I cam here to get away from all the corporate BS, but suddenly people want to welcome Facebook/Meta to the fediverse? I cannot fathom how people see their intentions as pure or innocent, especially since they aim to profit off of the open source software everyone has worked so hard on.
I just don’t see how the fediverse survives if it decides to let these massive companies make their instances. It feels like it’ll be a repeat of the rise of social media, where all the smaller forms got wiped out by large, consolidated social media platforms.
I for one would like to defederate from any and all corporations.
I love the idea that profit isn’t a focus of the fediverse.
Same. I’ve already added Threads.net to my “Blocked Domains” list on Mastodon. Hoping to be able to do that with Lemmy as well.
Isn’t a product of the fediverse yet.
Hard disagree. I want to interact with the grandma’s and family that aren’t tech savvy. The Fediverse promise is one where the user has the power. I don’t see how Meta will change that. All I see is that the Oklahoma asshole who wants to debate will get ads and I won’t. Commerical sponsors of the Fediverse is validation of the idea, so let it happen. Yes, Meta will see my username and will try to make ads happen, but thats not what Meta needs or wants: they need high quality content and will accept that some of it they can’t monetize. But if they can monetize those users in their corner, then they see value.
I really think a Fediverse separate from monetized social media is a healthier Fediverse.
We have a good thing going here. Let’s not invite the wolves into our little hen house.
Tbh if Lemm.ee doesn’t defederate then I’ll probably be moving on to a different instance.
“The Fediverse promise is one where the user has the power today.” ftfy
The concern people in the fediverse have with companies like Meta joining, is that:
- Embrace: they will “start off” by making the fediverse easy to access for the masses. There will actually be great growth in the fediverse. People will flock to Meta as their choice platform because they will be faster and more reliable than self-hosted fediverse servers.
- Extend: Big companies will begin to introduce new features, some of it will be added for the open source community to use. Eventually, there will be new proprietary features added (integration with WhatsApp for example) . This means that Meta’s Fediverse will be different from the open source fediverse. It’ll probably start out as something innocent like “needing a Facebook account to post a message / comment in their channels.” Then it gets worse…
- Extinguish: Now the masses have flocked to Meta because it’s fast and stable. This results in many/most of the Self-hosted services to become extinct. Then Meta starts to add more" security", like a fediverse “reputation”. Meaning, if your self-hosted service submits “enough” posts/comments that are not spam, then your allowed to read/post on their platform. This means if your self-hosted and/or a smaller member you will be barred from accessing/posting content. Thus, the fediverse is now owned by big corps and you need to use their platforms (and watch their ads or subscribe) to access content.
Source: Compare the history of e-mail (the original fediverse) before Gmail and Hotmail compared to what we have today. I (as an individual) can run my own mail server, but most of my messages will be marked as “spam”, if I send it to a friend who has a Gmail address, because my reputation is too low. This forces me to “pay” for email.
I hadn’t thought about it this way until I read your comment, but why not let them join the party? If they’re federating like Lemmy and Mastodon, isn’t that an acknowledgment that federation is a valid competitor? And if they’re re-modeling themselves to act like this, doesn’t that indicate we’re on the path to the future and we should welcome as many converts as they want to make?
Edit: Let’s move further discussion here: https://lemm.ee/post/851217
I don’t see any Lemmy <-> Threads interoperability happening in the near future anyway. I haven’t looked at Threads very much, but from what I can tell, it’s mainly going to be a problem for Mastodon rather than Lemmy. Even from a UX standpoint, it does not seem like Threads is really designed to show Lemmy content (and vice versa).
Having said that, Facebook has shown countless times that it’s actively harmful to its users as a platform, so there’s not much reason to believe that Threads would be any different. If Threads ever becomes interoperable with Lemmy, then I think defederation would be completely justified, unless they can somehow completely change their approach to ads, user tracking and feed algorithms. If that day ever comes, I will make a decision together with the lemm.ee community on how to proceed. But for now, it’s not an issue - there is nothing to even defederate yet.
