this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Yikes.

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[–] [email protected] 141 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is a reminder to lemmy users, that this new meta expriement will use the ActivityPub protocol, meaning that it can interact with other lemmy instances, please urge your lemmy instance admins to de-federate from this crap as soon as it launches!

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 years ago (11 children)

But why? Isn't the whole point of federation that we can interact with people in other communities? Don't we want these big platforms to adopt ActivityPub? Completely walling them off seems counterproductive

Not defending Meta, just curious

[–] [email protected] 93 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

this is why

there is a very good chance that this project by meta is the thin end of the wedge

(edited to include "the blogpost", link here)

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

Interesting and I'd say you're right. If you were to see a mass adoption of the fediverse (such as Twitter imploding and mastadon becoming the replacement) there would be an immediate attempt by the big tech players to gain control of it in some way. And this is exactly how they would try to do it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (5 children)

What’s the alternative? They go with a non activity pub system and woo away all our users anyway?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If people want to crawl back into Meta's clutches I'm not going to stop them. Don't give the one nice thing we have to a corporation that only wants to exploit us.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

Are you telling me this perfectly human looking human shouldn't be trusted? Are you telling me this perfectly human looking human shouldn't be trusted?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

Who cares? I’d rather they stay away from here anyways.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

realistically, yes :(

opinion time: not everything has to be about fast/unsustainable growth, in the pursuit of profit. i would prefer that the fediverse grows organically, and entices quality users, posters and commenters to join based on the merits of the service, and not on it's access to inflated VC budgets, huge advertising campaigns, and exploitation of a first-mover advantage.

facebook/meta will slay us, because we are a threat to it's profit model. why are we even contemplating negotiations with a tiger while we have our head in it's mouth? it beggars belief...

[–] damnYouSun 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

Is there a fediverse version of Facebook?

Very roughly,
Lemmy and Kbin = Reddit
Masterson = Twitter

So what equals Facebook

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Presumably Facebook's move into ActivityPub is to prevent or limit users moving to a decentralised alternative to Facebook?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think Diaspora* is the federated FB alternative

There was also a crypto backed and "freeze peach absolutist" alternative, Minds, dunno how that one's going

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Oh jeez Someone wanting more free speech than Facebook yikes

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

Diaspora as said was it long ago. Nowadays I guess the Movim project based on xmpp can give and experience similar to it.

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

Diaspora as said was it long ago. Nowadays I guess the Movim project based on xmpp can give and experience similar to it.

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

Diaspora as said was it long ago. Nowadays I guess the Movim project based on xmpp can give and experience similar to it.

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

Presumably Facebook's move into ActivityPub is to prevent or limit users moving to a decentralised alternative to Facebook?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Also here is a blog post about how Google killed the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) using extend, embrace, extinguish.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Don't we want these big platforms to adopt ActivityPub?

No. We don't. The more hands they have in the fediverse pie, the more influence they have over it. The more influence they have, the more control. The more control, the more at the whim of their decisions you are. The more at the whim of their decisions, the more power they have over you.

This should be common sense at this point.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

IMO this is such a shortsighted take and defeats the point of federation because of a knee jerk response.

There is the potential for federation to grow massively with the injection of billions from big tech.

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

There is the potential for federation to grow massively with the injection of billions from big tech.

Sure, of course it would grow. But at what cost? And then who effectively owns it in the end? There's an inevitable outcome - one that you apparently aren't aware of.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't see how it would be possible to stop them to be honest.

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

You may be right - perhaps it's inevitable, one way or another. I don't know.

I'm passive at this point.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Were talking about meta here, this is a bait and switch attempt (I see it that way)

They launch their new twitter competitor, everyone moves over to their new twitter clone, they will try and hold the power on standarts of federation (like any big tech corporation that has a smaller rival that succedes more then them, see microsoft vs netscape for refrence)

If they will fail with that, they will try to seduce lemmy and mastodon instaces with monetization and big money handouts, were talking about facebook here after all, they are not short of scummy tactics

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Yes. Three words: "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

A pratice as old as time, done and proved to work. It's not even theoretical, it's gonna happen. You either are proactive in protecting the network or we will be too late to do anything. Always works like that. If you think that giving the benefit of the doubt and wait and see is an option, then you already lost.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago

Don’t we want these big platforms to adopt ActivityPub?

I certainly don't. I abandoned Facebook years ago because of how BS they were getting with privacy concerns and social manipulation. Last thing I want is to bring those dumpster fires here. They join the platform, I will migrate to whichever Instances defed them or leave Lemmy entirely if necessary. Simply put, it's been a breathe of rational, civil air here. While it is early days keeping that hostile-to-humanity crap out of here is obvious minimum we should be doing.

[–] winterayars 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If they can embrace and extend the fediverse you know they're gonna extinguish it, too. They're s bad faith actor, we don't want them interacting with us or influencing us.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Don't we want these big platforms to adopt ActivityPub?

No. We don't. The more hands they have in the fediverse pie, the more influence they have over it. The more influence they have, the more control. The more control, the more at the whim of their decisions you are. The more at the whim of their decisions, the more power they have over you.

This should be common sense at this point.

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

I don't even know if I disagree with "big platforms" using activitypub. Like Tumblr integration could be cool, but fucking facebook? Eww

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

I'm don't know how the federation protocol works exactly, but I'm pretty sure Meta can throw more resources into it than all the independent instances combined. Again, I don't know anything about the specifics of the fediverse so I don't know if that applies here, but generally once you control more than 50% of something that does not have a central authority - you became, de facto, that central authority.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

What decade are you from, dude?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Another really big concern I have is that activity pub by definition shares all your posts with any instance that hosts your followers. So if you have a mastodon follower on FB’s activity pub/twitter replica, FB automatically gets your data even though you don’t use it

The type of things they get are

  1. Your profile
  2. Whatever you post
  3. Who interacts with your posts
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Another really big concern I have is that activity pub by definition shares all your posts with any instance that hosts your followers. So if you have a mastodon follower on FB’s activity pub/twitter replica, FB automatically gets your data even though you don’t use it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don’t understand why people call Facebook Meta now

I don’t accept that name

It’s Facebook

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I believe they actually changed their corporations name to Meta. As crazy as that rebranding is.

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

Yeah but they largely get it because the name Facebook became so toxic and poisoned and it's probably better just to force them to have to stay in the cultural millieu as Facebook, the company that runs psychological experiments on its users and creates profiles illegally on non-users as well. That pays to be installed on Android devices and not be allowed to be uninstalled.

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

I wonder how long it will take to tarnish the Meta name. Assuming it isn't already. The concept of the metaverse is a complete failure and they also never really stopped being terrible with data harvesting.