this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Fediverse

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How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) (ploum.net)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

We can't effectively block corporate injections, unfortunately. The admins of large hub instances are just of the opinion that bigger is better, and that more is more. They've been excited by the prospect of, I don't know, legitimacy or something, for a while now.

The result is going to be the network... not fracturing, per-se, but significantly restructuring itself. Big instances will get sucked into Big Social's halo, and be like the suburbs to Meta's or Tumblr's metropolitan centres. Smaller instances will end up as the exurbs. Content will flow quickly between metro and suburban spaces, and trickle across suburban spaces between the metro and exurban spaces. And which Fedivesre site you choose to use will end up mattering even more than it does now.

Right now, there's speculative reason to believe that Meta's offering up incentives to big instance admins. Those incentives will ultimately result in Meta owning them by proxy. They'll be client kingdoms, to mix metaphors, working on Meta's behalf, but getting relatively little in return for it.

I think Reddit moderators probably have a good idea about how they'll ultimately end up feeling.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly right. Human greed doesn’t only come from money.

  • “It will be free advertisement and will help the project grow!”
  • “Look how many people are using my server. MY server. I’m popular now!”
  • And the more obvious, “If I make my server big enough, maybe I can cash out by being bought by this big company!”

In the end and from whatever the source, that bus always ends up in the same place once they convince themselves to get on it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

They come with the gift of millions of new users, and all you have to give them is ownership of 95% of your users, forever.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The thing is that Meta and Reddit are masters of social manipulation through their algorithms. They know what low common denominators get the most engagement. I blame FB for a big number of echo Chambers and that just fed people their own negativity right back, made them spiral into a bad place mentally.

If they have any ability to post to the Fediverse or to track things they'll do it all over again.

It's the halcyon days of the Fediverse. Negativity on my feed is nonexistent. There's discussion. There's respect for differences. I know things will change with time but it's important that the big instances never work as proxies for big tech. It's important that big tech doesn't get a seat at the table. Voices should remain individual and not some mouthpiece to an industry that wants centralized control.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Negativity on my feed is nonexistent."

Absolute first thing I noticed when I came in to test this as a Reddit alternative. It's so refreshing, and the discourse is so civil.

If there's a way we can keep this quality, it'd be amazing. I often wondered when I'm on Reddit or twitter how much of the awful negativity is really people's or bots/algos prodding them into acting this way.

If the current big players best bets are to weasel in on the large instances, are there any simple changes that could be done to prevent their take over or influence? Things that aren't too heavy handed?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wdym there is so much negativity on Lemmy. It is everywhere i lok. Especially towards billionaire submarines, CEOs and corporations

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I guess I've been lucky enough not to be firehosed with it immediately. Guess I'll come across it more as I subscribe to more communities.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If they have any ability to post to the Fediverse or to track things they’ll do it all over again.

They have that ability, and always will have. They can create as many accounts as they like on as many instances as they like, or run as many instances as they like themselves, use incentivized individuals, or employees, or bots, or any combination of all of the above. No one can stop them, maybe even no one can spot them.

The only thing which is holding them back right now is lemmy/kbin still being too insignificant. If the network continues to grow, more and more big corps will see it as a market and an opportunity, and they will have plenty of ways to interact with it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Fuck, that's how it's gonna go, and i hate it