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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

I don't think this is EEE, I think this is a chance for meta to dominate the narrative by drowning us out with algorithmically curated censorship, distractions, hatred, outrage etc. I would join threads if I want threads, I would be on Reddit if I want corporate influence.

The mastodon post for the same server admins admitting to allow Meta thanks @BrikoX and @Melco

This is the post regarding an admin of fosstodon being offered a secret meeting under a non disclosure agreement

Thanks lunar for articulating my central point better than I could.


Most of my primary content was within the comment section scattered so I'll try to put it up here and edit more as i go. I was worried I'd butcher things so I avoided updating my post. Ignore the mess

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EEE - I don't want to talk specifically about this. Many others are, and you can talk with them about it.

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Privacy - My views on privacy is that lemmy is already fully public and facebook merging into it probably wont reduce your lemmy privacy in any meaningful way. Ignoring lemmy, your privacy is already fully breached in ways I'm not going to explain here.

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People keep making blind claims that facebook/meta can't use their algorithms to interact with us, so i will explain. For the record I know most of this effects mastodon directly, and not so much lemmy.

Threads will be able to control what gets minimised and maximised based on whatever secret algorithms they use. These end results are known to people that want to know, it's how our parents and grandparents, became increasingly detached from reality. If facebook/meta wants to censor their users, they will, if they want to promote hate against LGBTQs then they will. Those users will then interact with our users, slowly shifting our conversations and the overall culture of lemmy into the same cesspool that is facebook.

Secondly, the content of threads will be selected by a relatively massive userbase which will drown out our content if we stay federated. Of course that content will be optimised by their algorithm, thus influencing fediverse content.

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Now onto the principle matter. FACEBOOK IS EVIL, like genocidal evil, a propaganda arm of the empire evil. They have a heavily proven track record. "Wait and see"? There is no need to ignore facebook/metas criminal record.

The admins here should have clearly stated their intent but have been deafeningly silent. People are asking for clarification or in my case, acting because of a clear lack of action.

Other posts are talking about this and I will assume you have been reading them.

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pjhenry is a troll that ignores what people actually say, he focuses on his intentional misunderstandings and straw-men, just stop feeding the troll guys, he only wants to fight over nothing. He only acts in bad faith.

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[-] [email protected] 79 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Their stance if someone is interested https://mastodon.world/@mwadmin/110654590632768079

They basically won't do anything preemptively.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

This seems to be the part that relatively few people have read.

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[-] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago

Not saying meta isn’t evil…. but the whole point of the fediverse is that anyone can start a server. Meta isn’t going to be able to track you any better just thru federation, anyone can already scrape the data. People are too quick to defederate everything

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[-] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

While I agreed those who do not want federation with Threads should leave (me included), lemmy.world has not bent any knee. The admin is taking a wait and see approach, and willing to block if it turns out bad

[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago
[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They will extinguish us by watering down our uniqueness and incorporate us into them regardless of if we are in a separate unique server like lemmy.world. In the end this instance will become intellectually homogenised with meta while foaming at the mouth with standard twitter/reddit/facebook level hate and outrage over dumb stuff.

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[-] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago

Where is the indication that lemmy.world have "bent the knee"?

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[-] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

Thank you for pointing out that this is so much worse than just EEE. Meta has a long history of social and political engineering, and deliberately creating a toxic environment that turned all of our parents and grandparents into deranged conspiracy theorists. They don't just let hate thrive on their platform, they artificially inflate it in the name of engagement and profit.

I see no reason to assume they won't do all of this again, and should they do it all again it's going to impact the entire Fediverse. Even if you just stick to instances that block Meta, if you're federating with instances that aren't, the toxic environment Meta is likely to build will come back to you. If the majority of instances fail to block them, I can't bear to stay here and watch what has become the internet's most healthy and vibrant community rot from the inside.

I honestly don't understand why this is even a debate. If even a fraction of the shit meta has pulled was done by a smaller Fediverse instance, we all wouldn't hesitate to defederate from them.

And to those of you who justify Threads because Meta is somehow the lesser of two evils compared to Twitter, please remember that while Twitter is owned by a raging and incompetent manchild, Meta has eroded democracies and played a major role in a genocide. Don't fucking support these murderers. Meta is more than happy to spread even more hatred and killing in the world if it boosts their profits.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Thank you so much for being the first to properly understand the threat I was trying to express. You said it so much better than I could at the time.

I think the reason we are debating is because there are already bots and bad actors working hard to change and forge opinion. I think this style of fediverse just died, but we are close to easily making a new better one.

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[-] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think it's absurd to give Meta the shadow of a benefit of the doubt. in the past, they have explicitly stated their intention to make facebook the internet. If zuck had his way, there would be exactly one website, a monolith collecting your data to more efficiently serve you ads. There is no world in which their participation in the fediverse is not self serving and a net loss for the rest of us.

[-] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

What are you talking about?

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[-] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

If anyone does decide to leave lemmy.world, do not leave the lemmyverse. Join another lemmy instance or start your own instance. Lemmy is the future. Free, open source, federated link aggregator.

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[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

I'm getting sick of these "time to leave" posts about people wanting to jump ship on each sites decision. Beehaw decided they only want peaceful severs, time to leave. Lemmy.ml was founded by communists, time to leave! Lemmy.world doesn't instantly defederate from other instances, time to leave!

