The exchange is about Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!
I need meta to just stay away from the fediverse forever
What an absolute legend. Also, I do so solemnly swear that any instance caught federating with meta is going straight in my hosts file.
You have been warned.
share the list, I’ll add them to my pihole!
I am looking for a new instance because my admin is on the fence.
Oh look, a tough guy behind his keyboard.
So you will block Fosstodon?
That statement is refreshingly sane. Really sick of the amount of heat over this situation and the lack of light.
This conversation will be off the record, as the team may discuss confidential details that should not be discussed with others
Translation: Nobody needs to know how much money we offer you as a bribe.
My guess is that anyone attending will have to sign an NDA. That will make it hard to speak out against Meta joining the federation. If someone does say anything, the Meta lawyers will destroy them.
They did with the last one. That’s why there’s so much distrust about it.
Do you have a link? I’d like to know that
sorrystory too.
Meta does some interesting open source work, extra hands on fediverse open source might be reasonable.
It sucks that a company as evil as Facebook also built and open sourced React.
React is incredibly popular because so many companies use it. They are banking on Facebook’s continued support and development, and an assumption that if Facebook is doing it then it must be right. Being rich does not automatically make one right. Having worked at a company that forced React on its developers against their wishes I can unequivocally say it’s bad.
In any system the right action should be the default action. Query parameters should be parameterized by default, variables in HTML templates should be contextually escaped by default, and so forth. “Don’t make me think”. React is the complete opposite of that: It requires you to constantly think about the render loop (aka “Component Function”), it hides the fact there is an object behind the scenes containing the component state, the documentation is littered with “don’t worry about this feature until after you have a performance problem, then come back here for the solution”, it’s very neat and tidy for tiny example projects but does not scale well as the project grows.
Using useMemo and useCallback to Save the Past from React Langoliers + Thoughts on React vs Vue vs Everything Else in 2023
Compare that with a system like Vue or Lit, which is much more intuitive, does the right thing by default, and is easier for existing HTML/CSS/JS developers to grok at a glance.
lmao I love that article, thanks for the link!
Ironically enough, I just got done troubleshooting some insane rendering problems that a
useMemofixedI’ve been meaning to scope out Vue and never heard of Lit - thanks for some weekend inspiration
Don’t forget Svelte. That said, traction means more developers trained in any tech stack, that’s why my previous company ditched Vue for React circa 2016, Vue seemed destined for oblivion and irrelevance at the time.
more developers trained in any tech stack
That is the primary argument my company used to justify forcing React. Do you know how many people we hired for their React experience? One. Everyone else was primarily backend or only had passing experience in React (not subject matter expert / does not know best practices). Meanwhile the rest of the team struggles to work in it (the frontend has become siloed) and very little of it follows best practice.
@smokinjoe An interesting reaction to react is Svelte: https://svelte.dev/. Instead of sending an entire application to the browser and making the poor client run all of it, do a crap ton of compute and calculation at build time. Send minimal code and computation to the browser. Totally different paradigm.
The reactivity of Svelte leaves a lot to be desired. The only difference between a computed property and a mutable property is
let x =and$: x =, both of which are declared in the same top-level scope and doesn’t provide much to distinguish them. The lack of reactivity on arrays and objects is a major foot-gun by default. The number of places they say “this looks weird, but don’t worry it’ll soon become second nature” in the docs shows that they acknowledge it’s bad design to create code that is misleading or goes against the grain/standard for what behavior developers should expect (makes it confusing to work with and then use anything else, or vice versa).The
#awaittemplate directive is interesting; I’m not sure I agree it should be handled in the template instead of the script but if combined it would remove some boilerplateloading = true/falseanderror = 'message'variables from script scope.
Anything good Facebook/Meta has ever or will ever possibly make, immediately becomes garbage due to where it came from.
Fruit of the poisonous tree.
A more important topic is, what federated data will be kept on Meta, and most importantly HOW that data will be processed/used/sold by Meta.
meta can already freely pull that data from any instance
ActivityPub baby!
I really hope that we’ll be able to maintain a strong resistance and fortification against Meta taking over the fediverse.
