Why Defederating from Facebook/Meta is So Important
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sapient [they/them] @ sapient_cogbag @infosec.pub Posts 6Comments 201Joined 2 yr. ago
sapient [they/them] @ sapient_cogbag @infosec.pub
Posts
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2 yr. ago
Matrix is definitely better. But that doesn't mean Google didn't help kill XMPP when the open protocol could absolutely have been pushed forward to fix the flaws.
Your points boil down to “Threads will be easier to use and more attractive so people will use that”, congrats, that’s the case regardless of whether or not you federate. That’s not a result of federation, that’s a result of meta having a lot of money to make good apps.
They boil down to much more than that. Even if it's harder to use, Facebook has the ability and the means to run campaigns to promote their own stuff even if it's worse. Furthermore, it's not just about that, it's also about the fact that federating with them entwines us with their communities, and given their size it will not take long for our organisation and communities to be entirely stuck to theirs.
This entire argument hinges on the idea that the Fediverse is filled with great content that Meta will just steal and present to their users when quite frankly that’s just untrue. The fediverse is still a pale imitation of Reddit that is severely lacking in content and is still likely to die from never entering the virtuous cycle required to get a social network off the ground.
Seems pretty alive to me, actually. And the risk is not just Facebook/Meta taking our content, but more us being sucked in by theirs and having their algorithms and strategies used to manipulate us and make us too dependent on their own infrastructure to sustain our own communities again, especially if they cut us off after . (the threat of which can then be used as leverage or to outright subsume large instances).
I did, if you read it. Past and continued malicious behaviour + open manipulativity means that what they say cannot be trusted.
Trust is not required in this equation. The fediverse exists as a technical system and we can see how it operates. Within the context of those bounds I see no path for meta to break it and no one has been able to explain one beyond vague generalities like "they can't be trusted".
I gave examples in part 2 in my post of various routes to destroy activitypub, or nore importantly, destroy or consume the existing network of people.
Even if there aren’t formal Communities (as in, like Lemmy), there are still communities of people.
Yes, but the point I was responding to was saying that communities like fediverse@lemmmy.world would lose all its users when they went to threadiverse@threads.net when that's simply not even possible
It is absolutely possible if fediverse content is presented as-if it's just from threads, and then the majority of posters in communities become threads users, and then they either subsume or defederate.
You can post to lemmy communities from in mastodon via @-ing, which Threads could easily add as another feature later. And referring to more general communities the same principle applies.
Presumably people using Threads want that. Or they'll tolerate it.
They will do it to us, not just Threads users.
Fediverse instances aren’t just providers, they’re communities.
Just like email list serves. Should a listserv block gmail subscriptions? I would again argue not.
Its more like email lists blocking people from other email lists. If there is a massive email list that has continually and specifically coordinated to destroy or consume other email lists and spent massive resources learning specifically how to do this via social manipulation, yes, I would think blocking people from that email list is a very good idea .
It's tempting to believe the email issue really is some conspiracy to keep the little guy down, but it really is just that a new domain, with low volume, is a strong signal for abuse
Perhaps if it wasn't already corporate agglomerated, this wouldn't be so true. But fediverse isn't email, we have easier indicators for abuse because most content is public and we can guesstimate how much of an instance is "real" users .
Atleast having the option to communicate with threads is enough for the people on mastodon to stay on mastodon and have the choice to do so. Blocking them off will just cause mastodon users to have to make a seperate account just to merely communicate with their friends on Threads. Defeating the purpose of the fediverse entirely and going back to square one.
It doesn't defeat the purpose to prevent a known-hostile actor from interacting with everyone on Fedi.
It's not just your friends, it's Facebook, with algorithms specifically designed to manipulate you and the communities you are part of - including your friends - and by engaging with them you end up locked back into FB's reach and make it easier for them to EEE or EEC us or do even worse >.<
If you want to talk to your friends, use another app (including threads if you really feel that much need to interact with people who are only on there), or post links promoting Fedi on other platforms, to your friends.
Defederation exists to protect our network from groups like Meta/FB. It doesn't defeat the purpose of federation to choose who to federate with.
That's because they're essentially defederating entities they don't trust; exactly what's being proposed here. The solution to defederation is not pre-emptive defederation.
They're defederating smaller entities because the network got consumed by corpos. And abuse, but lots of that comes from big services and they don't defed those.
Fediverse instances aren't just providers, they're communities.
