this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023

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[Discussion] Potential of a Meta ActivityPub client (self.agora)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Whooping_Seal to c/agora

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/181146

I am assuming many of you have heard about the potential of Meta creating an ActivityPub enabled client (TheVerge, PCMag etc. have made articles). I was just wondering what people's thoughts are on this, and if it came down to it should instances in the fediverse defederate from it considering it could be a case of Embrace, extend, extinguish.

There's a DefederateMeta magazine at [email protected] if you're interested, which includes an anti-meta pact on cryptpad with the responses viewable on a seperate website if you care to see which instance admins have agreed.

I'm just curious what my fellow sh.it.heads think of this development in the fediverse, any input is appreciated!

Reposting at the request of can, within the context of c/agora should this instance defederate from any future Meta activity pub enabled clients? From my understanding it is more so a Twitter-clone and I'd argue a more severe problem for Kbin / Mastodon, but it is still worth discussing here.

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[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If meta wants to harvest data they would just create boring no-name servers to pull down the data that they want. De-federation isn't going to stop that.

The goal isn't to create a system where there are no corporate instances. The goal is to create a network that doesn't rely on corporate instances.

This idea that we use use de-federation like a weapon will cause the Fediverse to fragment and then we're back where we started: 50 different social media services and a fragmented social media experience. De-federation isn't a super downvote button, its use should be limited to boring server-related things (spam, complying with laws, etc).

The strength of federated social media is that it is all available for everyone at all times via one account. Breaking the network into small chunks or having some central group decide who gets to have access to social media is the exact thing that the ActivityPub protocol is suppose to help people escape from.

[–] Makhra 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Brushing this off as a data harvesting question seems a bit simplistic in my opinion as it ignores the concern for an EEE strategy.

What happens if they somehow manage to scale up and become the largest instance on the fediverse? Wouldn't they become that de-facto central authority? That would give them the ability to defederate instances which aren't following the "right" code of conduct, effectively silencing them for most of the fediverse users. They could push their own anti-features to the activitypub communication within their apps, forcing the rest of the instances to either follow suit and implement it, or break compatibility with that largest instance (not sure I explain that properly, but an example would be how microsoft and google forced their implementation of the W3C EME specification on Firefox).

Are we supposed to believe that after decades of building walled gardens and prioritising money over ethic, they had a change of heart and decided to embrace open platforms for the greater good of humanity?

[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 2 points 1 year ago

They already are the defacto authority on federation. If you're not on Facebook then you're cut off from THE social media network.

I understand the EEE fear. It's certainly a thing to watch out for going into the future. The way to win here is to outcompete them in feature support. If they have a closed proprietary feature that is popular then the FOSS community needs to strive for feature parity. That's always been the way you win in software. Linux is a prime example of this. Microsoft can't outcompete Linux in the commercial server space because the overall Linux development team dwarfs anything Microsoft has.

We're not going to strangle Meta out of the Fediverse even if everyone de-federated them. They can still support ActivityPub pub and the lack of any ability to communicate with the greater Fediverse removed any chance of users leaving Facebook. It allows them to market themselves as supporting open protocols and avoiding accusations of monopolistic behavior without ever being put in a position to have to compete.

Make them compete. Provide their users with better features, better privacy protection, more useful communities, etc. That's the only way to win the long battle imo.

[–] WheeGeetheCat 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I say let them do the extra work and incur the cost of running separate instances or scraping instances and then injecting the content into whichever ecosystem they have users sign up on, rather than giving them an easy way to do it. They will have to have a stable place for sign-ups no matter what

[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If Facebook made a Fediverse node it would dwarf the entire population of the existing Fediverse.

Cutting them off from what already exists wouldn't hurt them, it would ensure that their users couldn't migrate away while still allowing Meta to say that they're not a monopoly because they support open protocols.

This makes the EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) tactic a lot easier since they'd face no competition for users. A Facebook user couldn't see sh.itjust.works and decide that they'd rather use Lemmy than Facebook. They'd never be exposed to Mastodon and decide that they like it better than Twitter.

