The Intentional Federation

We have recently been advocating the activation of a function which is present but usually off in Mastodon and other fedi services called Authorized Fetch. As we plead with the major development projects to take safety more seriously and make it a default, we have learned that Meta itself didn't think twice about it and has activated it in their own ActivityPub implementation against *us*.

We know this because of news that a fascist has devised a way to evade it and force federation with Threads. They promise to then turn their technique upon us and coerce unblockable federation with fascist and cryptospam instances: https://soapbox.pub/blog/threads-server-blocking/

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Threads is blocking servers on the Fediverse. Here's how we unblocked ourselves. | Soapbox

Threads has begun testing federation over ActivityPub. And they have blocked two important servers I administrate. The first server is the Mostr Bridge. The Mostr Bridge connects ActivityPub and Nostr together, so people can communicate across protocols. The second server is Spinster.xyz, which is arguably the largest independent feminist community online.

While Authorized Fetch remains important to activate, it is clear that even it - which remember, provides better defense than that currently implemented on most of our home servers - is inadequate to the threats facing us as the Zuckerberg incursion progresses. If we're serious about protecting our communities and expressions from absorption into surveillance capitalism and the accelerating miseries of fascism, we need to talk about a stronger grade of defensive weaponry.

To this end, @are0h has fired a first volley: https://h-i.social/@are0h/111653850819592308 Every fedi community which serves as a refuge for those targeted and under siege should be thinking like this. True safety only awaits us in a transitive approach to defederation, and further on, in an intentional federation based on the allow-list.

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Optional Dictator (@[email protected])

Every instance that federates with Threads will be limited or suspended by the one I run. No, this is not up for negotiation. Run your instance as you see fit, but Threads will be treated like a bad actor until proven otherwise.

h-i.social powered by Masto Glitch Edition

Some worry that consent-based federation would lead to isolation, but this doesn't need to be true. For the end user, nothing at all would change; it would be just as easy or hard to join an instance as it is now, minus the funneling into a centralized, poorly-moderated vanilla flagship.

And what about new instance spinups? Their prospects could actually improve from the current status quo, if an allow-list fediverse was structured into instance alliances as described in the fedifam concept. New intra-fam spinups would automatically federate: https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110793531238090472

Fedifams could then form trust-treaties with other fedifams, smoothing federation out from the fam into the broader fediverse in whatever manner of comfort or caution is preferred (such as limited or probationary federation): https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110985194948458666

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ophiocephalic ๐Ÿ (@[email protected])

A Free Fediverse beyond surveillance capitalism should prioritize deepening its commitment to decentralization by keeping the maximum user count of its instances small. This addresses practical needs. Smaller communities are easier to moderate, on a human scale which doesn't involve algorithms or invasive third-party data collection. Smaller communities disperse targets for threat models like spambots, and enhance network resilience. And smaller communities are better at scaling democracy, so that we can avoid being pulled back into the circumstance now plaguing the fediverse of mega-server admins unilaterally imposing their will on everyone else. However, keeping things small can result in problems of its own. Smaller communities means more people grappling with the complexities of trying to set up, administer, moderate, and - not to mention - *fund* operations. A system of mutual aid, beyond the current haphazard status quo, is required. As an approach to solving these problems, and to instilling a ethos of solidarity devoid of the for-profit "monetization" impulse, consider the concept of the fedifam. :fediverso: ๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿ‘ง ๐Ÿงต 1/4 #FreeFediverse #FediPact #FediblockMeta #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #Democracy #Decentralization #Prefiguration #Fedifam

kolektiva.social

We accept and support new spinups by fellow travelers were are already in community with. The servers which entirely come in from the cold are mostly those belonging to the creatures of the dark-fedi, which cause many of the moderation problems for those of us on proportionately-sized instances (and most of the other problems are caused by the disproportionately-sized ones, who will be joining the Zuckerverse).

By assuming agency for who we choose to federate with, rather than existing in a state of constant reaction against those who would try and force us to federate with them, we can defend our federation both from the fascists, racists, transphobes and pedos of the defediverse, and from the horrifying and corruptive threat of the Zuckerberg entity, and its collaborator instances.

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An intentional federation would be a more decentralized one, as we could fully affirm a collective choice to keep instances small. That's not just an abstract idea; a more decentralized fedi would be a more democratic one: https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/110707707012210965

And it would also be a more community-centered one. Currently, the Mastodon network in particular is being driven by an approach which denies the prospect for a riotous polyculture of small and distinct communities in favor of a growth-oriented monoculture in which "servers are not... communities" ( https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/111628882009671820 ) and "it doesn't matter which one you use" ( https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter ), an outlook which Zuckerberg must find favorable.

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ophiocephalic ๐Ÿ (@[email protected])

Content warning: Long post - The Free Fediverse, Decentralization and Democracy - the mega-servers and the Kolektiva calamity - Part the Second

kolektiva.social

A note also on the gaslighting we face from Meta's colluders; the latest being the embarrassing spectacle of ActivityPub co-author Evan wagging around a "small fedi". @thenexusofprivacy has a good rebuttal to this cringe exhibitionism here: https://privacy.thenexus.today/the-annotated-case-for-a-big-fedi/

Evan has seen fit to misappropriate the "small fedi" idea, then build a blog post around warping it into a smear, with a long list of patronizing and fictional mischaracterizations. But what is truly small is the thinking that the fedi's future is surveillance, algorithmic ingestion, centralized servers too big to moderate, and huge psychotic corporations like Meta. In fact, that is social media's catastrophic past, the one we're all here to reject.

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The (annotated) case for a "big fedi"

As Johnny Rotten once said, "Two sides to every story"

The Nexus Of Privacy

A better vision for a near-future fedi requires an exercise of both the technical and social imagination, and another thing that Meta's collaborators appear to find elusive: a moral center.

Instead of a regression into another Zuckerberg-controlled nightmare of hate speech, harassment, "brand engagement" and dehumanizing surveillance, we can push forward into an intentional federation based on consent and community, which centers the non-negotiable requirement of safety for everyone who otherwise has the most to lose from the betrayal of this online space of refuge and resistance.

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@ophiocephalic @thenexusofprivacy "And Promodrou's is also a good example of an interesting dynamic that I've been talking about for months now: people in the "bigger is better" camp seem to have a hard time acknowledging why some people see it differently."

They sure fucking do! And it's still infuriating. #Threads #Meta #Facebook

@SallyStrange @thenexusofprivacy
Yes it is, and as @thenexusofprivacy has pointed out, that has been to their disadvantage. Ridiculous that they would dismiss our concerns as if we're all being "emotional" or "alarmist" at one of the world's most malignant corporations enclosing a community-centered noncommercial space

Yeah. And "hysteria", that's another particularly infuriating dismissal. Sorry but concern about the anti-trans hate groups that Meta gives free rein to is *not* hysteria.

@ophiocephalic @SallyStrange

@thenexusofprivacy @SallyStrange
Absolutely. This is a story about privilege, and it will probably be my next target โ›น๏ธ
@ophiocephalic @thenexusofprivacy It absolutely is. And I'm unreasonably disappointed in seeing the sexism, racism, queermisia, etc. run so rampant. I really SHOULD be more cynical by now...
@SallyStrange @thenexusofprivacy
fwiw, they're losing the moral argument, whether they realize that or not
@thenexusofprivacy @ophiocephalic I don't even have a uterus, so I'm fairly certain that any distress I've felt at the prospect of having Zuckerberg mine Mastodon for data isn't causing it to wander around my body.
@SallyStrange @thenexusofprivacy
Nah, you're good, it's the Zuckerbros who are a bit blinkered