this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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I think misunderstand. I do understand that. I used XMPP. I've read that article.
My argument is that the fedipact, if executed as desired by the people running it, will defederate from Meta and anywhere that federates with Meta.
So now you have 2 fediverses, completely separated from one another. One side has Meta; the other doesn't. If I want to post something and I want people to see it and react to it, I will post it to the side with more people. If I want to scroll endlessly without needing to stop and refresh or wait because the feed is stale, I will look at the side with more people.
The other side - the fedipact side - will slowly become stale and niche. There will always be hardcore users - people still use XMPP - but it will fade into what it was in 2020 and 2021. My Lemmy account - @EnglishMobster - is from 2020. My original Mastodon account is even older. I've seen this place grow and blossom into what it is now, and the fedipact is threatening that growth. People will leave the side of the fedipact and join the side without it... which is to say, the side dominated by Meta.
Instead of a big wide fediverse with open source projects living alongside random PeerTube creators living alongside movie stars... we have 1 niche one and 1 dominated by a large corporation. It's literally the same result as if Meta went through with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... but done without the "extend" or "extinguish", a massive "own goal" by the FOSS community.
And worse - it doesn't stop Facebook from going through with "extend" or "extinguish" later. It literally just destroys communities for no reason, leaving us in the exact same situation that XMPP is in today.
I am fine with an instance saying "we won't federate with Threads". I'd rather it not be Kbin, of course, but I will move to an instance that does federate because my friends are important to me.
I am not fine with me being held hostage for that. I don't want to join Threads directly if I can avoid it; I'd rather use my Kbin account. But the fedipact is trying to make that impossible by saying "we will defederate anywhere that federates with Threads".
i'm sorry but you're naive.
do you know how FB or instagram work? Do you think that when you post, your post reaches your whole audience? I believe you know how they work but for some reason you chose to ignore now.
So, you've read the history of XMPP. Did you understand what google practically did? Simply put, meta will create new features on top of activity pub. Open source activity pub developers will be in a constant race to adapt their own projects in a way that will be compatible with meta's project. They will have no voice but to follow whatever meta decides. Users will start getting fed up that their open source instance is not behaving as well as their friend's meta instance. People will jump project and/or when users are polarised, meta will decide that they had enough with activity pub. It doesn't cover their needs and they move to another completely closed project. Users again are forces to choose side and the open source community is just left with the project which they adapted in favour of meta, but now meta is gone because they were never in the same boat actually.
Staying away from meta is a decision in the basis of protecting the whole project. It is not because people don't want to be close to the users of meta. It is because meta is not here to promote the federated networks. It is here to make profit of it and they may even destroy it if they believe that this is the way to make profit. Siding with them is naive and will never bring value in the network itself.
None of that addresses the objection that has been raised though.
If instances want to defederate from meta that is perfectly fine, the Fediverse is supposed to be about choice.
Instances should not however be able to dictate what OTHER people on other instances are able to do.
By doing so - that part of the fediverse is behaving in exactly the same way that they fear that meta will behave eventually.
I don't get it. Nobody dictated anyone. People want absolutely none relation with meta and they want to be on a different network than meta. By federating with instances that federate with meta, everyone ends up in the same federated network while some pretend that they don't see each other. Meta is not here for the same values they are. Meta is not here for the values of the fediverse. Ostracizing meta is the only healthy solution if we agree that they have ulterior motives.
by not doing so, is like accepting meta as friend while at the same time you're waiting for the moment they'll stab you. Fediverse and activity pub have absolutely nothing to gain by allowing this.
@asjmcguire
Right.... so - the long and short of it is -
A company (any company) decides to integrate with ActivityPub, and the entire fediverse has a toys out of the pram moment every time that happens, gradually closing off into smaller and smaller federated circles, that stop federating with the rest of the fediverse.
A reminder, Tumblr are supposed to be adding ActivityPub.
Wordpress has.
Discourse I believe now has.
So who exactly is it that gets to decide which companies are and are not allowed to be part of the Fediverse?
It's all very very much like a dictatorship, whether you want to accept it or not - that's exactly how it is being operated.
Absolute strawman from the very first paragraph. Some people might complain about any company, but this uproar is specifically about facebook. Let's not pretend they are just any other company. They are among a short list of companies who have demonstrated just how awful a big tech company can be if allowd.
They have at no time in their history demonstrated any capability to be anything other than an example of all the worst things that Stallman or any of the OG greybeards would ever have warned us about. They are corporate greed exemplified, nearly to the point of parody.
@asjmcguire
I struggle to continue conversations when the argument is "if you're doing X to Y you are also Y". No, if you want to ostracise the biggest greediest corporation that we all know are here for different reasons than the reasons that the fediverse was created, no, you're not a dictator. You are just trying to protect your own values.
