this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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If we're going to have an effective strategy against FB/Meta, we should clear up some misconceptions around defederation (lemmy.ca)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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((I'm not an expert, I've been reading up on things as much as I can. If there's an error, I'll happily correct it!))

TLDR:

  • Nearly all of us distrust Meta and have the same broader goals
  • We need to pick the best move to go against powerful companies like Meta
  • Defederation may not be the right move, and it might even help Meta move forward (and more easily perform EEE)
  • There are other options that we can spend our energy on
  • It doesn't matter for Lemmy (yet), this is more a conversation for Mastodon, Firefish and Kbin

We've been getting a LOT of posts on this, but the misconceptions make it harder for us to decide what to do. If we're going to try and protect the Fediverse against large, well funded companies like Meta, figuring out the right action is important. We need to actually look at the options, consider the realistic outcomes, and plan around that.

I'm willing to bet around 95% of users on Lemmy and Mastodon CHOSE to be here because we understand the threat Meta/Facebook poses, and we want to do something about it. That's not in question here.

So in that sense, please be kind to the other user you are replying to. The vast majority of us share the same goal here. When we disagree, we disagree on the best path forward and not the goal. Wanting to stay federated DOES NOT mean the user wants to help Meta or thinks that Meta is here for our benefit.

Misconception: Defederation will hinder Meta's EEE

Not necessarily, and it might even help the EEE. Here's a link to some history of EEE, what it means, and some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish. I'd recommend at least skimming it because it's interesting (and because this isn't the only fight)

Assuming Meta is doing an EEE move, they're in the embrace stage. That’s not about us embracing them, it’s about them embracing the protocol, which they can do whether we stay federated or not.

Defederation can tell newcomers that the defederated instance is an island, and they’re better off joining the place where they can talk to their friends and see the content they want. We saw this early during the Reddit exodus with Beehaw, where many users hopped instances away from Beehaw.

Meta can more easily embrace if more people actively use their platform. They can more easily extend if we're not around to explain why extending is a poisonous action. Being federated can allow us to encourage users to ditch Meta’s platform and join an open one (ex. Mastodon, Firefish, etc.)

Misconception: Defederation is the only move

Defederation is the first option that comes to mind. It sounds simple, it is loud and newsworthy, and it can be done with the click of a mouse. But if it is a bad action, then what are the good actions?

  1. Don't let them have a monopoly over the use of ActivityPub. Grow the other platforms: The extend stage only works when the platform gets a near monopoly over use of the standard. That brings up the first action. If there are enough users, services and resources on things like Mastodon/Lemmy, then Meta (or any other company) can't just extend the spec without causing their users to ditch Threads to stay connected to the content they want to see.
    • Reach out to organizations in your area or line of work. Help them join Mastodon or other relevant Fediverse platforms. I'm sure the for-profit companies put money into this process, so brainstorm and reach out
    • Add your Fediverse accounts to the bio of your other accounts, and share posts from the Fediverse elsewhere

As long as there is a healthy community away from Meta (ex. what we have right now), then they can't extend & extinguish.

  1. Protect the Standards and share why it is important
  • Share posts from experts about strict adherence to standards, support regulatory and legal advocacy (interoperability requirements etc.), and educate other users about the risks.

(I didn't want to say more here because I'm not an expert, I'm happy to edit more points in)

Misconception: We should still defederate because of Privacy Risks

Not necessarily (and likely not at all?)

Meta is notorious for gathering data and then abusing that data, so this is an issue to consider. However, the way that activitypub works, the outgoing data is publicly available. Defederating with Meta doesn't prevent that, and federating doesn't give them any more data than they could get otherwise.

Lemmy instances need to decide

This is a big point: It doesn't really matter for Lemmy right now, one way or another.

