It still takes a while before Meta(P92) joins the Fediverse and the recent times we have read a lot of things from both sides

Polls are not super reliable but maybe it will give a better overall picture of what you, the people using these platforms want

The result will not be the definite outcome for us but I do take it into heavy consider because I love you all very much!

"Would YOU want to federate with Meta's new platform?"

Yes (but maybe block later)
36.7%
No (block from start)
63.3%
Poll ended at .

**please do share this post

The more people voting the better the overall picture ❤️

thank you

@hello @stux I voted against federating Meta. On second thought, with the amount of manipulation of their “clients “ they are capable of, Meta could start a powerful alternative to the fediverse and all of you admins are in danger to depend, even partially, on a Meta “fork” of the actual fedivers or, I hope not, get marginalized. Well, complicated question. Let’s hope for the best and wisest choices for the durability of this fascinating fedivers 🙏🏼
@stux Problem being that anti-Meta activists are far more animated about this and are probably going to make more effort to share this around. Twitter polls are similarly unreliable.
@hughster @stux "anti-Meta" activists? You mean decent good people with principles who don't want to federate with a pedo-fluffing vampire?
@stux Is it expected that users on non-mstdn.social instances respond to the poll?
@hybridhavoc Yess, i want a fedi-wide picture
@stux I don't trust zuckerberg or meta but blocking from beginning doesn't seem right.
@ATellurian @stux I voted yes for that reason but I definitely see a strong case for no. I think giving the instance a chance is worth it but if it proves to be problematic, block it. Thank you for soliciting our opinion!

@jmccyoung @ATellurian @stux

The fact that they insisted on NDAs being signed before they'd talk with instance admins does not bode well.

If they can't be open with _all_ of us, they shouldn't bother.

That said, I'm taking a "wait and see" approach. I don't actually block any instances at this time, but may revise my position if they give me good cause to do so.

@ATellurian @stux Agreed. Though I have this feeling people will go to their Twitter clone, because lots of people people don't care about things like "freedom of speech", decentralization, etc. This blog post covers a lot of those points: https://blog.bloonface.com/2023/06/12/why-did-the-twittermigration-fail/

I think the biggest thing here is that Meta's Twitter clone (P92) hasn't even *launched* yet. What we know is bits and pieces at the moment. Though at this point, we do have a good idea of what Meta *wants* to do...based on Facebook...

Why did the #TwitterMigration fail? – Café Lob-On

@stux Honestly, I don't know! I don't feel like I have enough information yet - the biggest question marks for me right now are, what's their content moderation policy going to be, and who's going to enforce it?
@RufusJCooter Valid questions! And i do not have the anwser ufort
@stux Right! Nobody knows, because they haven't said! Probably because the haven't figured it out yet!

@stux one important aspect regarding Facebook (at least for US users) is the presence of small businesses. I do marketing for small locally owned businesses such as restaurants and tiny retail stores. These businesses drive local culture and they have a strong Facebook presence.

Facebook may be the only viable onramp for them to enter the Fediverse. As a group, they are not tech savvy at all.

But if people don't want ANY kind of business on Fediverse, my point is null and I also will fight you to the death that small business is not an important aspect of life and culture.

@sysop408 @stux

Great point!! One of the most interesting/compelling points I've seen in this debate in a while!!

Is the fediverse a platform that would actually work for small businesses though?

The whole interface facebook provides with events and opening hours etc, is totally lacking on most platforms, apart from maybe friendica but I don't know the details there.

Which isn't to say that the fediverse shouldn't want to. Just that it might not be ready for small businesses, sadly.

@maegul @sysop408 @stux I would love for this to work for small business types.
Fb is terrible. Think of like a blood drive or a show at a dive bar. No one is going to catch a flight from halfway around the world to attend this type of local event. But our paid boosts would always be shown & clicked by people way out of area. Actual in area Followers would never know.
@maegul @sysop408 @stux I have like 5 followers on here and I'm constantly following people I find interesting. My expectation is that I'm seeing the posts of everyone I follow, unless I get so far behind I miss some. Because no one is making money off boosting posts.
A nonprofit wanting to push a local blood drive has different needs than an author with a new book out. Are we expecting the fediverse to solve these needs in the near future?

@ericatty @maegul @stux

I don't know if the Fediverse will solve those issues for small businesses, but it should be amenable to participating in solutions that help them. I currently run a small SaaS that is used by a few small business districts and the greatest problem I have is lack of interoperability between the website and their social media.

These types of businesses don't have marketing managers who can get it all to work out. Typically they abandon their website in favor of social media because they don't get many visitors there and eventually they'll even abandon all but one social media platform. It's too difficult to properly reach out through multiple channels without a dedicated marketing person.