Same as when you don't allow hate speech, you're not a fascist who oPposEs tO fReE SpEeCh
Using words with very clear, historically set meaning, to describe the exact opposite thing is a very weird path to take.
Sorry I missed this in my prior reply and can no longer edit it.
It's not a dictatorship beyond any one instance, which is the entire point. You don't like that some large percentage of instances have said "no thank you" to Meta? Then you move to an instance that is happy to be embraced by them.
For christ sake I don't understand why people aren't getting it. YES it is a dictatorship because it is not about any one instance - if it was just instances saying "I don't want to federate with Meta" and that was it - I wouldn't have a problem, that is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. But that's not what this is - this is instances saying "I don't want to talk to Meta, and if you want to continue talking to me, then YOU are not allowed to talk to Meta either" - explain to me HOW that is not being a dictatorship?
Of course not. But it doesn't on Mastodon either. Or Kbin. Or even Lemmy.
If someone is on vacation when I make my post on Mastodon, there is a good chance they will never see it. The post isn't going to be recommended to them - the feed is chronological. They would have to specifically search me out and scroll way back to see my posts.
If my post doesn't make it to "Hot" on Kbin or Lemmy, by default it dies. The only ones who will see it are those sorting by "New". That's a fraction of the complete audience. That's just how algorithms work.
Facebook and Twitter have their own recommendation algorithm of some kind. Threads does too, from what I've seen of it. While I wouldn't expect my stuff to go viral, frankly my friends are more likely to care and react to a post I make there. I don't use Facebook anymore, but I had plenty of interactions when I did use it. You will never reach your entire audience unless your entire audience reaches out for you - but on average the people I know are more likely to care about me than some strangers on my Mastodon instance. So I'd rather post where they can see it.
Yes, that was... like, my entire point. Everything you just described will happen with or without the fedipact. If Meta has plans to go through with EEE, they will do it no matter what. Even if everyone defederated from them, they'd still build on ActivityPub in weird ways and break the protocol over time.
But we know that not everywhere will defederate with them. So what will happen is you're going to have a splinter group defederated anywhere that federates with Meta (or federates with somewhere that federates with Meta) and you're going to have... well, everyone else.
People are going to leave and go to the side that federates with Meta, because that's where the network effect is strongest. Again, I don't care that someone on my Mastodon instance got married. I mean, congratulations, I guess... but if my childhood best friend is getting married, I'm more invested. I don't want to use Meta's stuff if I have another option; after all, I did quit Instagram and Facebook cold turkey. But I would jump at the ability to have those moments while still keeping Zuck off my computer.
So, like I said, this is going to lead to 2 fediverses. One that federates with Meta, and one that doesn't. And "normal" non-techie people are going to want to go to where they get the most eyeballs on their stuff - that means somewhere that federates with Meta.
Meta could still start extending and extinguishing. But they could do that anyway. That is a completely separate subject from the fedipact as designed. I agree that it's a problem, but the fedipact being executed will only speed up the process, bisecting the entire project and turning it back into a niche thing for nerds. You know, like XMPP or IRC.
Staying away from Meta literally has zero impact on what Meta does. Meta will do whatever.
The choice is if Mastodon tries to adapt to be compatible or not. Breaking ActivityPub for compatibility with Meta is a losing proposition, and one that we shouldn't even start. But that's the fight we should be having; holding firm if/when Meta stops holding to the standard.
The fedipact is self-defeating and won't stop Meta from being Meta. The only thing the fedipact will do is ruin the fediverse writ large. The true way to preventing an XMPP situation is by having maintainers hold firm and act just as they did before Meta joined; no feature creep, no goalpost moving. Break EEE at "extend", not "embrace".
@EnglishMobster
if no one is federated with them, then open source projects don't care if they break activity pub because nobody will be in a race to adapt in order not to break the federation. They will live happily in their own custom fediverse without affecting the community. I don't get why you struggle to understand this concept. I think it is because of
where you clearly struggle to understand that the one who is causing the issue here are the ones that opt to follow meta's path. The ones that will try to adapt. Not the ones that want no connection with the big corp. Instead of realising that meta has no good intentions, you side with them saying "it is what it is" and you just want to wait patiently till they actively start causing issues.
Then again, I think we're having the conversation in a wrong basis. Your biggest argument is that you want to be in the same platform as your friends. Yes, if for you the reason of existence of the federated network is to enable you reaching your friends who don't want to leave from their corporate networks, yes, then federation with meta is necessary. However the idea behind such network is not only to provide another UI to join a corporate network. Its much more than that.
I know I haven't replied/addressed all your points, most probably I'll come back later.
