I will probably be harassed for this but I feel like I need to act.
The recent debate and decision by world to federate with threads seems to have sparked massive pro meta propaganda. Some accounts post completely one sided articles nearly every day, using carefully crafted language to shape meta as the „facilitator“ of the fediverse and some beligerent benevolent god. You dont have to scroll far in this community to find the posts I‘m talking about.
Please consider reporting these posts for the propaganda they are and asking your admins to defederate from threads.net.
To show you why meta is not welcome in the fediverse, here is a quote from the fedipact which is the reason I have defederated threads in my own instance.
THEIR LONG TRACK RECORD OF PURE EVIL
i’m just gonna paste some links here because there’s no point in paraphrasing what others have already said more eloquently
(if you’re wondering why i’m using archive.org it’s to break the fucking paywalls on these articles because fuck that, information wants to be free)
that time they helped facilitate a genocide
that time they helped try to rig an election
that time they did creepy behavioral experimentation on their users
so, yeah. there’s legiterally shitloads of precedent here. not to mention all the privacy concerns. which brings us to the need many feel to protect ourselves from this insidious megacorp…
Against one thing meta-shills often try to ascribe: we dont have a problem with the people on there but it is literally everything else.
Admins and Mods who read this, please consider signing the fedipact on https://fedipact.online
Thank you very much for reading and have a nice day.
Edit: wording, crossed out
I think this is generally a valid point of view. However, what I don’t like is to frame it as a easy-to-make-point, something that is basically obvious. Because it isn’t, mainly, because of network effects.
Not opening up to Meta means prevent the Fediverse from becoming a global thing. Not opening up to Meta means not to shape the future of the social web.
If you have this opinion, you implicitly say that you want the Fediverse to stay small. However, I think we can all agree that it would be good if the Fediverse became big. And the only possibility to achieve that is through the growth through Meta, which doesn’t mean working together with it, but profiting from it and cutting in its growth (which admittedly, will not be easy as well and, as you pointed out, also comes with its own moral drawbacks, which have to be thought of, too).
Meta is not cool. But it won’t help to hide away in a shelter until the whole thing has blown over. Because it won’t. All that will happen is that the part that opened up to Meta will grow rapidly and the other part will stay small and become less relevant. In this sense, now is the best time to drive change in the social web, until it is again dominated by Meta. Now we still have the choice to join and work against Meta in the social web.
Just because you federate doesn’t necessarily mean that you work together with it. But if you hide away, you leave the whole field of action up to Meta without even trying. Apart from the fact that it’s barely explainable to anyone outside the Fediverse. They will and already do blame us of double-standards: why create an open protocoll if the ecosystem wants to stay small anyways?
I strongly disagree meta’s involvement is necessary for the fediverse to grow and become big. Snowballing is a very real thing and as long as growth continues to happen, that will encourage more growth.
The threat of meta is a huge jump in growth, and communities that then centralize around those users. Once popular communities are established on meta servers, they have control. If they choose to split or defederate those communities on the non-meta side of the fence would be back to square one building from scratch. That is the problem and if we don’t see it for what it is we will be left with nothing.
To a certain degree, yes. But that growth has its limits because of network effects. Most people want to be where their friends are.
But they are already there. Also, companies like Flipboard and Medium will continue to join the whole thing. It will be nearly impossible to convince ALL of them to leave this big growth potential behind and instead join the old Fediverse, which is much smaller.
I think in any case, there will be three new big factions on the Fediverse: Meta, non-Meta which federates with Meta and the Fedi-Pact-Fediverse. I think there is not much either of us can do about it. But I’m more symphatizing with the second group because I think ActivityPub was developed as an open protocoll and its the only way to make the Fediverse big (doesn’t mean btw that the federation-policy regarding Meta cannot dynamically change over time, this way it becomes a tool against Meta; just permanently defederating doesn’t make sense in my opinion).
Ecosystem doesn’t want to stay small - it doesn’t want to have moderation, among other things, dictated by facebook.
You’re manipulating, but you probably know that. You’re telling me what I’m saying instead of taking what I said. You’re putting a lot of effort in excusing them and it shows. It is very obvious.