How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.
On the one hand, Facebook/Meta are not interested in the health of the fediverse. This is clearly an “embrace, extend, extinguish” move. On the other… they’re sure to have a large number of users, which in turn means a large amount of content that we’ll want to view/participate in. Each of those users will in turn be an opportunity for us to encourage to migrate to the fediverse.
I feel that the large number of users is a problem, not an asset. What makes a platform good is the engagement level of the users, not the volume. A user who does not want to engage enough to create an account is not likely to be engaged enough to add significant value.
I moved away from Reddit because I don’t want to be part of one monolithic site, I want to be engaged with a smaller group that has more creative energy. There is no exclusivity clause that prevents people from using both sites and accessing all the content, but having them federated will lead to homogonisation and ultimately destroy what makes this site different. To extend the milk metaphor, we are the cream, mixing us in with the milk will make it richer, but destroy us.
I agree with your comments re: engagement and community. But Meta federating doesn’t impact that. Their users/communities will not suddenly become part of your local feed.
It is not my local feed that concerns me, it is the fact that we will become part of theirs. It will be like when a post is popular enough to make it onto the front page of Reddit - suddenly a post that was crafted for a local community, with users that have a shared culture and background, becomes exposed to a random audience including trolls and bullies who take 2 seconds to judge it and have no barrier to putting on their own comment and starting a pile on.
suddenly a post that was crafted for a local community, with users that have a shared culture and background, becomes exposed to a random audience including trolls and bullies
That is a good point, that I’ve not seen raised elsewhere. Though to an extent, it is already true when you consider the size of aussie.zone compared to lemmy.world for example. Threads will of course be orders of magnitude worse.
Besides the human impact of the negative interactions, the technical impact on the server of providing content for umpteen million Threads users is also a non-trivial risk. This alone is making me think defederation is the better option until Meta have a) released details on how they intend to not overload existing instances, and b) as @david@aussie.zone said “Meta can prove they won’t hurt fediverse”.
Having said that, when Threads announce they’ll be federating I’ll put up some sort of poll to solicit feedback from the wider aussie.zone audience. I don’t want to be making such a major change without soliciting feedback in advance.
What does threads federating even mean for Lemmy? They’re a mastodon type platform they can’t see posts, they can’t follow communities can they? I understand mastodon and Lemmy are activity pub in the background and theoretically you can susbscribe each way but how do you actually do that and what does it look like.
How do I follow my mastodon account from here and vice versa?
I think this is a moot argument for now as meta aren’t making a reddit/Lemmy type platform.
Do you think it’s something that they can defederate or block when it becomes a problem? Defederating this early in the game seems to be more about thinking that Meta will somehow control the Mastodon leadership enough that we won’t be able to do that later.
I might not understand how federation would work but users from Meta will have to actively choose to follow an aussie.zone community in order for your posts to be visible to them on Meta Threads. Even then only that user will see your posts here. So the chance of your post here on aussie zone being visible to everyone on Meta Threads just won’t happen.
If my understanding of Federation is wrong then I’m happy to be corrected.
That’s not how it works with Federation with other Lemmy instances works, I don’t see how Threads users would have a different system. When I look at the feed with All selected now it gives me a lot of random stuff from other instances I’ve never heard of.
I see what you are saying. I’ve changed the settings to only show my subscribed feeds by default because as you said there is a lot of random stuff.
What you are seeing with “All” on aussie.zone is “All” of the feeds that users on aussie.zone are subscribed to. If no one on aussie zone has subscribed to thisRandomCommunity@lemmy.ml then it will never show up on anyone’s All while in aussie.zone. If one single user subscribes to it then it will start showing up.
So by default in “All” you will only see Meta communities if people here subscribe to them. The same will likely work the other way. Users on Meta won’t see aussie.zone communities unless someone there subscribes.
That said I wouldn’t put it past Meta to have “bot” accounts that subscribe to ALL communities on each instance. That sort of action would put a strain on these instances as all posts would go back to Meta. If they pulled that kind of trick then I’d be all for defederation as it would impact the performance and could indicate Meta are just scraping all content from every instance. They’d be pretty dumb to do that but I wouldn’t put it past them.
I can understand the appeal of growing numbers but I don’t think the risks outweigh the rewards. Unlimited growth is unsustainable anyway. We can exist without Meta. Meta is a poison pill that will eventually monopolize the fediverse if it has its way. This will not be the first time they killed off a decentralized platform.
will be “Watching Like a Hawk, with our Fingers Over the Block Button.” We will NOT be pre-emptively taking a “Fediblock as a Frist Strike” position.
