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iOS AppStore privacy preview for Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-based app Threads
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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Fediverse
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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
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Genuinely curious as I'm new to all of this, why would it matter? Isn't that the whole point of the fediverse? If their spyware app interfacing with it is what gets the casual users into it who already have Meta's spyware installed, you can still use the fediverse from whatever service you prefer, right?
Because meta wants to: 1) embrace fedi and open it up to their users, 2) extend all possibilities in fedi forcing more users onto their instance and apps, 3) once they become the defacto instance and interface they will extinguish fedi.
Here’s a pretty thorough explanation of why this Meta app is dangerous for the Fediverse.
https://fediversereport.com/meta-plans-on-joining-the-fediverse-the-responses/
I’m still trying to wrap my head around Fediverse concepts as well but the thing that stands out for me is that there is a history of private companies effectively killing open source projects.
For us, the vulnerability is ActivityPub. If Meta begins “contributing” to a foundational Fediverse technology, they have the resources to extend the protocol in a way that benefits Meta only, at a pace that only a company with the resources of Meta can.
Yep. Just like how we don't want any particular web browser core becoming the standard core as opposed to having a common web protocols that anyone can write a browser to use. We saw what a mess people writing for only Internet Explorer became, and even Microsoft felt the pains of that when they wanted to retire Internet Explorer. The legacy of that remains to this day when coming across under or non funded web sites created through contract funding or grant funding and then not updated.
I certainly can see the same things happening long term with a large corporate entity joining the Fediverse, initially 'contributing' some great feature, and then in the future having a large number of instances dependent on that feature and having the tables turned by the corporate entity saying "Oh, well, we're charging for this now." You know... kind of like what just happened with Reddit and third part readers.
The TL;DR is "so it doesn't become XMPP" - if a big player from the corporate internet world achieves significant sway over the Fediverse, that gives them a position of power to steer the platform itself, eventually letting them undermine the whole "open-source" and "decentralised" part of it entirely before taking their chunk of the federation private, effectively kneecapping the remaining communities outside the walled garden.
If you've ever heard "the three Es" - Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, best known from the Microsoft antitrust days - that's what we're worried about happening here.
It's more or less the same problem as XMPP (end-to-end encrypted, federated chat protocol) had with Google Talk.
All users went to Google and then Google broke interoperability with federated servers, leaving them dead/unable to communicate with the majority of users.
Later Google killed the project as they always do. XMPP is still around, but the userbase is very small.
Here's a post worth reading:
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
The "fediverse" has been gaining traction recently, the fear is that Meta comes in with 1.2bn users, gets everyone on their service and the breaks federation, leaving the rest of the fediverse a drying carcass as they "move on".
Personally, I don't really care about the "popularity contest" - I'm not here because the community is large, I'm here because it isn't. Signal > Noise. So I'm all for defederation.
Meta has zero trust after all they've done.
Honestly I think a lot of it is that the Fediverse (especially Mastodon) wants to remain a small community relatively isolated from regular social networks, and a very big instance would ruin that. It's very similar to Usenet when AOL customers got access to it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September).
Some people are worried about Meta having their data, but anything you post publicly in the Fediverse is, by definition, public. A whole heap of servers have your data, and even today some of the federated servers could be operated by large companies. How would you know? My Lemmy server is federating with over a thousand others... I don't know who runs all of those or what they're doing with the data...
You can't be both a small community and replace for profit social networks. I thought the point of all this was the second one.
The point according to whom?
The fear is that Meta is making the classic tech monopolist move: embrace, extend, extinguish.
A few others have commented below, but from a top level perspective I'd argue that taking a relatively small platform like the fediverse and smushing it with Facebooks user base would dilute the community / environment.
If meta federates with everyone, it'll be a huge uplift in quantity as new people start posting, but the quality I feel would be impacted.
I imagine it would be like pouring a small cup of liquid and a big container of liquid into the same bowl, one would definitely dilute the other.
No, they don't the Fediverse as a current danger but as a future one. They see the potential in interoperability so they won't to crush it before it crushes their walled gardens. That's why they're acting so open and welcoming. I think I've seen this film before, and I didn't like the ending.
I have no doubt their backend would eventually somehow be able to link you to other accounts and create shadow profiles of you just like they have with their other products.
what they could potentially do is to post Ads across the fediverse, and their sales-pitch could be something along the lines "hey look, for just 20 bucks a month, your AD can be shown on 1500 other domains and not only on FB.com"
thanks, but no thanks