What defenses are in place?
We should bake it into the software (Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc.) as a first line of defense. If you want to federate, you’d have to fork the server first.
Only defense is to defederate meta and any instance that chooses to federate with meta
I agree, the decentralized aspect is a huge plus and makes this system . But I think the OP’s approach is fundamentally misguided and I have my suspicions for a few reasons.
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It’s a 45 minute meeting that provides an insight into Meta’s operations. There’s no need to contribute anything, just sit back and listen.
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There’s no reason to post about this and brag about it now. Compare this with what Christian did when Reddit tried to claim Apollo was blackmailing them. There’s no leverage now, just some internet points.
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We have one email and a response. Was there any further communication? How do we know this is all that was said? I could go further and question the legitimacy of this screencap but I’m willing to give OP the benefit of the doubt here.
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As others have pointed out, how does shutting them out completely stay in keeping with fediverse principles? This is legitimate question since, to me, it seems like despite the risks, it’s antithetical to the spirit of the fediverse until they demonstrate bad behavior here.
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To quote OP’s email, “Zero interest in having a conversation with #Meta 'off the record or otherwise.” “Otherwise” here is…on the record. So OP also won’t meet with them in a completely open meeting?
Look, I get it, I dislike Meta too. But this just seems like a misstep and bragging for zero actual gain.
- As others have pointed out, how does shutting them out completely stay in keeping with fediverse principles? This is legitimate question since, to me, it seems like despite the risks, it’s antithetical to the spirit of the fediverse until they demonstrate bad behavior here.
how much bad behavior do you want to see before accepting that MetaZuck is evil and has no go intentions?
There’s a literal trail of dead startups and bodies.
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Think we are in good hand if this is by any indication. Lol
I have mixed feelings about Facebook being a part of this, but I honestly don’t know if I’d want to get closer to Facebook. 💀
what are your mixed feelings? truly, what do you think is the positive of meta getting involved?
Not op but one positive is making their users aware of the existence of the Fediverse and providing an opportunity for non-meta servers to take up some of those same users. The question is what means are available to do that without putting the community at risk.
There is no chance a Meta version of an instance will do anything to make its users aware of alternatives. That’s beyond wishful thinking. Instead they’ll leverage the work done by others to make a walled garden for their users.
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The 7th one will shock you!
Programmer DESTROYS Facebook rep and the internet can’t handle it!
A 45 minute “round table” with multiple rando masto instance admins? That doesn’t sound like enough time for the table to get very round.
It sounds more like 5 minutes introduction, 30 minute presentation by Meta, 10 minutes Q&A. But oops our presentation ran just a bit long, and I really do have a hard stop at noon so we really only have about 5 minutes for questions thanks for all of the valuable feedback we’ll be sure to circle back offline.
“We here at Meta take people’s privacy very seriously and are committed to protecting our users. Unfortunately at this time we can’t discuss what measures we’ve put in place.”
Unfortunately at this time we can’t discuss what measures we’ve put in place…
Because we have none, as it’s counteractive to our revenue models.
Ah, I see you’ve taken part in Bullshit Corporate Meetings™ before!
a true person of culture!
savage
We shan’t bend the knee!
An infamously vicious predator walks up and bares its fangs at us, and half of you want to pet it instead of fleeing for your lives.
It’s hard to overstate my disappointment right now.
Meta isn’t as cute as predators in the wild.
They’re the type to freeze instead of fight or flight
Freezing would actually probably be better, in this case I think its fawn.
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TL;DR (if you can’t be bothered reading all of the below) - Fosstodon will wait and see what happens, but if Facebook’s new service introduces any issues that could negatively impact our users, we will defederate.
This is Fosstodon’s official stance on the whole Facebook joining the Fediverse debacle.
Which is a bad plan, TBH. At this point in history, zero waiting needs to be done to know exactly the sense of Meta’s involvement. The “if” is a certainty.
yeah i mean i… don’t know why you’d “wait and see”. it’s literally Facebook. they’re going to negatively impact your community, if not in features (lol) then in sheer size and volume.
