Mikina @ Mikina @programming.dev

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5

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486

Joined

2 yr. ago

For me, the main issue is that I simply don't want to spoon-feed them data about my behavior, or give them my content to monetize on their platform as they see fit. I'm certain that if they ever implement something like subscription to communities on Lemmy, or a Frontpage or All, they will do so with their own algorithms that decide what content you see (* see edit below) - algorithms that are designed to manipulate with people, backed by a ML model that has unimaginable amount of data from FB and IG to train on, and 3 billion users to learn and experiment on to further be better at showing you the right personalized posts that keep you glued to their apps for as long as possible, no matter how unhealthy it may be or how it changes you for the worse.

While I understand that my content personally, or the whole of Lemmy isn't going to make a dent in the data they already have to work with, I still don't what to have anything to do with it, and I would be pretty sad if we've let them exploit Fediverse in such a way.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I'm actually not sure if that's how ActivityPub works - from what I assume (and please correct me if I'm wrong), it's just a protocol that allows servers to query different instances for their content, but the content is then shown on that instance - so the frontend and the way the content is shown is decided solely by the instance owner, just as I use https://programming.dev/c/community@lemmy.ml if I want to see content from Lemmy.ml, and nothing is stopping programming.dev to have a different interface altogether, or show me the posts in whatever order they see fit. In the same way, if Mastodon wanted to let their users access Lemmy posts, all they would need is to query Lemmy instance for data using standartized ActivityPub API (what data actually? I need to finally read up on ActivityPub.) about the posts the user wants to see, and then implement frontend for that data. And if Mastodon user comments on something, it just sends the comment back to the Lemmy instance - using ActivityPub.

Is this correct? Or is there some kind of SSO involved in ActivityPub, so all of my Fediverse interaction isn't limited - and directed by - my home instance only? That's something I'm not really clear on, case my whole assumption about ActivityPub is based on random mentions here and there from comments around here.

Eh, I kinda hope that happens to be honest. I've finally got to the point where I just deeply refuse to use any of the large corporation stuff, and if they somehow kill community run social networks, then I'll finally be free of my addiction that I don't have the willpower to deal with as long as there's an ok-enough tempting alternative . Which I know is selfish, but I'd probably help me a lot :D

And that's another issue - if we federate, you won't even be able to block those trackers, because the Meta instance will just be able to ask the server for those data, if I understood it correctly.

Meta is not letting people out of it's walled garden. Meta will use our free world as a safari, selling tickets to their users so they can watch and interact with us, monetizing our content, while still being guided (since they can decide what content they see, and how do they see it) and watched by Meta (because they know every move of their users at any other instance) at every step they take outside of it's walls - because they are still from their instance. It will use those safari rides as an excuse to collect as much data about what we do here, unknowing to the people they sent here. In addition to that, you will get 3 billion of people who will just leave trash everywhere they go on our vast open plains, and Meta will eventually just use that as an example of how we can't handle cleaning our space, and use it as a reason why people should go live within their walls - because the walls will still be there, and every step you take within them, even if you're only visiting from outside, will be heavily monitored.

I don't expect it to be balanced. I also don't mind that a lot of users are centralized at lemmy.world - because we know the admins, and there isn't a largescale corporation behind them that would be capable of monetizing and manipulating their userbase. The only kind of balance I want is that there isn't an instance with multi-billion funding and teams of engineers dedicated to squeezing their userbase and monetizing every character they type. Sure, it will inevitably happen that someone from an instance would try something like this, but that's an acceptable risk with community-run stuff and may or may not happen - and it probably won't be as succesfull or large-scale. However, if you let in someone you are certain will do something like that, and has unimaginable amount of resources and manpower to do it, then they will just squeeze it dry while not shying away from exploiting every single privacy mistake there is in the protocol or our implementation.

I didn't research it too in depth, but from the quick understanding I have about it, it works something like this:

Fediverse is just a name for servers that implement the protocol ActivityPub. The protocol defines a way how different servers should share data and interact with eachother.

For example, you have Mastodon, which has decided to implent a Twitter-like social network. Or Lemmy, that implemented Reddit-like social network, or the Pixelwhatever, that implements a picture sharing service.

When someone hosts an instance of the social network, you use it just like you would a normal social network. But in addition to that, ActivityPub protocol defines a way how can the servers talk to eachother - how they share data. So a user of i.e lemmy.ml can ask their home instance "can you let me subscribe to posts from programming.dev community?", and the instance will use the protocol to start fetching posts from there, to show to the user, while also sending back comments the user makes on said treads.

