Mastodawn

femboy_link.mp4 Jun 25, 2023

If it ends up that meta is able to destroy the fediverse simply by joining it, that is a design flaw on OUR end.

“Simply by joining it” is not an accurate representation of what will happen in the slightest. Meta is not some scrappy little Lemmy instance operator relying on donations to keep the lights on, they’re one of the biggest companies in the world who simply do not care about fair competition or open standards, and they have a proven track record of using that position to either buy out or destroy competition.

When Meta have so much money that they can simply outspend any other fediverse platform and become dominant that way, how is that a design flaw on our end? You can make a project as resistant to corporate overreach as you like, infrastructure to run it still costs money and there is no fediverse operator on the face of the earth that is going to be able to outspend Meta when it comes to infrastructure and R&D. How is defederation not an appropriate response when smaller instances are crippled under the inevitable load stemming from Metas users?

Corporations have been embracing, extending and extinguishing FOSS projects in the tech space for decades now, and their demise has rarely been because of a fatal flaw in the projects themselves. It’s been an intentional play by Microsoft, Google et al to ensure that there is no viable open alternative to their walled gardens. Trusting them in any capacity is naïve at best and catastrophic at worst.

I encourage you to read this blog post which outlines these concerns much better than I can: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

ryan Jun 25, 2023

When this was linked a previous time, I wrote up a reply to it which I think applies here as well, so I'm gonna shamelessly copy and paste myself 🙂

I think the big thing to take away from that article is... XMPP developers cared so much about retaining federation with Google Talk that they "became watchers and debuggers of Google’s servers" as it is put there. Google came in and said "this is our house now, adapt or die."

For our current fediverse, it's important I think, as a community, we put our foot down with Meta and say "no, this is our house. If you don't adapt to us, we don't federate with you. If you deviate from the ActivityPub protocol or our other implementations that we do above the ActivityPub protocol (things like boosts/upvotes/downvotes standards as agreed upon by Lemmy/kbin, for example), you will break federation with us, and we will be okay with that." We cannot become the Meta watchers.

ActivityPub is just a protocol and they can use it. It doesn't mean they have to be compatible with us. Let them have their Twitter/Instagram hybrid application. Do we care that much whether we can or cannot see their posts?

To your point, many of us will defederate, either out of politics or financial necessity. There's rumors milling around that Meta / Threads will only initially federate with a few trusted larger instances and be monetarily compensated for it (aka those who will make a deal with the devil to moderate - more on my thoughts on that here).

It may come to the point where a lot of us are running on our own smaller "Fediverse", intentionally divorced from Meta and those instances which have federated with Meta and taken their advertisements and paid posts. If this is the case, we must take the bad with the good - we will always be smaller and niche, and our less techno-idealistic friends will not join our tiny Fediverse because the barrier to entry will remain high.

Some musings on Meta and the fediverse - fediverse - The Coolest.Zone

I'm just musing on the end game for #Meta here, and would love to hear what others think....

When Meta have so much money that they can simply outspend any other fediverse platform and become dominant that way, how is that a design flaw on our end?

It's a design flaw when simply "outspending" other fediverse platforms allows you to dominate them. There are ways to design a system where that's not possible.

The fact that those other fediverse platforms can defederate from the "big money instance" if they don't like what it's doing, for example, is a part of the design of the fediverse that can help counter influence like that. You can't force other instances to federate with you even if you have an enormous amount of money, and even if you did manage it in specific cases other people without that vulnerability can just spin up new instances.

We'll see whether this sort of thing is "enough", I guess, because Meta is coming one way or the other. If it turns out that stronger defenses are needed then there are other technical methods that could be used to strengthen the decentralized nature of the fediverse.

anthoniix Jun 25, 2023

I think defederation is not really that useful in this case, because then your users will just leave and sign up for the platform where they can view where the most content is. Although I do agree with your general premise.

If Meta is actually providing the content that people want, then what's the problem?

If it's not, then people won't leave your instance to go sign up for a different one that's not suiting their needs.

anthoniix Jun 25, 2023

The situation I'm thinking of is one where Meta creates Threads (or whatever it will be called), and then a bunch of people defederate. In that scenario, there will of course be big servers who choose to federate with Threads. Given Meta's reach and influence, they will undoubtedly have one of the bigger instances, so a lot of politicians, journalists and everyday people will go there.