Could small businesses figure out instances? They would just QR Code it. Small businesses haven't found a problem yet that they wouldn't attempt to solve by turning it into a QR Code.

Sometimes I'll send someone a link and they'll reply, do you have a QR Code instead?

@sysop408

The other day I was waiting in my car at the lights when I noticed the van in front of me—with business graphics—had small Facebook, twitter and Instagram logos alongside a username that was common to them all. He was a tradesman, and he was using them to expanding his reach.

It struck me that it wouldn't be possible to do that easily on Mastodon without knowing their instance as well. Just a name and Mastodon logo isn't enough info.

@stux

@sysop408 @stux Sadly there is a very loud activist minority who are vitriolically opposed to any involvement of for-profit enterprise, yes. See comments here as an example:
https://universeodon.com/@alasaarela@equel.social/109553883366009950
Mikko Alasaarela :equel: (@[email protected])

I see a lot of discussion about the fear that corporations and VCs will take over the #fediverse. The thing is, #Mastodon going mainstream will require a lot of capital and development of new products and innovations for this ecosystem. And that is perfectly ok, as long as everyone connects to the protocol, and the protocol itself stays away from the hands of oligarchs. If you prefer your local coop to host your account instead of Mozilla, Vivaldi or some other larger entity, that's great. But it's also totally fine that those bigger players are offering theirs, because it pulls in a lot of new members to this ecosystem. The main corporate takeover attack vector to the Mastodon ecosystem will not be the servers, but the mobile app. It is possible that one VC-backed mobile app becomes the single winner with most Mastodon users accessing the ecosystem with that. The owner of such an app will wield a lot of power over all servers and service providers in the ecosystem. Algorithmic feeds and fuzzy search are both inevitable mainstream features as the ecosystem grows. People need those to be able to use the platform effectively. This is fine too, as long as there's no single algorithm dominating, and especially if the algorithms are built transparently with users being able to choose their own algorithm. There are going to be many points of contention as the ecosystem grows, but for the sake of humanity, let's allow decentralization of social media to happen. Let's also allow VC-backed startups to flourish building services for all of us. We have the momentum now, and it is a rare chance to take back the power from corporate overlords, and rebuild the social internet as an open platform for innovation! Would you agree?

Equel | Mastodon for professionals
@sysop408
So contradictory... Small business relying on giant corps to "survive" 🤦‍♀️
@stux
@stux Is there something we might read about “the proposal“? All I’ve seen is people getting heated. What does it even mean to “join”? They set up an instance; ok. But then what? Will they be cloning FB posts to it? Cloning fediverse posts to FB? Or is all that still within the paranoia cloud?
@stux
@oliphant
There is a reason I walked away from FB and Insta more than a year ago, and they haven't changed in any way that makes me want to go back, nor for them to come to me.
All P92 servers will be blocked, and anyone federating with them will be considered suspect.
Especially the bigger instances.
@stux Since ActivityPub is opened and as @atomicpoet suspects that will make them lose their monopoly, I'm for the federation.
However if Meta blocks other fediverse instances or make it hard for people to move to another instance, I'll block them personally (as a user, I must be able to do this).
@olireiv @stux I once posted on facebook about using mastodon instead of twitter, and facebook marked my posts as spam and blocked them from the private closed group I own and shared them with. I didn't say anything negative in any way about facebook.
@Susan_Larson_TN Yeah they are one super shady company that's for sure.
@stux Depends if meta only wants to federate with a couple of big servers I would suggest block.
@stux I'm inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt, but also fine with cutting off someone who proves to be a bad actor.
@stux while I hate Meta as a company, wouldn’t blocking them be harming the users more than anything? The whole point of the fediverse is that people can connect to and use it however they see fit, whether we agree or not. If a ton of users come in and provide valuable content via Meta then great. If they bring bigotry and offensive content then I’d say block them, keep moderating as we do. If they break our already established rules then we’ll do what’s necessary.
@stux I wish there was a "No (block from the start but maybe refederate later)" option. That I think would be closest to my preference here.
blog:2023:0625_meta_on_the_fediverse_to_block_or_not_to_block [About scicomm.xyz]

@maswan
> If Meta can show their platform is well moderated (…)

Eternal defederarion then :]

@rysiek @stux

@maswan
I voted for yes because I was primarily thinking about the benefits to share information and contacts with *users* not yet in the fediverse.
Reading that summation of Meta's history, nothing really new to me, reminded me why I never had a FB/Insta/WhatsApp account. And the thought that this would be the way how Meta finally got at more specific data about me or others is why I want to change my vote. Thx for sharing.
@rysiek @stux
@rysiek But when?  im not gonna check their platform each day

@stux well you added "but maybe block later", so it feels like a natural complement to that option? 

Not saying you should change the poll now, of course! That would screw up already cast votes! 

