I'm changing my stance on the whole Meta/project92 thing after reading this article. I think the entire* fediverse should block project92 by default. Later, some instances can re-evaluate whether to maintain those blocks, once we have a better idea of what the benefits and consequences of federating will be:
Of course, it's possible to work with companies you don't trust. Still, a strategy of trusting the company you don't trust until you actually catch them trying to screw you over is ... risky. There's a lot to be said for the approach scicomm.xyz describes as "prudently defensive" in Meta on the Fediverse: to block or not to block?: "block proactively and, if none of the anticipated problems materialise within time, consider removing the block." Georg of lediver.se frames it similarly:
We will do the watch-and-see strategy on our instance in regards to #meta: block them, watch them, and if they behave (hahahahaha) we will see if we unblock them or not. No promise though
Previously, I'd thought "some block, some federate" would be the best approach, as described in this post by @atomicpoet:
My stance towards Meta is that the Fediverse needs two types of servers:
Lobby servers that explicitly federate with Meta for the purposes of moving people from Meta to the rest of the Fediverse
Exit servers that explicitly defederate with Meta for the purposes of keeping portions of the Fediverse out of reach from Meta
Both approaches not only can co-exist with each other, they might just be complementary.
People who use Meta need a way to migrate towards a space that is friendly, easy-to-use, and allows them to port their social graph.
But People also need a space that’s free from Meta, and allows them to exist beyond the eye of Zuckerberg.
Guess what? People who use Meta now might want to be invisible to Meta later. And people who dislike Meta might need a bridge to contact friends and family through some mechanism that still allows them to communicate beyond Meta’s control.
And thankfully, the Fediverse allows for this.
I think there is no evidence that corporations are going to do what you all say they're going to do. Critical thinking is a thing, and judging without evidence is not a very good action. I mean, is there a tangible evidence that Meta is going to destroy the fediverse?
People have been bringing up the Google eating xmpp thing so there is precedent. It's also not as if meta is innocent to apply innocent until proven guilty.
But also if dealing with an explicitly profit seeking corpo, why would you trust them unless you had very good reason to? I believe the burden of evidence is on that side given the context.
All you have to do is look at Facebook's history with any competitor and perhaps look at any big company like lets say, google and pretty fast you'll see why everyone is distrusful.
I didn't ask for evidences that Meta did something. I asked for evidences that Meta will do something.
An old woman was walking down the road whan she saw a gang of thugs beating a poisonous snake. She rescued the snake and carried it back to her home, where she nursed it back to health. They became friends and lived together for many months. One day they were going into town and the old woman picked him up and the snake bit her. Repeatedly. "O God," she screamed, "I am dying! Why? I was your friend. I saved your life! I trusted you! Why did you bite me?"
The snake looked up at her and said, "Lady, you knew I was a snake when you first picked me up."
Agreed, so I went looking for evidence. What do you think about this?
The monopolist survived existential threats by illegally acquiring innovative competitors and burying successful app developers
My friend, learn some history.
Here's the thing - people who already hate meta won't use it - so nothing changes for those folks whether meta is here or not.
ActivityPub is a W3C standard, so I hope meta shows up and connects. That breaks down the walled garden.
Users can choose to follow or not follow or block themselves.
(It's really Instagram joining btw, not classic fb)