It's more of an issue when data start coming IN to Lemmy from Mastodon and Meta's Threads. See below

Legitimate risks from Federation with Meta, and more effective ways to counter them

  • Algorithmic Amplification: Meta's history of using algorithms that prioritize engagement can amplify harmful or divisive content. These algorithms are not public like it is with Mastodon and other FOSS platforms.

  • Misinformation and Content Moderation: All Fediverse platforms will have to work on content moderation and misinformation. Platforms like Meta, focussed on profit and advertising, will likely moderate in a way that protects their income. Those moderation decisions will be federated around.

  • Commercialization and User Exploitation: Meta's for-profit nature means it's incentivized to maximize user engagement, at the expense of our well-being.

Counters:

  • Promote user control over their feeds, and develop USEFUL but safe and open algorithms for the feeds
  • Flag content and users from risky platforms, with a little warning icon and explanation (ex. 'Content is from a for-profit platform, and it may ___')
  • Implement features so that users can opt in or opt out from seeing content from risky platforms. In particular on explore/discover/public feeds, so it doesn't affect content the user is following.
  • Develop strict community guidelines that can get Meta (and other companies) sent into the 'blocked by default' bins mentioned above.

Final point: Evaluate things critically. Don't even just take my word for it. I doubt Meta or other groups care enough about Lemmy yet to spread disinformation here, and every post I've seen promoting defederation feels like a good faith attempt for something they believe in. But it's still worth thinking about what we're supporting.

Sometimes what feels like a good move might not help, and could even make things worse.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Being federated can allow us to encourage users to ditch Meta’s platform and join an open one (ex. Mastodon, Firefish, etc.)

What you fail to mention here is that this goes both ways; it also allows Facebook to "encourage" users to switch to Threads.

"All your friends are on Threads, why do you keep using that weird Mastodon thing?"
"Oh, Threads has this cool new feature where you can use (insert current NFT AI tech bro grift here) but it doesn't work with Mastodon."

But yeah you're right, the last time a tech giant embraced an open federated protocol, everyone and their mom started using the open platform instead. No wait, XMPP is fucking dead after Google did the third E.

Don't let them have a monopoly over the use of ActivityPub. Grow the other platforms: The extend stage only works when the platform gets a near monopoly over use of the standard. That brings up the first action. If there are enough users, services and resources on things like Mastodon/Lemmy, then Meta (or any other company) can't just extend the spec without causing their users to ditch Threads to stay connected to the content they want to see.

How tf do you expect that to work when they will start out with a 98.5% "market share" in the entire AP network?

Might aswell call it "Facebookverse" at that point because the entire rest of the Fediverse as we know it would be a drop in the bucket.

That's right, in a world where the broader Fediverse federates with Facebook, Facebook's starting conditions would be market dominance; a monopoly you might call it.

As long as there is a healthy community away from Meta (ex. what we have right now), then they can't extend & extinguish.

Good luck having a decent conversation with two people when there are hundreds of people screaming about irrelevant trifles in the same room.

Protect the Standards and share why it is important

  • Share posts from experts about strict adherence to standards, support regulatory and legal advocacy (interoperability requirements > etc.), and educate other users about the risks.

Facebook: We will muddy the waters around this upcoming competitor that could destroy our entire business model and drown it in noise. Users: Share posts from experts about strict adherence to standards, support regulatory and legal advocacy
Facebook: Oh no, not the expert posts! Ok, we will stop.

the way that activitypub works, the outgoing data is publicly available. Defederating with Meta doesn't prevent that, and federating doesn't give them any more data than they could get otherwise.

It is not. It is only available to federated instances and even to those it's almost always a subset because not every user/community is followed. Due to Facebook's sheer size, they would probably receive pretty much everything from any instance federated with them.

If they were defederated, they'd have to scrape every instance's API to actually export everything. Not a real blocker but much more difficult, expensive and legally questionable. (See the recent popularity in imitative statistical algorithms aka. """AI""" or "Copyright condoms" as I like to call them.)
Additionally, this opens up Fediverse users to Facebook tracking in things like DMs. I'm aware they're not E2EE and you should therefore not expect secrecy from them but putting them into a known bad actor's hands is quite a lot worse.

