micha
Aral BalkanFolks, the reason #Facebook/ #Instagram/ #Meta/ Zuckerberg hasn’t launched #Threads in the #EU isn’t because the EU is determined to protect your privacy, it’s because the EU is determined to protect The Single Market (peace be upon it) from anticompetitive behaviour. It’s because they’re using Instagram to launch Threads and sharing data between them (and not with EU startups that might want to use that data too). It’s #antitrust, not #privacy. It’s markets, not people.
By the way, it’s possible that #Facebook/ #Instagram/ #Meta/ Zuckerberg’s fediverse play for Threads is related to sidestepping the anti-competitiveness/antitrust issues around the EU’s Digital Services Act.
“Hey, look, we’re not a monopoly. We’re not being anticompetitive… we’re federating using an open protocol. Here, let our friend Eugen, CEO of Mastodon, explain to you how it works in very dispassionate words…”
#eu #ec #fediverse #mastodon #antitrust #DigitalServicesAct #PR #usefulIdiots
Daniël Franke 🏳️🌈@aral I call that #fediwashing
Matthew J. Barnard🤔💭@aral I actually think they know they'll be forced to be interoperable soon and are just getting it done from the beginning tather than having to come back and add activitypub later
Oblomov@aral (off topic, but # after / does not work for tags, you need to insert some kind of space, even an invisible one, here it is for you: > /# < copy-pasting this should give slash-hashes that tag properly)
@oblomov Thanks for the heads up but that sounds like a bug in Mastodon.
my understanding is that it's an intentional choice
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/1910#issuecomment-294348051
Steve has ☕️ for brains
Yassie > moved to 0w0.is@aral I hate that this makes sense
@yassie_j Me too.
Sbectol@aral @[email protected] so how do you solve the problem of all the extra traffic federating with meta might generate if a post is shared and liked widely on their platform?
Gareth Kitchen
aristeon89@aral I agree with @Gargron on this and I am not in favour of preemptive defederation.
The whole promise of the fediverse is that it can't be taken over, and this is a huge test to see how it works out when a big corporation federates.
Building up walls between us and millions of people makes no sense to me. I don't want to be part of a niche platform where some gatekeepers want all instances to do the same thing.
We'll see how Threads moderates. If it impacts us, we can defederate then
@aristeon89 @Gargron Good for you.
me
Mikael Gramont@aral That's quite possible! It's also possible that Threads will fail (for whatever reason) but still bring more people into the federated ecosystem. It's going to be a fascinating thing to follow.
SkyNebula@skynebula @aral
I'm aware, and yet millions of people joined Threads yesterday. It's entirely possible that a portion of those will leverage the bridge to the rest of the fediverse, whether they're aware of it or not. Think of "Join with Threads" buttons and stuff.
I'm aware, and yet millions of people joined Threads yesterday. It's entirely possible that a portion of those will leverage the bridge to the rest of the fediverse, whether they're aware of it or not. Think of "Join with Threads" buttons and stuff.
John Conway@aral yes I believe that is their play, and we should use it to our advantage. IE was killed despite being in a dominant position because of monopoly concerns. Standards helped there.
mogwai@aral I'm beginning to suspect that they might not even implement ActivityPub at all.
Just talking about implementing it at some vague point in the future might be good enough to fool the EU regulators. By the time they realize the real intentions it'll be too late to do anything about it anymore.
Spork@aral Considering they did just get sued for something like 1.3 Billion Euros for moving EU Facebook Data Storage to US Facebook Data Storage violating GDPR Standards, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case.
There’s a reason Meta is using “Instagram Inc.” for Threads and not Facebook and it has nothing to due with user base I’m sure.
natriumchloride@digitalspork haha yeah, also why they changed the company name. The name Facebook is too dirty beyond repair xd
Tom Walker@aral Maybe criticise Eugen for doing this if he ever does it (I'm confident he won't) instead of making up a fantasy world for yourself to be angry at
lol he blocked me for this
DeusWe’re not being anticompetitive… we’re federating using an open protocol.
Or META could go ahead with ‘supporting’ Mastodon (a nonprofit) like Google does Mozilla (a foundation). Has anyone even thought of why ‘Mastodon’ was mentioned? (see PIC).
As for Google supporting Mozilla, Chrome ‘needs a rival’ in Firefox and Google supports Mozilla (the foundation) for a reason.
Don’t tell me to buy Mozilla’s justification of, “we have business relationship with Google so we set Google as the default search engine.”
Kim Schulz@aral but they launched in UK, and they have both GDPR and Single Market implemented. I wonder how that will work
@kim Having a law and enforcing a law are two different things. (And the Tories are working on fixing the former problem also.)
❄️ freezr ❄️
Andii אַנדִֽי
Cinnamon (moving to @aral what? It's privacy too. They don't exclude each other.
Sarah W
Emon (moved to masto.top)@aral I see your point, nevertheless I'm glad I'm in the EU for that matter
@emon Oh, me too. But it’s not perfect by a long shot. There’s really no room for complacency.
Loukas (They/Them) 🏳️⚧️
Nathalie Van Raemdonck@aral ufff that's a cynical, but likely accurate, reading. If I understood correctly btw, Meta hasn't been prohibited by the EU to launch Threads, they decided themselves not to for now. But you're probably right that the reasoning behind their hesitation is not "privacy fines" but "antitrust fines"
@nvraemdonck You say cynical, I say a decade of seeing up close exactly how this bullshit works ;)
@aral oh yeah totally. We're in a stage where cynicism is the logical glasses with which to read what big tech is doing.
Ivan Maljukanović 🏳️🌈That's an interesting perspective on the subject. You could be right - all political organizations (including #EU) have their agenda that's not necessarily aligned with the #publicInterest.
ash
Coinalyze@aral And what are the benefits for the #EU people/business?! Imagine, a company from EU can't grow/promote its brand/product/service on #Threads platform, while its competitors can do that. Basically any EU company is in a competitive disadvantage now, because EU legislation deny access to a platform where the EU company could grow and promote its product/service. How is that protecting us?! ALL the ppl around the world can join Threads, only EU people can't. It's a colossal stupidity!!!
ProScience 🇪🇺I value my privacy more important than the benefits of greedy Stasi-like megalomaniac company profits, thank you very much.
Mab_813But that's also a disadvantage for Threads itself - we are talking about 447 million customers that global companies can't reach via Threads.
And as a EU citizen I really like having rules for data privacy.
@Mab_813 I don't care about Meta/Threads disadvantage I care about my disadvantage. Do you care about Meta disadvantage?
Having rules for #DataPrivacy is a an advantage for me as an EU citizen. Being part of a 447 million costumer bloc also has its advantages in the big picture.
If you don't care abour your data privacy that's your problem - but many other EU citizens do care about that.
😂 I hope that you get at least paid a decent sum for such blatant BS propaganda for these corrupt Big Tech folks.
@proscience Clearly, you’re clueless about who I am or what I stand for. But thanks for the hot take, I guess.
🤷♂️
alternative_be✅🖖🏻
sab@alternative_be @aral But Facebook is in breach with EU law. Would be bold to launch a new service with the same GDPR breach two days after the ruling.
https://noyb.eu/en/cjeu-declares-metafacebooks-gdpr-approach-largely-illegal
https://noyb.eu/en/cjeu-declares-metafacebooks-gdpr-approach-largely-illegal
