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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.