I'm waiting for the part where you explain the problem.
Just like today the folks who want to interact with the quality of discussion you get on facebook will be able to do so, and those who don't, won't.
I have scrolled this thread quickly so maybe I'm misattributing, but I feel like you've commented on how you and others will go to instances with "more users" more than once - as if this is some universal success metric.
I will go to the side which has quality discussion, and I'm exceptionally doubtful it's going to be the part of the fediverse that federates with meta. More users does not equal better discussion. I would argue that past a certain critical mass it almost guarantees lower quality discussion.
The fact that there CAN BE two fediverses seems to me a feature, not a bug.
If you want "quality discussion", why are you on here and not Tildes? Tildes' whole purpose is quality discussion. Shouldn't you go for the place where that's being optimized for?
Tildes is a great example, actually. They're small and quiet and want to be quiet. They don't want to take off. You can get through Tildes in an hour.
That's why I get bored of Tildes easily. I don't want to just be one-and-done with a site. I want to constantly be discovering new things. I want to see number go up (to an extent). I want to read a bunch of comments, some insightful, some dumb.
If I'm going to post something, I don't want to post it to Tildes. I'll get a slow trickle of comments and replies, people replying to a week-old post with something I've long stopped thinking about.
I worry that if defederation comes and severs the fediverse in two, engagement will go down. Mastodon.social isn't part of the fedipact, and likely won't be. Everywhere that relies on content from Mastodon.social - which is a lot of them, non-techies don't want to find a specific instance - will have a lot less content, very suddenly.
People like me who love refreshing feeds will see the torrent of posts slowly... come... to... a... stop. People like me will get bored - where are all the posts? Why can't I see the creators I really like?
"Well, they're on a server that federates with a server that federates with Meta."
So you'll just be left with those in the fedipact. People who are used to the fast-moving feed (like me) will get frustrated. There's a reason why I left Mastodon in 2019ish and why I left Lemmy in 2020 - they got boring quickly (well, Lemmy was also full of tankies). I left Tildes because it got boring quickly too.
I'm in this sort of industry. I'm not going to reveal much about what I specifically do, but I know that most people want something that is new and exciting and moves fast. It draws them in and causes them to spend most of their time there.
When that feed slows down, they spend less time on that site. When they have enough experiences of "opening the app just to close it again", they'll eventually remove it from their home screen (or bookmarks). Then it gets forgotten about.
When the user forgets about a site, it gets less content. In turn, that makes the content even slower. In turn, that drives more people away, except for the die-hards who love slow discussions (like Tildes or 2019-era Mastodon).
Where are the people who left going to go? Well, they might go to where their creators were - somewhere like Mastodon.social. Or they'll leave entirely, or they'll move to Bluesky or Threads.
A lot of those options aren't healthy for the broader fediverse, so you'll just have this one branch that is dominated by Meta and the other which slowly dies as people leave due to increasingly stale content. If they were united, they might've stood a chance against Meta if/when Meta made an anti-competitive move... but divided they're a lot easier for Meta to scoop up and slowly extinguish, XMPP-style.
Again, the fedipact is doing Meta's dirty work for them.
So now, not only are you upset that folks who want quality discussion don't want meta here, because you really badly want to be able to communicate with meta users from the fediverse while giving nothing up, you are also saying that anyone who wants quality discussion should just go elsewhere.
With no malice intended, we seem to be very thoroughly talking past each other, I'm not going to worry about the rest of your points because I don't think there's going to be much common ground that we discover we have to build on.
That's not what I'm saying. You are putting words in my mouth and then refusing to have a conversation. But I get the same feeling that we're going to keep talking past each other.
It doesn't matter because you likely won't read this. But I'm not saying you should go elsewhere - I am simply asking why you chose here and not a place that focuses on discussion, like Tildes. I am not telling you to "go away"; I'm merely pointing out that there must be more to your decision and it can't all be because you want serious discussions, since this place isn't suited for that as well as others are.
Well I mean first of all, it's not "most people". It's "most people in the influencer industry".
Second of all, fuck those people. They don't care about corpos running their lives. We don't need them or their content in the fediverse.
And thirdly, you're in that category too. You're a shill for big corpos but you want a veneer of respectability. Just join Facebook and get it over with.
How many times must I say that I disagree with Facebook on a moral level? How does that make me a "shill"??
My point is largely:
The fedipact is self-defeating. Nobody has refuted this point, they all seem to ignore it to focus on personal attacks. It won't stop EEE; it will simply divide the fediverse and make it a worse place when it's still new and fragile.
This is a general-purpose instance. As such, it shouldn't sign the fedipact or defederate from Threads. If you're running a niche instance - that's fine, you can sign if it's important to you and you wish to stay niche. But a loud minority shouldn't speak for the entirety of one of the largest fediverse instances out there (which is what kbin.social is).