Gross, this is obviously their attempt to embrace, extend and extinguish the Fediverse.
Yep they’ll be a good actor until they’re the biggest instance and they’ll try to turn the fediverse into whatever verse they’re feeling like that week and shove it down our throats. We’ll end up right back here in 3 years of we choose as a community to federate (i.e. give free content) to Meta.
On the one hand I can totally understand this reaction by Kev, on the other hand, by completely locking off all discussions like this, means that there’s no way to change things for the better.
Granted, it’s Meta, they’re not to be trusted, but still, a discussion, if one has the time, wouldn’t be too bad an idea.
I think it would be incredibly naive and foolish to believe Meta has any kind of pure motives for this.
One of the biggest corporations in the world reaching out to its competitor to try to get them to talk “off the record” about “confidential details”… Sounds like a pretty blatant scheme to get them to reveal confidential details about their competitor’s product.
Or maybe Meta has broken with decades of its own conduct, and several centuries of capitalism, in order to reach out in good faith to their competitor. LOL.
Its a really immature and niave response from Kev. Information is power, he’s chosen to operate without knowledge for internet points.
Meta think there is potential to enlarge their market and make money, Kev’s response won’t impact their business making decisions.
Kev should have gone to the meeting to understand what Meta are planning. That would help him figure out how to deal with Meta entering the space.
I don’t expect he could shape their approach but knowing they want to do X, Y or Z might make certain features/fixes a priority so it doesn’t impact everyone else
I think you are insinuating that because meta has money and power, he owes it to the community to hear them out. That’s a capitalistic perspective that seems centered around either making money or having a larger ‘market’. I wouldn’t assume that this is the status quo for everyone involved in the fediverse.
Also, if Meta isn’t willing to share its plans publicly, only to the owners of the largest instances online, I question their motives.
Having a larger market = having a larger network = greater network effects for content
Having Meta join with Mastodon might actually sway people off twitter and into the fediverse where it will be easier to migrate over to a different instance.
It’s foolish not to hear them out, you accomplish nothing. This isn’t some silicon valley episode where he has some arkane secrets that meta engineers couldn’t figure out that he might leak. Meeting with them is zero risk and he would gain more information on what they’re planning.
Nah.
Not if they ask him to sign an NDA before the meeting, and you bet they would.
This is not a proper talk by meta that you could just “hear them out”. They explicitly said off the record and confidential, there’s no reason for that if it’s something innocuous. There 100% would be an NDA involved.
The fediverse is all about being open, starting with an NDA is definitely not “zero risk”, you can not slip up ever, or you’re going to be destroyed by lawyers, this is the exact opposite of “zero risk”.
This is not a proper talk by meta that you could just “hear them out”. They explicitly said off the record and confidential, there’s no reason for that if it’s something innocuous.
They plan on showing demos of their product to them or talking about potential features it might have. Boom, they require an NDA.
I don’t think you understand how the professional world works or how common NDAs are. I’ve signed NDAs while going through interview processes at FAANG and other large companies just so that we can talk freely about projects I might work on. Especially for a company like Facebook where everything they do will get about a dozen news articles written, they’re going to make you sign an NDA for any conversation about an unreleased product.
I don’t think your assumption on how well I understand how the professional world works is correct.
I understand very well that signing any NDA is by no means “zero risk”, it has a definite risk attached to it. Declining it is costly in some way, but also has definite advantages.
I also understand that very rarely is the phrasing ever “this conversation will be off the record”, but rather some phrasing including the specific topics that may not be shared, like you say for example, product details. Blanket phrasings like this are always very sketchy.
@macallik and if you scroll down the comments, Byron from Universeodon, who did take the earlier meeting, did provide some vague points from the meeting. Relating to your point about big instances, it seems likely that FB wants to throw money at them so that they won’t become overwhelmed by the ensuing traffic (unlike the rest of us, I guess…) so they can demonstrate that the Instagram bridge (it’s an IG product) works.
Massive corporations never “throw money” at people or things without strings. I’d be very wary about what taking money from Meta would mean.
