Some good-faith questions of some seemingly apparent benefits of a potential Corporate Fediverse, and the detriments of defederating from a Corporate Fediverse. Could I get some answers? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by MrMusAddict@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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Hey guys. I admittedly am mostly a layman to the Fediverse as a concept. So I am coming into this post with the knowledge that I don't understand the technical intricacies of it.

I fully expect that Meta will act in as bad of faith as possible, that is something that I think we all agree on. But from what I understand about the Fediverse, I'm just having a hard time understanding how we would not be shooting ourselves in the foot unless we at least try to federate with Threads.

I am aware of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.

Here are my understandings of the goals as a non-corporate fediverse:

We love decentralization
We love privacy
We love self-reliance
We would love to see the non-corporate federation grow

With those understandings, here are my questions:

Doesn't the fediverse have an inherent protection and/or immunity from corporate take-over?

As I mention above, I am aware of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. But, how is that a risk for the Fediverse?

QOL features, and gimmicky capabilities can be replicated.

The only thing we may not directly be capable of are 1st party Meta acct/apps integrations.

Aren't we protected?

Threads requires effectively all personal data from its users. But only their users. We are not forfeiting any personal data by federating with Threads; we are isolated to, and protected by, our individual instances.

Is there anything currently stopping Meta from scraping the Fediverse for our content?

If even anonymized privacy is a concern, why do we think that defederating will protect us? We're all posting our content on private servers which are wide-open to the public.

Won't we grow & educate?

If we keep corporate instances in the federation, isn't is safe to assume that the non-corporate instance will grow massively? Connecting with Threads and others will allow us to proselytize the benefits of moving off of threads, and improving their digital wellbeing. If we are not connected, they will largely remain oblivious to us.

EDIT: I think this is a benefit because the people who want off of Threads and into the Fediverse are the people who strive for Freedom. This atricle claims the fediverse is not looking for growth, but we do want it to grow with people who agree with its goals, right?

Aren't we worried we're forcing an ultimatum while the Fediverse is still in its infancy?

If we disconnect now, we are telling everyone "choose the shiny new Threads, or the clunky up-and-coming Fediverse". This affects prospective users, and existing users.

What's the harm in pulling the ripcord if we try it, and it's truly not a good fit?

If we pull the ripcord now, we allow Threads to grow in their walled garden.

If we pull the ripcord later, we make an informed decision.

If we never pull the ripcord, we allow Threads to pull the ripcord if they ever so choose. That encloses them into their walled garden, which is exactly where they'd be if WE pull the ripcord now.

"What about an influx of low-quality content?"

This is a whataboutism I've heard. What's stopping individuals from blocking their disliked communities?

"What if Meta doesn't moderate well?"

This is another whataboutism I've heard. I personally think that Meta has a vested interest to moderate Threads enough to stay out of the news. As a publicly traded company, it's in their best interest to not scare off their advertisers and shareholders.

If some low-quality moderation does persist though, we still have the ability to block users & communities.

Thanks for taking the time to answer any of these. I will likely have follow-ups, and if/when I do please understand I am asking them in a good-faith effort to try and clarify/understand.

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[-] thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz 15 points 1 year ago

Looking at your posting history (or almost complete lack thereof) I'm a little suspicious that these questions are as good faith as you claim. Having had years of debates with corporate PR infiltrators on such subreddits as r/permaculture and r/environment (to name a couple) this post raises some serious red flags with me.

[-] MrMusAddict@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I came over as a Reddit refugee, and really like the idea of fostering communities with like-minded individuals. That's why I have founded 5 already, which replicate what I was missing from Reddit.

The last few comments directly before/after this post are the result of continuing my full train of thought, looking for clear answers, in a more visible format than the comments of a lemmy.ca post. From what I understood about the fediverse, I was surprised to see communities blindly defederating when it didn't seem to be fully thought through (although I admittedly am new here, so I may just not understand). But that was the impetus of my questions.

As of me writing this comment, I have not found understandable answers to my questions yet.

[-] thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That may be true, and if so I apologize. However, be aware that showing up with a newish account and asking "good faith questions" (or showing up with an account that participates in a few niche communities and THEN advocates for the procorporate view point) is a VERY common PR tactic, to the point that any time it happens it's suspicious. Adding some subtle criticism or distrust of the corporation before spinning their point of view is common as well (also something we saw from more sophisticated Russian trolls during the 2016 and 2020 elections).

I will good faith tackle your questions.

Doesn’t the fediverse have an inherent protection and/or immunity from corporate take-over? Aren't we protected?

EEE is totally an blatant risk to the Fediverse, which is vulnerable in exactly the same ways earlier examples of decentralized opensource networks were. Specifically, this strategy targets the lower effort, lower information and less ideologically motivated participants (which, once a network grows beyond a certain point becomes most of the participants) and tries to steal them away by connecting them to features and content faster than the opensource network can. Once those participants are using the corporate tools and participating in the corporate version of the network, you can drop support and give the original network back to whatever of the original participants are left.