Making it so people can't see that content will just make the fediverse become more centralized, because people will just go to the bigger instances that will allow for them to see that content, or just go sign up for threads. I think that's bad because it creates further centralization, even if they're providing the content that people want.

Even though I know a lot of people disagree, we need all types of content in order for this place to grow. I'm not talking about any far-right nonsense, but even garbage like tabloid fodder and stupid meme bullshit will keep our networks alive and users engaging. The easier it is for the average person to use the better. If the point is not profit, then it must be to allow people to come together and talk about almost whatever with almost whoever, and wherever.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but it sounds to me like you're still saying "if Meta is providing the content that people want and it's not available elsewhere then people will go to Meta for it."

And that seems fine by me, in that case they're competing by providing the content that people want. However, not everyone wants the same thing. I have no interest in "following" politicians or celebrities. A lot of the sorts of conversations I'm interested in do not benefit from having a huge number of people in them. So even if Meta is some kind of juggernaut there's going to be people (like me) who don't want to participate in a juggernaut. The smaller defederated instances will still be attractive.

yeah, i don't see the problem.

I'll be federating with Meta because i know several hundred millions of people will make content I want to see - so i'll follow it.

The walled garden is opening up and you bet your beans i'll be growing right along with it.

I don't buy the XMPP argument. That went out the door when the anti-meta crowd decided meta wasn't worthy of activitypub.

People need to realize meta joining the fediverse isn't about meta. It's about the fediverse having potentially millions of people who can move over.

It's about the people.

Making it about XMPP or Meta is WRONG.

ldacampelo Jun 25, 2023

No trying to be explicitly contrarian, but the EEE strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish) is well known by this point and it always ended up with the open standard not being used anymore and falling into irrelevance (as it happened to XMPP after google and Facebook embraced).

I do think it is a design failure, but it’s one that is necessary for it to be open: anyone can enter the space and build features on top of it. So they bring a lot of people, with features exclusive to them and then lots of people migrate because the experience feels broken if you can’t “florp” a post from someone else. It’s the nature of open source vs closed platform that enables the strategy to exist.

It may not happen this time, and I surely hope you’re right, but it would be a shame for the monopoly to win one more time when we had the chance do to something about it but we didn’t. Bringing more people do the fediverse sounds like a dream, but I’m not holding my breath expecting everything will work for the best. There’s a reason they’re doing this, it’s not because they need more users, they already have all of them.

Bloonface Jun 25, 2023

XMPP was irrelevant before Google and Facebook had anything to do with it.

Exactly... and If people want ActivityPub to survive and not be XMPP 2.0 - they have to be willing to keep it open. Certainly not going to have an open protocol if you hate everyone who uses it and hope it wins the mindshare of developers

tchambers Jun 25, 2023

Agree.

the EEE strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish) is well known by this point and it always ended up with the open standard not being used anymore and falling into irrelevance.

This isn't even remotely true, there are plenty of counterexamples. TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, XML, SMTP, PNG, SVG, OpenDocument, OGG, PDF, FLAC, WebM, Vorbis, I could go on at great length. There are a vast number of open standards that are still open and are used extensively as fundamental parts of our everyday lives. Eg, the IEEE standards and RFCs.

IEEE Standards Association - Wikipedia

00 Jun 25, 2023

OpenDocument

How compatible is microsoft office with it?

And how many PDFs are broken by Adobes bs?

Bloonface Jun 26, 2023

ODF has been supported natively by Office for years now, and LibreOffice is able to open .docx files just fine.

I've never found a PDF "broken by Adobes bs".

00 Jun 26, 2023

ODF has been supported natively by Office for years now, and LibreOffice is able to open .docx files just fine.

Open, yes, but the formatting will be terrible in my experience.

I've never found a PDF "broken by Adobes bs".

It has happened to me. Wasnt impossible to solve in the end, but still.

BurnTheRight Jun 25, 2023

"If your body can't survive toxic poison, it was never going to survive in the first place"

We should not be federating with Meta or any other corporate poison factories in the first place.