His reasonings are much better supported compared to Eugene’s. I my opinion he seemed to downplay EEE without any defence mechanism
In my personal opinion, I support defederation until Meta can prove they won’t hurt fediverse. My points are
Fediverse, especially Lemmy is growing so well without Threads/reddit. We don’t need their contents. People who do would have stayed with reddit already. Having said that, why would we want to federate in the first place
The whole reason Lemmy is where it is today is due to people fed up with reddit’s. They’ve lost trust on Big Tech.
Imagine Meta set up an Lemmy instance. Are we willing to give them for free all the mineable data they would not have otherwise from scrapping? What if they use all that extra data to better train their AI and sell more targeted ads
On an instance like aussie.zone, our profile is likely linked to a city/location. I wonder how many of us set up accounts here just for this instance. I know I do, where i have another account elsewhere for my hobbies, interest groups so that I cannot be traced easily. With that in mind, people can easily create an account elsewhere to follow threads if they really want. Multi account is already supported in app such as Memmy
I’m really glad to hear this. honestly I think there’s a lot to gain and we have the privilege of choosing to defederate if it’s the right move, just cutting us off because we don’t like meta is a bit short-sighted. cutting us off if it’s doing harm is another thing, but it’ll hopefully be obvious.
I think the wait and see approach is probably best. Your average user doesn’t have to engage with Meta even if aussie.zone federates.
The good thing is even if aussie.zone federates with Meta your average user will never see any of the content unless they specifically subscribe to a meta community.
There is a chance Meta users could subscribe to aussie.zone communities but really the chance of that is pretty slim. It’s likely Meta will have “competing” communities for the same topic so why would they subscribe to this little backwater aussie.zone?
I’m 100% sure there will be many that just don’t like the idea of being federated with Meta from a personal/ethical standpoint and will likely threaten to walk even though the impact of federation will have no zero visibility on their experience in aussie.zone. That’s the beauty of Federation I suppose if you don’t like the way a site is run go elsewhere.
I’m also certain that there will be a lot of kneejerk freakouts and amplification of anything Meta does going forward. So I do ask @lodion@aussie.zone that you try to look at things objectively like the Mastadon admins are doing and try not to get caught up in the emotions of it all.
I’m the first to agree that some of the things Facebook has done to society as a whole are horrendous but I also take issue with people being disingenuous or amplifying something that is complete FUD about some of Facebook’s actions in the past too. “Fake News” no matter who pushes it is still fake news.
This is clearly an “embrace, extend, extinguish” move.
Is it? I certainly don’t think Meta is doing anything because it’s genuinely the “right thing”, but that doesn’t automatically translate to them already having a deliberate plan to kill off the fediverse by starting to use it before they add on their own proprietary features only available to their users.
My personal opinion would be that there’s no need to pre-emptively defederate them. Keep yourself ready to defederate the instant they do something that’s directly harmful to the community at large, but until then, hold off and let their users experience what the fediverse has to offer—and let our communities benefit from their increased activity.
This is clearly an “embrace, extend, extinguish” move.
I don’t think so.
Meta has 2 billion active users on WhatsApp alone, plus Facebook/Instagram and now Threads. The entire fediverse has only 2 million active users - the fediverse is loose change for Meta.
Embrace Extend Extinguish was perfected by Microsoft, until they were smashed by antitrust regulators and narrowly avoided going bankrupt. Regulators are far more strict today and Meta knows that, note they haven’t launched in the EU… The fact is Embrace Extend Extinguish would be far more likely to result in Meta being extinguished than the Fediverse. Give regulators half a chance and Threads/WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram will suddenly be four companies, none of them owned/controlled by Meta.
I think it’s more likely Meta expects that breakup to already be in the works - and they see the Fediverse as their protection. Look! Tens of thousands of social networks! And we have a healthy relationship with most of them!
I’m wondering if the main reason for this is because they are currently linking Threads accounts to Instgram?
I know for a while in Germany Meta did not sell their VR headsets because they required a Facebook account to work which was against a German law. Meta have since separated the requirement of a Facebook account to use VR headsets so are now no longer in breach of that law.
I am considering deleting my account and removing myself from the fediverse until I find an instance/s that block Meta and any instance that is associated with them. Because fuck Meta and fuck their demographic…
At least with Fediverse you have the option to move. See the list of instances (not all but many) with their positions on federating/defederating here: https://fedipact.veganism.social/
I’m undecided.
On the one hand, Facebook/Meta are not interested in the health of the fediverse. This is clearly an “embrace, extend, extinguish” move. On the other… they’re sure to have a large number of users, which in turn means a large amount of content that we’ll want to view/participate in. Each of those users will in turn be an opportunity for us to encourage to migrate to the fediverse.