Remember, if it's free you are the product. The users are what these folks are after, and they know they can get them by providing a more convenient experience with more of the content users want to see, and then just biding their time, avoiding enshittification of their participating tools until they're ready to cut ties and take the userbase with them.

Won’t we grow & educate?

I mean sure, but at what risk and what cost? The safest way to view this kind of thing is as a sort of attempt at colonialism. Let's say you're an indigenous person in 1780 and some white folks show up on your island saying they want to participate in your culture, learn about how you survive, teach you about guns and how there's one alimighty God and Jesus is his son and be your new best friends? Let's say you have a modern person's knowledge of history when that happens? Do you see this as an opportunity or a huge threat to your culture and way of life?

Aren’t we worried we’re forcing an ultimatum while the Fediverse is still in its infancy?

This is the best time TO make a stand. The people who will be interested in what's happening here and want to avoid corporate shenanigans can discover this place, while we protect it's future. So what if we don't grow to some ubiquitous cultural behemoth? Our volunteer hosted servers can't support that right now anyway.

What’s the harm in pulling the ripcord if we try it, and it’s truly not a good fit?

Put a frog in warm water. Tell him when it gets too hot to jump out, he's welcome to. Start to turn up the heat. What will happen?

Better not to be the frog in the water in the first place.

“What about an influx of low-quality content?”

I mean, I LIKE Lemmy's content quality where it is right now. We should grow slowly and nurture this culture instead of growing quickly and getting overwhelmed.

“What if Meta doesn’t moderate well?”

I don't even care, as I don't plan to federate the instance I run with ANY Meta instance.

[-] Emotional_Series7814@kbin.cafe 1 points 1 year ago

Hey, I’m an onlooker and really appreciate you answering these questions. I read once that debates/arguments may not change the minds of the participants, but they do change the minds of onlookers.

If OP is legit, thanks for the answers, it probably feels bad to ask questions and come away with zero answers and several accusations of being something you are not. If OP is a PR infiltrator, you’re probably assuaging doubts Meta tried to plant with this post in regards to taking a hard anti-Meta stance and fully defederating.

[-] MrMusAddict@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for taking the time to answer. I did read all of it, and was planning on responding to each individual point, but it all kind of melded into one combined thought.

I guess from what I'm thinking, it's sounding like this is the pessimistic expectation:

Threads will do all that they can to entice people onto their platform.
They will go for people with low standards of privacy and high expectations of networking, and try and win them over with features.
Once they've been won over, they become Meta's product, and once they have enough products they will cut ties and leave us high and dry.

But, if we "make a stand" against it now, because we expect to be a frog in boiled water if we don't, how exactly does that improve the above outlook? We've walled the garden for them. The people with lower standards will be won over by default.

I guess it may just be a difference of opinion, where you think it protects us, but in my view it just makes the decision easier for those individuals since they are forced to choose. I'm thinking that with coexistence comes the opportunity to rip users of similar ideologies over to our side while Threads grows.

[-] normalmighty@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

For what it's worth, I wanted to pipe up in these comments and say you're not the only one with these opinions. Just thought I'd say so here because the nature of the post is getting you blasted pretty hard with people who've made up their mind that federating with threads is damning your soul for eternity.

Imo we have more to gain than lose, and all of the doomsday scenarios laid out by people - though more than possible - are no better than the outcome if people don't federate with them.

[-] Candelestine@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

You know, I've been in a lot of these conversations today too, and I've been thinking about this.

There's one major motive that people are ignoring when considering why folks might want Zuck to join the Fediverse. While it's difficult to defend if one were to say it aloud, they simply want his content.

Instagram is probably the internets single largest source of photos of attractive people, for instance. It's prime internet stalking turf. It's a heavily-used service in general. Do many people want to admit that they want it on here, they want access to it from their own home Instances? No, I don't think many people would be willing to admit that. But it would definitely make them willing to fight pretty hard for it.

What's the cost to them personally? None, really. The gain? Access to Zuck's content without having to open up another service--horribly convenient. Once everything gets integrated anyway.

Obviously there's a lot of motives a person could have, but this is a big one I think gets ignored in favor of less gross ones.

[-] Marxine@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

With all due respect, you (and your account) sound too much like astroturf material. The primary business of Meta is influencing public opinion, and that's the biggest danger it poses to any group.

If you'd like to invite the company that has collaborated with Rohingya's genocide, feel free to do so. I'd never be able to do so and sleep well at night.

I won't further engage past this comment our of respect for my own time and for your ability to comprehend my points.

