:** s/Swischer/Swisher/. Clarified and corrected out-of-compliance period regarding consent orders. #Facebook #Meta #MetaBlock #KaraSwisher #LinaKhan #USFTC #Antitrust #Monopoly #EmbraceExtendExtinguish #EternalSeptember #MarkZuckerberg #FuckZuck #FuckFacebook
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