I feel that the large number of users is a problem, not an asset. What makes a platform good is the engagement level of the users, not the volume. A user who does not want to engage enough to create an account is not likely to be engaged enough to add significant value.
I moved away from Reddit because I don’t want to be part of one monolithic site, I want to be engaged with a smaller group that has more creative energy. There is no exclusivity clause that prevents people from using both sites and accessing all the content, but having them federated will lead to homogonisation and ultimately destroy what makes this site different. To extend the milk metaphor, we are the cream, mixing us in with the milk will make it richer, but destroy us.
I agree with your comments re: engagement and community. But Meta federating doesn’t impact that. Their users/communities will not suddenly become part of your local feed.
It is not my local feed that concerns me, it is the fact that we will become part of theirs. It will be like when a post is popular enough to make it onto the front page of Reddit - suddenly a post that was crafted for a local community, with users that have a shared culture and background, becomes exposed to a random audience including trolls and bullies who take 2 seconds to judge it and have no barrier to putting on their own comment and starting a pile on.
That is a good point, that I’ve not seen raised elsewhere. Though to an extent, it is already true when you consider the size of aussie.zone compared to lemmy.world for example. Threads will of course be orders of magnitude worse.
Besides the human impact of the negative interactions, the technical impact on the server of providing content for umpteen million Threads users is also a non-trivial risk. This alone is making me think defederation is the better option until Meta have a) released details on how they intend to not overload existing instances, and b) as @david@aussie.zone said “Meta can prove they won’t hurt fediverse”.
Having said that, when Threads announce they’ll be federating I’ll put up some sort of poll to solicit feedback from the wider aussie.zone audience. I don’t want to be making such a major change without soliciting feedback in advance.
What does threads federating even mean for Lemmy? They’re a mastodon type platform they can’t see posts, they can’t follow communities can they? I understand mastodon and Lemmy are activity pub in the background and theoretically you can susbscribe each way but how do you actually do that and what does it look like.
How do I follow my mastodon account from here and vice versa?
I think this is a moot argument for now as meta aren’t making a reddit/Lemmy type platform.
Do you think it’s something that they can defederate or block when it becomes a problem? Defederating this early in the game seems to be more about thinking that Meta will somehow control the Mastodon leadership enough that we won’t be able to do that later.
I might not understand how federation would work but users from Meta will have to actively choose to follow an aussie.zone community in order for your posts to be visible to them on Meta Threads. Even then only that user will see your posts here. So the chance of your post here on aussie zone being visible to everyone on Meta Threads just won’t happen.
If my understanding of Federation is wrong then I’m happy to be corrected.
That’s not how it works with Federation with other Lemmy instances works, I don’t see how Threads users would have a different system. When I look at the feed with All selected now it gives me a lot of random stuff from other instances I’ve never heard of.
I see what you are saying. I’ve changed the settings to only show my subscribed feeds by default because as you said there is a lot of random stuff.
What you are seeing with “All” on aussie.zone is “All” of the feeds that users on aussie.zone are subscribed to. If no one on aussie zone has subscribed to thisRandomCommunity@lemmy.ml then it will never show up on anyone’s All while in aussie.zone. If one single user subscribes to it then it will start showing up.
So by default in “All” you will only see Meta communities if people here subscribe to them. The same will likely work the other way. Users on Meta won’t see aussie.zone communities unless someone there subscribes.
That said I wouldn’t put it past Meta to have “bot” accounts that subscribe to ALL communities on each instance. That sort of action would put a strain on these instances as all posts would go back to Meta. If they pulled that kind of trick then I’d be all for defederation as it would impact the performance and could indicate Meta are just scraping all content from every instance. They’d be pretty dumb to do that but I wouldn’t put it past them.
I can understand the appeal of growing numbers but I don’t think the risks outweigh the rewards. Unlimited growth is unsustainable anyway. We can exist without Meta. Meta is a poison pill that will eventually monopolize the fediverse if it has its way. This will not be the first time they killed off a decentralized platform.
I’m not interested in growing user numbers. But I am interested in having access to the content those users generate.
I am leaning towards defederating Meta… but for now am taking a more “wait and see” approach.
My opinion would be to defederate and take a “wait and see” approach to federate if they behave themselves. :p
Thank you for being transparent. Your plan seem to align with that of some major mastodon’s instance owners, as they agreed with this guy https://www.timothychambers.net/2023/07/03/instagram-threads-and.html
His reasonings are much better supported compared to Eugene’s. I my opinion he seemed to downplay EEE without any defence mechanism
In my personal opinion, I support defederation until Meta can prove they won’t hurt fediverse. My points are
Fediverse, especially Lemmy is growing so well without Threads/reddit. We don’t need their contents. People who do would have stayed with reddit already. Having said that, why would we want to federate in the first place
The whole reason Lemmy is where it is today is due to people fed up with reddit’s. They’ve lost trust on Big Tech.