[-] MrMusAddict@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

On the offset chance I do hook you back in;

It's not the company I'm interested in connecting with, it their users. If my friend opts to join Threads, I won't be holding him against Meta's collaboration with Rohingya's genocide, but would love to still be able to interact directly with their content (and vice versa).

Not quite sure how to get you past feeling like I'm astroturfing. I guess take a look at my 11 years of Reddit history under the same username?

Also, how can you claim I can't comprehend your points if this is your first comment you've sent me 😅

[-] kglitch@kglitch.social 6 points 1 year ago

I'm not going to explain it to you.

I mean, it's been fifteen fucking years. We know what Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey are about. They've shown us their whole entire asses. We've seen them radicalize our family members and put Nazis onto the streets. We've seen them stand by while genocide was organized on their platforms. Cambridge Analytica. Trump.

But the second they dangle a toy in front of us with the vague scent of FOMO and ground floor clout, that whole history gets thrown away and we're back to repeating everything like it's 2007 all over again.

Come on.

[-] MrMusAddict@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

To clarify, my post is trying to highlight that Threads will exist with or without us. If they want to join the Fediverse, and we refuse and wall their garden for them, that does nothing to stop their growth and profit immensely. However, we lose the opportunity to connect with their users and content, and we lose any chance we have to convince them off of Threads. If they remain federated, we can offer the identical content they're used to while promoting privacy and self reliance.

[-] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Risk/reward. What are the chances that a user of Threads would know or care about how Fediverse works? What are the chances that Meta obscures any knowledge on the Fediverse, so that it's difficult to learn how the Fediverse works?

Meta is not some sort of saint that's offering us a bone. They will try their absolute hardest to ensure it's difficult to switch one away from Threads, and it will most likely be successful.

And on the risk side, how many users would you lose from an EEE maneuver? Even if the Fediverse remains standing, how much of its reputation has been damaged, and how will that affect its future growth?

To be clear: Fediverse is resilient toward corporate takeover. But EEE is not a corporate takeover maneuver. It's a maneuver designed to attack the reputation of a platform, to stop it from growing. Nobody wants to use a platform with a bad reputation, and EEE is the platform equivalent of a bully becoming your friend just so they can gossip behind your back. You don't need to be bought out or taken over to suffer reputation loss. The Fediverse is completely vulnerable to EEE. Even in the post by the Mastodon developer about Threads, he points out that he's not worried about Meta stealing your data. But he said nothing about Mastodon's ability to survive an EEE. Which I think is pretty telling.

And if we view it from the lens of my analogy (bully trying to befriend you to gain gossip material), I think the answer for what to do is plenty clear: don't accept the friendship. That is what we are deciding to do. Accepting the friendship anyways because "maybe we can teach the bully to become a good friend" is both naive and missing the entire point. You're missing the forest for single particular tree that most likely isn't even there.

[-] dudeami0@lemmy.dudeami.win 5 points 1 year ago

These are just my opinions on the matter at hand.

TLDR; it's not all about growing as massive as possible and letting everyone talk to everyone. It's about communities being able to make choices for their user base and the freedom to choose who to federate with. It's also about users having a choice of which instance they use to interact with the fediverse, and with whom. Having Meta involved limits these choices in not so obvious ways.

Doesn’t the fediverse have an inherent protection and/or immunity from corporate take-over?

Yes, but that does not mean it is invulnerable. Take the World Wide Web as an example, over the past couple of decades the decentralized web has become increasingly centralized. Projects such as Lemmy and Mastodon are a shot back at this trend, to try and break the web up as it was. Each instance gets to decide if letting large corporations federate with them is the best choice or not. It seems that a lot do not want this, and this is exactly the kind of protection from corporate take over that is inherent. The more large central servers are allowed to take a central role, the more power they will gain to snuff small communities and instances. They will do this by fragmenting users bases and communities over time, or any other dirty tricks they can come up with.

Also, having billions of dollars at your disposal is known to increase your influence overall. They can outspend anyone to sell most people on how Threads is interconnected and fediverse friendly, if you let them sell that lie they will win in time. They'll do this, pull the rug and say how other independent instances aren't corporating. They will shut off access to these communities in one way or another and begin the process of centralization. It has happened before, and will happen again.

Aren’t we protected?

If you choose to not use Threads, you are not giving your information directly to Meta. But, that does not mean you are safe. Meta is a corporation, and will try to pull whatever tricks they can to take over as the dominate player. They are going head to head with Twitter, what makes you think instances a fraction of Twitters size are safe?

Also, saying we are isolated by our individual instances is a bit humorous as they are federated. If one instance pushes most of the content is that really isolated? What about upvotes, engagement and any other activity that is pushed to other servers via the ActivityPub protocol? These will all be taken in by Meta, which means you are feeding them activity. Sure it's safer, but they are still getting more data by engaging in the ActivityPub protocol than they get via scrapping pages. Also, they don't have to play fair with the ActivityPub protocol, there are a lot of dirty tricks that could be used to hamper content on other instances than their own.