Meta already has all of the users federating with them means those same users can now be siphoned off by creating software that provides a better user experience than what Meta can provide with their services.

[–] WheeGeetheCat 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This makes the EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) tactic a lot easier since they’d face no competition for users.

People are running around this thread spamming EEE and in this case you have argued that my suggestion makes it easier, while another user has argued that the original suggestion not to block it makes it easier. Rather than spamming it like a buzzword, break out concepts which apply and explain how.

A Facebook user couldn’t see sh.itjust.works and decide that they’d rather use Lemmy than Facebook

A facebook user would not understand that they were seeing lemmy or sh.itjust.works content at all. You may have forgotten that some of facebooks original sins were starving youtube content creators of views / revenue by embedding their content in a way that prevented following the link to the real content. Expect to see facebook pipe the lemmy content into their wrapper and maybe even strip the comments out, if not just censoring any mention of other social networks.

[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're already Embracing Fediverse by creating instances. That can't be helped.

The Extend part of the strategy is to create proprietary extensions to ActivityPub/Fediverse services so users are required to use their instance rather than the public ones.

The users arguing for de-federation would help this part the most. By isolating Facebook from the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities it allows Meta to dominate the sections of the Fediverse that are in its federation.

If there isn't any meaningful competition to Meta then the existing Meta users will use Meta extensions be default and their proprietary version of the Fediverse will be the default.

Meta already has all of the users. They're expanding into the Fediverse to try to avoid being regulated as a monopoly by being seen as embracing open competition. They don't WANT competition, no corporation does. By de-federation them we're effectively cutting ourself off from the billions of people who could potentially leave Meta's ecosystem and at the same time removing any potential competition to Meta's extension of ActivityPub.

Meta joining Fediverse is better for Fediverse than it is for Meta. Siphoning off users from their platform should be the goal, not giving them an isolated pocket of the Fediverse that they can dominate easily.

[–] WheeGeetheCat 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Okay I think this is the crux of our disagreement.

You are worried about people not flowing off facebook fast enough. You feel that it has 'all the users'. I don't know exactly this applies to the extend portion, but I can see you think it reduces our influence /reach over those users.

I think that federating with meta makes the 'extend' part you mentioned easier, because lemmy users will see the federated facebook content, which may have these extra features you mention. Lemmy users may be forced back to facebook to use these features.

I also just want to push back against your idea of metas dominance. Facebook and instagram have really low engagement when compared to tiktok. (I didnt see any comparisons to reddit, if you see any let me know. ) Sure a lot of us (north americans) have old dusty accounts that we never use, but a lot of us don't generate content or create communities over there. Facebook has a huge network of users and tons of astroturfed advertiser content and that IS IT. They need real content to legitimize that, or they will die.

We are already siphoning users without federating with them.

[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would agree that de-federation could work to slow them if there was a way to ensure that there was 100% compliance. I just don't see having anywhere near that level of compliance with a Meta blockade. Many instances are going to federate with them simply for the traffic.

On paper it sounds good, but the actual implementation will be incredibly spotty. It will create a fragmented Fediverse where people have to pick and choose which islands they want to live on and the Network Effect will drive a huge amount of people to choosing the island that Meta is on which will starve the other islands of users.

The people who feel so strongly anti-Meta (and I am one of them) need to be able to directly compete with them. We're not benefiting anybody by creating a tiny Fediverse island of idealists while Meta takes over the rest of the Fediverse.

My stance on de-federation has been pretty clear I think. I just don't think it is a tool to be used like this. I think of it like a firewall or router, it's just a low-level tool to be used in order to ensure that the network functions. It shouldn't be used to carve the Fediverse into multiple completely independent services. We already have a situation like that where Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc are all their own island controlled by a small group of people.

The Fediverse's promise is in the ability to have ONE social network that connects every person to every other person regardless of what platform you're using. These de-federation campaigns are the antithesis of that idea. We should be looking for ways to ensure that the network is more robust and accessible to everyone... not ways to carve it up into different ideological segments.

[–] WheeGeetheCat 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think we mostly agree and whichever way the community goes on this, the best thing for us to do is to create fun and useful federated content.