You can't just continually shuffle the community from site it site.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

While a entire community can't convince itself to leave, the beauty of the fediverse is if you as a user want to leave it's very easy to switch instances and get access to most of the same info you want.

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[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

I believe the approach described in https://www.timothychambers.net/2023/07/03/instagram-threads-and.html is much more pragmatic than “Meta is bad, Threads will corrupt us” argument and I honestly believe that fighting among fedi instances would be the first win of EEE strategy. Meta IS bad, federation with Threads may be an opportunity, fighting before even watching and assessing the situation is wrong imho. “Watching Like a Hawk, with our Fingers Over the Block Button.”

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We don't have to wait and see? Meta has a proven history.

His write up doesn't cover the issue my post is about, but it does cover a fair bit. I also worry about fracturing the community but see it differently. If everyone rejected meta or if everyone embraced meta, we would be an unfractured community. Unfortunately we aren't fully one way or the other. The best part though is that we can split into different instances. My biggest issue is that to my knowledge, on lemmy.world there were no announcements stating intent, and to people like me that means pro-corporate and I need to leave. If they just announced I would have just slowly left without much fuss.

i do realise lemmy isn't effected that badly compared to mastodon, but the basics still stand.

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[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

All this talk of Meta is histrionics at this point until we find out if they are going to federate. Wait and see then you can decide what to do.

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[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I think it's silly people are using arguments from pre-launch. If what I'm being told is true from what is being posted there, it's no doubt that it'll get defederated from most places fairly quickly. However, whether your instance federates with it or not will do nothing to address your concerns that are legitimate. You have nothing to fear from the algorithm or curation in any way. That won't affect you, federated or not. You also won't be drowned out either. That's not how federation works. Threads will dominate the narrative for a bit regardless of federation.

And your closing statement about "us" and "we" is culty and creepy. Don't speak for people you don't even know.

You want a server run by "one of you"? Run one yourself. You can do so for well under $100 a month (likely significantly lower depending on how snappy you want it).

I'm kind of tired of folks protesting against people hosting instances for others and entitled individuals making demands that they've done nothing to earn.

This has nothing to do with corporate. If you read what you linked, you'd know that full well. I'm guessing you didn't go more than that one link deep and didn't dive down to read the given reasons for the stance. Lazy.

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[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

This grand standing and these purity tests about threads are sickening.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

We want to prevent enshittification. Not encourage it.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

As much as I preemptively created an account on another server (as I prefer admins to have a decisive stance in regards to Meta and similar corporations), it'd be good to wait for lemmy.world admins official message on it before telling everyone to leave.

But if they do "officially" bend the knee, yeah, it's time to leave if you want to avoid Meta.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Man.... I just got here.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't WANT to agree, but I kinda do.

We're here because Reddit was shit on top shit, led by gaping anus. We all accept that Meta is the same.
We didn't want Reddit profiting from our work. Meta will do the same, only more competently.

Defederation is useless at scale They can continually spin up new instances that act as spies and bridges to Meta's area.
Once enough Meta bridge nodes are woven into the Fedi, they'll be masked by a backchannel to mask the exchange/activity.

Someone plz tell me I'm wrong, but this is how I think things work in the background...

  • Bob creates a Lemmy node - @Zucc1.ughfuckoff. It has 3 users and basically shops around until someone in lemmy.world's sphere allows federation. Zucc1 looks like any random, small instance.
  • Once federated, Zucc1 syncs to its connected Lemmy instances - for now there is no Meta connection.
  • Zucc1 can then federate with a bunch of other instances, including Zucc2.
  • This repeats for a few weeks, infiltrating Fedi. This could be happening now.
  • A new set of Lemmy nodes spin up and federate only with a portion of the spy instances. The spy instances don't respect the federation rules, distributing portions of the Fedi sync back to the Meta connected nodes, masking the source and destination.
  • Once signed posts are received by the spy nodes, user names are swapped with a table synced by spy and bridge instances. @[email protected] becomes @[email protected].
    • The Threads user sees their message from @[email protected] (which can also be swapped if they worry Threads users care about any of this stuff).
    • The Lemmy user sees the message from @[email protected].

Probably easy to combat when it's one instance here and there. If it's constant and automated, federating would have to be paused until the spies are weeded out and there's a better detection strategy. If they get a big enough network going, they could all dip out at once, change identity, and refederate back in as the Fedi network flips out because of all the sync mismatches. Just more new nodes joining in. They have the source code, so they can act differently from other instances as long as it doesn't cause problems.

Is this a realistic scenario or am I way off base? I feel like it has to be one of the two.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's all getting a bit Judean People's Front around here. I know there's a generally leftist userbase, but do we have to do this?

That's less about defederating with Meta. Meta are the Romans. It's about people defederating with anyone who federates with Meta.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I'm not on lemmy.world, but I've joined some communities that are. I think an important question is, for any community mods who take this stance, do you plan to shutter your lemmy.world community and move to another?

This situation is one reason why it's important to get tools for community migration into Lemmy. (Another is: what if an admin simply has to shut down their instance for personal reasons?)

(Also FWIW there's already reason to defederate based on the garbage moderation even if you're not concerned about EEE, so I don't get admins who are in "wait and see" mode.)

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[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm not surprised, but disappointed. And I'm even tired to talk about it. It's just so fucking dumb.

Do the fosstodon people have a Lemmy instance?

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[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Rather than make thread after thread after thread about it, just start an instance with blackjack and hookers and threads.net on your blocklist

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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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