That is good to know. That doesn’t negate the fact that this is the same company:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/app-developers-sue-facebook-over-alleged-anticompetitive-scheme-n1117551@macallik
Absolutely. If this is true then for the other small to mid-size instances it’s not just an existential threat philosophically but technically. They’re expecting Threads onboarding might just knock out instances because of the traffic. Might as well limit or block just for your own performance metrics.
I think you are seriously underestimating meta here. They know knowledge is power too, and they have an enormous amount of resources to ensure that their information is shared in the way that exposes them the least and benefits them the most. Any one person is just going to be at a severe disadvantage and is much more likely to do damage than get something positive out of it.
It doesn’t need to be said that Meta is purely driven by profit - that is any corporation. But Meta is incompetent and failing - yet still a behemoth. If they want to pour millions of dollars into the fediverse, then we don’t we let them? They would presumably just be another site on the fediverse.
I totally support them joining on assuming it doesn’t change the fundamental structure of the system.
If they want to pour millions of dollars into the fediverse, then we don’t we let them?
Because, if we do, they will destroy it.
ok i’m not saying they won’t but i’ve asked this before and nobody seems to be able to provide some mechanism by which they would destroy it
is the system not federated? if meta starts acting up, can’t everyone just defederate them? this is what i’m not getting
if someone can explain to me what exactly is dangerous, i would appreciate
ok i’m not saying they won’t but i’ve asked this before and nobody seems to be able to provide some mechanism by which they would destroy it
Read up on how they destroyed XMPP.
is the system not federated?
So was XMPP. That’s why they’re a huge threat to the Fediverse: they have experience in destroying federated systems.
Facebook didn’t “destroy” XMPP. XMPP was a tiny messaging protocol nobody used, Facebook picked it up for a bit, stopped using it after a while, and then XMPP returned to being a tiny messaging protocol nobody used.
People are acting like Jabber was hot shit when Facebook picked it up, and its present state of irrelevance is because of big bad Zuck. No, no fucker used Jabber and it saw basically no mainstream adoption until Facebook and Google got involved, and as soon as Facebook and Google weren’t involved (as it turns out that XMPP actually kind of sucks and its unique features are things end users don’t care about) it returned to being a complete irrelevance. A well-intentioned irrelevance, to be sure, but an irrelevance.
Fediverse is the same, mutans mutandis. We’re tiny. I know it’s nice for us to psyche ourselves up and say that we’re going to destroy the big bad corporate media! but in reality we are a niche constellation of social networks that has literally 0.1% of Facebook’s user base and whose adoption has been, shall we say, not stellar.
Not stellar? We’re having this conversation, aren’t we? This place has proven to be an able replacement for Reddit, and the last thing I want to see is it become irrelevant because of Meta’s involvement.
I figured I’ll write up a tldr on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish in case you aren’t really feeling reading the articles.
Embrace: Meta builds a federated Twitter/Reddit alternative, potentially called Threads but is right now P92, that follows the ActivityPub standard almost perfectly. Various Lemmy and KBin instances federate with them and share information. Users from Facebook and Instagram flood into P92, making it one of the largest instances.
Extend: P92 starts adding nice, but proprietary features to their system. The allure of these features begins drawing users off of other instances to P92. Those instances are upset, but Meta insists it’s doing nothing wrong, continues to follow the ActivityPub standard in some form, and tells the other instances to just implement the features themselves.
Extinguish: Meta announces that due to incompatibility, they are withdrawing from the standard and defederating from everyone. Most users of this software are now on P92, and thus don’t mind. Meta gets a fully populated Twitter/Reddit alternative, and the remaining ActivityPub instances wither. Without user support, the standard fails, and a new open source alternative is created to replace it.
That strategy has been used to kill other open source protocols, and many people are worried it will happen again. My personal opinion is that servers should only federate with Meta if they follow the standard perfectly, and if they deviate even a little bit they should be universally defederated via software changes, but I’m sympathetic to the people that would rather be proactive than reactive.