It's more of an issue when data start coming IN to Lemmy from Mastodon and Meta's Threads.

...that's precisely what defederation is about. You can't stop someone from scraping your API but you can stop their toxic waste from flowing into your healthy platform.

All Fediverse platforms will have to work on content moderation and misinformation. Platforms like Meta, focussed on profit and advertising, will likely moderate in a way that protects their income. Those moderation decisions will be federated around.

Moderation is a problem with our Fediverse platforms already, how tf do you expect us to do the work for Facebook's platform in addition to that when it's like 100x the size of the entire Fediverse?

develop USEFUL but safe and open algorithms for the feeds

There is no such thing. The only reason our current feeds aren't full of shit is because the general signal to noise ratio is still quite high. Refer to the conversation in the room example above.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fair points, I'll have to look more into some of it especially this bit

If they were defederated, they'd have to scrape every instance's API to actually export everything. Not a real blocker but much more difficult, expensive and legally questionable. (See the recent popularity in imitative statistical algorithms aka. """AI""" or "Copyright condoms" as I like to call them.)

I'm still torn on the other bit. Even if it's a losing battle, it feels like we have a better chance if we keep the alternative available. Otherwise they can do pretty much all of the above anyways

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Even if it’s a losing battle, it feels like we have a better chance if we keep the alternative available.

That's precisely what the mass-defederation is intended to do. From my PoV, defederating Facebook is the only way to keep "the alternative available" as otherwise it'd be drowned in shit and/or EEE'd.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Fair point, and it's something I'll be keeping on my mind as well to think more about.

I'd also like to say I appreciate that you wrote out the long response and addressed the other points. I didn't say that earlier but thank you

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Totally agree. Back in June I wrote about the reasons the FediPact was good strategy and started it with

Most importantly, it counters the gaslighting that resistance is futile. The segment of the fediverse that wants to reject Meta is clearly large enough that it will survive no matter what the big Mastodon instances and pundits do.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I won't federate with instances that choose to house hate groups. Meta chooses to house hate groups.

For me, it's that simple

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

This, to me, is the most immediate issue.

All the technical issues OP talks about are part of the future. I believe that because it's Meta, it'll be a bad future for the Fediverse, nonetheless, it is for the future.

Right now, Threads is the worst moderated instance on the fediverse (or will be). Groups that, if they were on a Mastodon or PixeldFed or Lemmy instance, would cause all responsible instance Admin's to defederate instantly. Exploding Heads type groups.

We have a collective responsibility to the people who may be part of a so-called minority group, who are on the fediverse because it's safe( r ) for them in a way it isn't anywhere else, to maintain that. Federating with Meta literally wrecks their experience. They will be targeted and brigaded. Surely no one is so naive to think that some right-wing lgbtqi+ hater(s) is going to think 'Oh, I can't be awful to those people because they're on a Lemmy instance, not Threads'? And by the way OP, if Mastodon users can post to Lemmy communities, I'm sure Threads users will be able to as well.

Instance Admin's who elect to federate with Threads are going to be swamped with moderation reports. There are 100 million people on Threads. I'm not suggesting all of them are hateful people but even if it's just 0.5% (and it's not) that's 1/2 million people. What will give first? Instance admins tolerance of Threads or instance Admins enforcement on their rules?

We can see what they're like now, just by going to Threads. I can't think of a more effective way to say to current Fediverse users who are non-white or trans or gay or feminists or disabled that their concerns matter less than being open to Meta.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Solid reason

I appreciate the care you put into the instance and I think it's very reasonable to keep doing that :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Right. And that's why I'm on blahaj.zone!