Imagine Meta set up an Lemmy instance. Are we willing to give them for free all the mineable data they would not have otherwise from scrapping? What if they use all that extra data to better train their AI and sell more targeted ads
On an instance like aussie.zone, our profile is likely linked to a city/location. I wonder how many of us set up accounts here just for this instance. I know I do, where i have another account elsewhere for my hobbies, interest groups so that I cannot be traced easily. With that in mind, people can easily create an account elsewhere to follow threads if they really want. Multi account is already supported in app such as Memmy
We can federate later if we really need to
I’m really glad to hear this. honestly I think there’s a lot to gain and we have the privilege of choosing to defederate if it’s the right move, just cutting us off because we don’t like meta is a bit short-sighted. cutting us off if it’s doing harm is another thing, but it’ll hopefully be obvious.
I think the wait and see approach is probably best. Your average user doesn’t have to engage with Meta even if aussie.zone federates.
The good thing is even if aussie.zone federates with Meta your average user will never see any of the content unless they specifically subscribe to a meta community.
There is a chance Meta users could subscribe to aussie.zone communities but really the chance of that is pretty slim. It’s likely Meta will have “competing” communities for the same topic so why would they subscribe to this little backwater aussie.zone?
I’m 100% sure there will be many that just don’t like the idea of being federated with Meta from a personal/ethical standpoint and will likely threaten to walk even though the impact of federation will have no zero visibility on their experience in aussie.zone. That’s the beauty of Federation I suppose if you don’t like the way a site is run go elsewhere.
I’m also certain that there will be a lot of kneejerk freakouts and amplification of anything Meta does going forward. So I do ask @lodion@aussie.zone that you try to look at things objectively like the Mastadon admins are doing and try not to get caught up in the emotions of it all.
I’m the first to agree that some of the things Facebook has done to society as a whole are horrendous but I also take issue with people being disingenuous or amplifying something that is complete FUD about some of Facebook’s actions in the past too. “Fake News” no matter who pushes it is still fake news.
Is it? I certainly don’t think Meta is doing anything because it’s genuinely the “right thing”, but that doesn’t automatically translate to them already having a deliberate plan to kill off the fediverse by starting to use it before they add on their own proprietary features only available to their users.
My personal opinion would be that there’s no need to pre-emptively defederate them. Keep yourself ready to defederate the instant they do something that’s directly harmful to the community at large, but until then, hold off and let their users experience what the fediverse has to offer—and let our communities benefit from their increased activity.
Yes, as posted below I’m taking a “wait and see” approach. The Mastodon CEO has posted his thoughts on Threads, with some compelling reasons to not defederate:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/
Wow thanks for sharing. I really think that last paragraph especially was a powerful one.
Given the current content on Facebook I’m not sure more content is necessarily good.
I look forward to them ruining everyone’s feed with ads as soon as they find a way as well.
If that ever happens I’ll defederate them in a heartbeat.
I don’t think so.
Meta has 2 billion active users on WhatsApp alone, plus Facebook/Instagram and now Threads. The entire fediverse has only 2 million active users - the fediverse is loose change for Meta.
Embrace Extend Extinguish was perfected by Microsoft, until they were smashed by antitrust regulators and narrowly avoided going bankrupt. Regulators are far more strict today and Meta knows that, note they haven’t launched in the EU… The fact is Embrace Extend Extinguish would be far more likely to result in Meta being extinguished than the Fediverse. Give regulators half a chance and Threads/WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram will suddenly be four companies, none of them owned/controlled by Meta.
I think it’s more likely Meta expects that breakup to already be in the works - and they see the Fediverse as their protection. Look! Tens of thousands of social networks! And we have a healthy relationship with most of them!
I’m wondering if the main reason for this is because they are currently linking Threads accounts to Instgram?
I know for a while in Germany Meta did not sell their VR headsets because they required a Facebook account to work which was against a German law. Meta have since separated the requirement of a Facebook account to use VR headsets so are now no longer in breach of that law.
https://mixed-news.com/en/meta-is-now-selling-vr-headsets-in-germany-again/
I am considering deleting my account and removing myself from the fediverse until I find an instance/s that block Meta and any instance that is associated with them. Because fuck Meta and fuck their demographic…
At least with Fediverse you have the option to move. See the list of instances (not all but many) with their positions on federating/defederating here: https://fedipact.veganism.social/