People may have legitimate reason to communicate with people on Threads, and because they may disagree with Facebook on a moral level (like me), you shouldn't force them into Zuck's slimy fingers. I'm not going to use the service if I have to go through Zuck's gateway to do so. There's an opportunity to use FOSS stuff and stay away from Zuck, but people who ostensibly agree that Zuck is bad are telling me I can't do that? For reasons they can't even vocalize. So me not wanting to join Threads makes me a corporate shill, somehow. Okay.
By opening up the fediverse to Facebook, you're already in Zuck's slimy fingers. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too. Doesn't work like that. Those who federate with them will get eaten by them.
And here's a point for you to consider:
Why don't you just host your own instance? Federate with Threads AND the rest of the Fediverse? Why are you trying to convince us to federate with Facebook at all??
Here's a point for you, then:
Why must you force your beliefs onto communities with tens of thousands of people, many of whom don't agree with you? The status quo is that kbin.social federates with basically everywhere, as it should since it's a general-purpose flagship instance. Why do you want to change the status quo because of your personal beliefs?
Instead of trying to force Kbin.social to change, maybe you should host your own instance where you can block Meta and everywhere that federates with it. Or you can join a Kbin instance that already does so: https://kglitch.social/
But there should still be places that allow for federation if that's what they desire. That's how Kbin.social is currently set up. I am defending the current status quo, and you are trying to argue for changing it. There are instances that already agree with you; you don't need to stay here and fight everyone who disagrees.
There is no more status quo. Facebook stepping into the fediverse has changed it. The only question is in what manner do we want it to change.
The admins of kbin.social have not come out in favor or against. I am trying to persuade them. If they choose to federate, then yes I'll probably find a new instance.
And I am saying we should maintain the status quo. Rather than trying to persuade, you should go somewhere that already guarantees you get what you want.
You don't get it. The status quo is gone. It's not an option. The options now are defederate Threads, or be consumed by it. You've admitted so yourself. The old fediverse won't be happening.
If that's the case, presumably you're in the fediverse for other reasons? If audience size is central to you, wouldn't you be on reddit and insta/facebook?
To an extent, but morality is important to me too.
I don't use Facebook because they corrupt democracy. I don't use Twitter because Elon Musk is a wannabe fascist. I don't use Reddit because they have refused to clamp down on bad actors and have directly insulted their users.
If everyone defederates from Threads, I won't use Threads, because I don't use Facebook. My morals are more important to me than audience size.
But... as things stand, once Threads federates with the wider world, I will be able to interact with my friends without letting Zuck near me. In a most ideal world, they'd be able to follow me here on Kbin and I can follow them back. I'd see their posts in the Microblog feed and sorted into magazines, and I can like and comment and boost without logging into Zuck's website and letting him have my data again.
You can say that's supporting Facebook. Maybe. But if Threads is truly federated, then Facebook would basically be able to go anywhere regardless; in that sense I'd be supporting Threads whether I was talking to someone directly or not.
And in that sense, I totally see why people say "we shouldn't federate with Meta, they're evil and they're selfish and they're going to destroy the fediverse." I can understand why people personally would want to choose somewhere that doesn't do that. I don't think this instance should block Meta because it's large and general-purpose, but somewhere like Beehaw where that sort of thing is part of the mission statement... I get it.
But from my perspective, I am given the chance to talk to a large group of people; people who share the same interests as me; people I know in real life. People who would see my stuff - but (more importantly) I'd also see theirs. And I'm sure most people feel the same way; they're going to where the people are. This'll naturally create an audience, one that gives a wide variety of fresh content and also responds to content you give.
I'd much rather have that then return to 2020-era Mastodon where you'd be lucky to get 3 interactions to a Toot, and you'd see everything there is to see in 15 minutes (at most).
I think I might have misunderstood your wider point. The part where you were positing a hypothetical in which the fediverse splits and one side has Meta. I thought you were saying you will align with the Meta side because of audience size.
Which kind of implies that if Meta then moves into the Extend Extinguish phases you would end up at Threads?
At the Extend phase I would encourage fighting back - or at least making it clear that we are separate from Threads and shouldn't copy them.
I wouldn't leave for Threads during Extinguish; I'd stay here. But I would just sit back and mourn what could've been.
Just like how I mourn XMPP whenever I see Pidgin in software center.
Just like how I mourn when my Windows Phone had SMS, Hangouts, and Facebook Messenger all in the stock texting app.
I'll survive. I'm not going to Zuck's site. But I'll be really sad that I'm not going to be able to talk to my friends from anywhere else.