For many thought it's not that simple: they're okay with Meta housing hate groups as long as it doesn't directly lead to users on their instances being harassed. And it wouldn't surprise me that if harassment starts happening it'll still turn out not to be that simple for them because there are a lot more non-harassing accounts than harassing accounts

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Agreed that figuring out the right action is important! It's clear from the conversation so far that a lot of instances are going to defederate, and a lot of instances are going to federate, so any strategy needs to take that into account.

I talked with a lot of people about this when I wrote Should the Fediverse welcome its new surveillance-capitalism overlords? Opinions differ! and don't think it's the case that we share the same goals. Some people see increasing the size of the ActivityPub network as a goal in and of itself (and generally support federation); others are in the fediverse because they want nothing to do with Facebook or Meta (so unsurprisingly support defederation). And some people have a goal of communicating with people on Threads -- friends, relatives, celebrities, etc; others don't. So again, these different goals are something to take into account.

Wanting to stay federated DOES NOT mean the user wants to help Meta or thinks that Meta is here for our benefit.

That's correct, but many of the people I've seen arguing in favor of federation do seem to think Meta's looking for a win/win situation where the fediverse benefits as much or more than Meta. And conversely many would argue that wanting to stay federated means the user is helping Meta whether they want to or not.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

IMHO, this is more of a problem for Mastodon, not Lemmy. Right now Threads is about individuals, not community groups.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

For sure! I posted it here because we've been seeing a lot of posts about it here.

I'll edit it in to the TLDR as well

[–] matlag 6 points 11 months ago

This might be an unpopular post but so'll be it: Mastodon is the existing proof that Meta could kill Mastodon any time.

Mastodon was using a protocol compatible with GNU Social: OStatus, but some features were quickly added without consideration for other implementations.

So when per-post privacy were introduced, for example, they were very public on GNU Social, because their devs had no idea this was coming. And GNU Social was blamed for it.

https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/#mastodon-gnu-social-and-the-early-fediverse

Instead of having more users, GNU Social is now (almost?) dead. Of course it's not just because of the above. But it wouldn't have been set back so much without Mastodon.

Now, Mastodon is opensource, has more features and some compatible implementations. I run Pleroma myself. But why would one think Meta could not cripple them both?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

People seem to be confusing Google effectively just defederating with XMPP and taking their users elsewhere with them somehow usurping the offering. Their apathy with respect to embracing xmpp and not extending it for reasons I recall being too much work for them and then moving to completely different protocol (hangouts) is not the same as EEE. It is taking your users and going home. It isn't like XMPP was this giant success that Google then used to steal users from it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

While indeed it was different in some regards, Google did not have a lot of users to begin with and did piggy-back on open standards to get those users. So the stage you are talking about was the last E only.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Gtalk had every Gmail user at the time. There is no way that didn't dwarf any users of xmpp.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Xmpp predates Gmail, so of course it had more users initially and this is also why google decided to support xmpp, because it already had a healthy userbase with clients (mostly Pidgin) installed. The initial selling point of Gmail was that it was a standards compliant and well managed email (and xmpp) server, and that was true in the beginning, which is why so many tech enthusiast early adopters switched to it and promoted it heavily.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Hahaha. Seriously? No one had to promote Gmail heavily to bootstrap it, everyone and their grandma wanted a free unlimited email account. It is kind of ridiculous to lump xmpp into that as a selling point at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

It wasn't unlimited at the start, but rather for the time very generous 1GB. And Google absolutely used that as a leverage to break into the strongly growing IM market at the time, which is exactly what we are talking about here... and they did it in a way that ultimately did a lot of damage to the Jabber federation, which again is exactly what we are talking about here.

Just because it isn't an exact 1:1 match to AP and Meta doesn't mean we can't draw valuable lesson from it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Warning: I have opinions

Normal people are not going to migrate to Lemmy or Mastodon. They had their chance with Reddit and X, formerly known as twitter. If those didn't provide impetus to leave nothing will.

They are attached to their personal content. They have been "building their lives" on those platforms for decades. If you think that's an overstatement, consider your average tailgater or gender reveal party attendee. Do you think they are going to leave all of those pictures, and thumbs, and climaxes just before "posting to social media?" Not a chance.