It would also be possible to connect Mastodon with Lemmy - assuming that some kind of UI is created that would handle the difference in type of content. But the ActivityPub protocol gives them a common language about how to interact. So if a Mastodon creates a special post type for Lemmy posts, users can start requesting "Hey, can you get me posts from this Lemmy instance?", and it will be able to get them though ActivityPub and then somehow show it to them.

A fediverse is just a network of servers that are allowed to talk to eachother. If Meta would join the Fediverse and we did not defederate with it, it would mean that Meta's servers can ask any instance to give them their content and let their users interact with it - but Meta will decide how is it shown. So Meta can riddle it with ads, run analytics about how are users interacting with the posts, scrape it for user data or simply use the content we have as a way how to kickstart their platform that noone would want to use in the first place.

So, defederation just means "I don't want to talk to you, and I will not give you any data."

Nothing is stopping Meta (or me, or you) from launching an instance that has ads, investors, and sells all its data to people, whether that data comes from that instance or is discovered through federation.

You are right, they are only suggestions. But suggestions I would really like to se enforced, and that is exactly what defederation is for. If we want to uphold the values mentioned in the quote, and not let our content be monetized through federation, then defederating with those who don't uphold the values is the solution. It's as simple as that.

Meta already has access to our public posts just by scraping the instance, they don’t need to federate to do that.

While they don't have to federate to do that, federation makes it a lot easier, because the content is served right to them. It also legitimizes them monetizing and stealing our content, because after all - that's how the protocol works. While scraping for content is much more effort and grey-zone, since then they also have to somehow show it to the users - by impersonating us? By using fake accounts or bots? Probably, but that's still more effort. And that's what I take issue with. Meta would decide how is our content shown, they would be monetizing it and they would be using it to manipulate with their users (because as far as I know, the instance you are on is in full control of the UI, and the order in which content is shown and how), or watch and analyze how users interact with it. And I want no part in that, in spirit of the above mentioned suggestions.

I think that making someone addicted to youtube would be harder, than simply slowly radicalizing them into a shunned echo chamber about a conspiracy theory. Because if you try to make someone addicted to youtube, they will still have an alternative in the real world, friends and families to return to.

But if you radicalize them into something that will make them seem like a nutjob, you don't have to compete with their surroundings - the only place where they understand them is on the youtube.

I've actually just asked that in another post, because I am kind of interested in what people see as Fediverse main idea.

But, thanks for this summary of how Threads looks like, since I'm avoiding it like a plague. You seriously can't even select what content you see? Fuck, that's way worse than I though - that's so obviously a ML model manipulating with people without holding anything back. I hope they've at least done something with the misalingment where it seems to just radicalize people to keep them on the platform, because if not, the world is fucked.

I hate Meta so much...

I've though about it some more and I have realized something - while I definitely don't want Meta to have any access to my content, so I will simply not be interacting with any instance that won't defederate, if it would allow me to message people on Messenger with my account on a random federated server, I'll be all in - but only use the instance for messaging. Which reminds me that I don't really know how interconnected are Threads with the rest of Meta ecosystem - will you be able to message someone on Facebook from Threads? As far as I know, I don't even think you can message someone on Instagram from Messenger, unless they have a FB account - at least I never managed to do that.

So I'm 90% sure that will never happen.

It's even worse than "a lot easier". Ever since the advances in ML went public, with things like Midjourney and ChatGPT, I've realized that the ML models are way way better at doing their thing that I've though.

Midjourney model's purpose is so receive text, and give out an picture. And it's really good at that, even though the dataset wasn't really that large. Same with ChatGPT.

Now, Meta has (EDIT: just a speculation, but I'm 95% sure they do) a model which receives all data they have about the user (which is A LOT), and returns what post to show to him and in what order, to maximize his time on Facebook. And it was trained for years on a live dataset of 3 billion people interacting daily with the site. That's a wet dream for any ML model. Imagine what it would be capable of even if it was only as good as ChatGPT at doing it's task - and it had uncomparably better dataset and learning opportunities.

I'm really worried for the future in this regard, because it's only a matter of time when someone with power decides that the model should not only keep people on the platform, but also to make them vote for X. And there is nothing you can do to defend against it, other than never interacting with anything with curated content, such as Google search, YT or anything Meta - because even if you know that there's a model trying to manipulate with you, the model knows - there's a lot of people like that. And he's already learning and trying how to manipulate even with people like that. After all, it has 3 billion people as test subjects.

