I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.

Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.

As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:

  1. Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won’t care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
  2. When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won’t care. They will use Threads because its faster.

This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.

Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That’s not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.

My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.

I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.

We couldn’t get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.

  • possibly a cat@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Also, any instance can and should be able to federate and defederate any other instance for any or even no reason, that’s the entire point.

    You’ve got a great point, Margot. I think that’s what it really boils down to: Actions, including the ones we can and cannot take.

    The fediverse has a toolset to deal with troublemakers, corporate and otherwise. Federation is clearly the most relevant in this case. So how do handle the threat - how do we use our tools effectively here? Is it as simple as boycotting/embargoing corporate metaverses? Or de we seek to make them redundant through their own limitations?

    Just hearing the name Meta makes me want to run with my tail between my legs, put up the walls and cut that part of existence out of the maps. But would that be undercutting the fediverse?

    …what does a fediverse with billions of users even look like? How would server costs scale? Would those of use here now be seeking refuge in a tight knit community of extremely moderated instances to keep up the level of discourse (like all the good torrents are on private trackers), or would mediocrity overrun the entire fediverse and drag us back down to the level of reddit post-7/2023? Count that as your mental exercise for the day…

    • Margot Robbie@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think extreme moderation is necessary, as I believe that most people are good and willing to be nice and helpful and can be reasoned with. However, if it is clear that someone is so consumed by hatred that they can’t, then these people needs to be kicked out, otherwise they will just spread their misery to everyone else.

      People who seek the same things will naturally group together, the Fediverse really isn’t different than the independent forums of the early internet, except that we can use one account to access them all now, so scaling would be more on the addition of more instances. There will be good ones, there will be bad ones, but that’s humanity.

      Open source is about letting everybody use what you make, even those that you don’t like, Facebook has the right to the ActivitHub protocol like everybody else, but so far they are doing a pretty bad job at their first attempt. I think the only way for Facebook et. al to survive is if they fire Zuck and bring in their equivalent of Nadella.

      • possibly a cat@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

        I don’t think extreme moderation is necessary,

        I agree.

        as I believe that most people are good and willing to be nice and helpful and can be reasoned with.

        I agree, although not necessarily online. Online, I have faith that those of us who are active participants in conversations (a small percentage) are capable of demonstrating the judgment it takes to discern good faith from bad faith - but only if it is clear that we need to do so, and only where we feel our good faith arguments won’t be lost into a void of trollery. Many of us let our guard down in overly curated spaces, but when there are trolls around we view every comment with critical thinking. It’s not ideal but it is, in my opinion, more natural and with less unintended side effects.

        A certain amount of moderation goes a long way. Too much moderation, on the other hand, misses the mark. I also believe that the common users must have some active stake in moderation for a healthy forum to survive; they must take on the responsibility of helping maintain the space for everyone. Otherwise the users develop an ‘us vs. them’ mentality against the moderation (and/or vice versa). Others develop the mentality that the forum is a playground for troublemaking. It takes more than arguments to make a community.

        People who seek the same things will naturally group together

        Brigading is one of the practical challenges here, but defederation is a powerful tool against bad faith groups. It’s just a single function, yes, but it has the potential to change everything.

        Open source is about letting everybody use what you make, even those that you don’t like

        100%. I appreciate that the original Lemmy devs pointed this out in their recent update. This is one area where we can build bridges, and I have always believed that the most powerful force for change is action and the power of creation. Working together unites people under a common cause, and many times that’s what we’re missing in this day and age - a societal/communal goal to maintain our bond.

        I think the only way for Facebook et. al to survive is if they fire Zuck and bring in their equivalent of Nadella.

        Very true which is why I hope they don’t. However their cash moat will buy them a lot of time, and a lot of missteps. They are also a #1 commerce platform in several developing nations (ugh those words feel dirty in the age of ecological collapse). The metaverse was one of their failures although I’m not sure we’ve seen the end of it’s story yet. I think where they really, abysmally failed in the metaverse was in not incorporating Web3 tech and principles. However, it appears that they are still capable of learning: Their adoption of ActivityPub brings down the walls of the garden just a little bit, and in doing so it allows them to catapult off of the efforts of the open source community (while also making interactions with them more tenable for those who deleted their facebook accounts many years ago - everyone takes a peek at the “front page” every now and then, and their money will give them the front page). This is exactly what they should have done with Web3. I don’t think they’ll fail here so quickly here in the fediverse as they did in the metaverse, unfortunately.