[–] Difficult_Bit_1339 3 points 1 year ago

Here's to that!

[–] agentshags 20 points 1 year ago

Shitheads lol, I love it.

You would have a yes from me on keeping that BS out of our instance for sure

[–] WheeGeetheCat 17 points 1 year ago

I came here to make a post like this one after reading about Meta's project92 on the Verge

I would be against federating with meta and would be for signing the anti-meta pact.

Here are my reasons:

Demand for social media alternatives is high right now because existing networks like facebook (instagram/ meta) and twitter have failed spectacularly to serve the people using them, and instead have sought to exploit them.

There is a rare migration taking place. This is a rare moment of opportunity. Meta seeks to once again establish an exploitative relationship by piping fediverse content into their 'wrapper', which they can then profit from.

The content is the valuable part. Not the wrapper they put on it to drive eyeballs to their advertising partners. So, We should withold content from them in all ways possible.

Additionally, people are motivated to learn new behavior right now - like how to work with federated content - specifically because there's a lack of content easily available on reddit. Withholding content from meta incentivizes more people to abandon their networks, which shrinks meta's influence, which is a good thing.

[–] can 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Meta will infiltrate, harvest and manipulate everything if we don't stop them.

https://fedipact.online/

[–] tcely 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I would absolutely support keeping Meta away.

The known downsides far out weigh the potential benefits.

[–] god 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What are these down side s?

[–] Makhra 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One of the most damaging downside could be that this move from Meta is made in the aim to apply some EEE strategy. With that company's history, I doubt there is much to hope in terms of their motivation to join the fediverse.

[–] god 5 points 1 year ago

Let's hope we have 1 billion users by the time meta launches their app. We've got 350k. 1 billion to go.

[–] can 7 points 1 year ago

Grandma can't follow my posts?

[–] sapient_cogbag 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm less worried about data harvesting - the fediverse is already public - and far more worried about Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, in which they cooperate at first but then start to use their influence to add proprietary extensions and push the rest of the community around (or even cut us off), or otherwise coopt the movement towards federated social media and reassimilate it back into their obscenely dominant and centrally controlled network >.<

Edit: My understanding is that they've already done this with XMPP, I don't see any reason to think activitypub will be different. I say defederate.

[–] Naz 13 points 1 year ago

It's like the sharks sensing blood in the water - Reddit is bleeding and so they assume it's weak enough to go for the kill.

I would say it's shameful or deeply unethical behavior, but it's Reddit's own poor behavior that got us here in the first place.

It seems that it requires a constant and great deal of effort from ordinary people to continuously fight and stop the enshittification of the Internet.

It goes without saying, but Fuck Meta/Facebook. This is what free speech is all about.

[–] nyahlathotep 10 points 1 year ago

I would vote aye to defederate any meta/facebook instance, and probably any tech giant instance for that matter.

[–] AlligatorBlizzard 9 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure? I went to the magazine and read through the magazine and the gist of the arguments for defederaton are basically

1 - it's Meta. They're a privacy nightmare, actively abuse their users and (some of their) employees, and are playing an active role in the enshitification of the Internet. I'm relatively new to the fediverse, to what extent does federation open up non-users of the Meta instance to their tracking? I suspect it's quite a bit, but what's stopping these big companies from scraping fediverse data already?

2 - Meta platforms have moderation issues, abuse, hate speech, and incitement of violence is a problem on their existing platforms, and a similar cheap approach to moderation will occur with their fediverse attempts as well. I have reasons to be a bit more familiar with Meta's moderation but can't really discuss because I'm not sure my NDA has expired yet... it's not an ideal situation and everyone already knows that. But this instance is currently federated with instances that embody the same awful shit Facebook is currently known for, and an argument in Facebook's favor is that their platform isn't explicitly encouraging that kind of nastiness even if they use algorithmic methods to ultimately end up in the same place.

Meta getting into the fediverse presents an opportunity for some good communities to show some small positive sliver of what exists elsewhere in the fediverse and could be a way of gaining users that otherwise wouldn't have seen what exists here. But, while I see some upsides to federating with the Meta instance, ultimately I don't think the opportunity presented here to grow the fediverse is worth Meta's inevitable exploitation of the users and community as a whole.