@stux o̠͂͌̊ͤ̒̾͗n͓ͧ̒͌̿ͥͭ̋c̣̺̭ͪ͌ͮ̽̿͆e̮̝̮̻͖̽̆̾̉͆͆ ͎ͪ̒̋̈́ͣͯ̉͛͆T̗̟͓̠̭̩ͫ̃̇̊ͫͪͅͅh̰ͫ̈̎̈̅̈ͩĕ̟̝̥̳̼̖̼̺ͧ͐́ ̗̣̭̱̥̖̯̾P̦͕͓̘̳̫ͯ̍r̺̻̹̝̉͐̊̊ͣo̯̥̗͙͈͖͌ͬ̍p̫̩̩͖̳͎ͩ͊͌ͬ̾h̼̯̼̘̲͙͂̅ẻ͎̤͉c̻̺̱̊ͮ͆͛̓́y͇̞͍͎̜̪̐̋̌̈́ͥ͑ ͕̤̼̮͖̫̗̭̥ͬ͊ͦi̳͕̦͉̰̻͇͍͐s̭͌ ͎̖͙̤̓ͨͩͩ̾f̮̼͊ủ̟͔̑̋̐̓l̟̏̎͛͐̎f̣̟͙͍͇̻̭̼͌̈̃͆ͅi̹̤̻̠̦͙̞̭͔ͣͥl̝̓ͬ̒ͯ̅͊ͯ̃̅l̜̲̫̼̠͚̃e̘̖̩̦̤͇̼ͮd̳̜͋̽͒
@rysiek

@stux My initial response is NO, fuck them.

But I want to see what they are proposing to do.

I doubt I'll change my mind but hey, stranger things have happened.

@stux "Block later" is the worst of all worlds. It tears apart ppl's social graphs and makes you the bad guy. "Block from start, consider unblocking later only if conditions are met and users approve" is the safe compromise option between "block" and "don't block".
@stux
Any indication of how many new posts the instances might be forced to process from the new Meta instance?

@GreenFire

I would think this would be the same as any other instance: the posts that are relevant to your users based on follow relationships.

cc: @stux

@stux I don’t know why people think preemptively banning another fediserver is a good thing. Surely innocent until proven guilty.

@stux

Block from start, Meta's reputation is consistently horrible in terms of human rights, privacy, treatment of staff etc.

They're the opposite of what the Fediverse should be.

@feditips @stux Yes, there's no need to give them the "benefit of the doubt" -- they've proven who they are repeatedly. They just see us as a new venue to be abusive and exploitative. Cha-ching!
@feditips @stux Definitely blocking them. I had enough of their nonsense, if it were not for family messenger and whatsapp would be gone. Their apps are accessible, but their human values are waste.

Have you also blocked all emails coming from gmail accounts, because gmail is owned by Google?

Block from start, Google’s reputation is consistently horrible in terms of human rights, privacy, treatment of staff etc.

They’re the opposite of what Email should be.

@FransVeldman @stux

You realise that Google blocks emails coming from small independent providers, right?

It is really difficult to set up indie email now because of all the roadblocks by the major players.

They are doing everything they can to shut down choice in email.
We can expect exactly the same thing on the Fediverse if major corporations get a foothold.

I have my own email servers. They are used for business purposes as well, so they send out quite a lot of emails and I would discover very quickly if Google no longer acceps our emails. I never experienced any problems sending emails to gmail accounts (as long as I adhere to the latest anti-spam policies, like DKIM, DMARC, etc. and making sure I’m not on any spam lists).

Even then, you prove my point. Despite the horrible policies of Google, we all still continue to send and receive emails to/from gmail accounts… So why should we treat Meta different than Google?

@stux As others have pointed out:

they’d want to block plenty of things that we post—it’s not just about the fact that they’re a shower of nefarious Cunts.

@stux if there was a fedi instance that did the shit facebook did, y'all would block on sight.

@stux what I want to know is:

What would the bandwidth usage look like? I don't run an instance yet, though I've been considering starting one (and have reserved at least two potential domain names). But if federating with meta (metarating? fbederating?) is going to utterly crush the affordability/operating costs of the system, that might be a no-go.

@stux I think block Meta first until we can see the situation to reevaluate to continue to block or not. Meta's track records on privacy, protecting its users, preventing toxic and hate content,... has been always terrible. And Meta even said that they only start developing P92 in January around the time of Mastodon's hype and Tumblr, Flickr, Wordpress, Mozilla announcing joining Fediverse so Meta had already thought to siphon other platforms' users and kill Fediverse.
@stux I voted, though I realize you probably only meant this poll for your own instance.
@stux
If Meta is joining they are not your friends. I just left FB, Twitter and only use this place . I will move