That's why I'm extremely focused on privacy and about my data - not that I have something to hide, but I take a really really great issue with someone using such data to train models like that.

My personal opinion is that it's one of the first large cases of misalignment in ML models. I'm 90% certain that Google and other platforms have been for years already using ML models design for user history and data they have about him as an input, and what videos should they offer to him as an ouput, with the goal to maximize the time he spends watching videos (or on Facebook, etc).

And the models eventually found out that if you radicalize someone, isolate them into a conspiracy that will make him an outsider or a nutjob, and then provide a safe space and an echo-chamber on the platform, be it both facebook or youtube, the will eventually start spending most of the time there.

I think this subject was touched-upon in the Social Dillema movie, but given what is happening in the world and how it seems that the conspiracies and desinformations are getting more and more common and people more radicalized, I'm almost certain that the algorithms are to blame.

It's only my personal point of view, but have you ever seen how does a Meta user usually communicates? Can you imagine a moderating an instance where you suddenly get an influx of 3 billion users? None of them will ever create an account outside of the Meta ecosystem, and will only bring problems to most of the other instances, while making any kind of moderation a living hell.

I would like to also add this argument into the discussion, since I've seen a lot of people who are voting for federating with meta, with the argument that defederating just because we don't like someone goes against the idea of Fediverse, and interconnected network of diverse servers that is should inclusive and allows people to connect.

It's quite the contrary - allowing Meta in goes directly against the idea of Fediverse, and we should fight it as much as possible.

This is a literal quote from the main header on https://www.fediverse.to/

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

Judging by this main selling point of the Fediverse, it sounds to me like Meta shouldn't be in the Fediverse do begin with, and every instance should defederate from them by default.

While lemmy.world is not my main instance, so I have no say in whether you defederate or not, I would like to bring this arugment into the discussion, because it's applicable for all instances, and make de-federation an absolute must for every instance.

Allowing Meta in goes directly against the idea of Fediverse, and we should fight it as much as possible.

This is a literal quote from the main header on https://www.fediverse.to/

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

I've seen a lot of comments mentioning that defederating with Meta goes against the principles and main ideas of the Fediverse, that it should be inclusive and allow people to connect. But, judging by this main selling point of the Fediverse, it sounds to me like Meta shouldn't be in the Fediverse do begin with.

I've just stumbled upon something that I think makes a pretty solid argument that federating with Meta goes directly against the idea of Fediverse (because I was actually intrigued about whether I'm not just projecting my dislike for Meta into it).

Take a look at https://www.fediverse.to/ (which I'm actually not sure if it's the official main page, but it is the first search result), this is literally the first selling point, written in (absolutely hideous :D) large font on the landing page:

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

I think that with that in mind, there's no way how we should even consider federating with them. That is, of course, unless it's what majority of people wants.

I've already made my view on the issue known in other comments, but I've just stumbled upon an argument that I think is really important to consider, and should make de-federation an absolute must.

Allowing Meta in goes directly against the idea of Fediverse, and we should fight it as much as possible.

This is a literal quote from the main header on https://www.fediverse.to/

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

I've seen a lot of comments mentioning that defederating with Meta goes against the principles and main ideas of the Fediverse, that it should be inclusive and allow people to connect. But, judging by this main selling point of the Fediverse, it sounds to me like Meta shouldn't be in the Fediverse do begin with.

I don't agree that defederating with Meta is against the definition of Fediverse.

This is the header on fediverse.to:

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks. Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics. Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

Meta-owned instances go directly against every one of those points. For me, Fediverse should always be run by people not doing it for monetary gains. The main advantage of fediverse is not that you can and should connect with anyone, but that it's a community that is not ran for profit, and the servers are run for the people with good and self-less intentions, instead of users being heavily monetized and their behavior fed into algorithms to manipulate them even further with the content they are shown. And the federation is there mostly to alleviate a problem that usually happens in such comunities - people move on, servers die, admins can't run an instance any more. With fediverse, this is not that big of an issue, thanks to the way it's designed.

Allowing Meta, or any large company in that regard, in will destroy this idea of community run and privacy-centric social network for everyone, and only result in Meta profiting from it and the content the users create.