Is there anything currently stopping Meta from scraping the Fediverse for our content?

No, and the fediverse should not care. The goal of the fediverse at the moment is to stay independent and have a user base that is not reliant on a single entity and to stay away from the influence of corporate interests. If you operate in a public space, someones always going to be able to see it. It's all about who owns that public space.

Won’t we grow & educate?

Who is we? Users that value their freedom will stay in the independent fediverse instances. Those who are looking for a twitter alternative will probably go to Threads. Those who don't care will probably stay on Twitter. Any of these users might have multiple accounts on some or all of these services. Trying to group this together as "we" is a bit disingenuous.

As for growth, it's not safe to assume that independent instances will grow because of the federation of users from Threads. Users that are on Threads are likely to stay on Threads, users that join instances are likely to stay there. Look to linux users to see why you aren't going to convert many over the virtues of freedom and decentralization, you'll just become another "fanboy".

Aren’t we worried we’re forcing an ultimatum while the Fediverse is still in its infancy?

What is the ultimatum? This is a pretty loaded question, since some of the fediverse is already fractured. The fact you can spin up your own instance, invite whoever you want and keep the interests of your community out of the hands of corporations is the goal. Freedom to host your own community. Anything else is just having a capitalist mindset on growth, the line doesn't always have to go up. Getting the most users isn't the end game, it's having a community that you belong to and feel a part of.

What’s the harm in pulling the ripcord if we try it, and it’s truly not a good fit?

Each instance chooses what is best for their community. Being a part of the mainstream content feed isn't the goal of most of these decentralized communities.

“What about an influx of low-quality content?”

Why do instances need to let users block Meta when they know their users want Meta blocked? What's stopping users from going to an instance that doesn't block Meta if their instance disagrees with their opinion? It's all about doing what instances communities want, or users can migrate if they feel their needs aren't being met.

“What if Meta doesn’t moderate well?”

Meta will probably be able to moderate for their advertisers better than most instance operators will be able to. But again, it's not about moderation and sanitizing content for advertiser revenue, it's about having a space that is for the community by the community. It doesn't need to be a single homogeneous community so ads can sell. Some of us want that outside of a corporations control, others don't or don't care, all are valid. Thankfully, everyone has a choice instead of being forced to do one or the other.

[-] MrMusAddict@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

I guess anytime I say "we", I mean people who value freedom, privacy, self-reliance, and decentralization. The kinds of people who the Fediverse purports to attract. I guess my questions mainly stem from a lack of understanding of how blind defederation is supposed to be a tactic to protect people who I've classified as the group "we". We're not going to ever go to threads. Others here may, because they are willing to forfeit their personal data, but not us.

Most of the sentiment I've seen demanding defederation seems to imply that our group and ideologies of freedom/privacy/self-reliance will be undermined by the mere connection with the Threads userbase. You mention that people on Threads will likely stay on Threads. Why would we expect differently for "us" staying on non-corporate Fediverse?

What I do know is that the concept of the Fediverse is very novel for the vast majority of people, even to people who value their freedom (but just hasn't thought to look, or what to look for). That will not be the case much longer now that the big guys have stepped in.

I guess it boils down to pessimism vs optimism. In my optimistic view (even with a pessimistic understanding of corporates greed) there's no harm in establishing the connection and playing it by ear as an opportunity to educate. And if we "wall the garden" for them, I don't see how that would protect the Fediverse, aside from perhaps preventing new flavors of content.

[-] RaleighEnt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago

I remain unconvinced that threads is going to kill the fediverse. I haven't seen any convincing arguments yet. Maybe I'm just a dumbass (I'm 100% a dumbass) but I really cant see how threads could make anything worse. even if they do eee so what. the fediverse is small now. if they join us but break compatibility down the line we'll still be where we are now.

maybe I'll just start my own kbin instance

with blackjack

and hookers

[-] solidgrue@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Without engaging the questions directly (in part because I've been discussing this for a fair part of my evening already), thank you for articulating the major discussion points succinctly for folks to engage.

Myself, I'm receptive to good-faith corporate participation in the fediverse, from the standpoint to engagement and dialogue. I'm less enthusiastic about corporate participation in ActivityPub governance because, well... *cough, Redhat*. W3C is a good curator of protocols though, and I hope they are able to resist the worst tendencies of our corporate overlords.

edit to add because "post" is too close to "preview:" I've come around to not being keen on the "defederate first" plan of attack. I think the extra participation will be beneficial before it becomes detrimental. Moderation is a platform problem here, and maybe that is where the defederation hammer falls. I dunno. I'm gratified to see ActivifyPub be acknowledged as more than some toy protocol. Inguess welltsee what cones of it.