Remember people don't like choice. Ever had that friend mildy interested in Linux? Ever make that mistake of excitedly telling them about every distro hoping they would enthusiastically want to know more... About absolutely everything? Of course. We all have.

Did they try it? Stick with it? Wonder about the others being better? Give up? Trying to bring folks to The Fediverse ends up being an l x m x n problem. Platform. Instance. App.

You know who makes that a lot easier? Meta. There are no choices. They have development funds and developer power. You are absolutely insane if you think any normal person would trade their normie app's meaningless animations and bells and whistles for something flat and pragmatic, but lacking their cryptogrift ai deer antler camera filter horse shit. Or whatever kind of fluff we will never be able to provide them.

Keep things in perspective. This post may be largish for here. It may even go viral. Or re-lemmied by an Influencer or Content Creator... like and subscribe. Ring that notification bell. And join our patreon to support the channel and get behind the scenes content.

*We can not change the social media landscape. * Want to change things? Tell people they need to throw their computers away.

Otherwise, defederate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm torn on this. On one hand, I would love to see more content coming into the fediverse from larger content creators. Sure there are plenty of great folks here but I want more adoption. Threads could be the way for a lot of people into the fediverse and if everyone defederates from them it really won't make a splash. I have seen big tech EEE too many times to really trust them though. ESPECIALLY meta. What I prefer to see is things like flipboard migrating to the fediverse. We need to see more of this!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't mean to be rude, but if you want non lemmy content, go to non lemmy platforms. I'm not saying log into FB, instagram or whatever. There are often os frontends/proxies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Threads affects more than Lemmy. The whole fediverse is interconnected so it will affect all platforms.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I personally am on the side of keeping the Fediverse separate from the Metaverse, I'd even concider the defederation of any leaking instance just to avoid the possible connection. Hence, I already went ahead blocking the Threads domain and will do my best to keep Meta out...

That being said, as I was reading one of the longer comments, I did contradictively think of a counter-point too... As was said, the current way of Federation only federates followed items and it has proven to be rather tedious if you want to see posts from an account from before it got Federated (my client now has a 'Load from remote instace" button that kinda solves this seemingly local (in the app), but even there it's an extra click per profile to a second profile window just to see what I would expect to already be on the first). This is kinda annoying when scouting accounts to follow, as many will have (ex.) 2184 posts, yet after scrolling 7 it says there's no more. On top it also makes the ability to encounter something or someone interesting to follow (unless somebody locally already follows them) kind of impossible...

Relays are a crooked band-aid solution to this, but are instance-targetted and you'll have to add any you encounter one by one if you'd want your instance to work like Twitter and Reddit where content can find you (and with constant access to all (or most) content), while filling instances storages exponentially. So relays are more like ducttape than a real viable long-term solution to this.

In comes a big company instance that, if our instances would be busses and trains, has a comparable size of a planet, which technically could be exploited to relay stuff while leaving the attached media linked from their copy, and as a global index. Every account could be connected to any instance without having to store the entirety of it; any content creator could be fully seen at any point in time from any instance (if they wanted to); it would make federation a lot less intensive as it'll just have to query the giant (if adapted for this use),...

But is that worth giving up my privacy to them again? Is that worth bowing to them as they assume authority over me again (like the power to cut me off from, not only the Metaverse then, but even the whole Fediverse too, should they (wrongly) suspect or misjudge something someone says? (A thing that will be bound to happen eventually, cause social media is probably the easiest place to get misunderstood, misquoted, oversimplified,... and getting a bunch of predispositioned opinions against you...)) And with Meta there isn't even anyone to explain yourself to or complain to, which makes all that even worse...

So, my answer still remains No on direct interaction,... I'm not yet sure on my position on defederating ActivityPub instances that federate with Meta yet though... I'll still need some research and input for that before I'll decide for sure.