I see your point, and I think that we both simply have different views on what is more important, and there's no need to convince eachother. For me, one of the main advantages of the Fediverse is that you're not directly feeding analytics and algorithms of a large company that is trying to monetize and manipulate you through content that you see - a company which business model is literally to change your behavior (which is a hyperbole, but still a quite from Social Dillema), and it's really important for me to not give them any chance to do that. And I don't see a scenario under which we would federate with Meta (or another multi-billion company) and this would not happen - and even if they wouldn't be able to directly affect what you see in your feed, your data and behavior will still help them train their models and AIs to be better at it, even if you didn't interact with the instance. I simply don't see anything of value federating with meta would provide, that would be worth this, along with the really probable risk that Meta is simply going for EEE, as mentioned in the other comments. And I think this was the main idea of Fediverse - to have a network of community-ran instances, where you are not the product, but the actors are indeed benevolent and selfless.

But I also understand your point of view, because you are right that defederating with them by default goes against some of the principles of decentralized ecosystems, and that there is a lot of content and userbase that we would be missing on. For me, I don't really mind if the growth of Fediverse is slower, but the community has similiar values as I hold, and I'd rather see it fail because it tried to uphold them, than see it turn into, or be destroyed by, Meta. Be it planned as part of EEE, or only a casualty. But then again, that's my point of view and so I vote to defederate, but It's good that there's someone like you with opposite side of view. I also don't think that either side is wrong, we just have different views about what the Fediverse should be.

And one last thing - I don't feel like the example with email is fair, because it's comparing a private messaging service between two users, and a social network where you provide content for other users, and none of the risks there are with Meta federating would apply. I've tried comming up with a better comparison, but couldn't come up with anything for quite some time, so I'll just leave it as is. Maybe someone else can think of something.

This is an interesting take on the matter, and you do have pretty good points. For me personally, I don't think that bringing in the Meta crowd would bring us much value, as I've already stated in the other comment. I'm not interested in the style of content both Facebook and Instagram provides, and I don't really like the userbase - but that's also only my personal view, and it's not something that would warrant defederation.

I'm worried that due to sheer amount of people they have, it would simply drown any content from other instances and would make it harder to find (and also really hard to moderate - Meta has significant resources to moderate that many millions of users, something smaller instances can never reach). Hot and Top would simply be filled by influencers, and it would take significant effort to just unsubscribe or block all of them (I'm actually not sure here how does the frontpage works, if you select all instances - is it like All on Reddit, or like frontpage with a set of default communities, but not everything shows there?), while also making it pretty hard to find smaller communities with different crowd - which is what I like on Lemmy as of the current state.

As soon as someone with actual resources wants to contribute, we shut them out? Folks, if a single organization could bring down the fediverse, then the “decentralize so that no one can gain too much power” model is proven wrong, and it was bound to fail anyway.

I don't really agree with this. It's only my own take on things, but I don't believe in the slightest that Meta wants to contribute to the Fediverse or has any of it's interests in mind. Nothing good will come out of it, Meta will only exploit the Fediverse for free content they don't have to host or pay for to kickstart their own platform, and then slowly bring users over there with QoL they have resources to implement for their instance. I'm not worried that they will bring down the Fediverse - that's where the decentralization will work as it should since other instances can defederate as soon as a problem appears, and keep their content and their userbase. What I think is an issue is that unless we defederate soon enough, Meta will exploit Fediverse for their gain only, slowly make people used to the QoL they are providing and have resources for, and when it finally gets bad enough that instances decide to start defederating from them, it will be too late, and Fediverse will loose users and content creators, because they were used to and interacting with communities on Meta's instance - which were the best choice simply due to a high number of users coming from Meta's userbase. Which brings me to

That’s what defederation would imply: people who want to interact with Meta’s folks and be in touch with Meta’s community would end up creating accounts there. We’d be handing users to Meta by doing that.

This would be even worse if we defederate later, once it turns out that Meta is trying to do something that really warants a defederation. As I've said in the previous paragraph - Meta's communities will be larger and have more content, and more people will leave once we defederate because they are used to those communities, including people that would not leave there now.

And the last issue is the fact that it serves so much data about users and their interactions right into Meta's algorithms, without them having to make any effort for it. And I really don't like that, and it's the reason why I'm avoiding anything Meta even touches. But then again - that's my personal issue.

To sum it up - some commenters said that it's a risk that we should try and take to see how it will go - I'd personally rather not risk it, and just keep Meta or any other multi-billion corporations out of this ecosystem. You can be sure that they don't have anyone's best interest in heart, and will only exploit it for monetary gain. And they have teams of experts in the field already working on strategies about how to exploit us as much as possible. I say don't give them a chance, this is something we cannot win and it will only make everything worse.