That's a real problem for the Fediverse too, because there's almost nothing that stops someone from spinning up infinite numbers of instances and spamming other instances.
This is in essence what FB/Meta is doing, all the time, except it's not individual spam it's an algorithmically backed manipulation mechanism using it's users as tools .
This is complicated and brand new to all of us but if people realize they're a part of something bigger than them. They would want to be part of that too!
That's not how this works. The overwhelming majority of Threads users just saw whatever thing FB put on the instagram accounts and clicked it. They have probably never heard of the fediverse and even if they like the idea they'll just go "oh, I'm already on it, no need to bother".
We can get exposure without letting a company specialised in manipulation and astroturfing straight through the door.
Did you read my post? Meta/FB is a well known threat. We already know they are continuously engaging in information warfare towards their own ends and federating with threads just saps our momentum and redirects it towards them >.<
Defederating doesn't stop people who want "exposure" from creating an account on Threads or even starting a masto instance. I highly doubt FB will make it obvious to Threads users that Mastodon even exists, which you would know if you read my comments on how their app acts as a silo.
Defederation isn't a bad defence, though.
Chances are with that strategy, facebook will just block those sort of bot things once they realise it's happening and it will just look like people here aren't replying to the Threads user.
The only way to win is to not play their game .
ISPs are at a different level of the stack and already have an oligopoly.
We can see the end state of email from when they let big corps take over - its very difficult to selfhost without permission from them lest you get marked as spam.
We have an opportunity to prevent that before it happens here, too. .}^
Point being, Threads doesn't need any other communities. People using Threads are those people who have never used reddit, and never would have signed up for lemmy. These people are also the same ones who don't care about if their content is coming from a federated source, or just Threads.
And hence, defederation is a good idea.
Defederation is to protect us from them. You are absolutely right that they aren't comparable to beehaw in size - now imagine if people here start joining the communities on Threads (not formal ones cus threads doesn't have those), and we later decide to defederate, as some have proposed? Beehaw alone caused a massive clusterfuck, now imagine an instance with 10000x more users and power and concentrated community being let in?
I'm not here to make excuses for Meta, but not a single one of these "sky is falling" posts actually articulate any real danger with federation. They just list all the bad things that have come out of Facebook to imply that surely something bad must happen here too then.
I did, if you read it. Past and continued malicious behaviour + open manipulativity means that what they say cannot be trusted.
Except that Threads isn't organized around topics / communities, it's organized like Insta / Twitter around following people, so there's no communities to flock to.
Even if there aren't formal Communities (as in, like Lemmy), there are still communities of people.
Given some of the naive stuff I've seen from some of the mastodon community leaders, I'd be more worried. And there is indication that Meta/FB cares (not in a good way) about Fedi, since they've been in meetings with instance admins .
Not if we work together and most of us defederate from them.
That basically starts us playing the losing game of "more users at amy cost". We will not win and it is comically naive to think so.
Read my post.
It's only partiqlly a technical issue (well, unless we make ActivityPub into an almost-p2p ish protocol that is kinda still federatated, which i don't think is a bad idea). It's mostly a social and organisational issue .
.... you can still spin up your own instance if you really want to expose yourself to facebook's social manipulation? Or you could make an account on there.
But you can also show people it's fine over here by posting links, talking about it, sharing lemmy memes, etc.
Letting them in on any large scale is a losing proposition, as explained in my Original Post .
https://github.com/wescode/lemmy_migrate
For now, this is the best I've found. I think there's work on implementing this in actual lemmy, but this python script is the best option I know of . - you basically put your user account name and password for each account in a config file and run the script - though I'd make sure to delete the config file after you've done it, preferrably with some kind of secure-delete tool like shred on linux.
However, we don't know yet if lemmy.world will defederate from Meta/FB, until the admins make some kind of statement on it nya. So I wouldn't leave yet. Though making an account on a smaller instance might be a good idea anyway for simple performance reasons :)
Most of Lemmy and the associated instances seem to be very anti-Meta so far. I think it's not likely for lemmy as a whole, though we might see a minority of instances that federate with Meta. Got to wait and see .
Mastodon I'm somewhat more worried about.
Most of our posts are public already - that is part of how ActivityPub works. But internal data, any logs that might be kept, and a centralized repository of this data would be more accessible to Meta/FB if an instance were to be bought out.
However, this is true of essentially any entity capable of being bought, you can't really avoid it without going full p2p and even then...