I understand the concept of embrace extend extinguish
i just don’t see a significant chunk of fediverse user giving up on open source instances and flocking to Meta’s instance. I can’t imagine what kind of features they could add that could accomplish this. Sure, they could make a site that’s more polished but if Meta enters the game, we’re going to be seeing a huge influx of both users and development. open source alternatives will likely be very close in parity
i think when considering this whole situation we need to calculate the potential positives and calculate if it’s worth the risks - and those positives include huge amounts of money and people. this could be enough to push the fediverse to the next level of adoption… the dream of having a decentralized social media system could become the standard in such a future.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
This blog explains really well how destruction from the inside would work. And personally I’m not excited to have all Facebook users on here, most of that website is extremely toxic.
That article has been posted several times and does not explain how Google “destroyed” XMPP - it assumes that XMPP was some hot shit everyone was using before Google and Facebook picked it up, when in reality it was used by next to nobody, most people who used it with Google or Facebook were just using it to talk to other Google or Facebook users, XMPP doesn’t support a lot of features that consumers now expect in messaging, and since Google and Facebook dropped it it has returned to being a niche FOSS thing - only now its advocates blame Google and Facebook for its failure rather than the fact it’s not a very good protocol and nobody uses it.
So, because us laymen can’t think of exactly how they would do it, that means it’s not possible?
The best (and often only) indicator of future behavior is past behavior. And if we go on that, I think we all know how Meta looks.
you reduced my comment and favorited your own. lol
look - nobody has given me a concrete mechanism by which they could do damage. neither on here nor on mastodon where I’ve had similar conversations. @thesanewriter was the only one who attempted to give some sort of method - and his was that Meta’s platform could become so popular it steals users. That to me isn’t really unique to the fediverse
I’m not gonna hop over to Meta’s platform just because it’s nice and shiny.
But look at the potential benefits of Meta investing heavily into the fediverse… we’re talking millions and millions of dollars in development. i say milk meta for all they are worth, they’re a failing company anyway, this is a desperate attempt on their part
Meta intends to harvest content and kill off competition before it poses a threat.
I’m sorry, but it’s on Meta to come forward to the public Fediverse and be open with their plans, not try to organize some hush-hush meetings with Mastodon instance owners.
Connectivity on fediverse platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy rely heavily on trust between users to maintain an engaging community. Unless Meta publicly demonstrates otherwise, people are right to distrust Meta at the outset, given their past and current affairs.
Meta’s P92 should release itself on the Fediverse’s terms, rather than Fediverse catering to Meta’s terms. Otherwise, Meta should just make their own platform and see if Fediverse instances latch onto it.
Sitting to an off the record coveraation will be used as a hook agaiant you in the future.
They have enough lawyer money to bleed you dry, and your attendance (probably sign some NDA) will be used as basis.
Off-the-records convos w/ repeated bad faith actors seems like a liability.
Granted, it’s Meta, they’re not to be trusted, but still, a discussion, if one has the time, wouldn’t be too bad an idea.
It feels like Meta has to pay like a billion dollars in fines every few weeks in europe for violations. And they don’t seem to plan on stopping (based on the fact that it happens every few weeks). Even faintly hoping that you could even have the smallest chance of moving even the smallest gear in Meta by appearing in such a meeting is complete delusion.
You would still know what Meta is thinking of doing on the Fediverse, and adjust course accordingly. Now we 1) know nothing, and 2) have closed off an avenue to gain information.
Curious if you have a rough example of what type of positive information that will be gained from the secret, closed-off meeting, and how it could benefit the community?
How do you think we could frontrun one of the largest tech companies in the world?
Who would know that? Surely not the average user, since we weren’t all invited to this meeting, and everyone who was would be under NDA…
They chose to close off that avenue by making it a closed, off the books, invite only meeting. And as other posters have already mentioned, its likely that the people that do show up might have to sign NDAs or something similar. So we might not have learned anything anways.
You would also be under NDA, which severely limits your options. Meta is not stupid.
But if he attended he wouldn’t legally be able to share information - or do anything that reveals details of the meeting without facing the wrath of Facebook’s legal department.
You would only ever know what Meta would be willing to tell you anyway. Also, there’s the whole NDA thing.