[–] JackRiddle 9 points 1 year ago

Defederating absolutely seems like the best move here, since meta cannot be trusted to not poison the fediverse. We know their trackrecord of sucessfully killing platforms, and there is very little to gain from federating with them.

[–] Hagarashi8 8 points 1 year ago

Well, you got a strong yes from me.

[–] Trekman10 7 points 1 year ago

There was a really good thread on it by this person over on Calckey.social

[https://calckey.social/notes/9g6tq8dysxqagm4n]

[https://calckey.social/notes/9g6vg02klbez9ft0]

[–] southsamurai 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here's the thing.

It isn't really meta that's the problem. As others have said,, if they want to throw money at it, defederation isn't going to stop them from causing trouble.

It's who comes with them that's the problem. Go look at facebook and instagram. That's what would come with meta if they federate in one way or another.

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

That's basically arguing 'its not the fire that destroyed your house, it was the heat and smoke'

[–] 3lfk1ng 5 points 1 year ago

I don't do Facebook/Meta and I don't support any products that do.

[–] Kazaii 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think there are really great points / angles being presented on this issue. If you Shitheads want to de-federate, I'll stand in solidarity; However, I very much concur with a lot of the salient nuance being presented in this thread, along with the linked threads.

At the end of the day, this particular community should take action in defense of the plural. Those who feel otherwise, revel in the utility of freedom-of-exit that the fediverse grants us -- yet, I hope your new community will stay federated so we can continue to share ideas.

[–] Derproid 6 points 1 year ago

Off topic but I never knew I would ever enjoy being called a shithead.

[–] Cracks_InTheWalls 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

sh.it.heads, my guy. Shitheads are assholes, (most) sh.it.heads are not. This is my (ultimately meaningless) hill to die on.

[On topic] Agreed, there is a lot of nuance re: dealing with Meta and the implications for the Fediverse writ large. I am still firmly in the 'Fuck Meta, cut them off wherever possible', but understand concerns of this creating a split that ends up with Meta being the defacto Fediverse for many users later on.

To this I'd say: tell people about other instances. Be the guy who says "Oh man, I saw this hilarious thing on sh.itjust.works - oh, what is that? Well..." and send a link [or any other instance, whatever, but I like this one]. Post cool stuff here. Bitch about Meta stuff loudly, often, and underscore the fact that THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES, AND YOU CAN JOIN NOW! Print some posters, drop instance links in other places where discussion seems warranted, tell anybody and everybody. Those who wanna Meta will Meta regardless, but there's some momentum here re: moving away from large social media companies right now. Why federate with a wolf who wants to consume you?

Maybe it's a tad idealistic, but accepting it as an inevitability seems lame as fuck to me, even if it is indeed inevitable. Die with a sword in your hand and all that.

Noted that while my views are definitely shared, they may not be a representation of the majority when it comes down to a vote.

[–] Kazaii 1 points 1 year ago

lol, sorry. Sh.it.heads**

I agree with your added notes. If Meta's P92 instance became the de-facto party that everyone's at, I would likely self-host my own instance and use that to browse/communicate, if there's anything of value there; I know a lot of Homebrewing groups flock to Facebook today. I would keep my sh.itjust.works account to have more meaningful engagement. It's kinda like my two emails.... my shitty gmail account I've had for a long time & my email meant for more curated communication.

Personally, I'm enjoying both sh.itjust.works & my niche Mastodon instance (noc.social). It's nice to be part of a community, but be able to follow/search those beyond. I agree with your ideals that we should praise this method and educate everyone who misses the protocol for a platform.

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

I guess I've been living under a rock because no, I had not heard of this. I believe it can be a huge opportunity for the protocol and instances shouldn't insta defed them, however we should also be wary of mega corporations getting too big of an influence over the Fediverse. In the future, not respecting Facebook's (or any other giga platform's) TOS might be a death sentence for growing instances, and that would in turn spell the doom of ActivityPub turning everything back into a centralized mega site.