Meta can introduce their signature rage farming to the Fediverse. They don’t need to control Mastodon. All they have to do is introduce it in their app. Show every Threads user algorithmically filtered content from the Fediverse precisely tailored for maximum rage. When the rage inducing content came from Mastodon, the enraged Thread users will flood that Mastodon threads with the familiar rage-filled Facebook comment section vomit. This in turn will enrage Mastodon users, driving them to engage, at least in the short to mid term. All the while Meta sells ads in-between posts. And that’s how they rage farm the Fediverse without EEE-ing the technology. Meta can effectively EEE the userbase. The last E is something Meta may not intend but would likely happen. It consists of a subset of the Fediverse users leaving the network or segregating themselves in a small vomit-free bubble.
Some people asked what EEE is:
I agree with the sentiment, I’m not a fan of preemptively blocking meta on instance level, especially when everyone was touting about how the fediverse is corporation resistant and by design it is resilient because of it’s horizontal nature, but at the first sign of threat they resort to the nuclear option.
Having said that, Lemmy specifically lacks tools on the user level, especially blocking instances. If a user doesn’t want to associate at all that is understandable (privacy concerns, not wanting to interact with hate groups, etc) but right now they can only block communities and users individually, which would make it impossible to block meta.
Lastly, I feel there are avenues that haven’t been properly explored, like forcing them to open source if they want to federate. (On the grounds of privacy concerns and security) In practice that would be the same as blocking them, but it would laid out a good foundation for new companies that want to enter the space without having to discriminate on a case by case basis.
Problem is that blocking is the nuclear option and everyone blovking before something comes out, which no one knows the danger yet like a hate speach platform would entail, goes against the spirit of the fediverse.
I don’t think Mastodon allows user blocking instance either but I don’t see why that can not change in the future.
I’m not sure forcing open source on other instances is the right way to go. I imagine that in the future there could be instances that offer more polished experience, maybe a really nice proprietary app, that are commercially funded. As long as we have open alternatives and interoperability then we should be fine. In terms of privacy it’s a matter of regulations.
I also fully respect choice of some instances to defederate from commercial platforms but in a rational environment it would be akin to subset of Linux users opting to use free software only with no binary blobs and things like that. Perfectly reasonable thing to do if that’s what your ethics / philosophy dictates. Just don’t think it’s something that is a net benefit to average person.
Good points. I’m sure there are other potential solutions to reduce the fear of EEE taking place here. I don’t really think EEE would work, since instances are supposed to be small and operate horizontally, it is kind of impossible to kill Lemmy as long as we understand that we need to spread out a little bit (otherwise huge instances being defederated hugely impacts the user experience)
One thing though, Mastodon does allow for blocking domains. I just tried it over Mastodon.online and also through the fedilabs app, both are working. Kbin also has that feature, wish they implemented it to Lemmy so that we can empower users to customize their experience without needing to self host.
My reason for preemptively blocking Threads is much simpler - Lemmy exposes a TON of data from all instances. I simply don’t want to feed the data hog any more than absolutely necessary.
But a counter is that much of that information is already public and can be scraped, they aren’t gaining much on outside meta users that they aren’t already able to do.
Best advice at the end of the day is that for social media, unless advertised on privacy, never post anything you dont want to be public. And for cases like lemmy, expect even metadata to be available for anyone interested.
I understand the wish to not interact with meta, even if its for privacy concerns.
But Im a firm believer that it is the user first who needs to make that decision, not the instance. But as I said, Lemmy being the only one of the big fedi platforms right now that doesnt have a feature for instance/domain blocking user level kinds of screws this up.
There is no technical way for the user to make this decision as data gets federated across instance databases, not users’ browsers. I do run my own, which is what enables me to make this decision, and anyone agreeing with it is welcome to come along.