Why Defederating from Facebook/Meta is So Important
Why Defederating from Facebook/Meta is So Important
How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.
I strongly encourage instance admins to defederate from Facebook/Threads/Meta.
They aren't some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They're a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:
- Helping enhance genocides in countries
- Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
- Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make "facebook" most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
- Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
- Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren't able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
- Even now, they're on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.
Yes, I know one of the Mastodon folks have said they're not worried. Frankly, I think they're being laughably naive >.<. Facebook/Meta - and Instagram's CEO - might say pretty words - but words are cheap and from a known-hostile entity like Meta/Facebook they are almost certainly just a manipulation strategy.
In my view, they should be discarded as entirely irrelevant, or viewed as deliberate lies, given their continued atrocious behaviour and open manipulation of vast swathes of the population.
Facebook have large amounts of experience on how to attack and astroturf social media communities - hell I would be very unsurprised if they are already doing it, but it's difficult to say without solid evidence ^.^
Why should we believe anything they say, ever? Why should we believe they aren't just trying to destroy a competitor before it gets going properly, or worse, turn it into yet another arm of their sprawling network of services, via Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - or perhaps Embrace, Extend, Consume would be a better term in this case?
When will we ever learn that openly-manipulative, openly-assimilationist corporations need to be shoved out before they can gain any foothold and subsume our network and relegate it to the annals of history?
I've seen plenty of arguments claiming that it's "anti-open-source" to defederate, or that it means we aren't "resilient", which is wrong ^.^:
- Open source isn't about blindly trusting every organisation that participates in a network, especially not one which is known-hostile. Threads can start their own ActivityPub network if they really want or implement the protocol for themselves. It doesn't mean we lose the right to kick them out of most - or all - of our instances ^.^.
- Defederation is part of how the fediverse is resilient. It is the immune system of the network against hostile actors (it can be used in other ways, too, of course). Facebook, I think, is a textbook example of a hostile actor, and has such an unimaginably bad record that anything they say should be treated as a form of manipulation.
Edit 1 - Some More Arguments
In this thread, I've seen some more arguments about Meta/FB federation:
- Defederation doesn't stop them from receiving our public content:
- This is true, but very incomplete. The content you post is public, but what Meta/Facebook is really after is having their users interact with content. Defederation prevents this.
- Federation will attract more users:
- Only if Threads makes it trivial to move/make accounts on other instances, and makes the fact it's a federation clear to the users, and doesn't end up hosting most communities by sheer mass or outright manipulation.
- Given that Threads as a platform is not open source - you can't host your own "Threads Server" instance - and presumably their app only works with the Threads Server that they run - this is very unlikely. Unless they also make Threads a Mastodon/Calckey/KBin/etc. client.
- Therefore, their app is probably intending to make itself their user's primary interaction method for the Fediverse, while also making sure that any attempt to migrate off is met with unfamiliar interfaces because no-one else can host a server that can interface with it.
- Ergo, they want to strongly incentivize people to stay within their walled garden version of the Fediverse by ensuring the rest remains unfamiliar - breaking the momentum of the current movement towards it. ^.^
- We just need to create "better" front ends:
- This is a good long-term strategy, because of the cycle of enshittification.
- Facebook/Meta has far more resources than us to improve the "slickness" of their clients at this time. Until the fediverse grows more, and while they aren't yet under immediate pressure to make their app profitable via enshittification and advertising, we won't manage >.<
- This also assumes that Facebook/Meta won't engage in efforts to make this harder e.g. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish/Consume, or social manipulation attempts.
- Therefore we should defederate and still keep working on making improvements. This strategy of "better clients" is only viable in combination with defederation.
PART 2 (post got too long!)
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If the fediverse can't survive meta it can't survive. If decentralization's Achilles heel is corporations then decentralization is not viable strategy in the current world and we should give up on it now.
Threads wasn't first, and it's going to be very very far from last. There is no escape from corporate interests in any g7 nation - other than being deemed too small to matter
My point is that defederation is our defense against corporate interests. And Facebook isn't just "a corporation", it's specifically a known hostile actor with massive experience in social manipulation. It's not a perfect defense, but you don't resist corporate subsumation by letting them straight through the door.
This right here! The ability to defederate is what makes this community viable. We still have the power in this space to ignore corporations. Something we are losing the ability to do in real life. Corporations live and die by their ability to interact with us. Defederation is one of the strongest tools on the internet now.
How do you identify corporations? What if they buy huge instances and not tell anyone? Anyone can be bought, there isn't really any stopping this. They then can just merge it with their own branded instance.
A corporation is technically a group of people acting as a legal single entity. But in this case I’m using the more layman definition of large monied interests trying to monetize everything and crush creativity in the process. If they buy huge instances… then we make others. Just look at how many people (like me) did their research to try something new when they fell out with Reddit. Switching to a new instance is not that hard.
I think most lemmy users are against federation with meta.
Mann .. I’d spin up an instance and defederat from them if the majority of admins decided to federate with meta.
Perhaps what is eventually needed is some sort of Fediverse Alliance that operates under established usage/ethical guidelines.
To join the Alliance, an instance must sign a Terms of Agreement/Charter/Constitution that is written (and owned w/ potential for future amendment) by said alliance. It would contain all of the data usage rules and operational ethics that must be adhered to in order to be a member of the Alliance (and therefore have access/be joined to the group of allied Fediverse instances via federation).
If such an Alliance were successfully formed (especially if top-instances banded together) it becomes a powerful mechanism to filter out the bad and protect the users. For example: perhaps one charter rule is no for-profits or corporate instances?
If an instance violates the charter they would face defederation from the Alliance—perhaps by vote? ( ie group level defederation). At this point the offending instance(s) could of course create their own Alliance. However the benefits of being in the “Primary Alliance” are lost (or gained!).
Just thinking out loud.
Edit: Alliance self-governance would need to be thought of very very carefully in order to protect against corruption and hostile acts….
I think this is a really good long term strategy, and something that is already happening to some level.
Many instances are open about blocking others, and warn eachother of bad instances (like a instance full of spam bots or bigots). I could definetly see this evolving into an alliance type network like you described.
It's less of a defense and more of a stick to shove in our spokes. We can get bled to death by simple user inertia, it happens all the time. We can see it happening right here in the Fediverse as we speak, where the majority of active users just think of beehaw as "that weird server where people won't see my replies."
Threads is an aircraft carrier at full speed and we're a rowboat being attached to its side whether we like it or not. If we just cut ourselves loose we will be crushed in their wake.
This assumes that the people joining threads actually consider themselves part of the Fediverse, which I would bet is not the case. They're just using their existing IG account, and if more communities and groups start being formed on Threads than anywhere else Facebook essentially gets control over most of the fediverse, due to it's large size.
It also assumes that the instances defederating are going to be a small minority, which doesn't have to be the case at all. We already have pretty thriving communities here, we don't need Threads to grow - just improving our user experiences to grow steadily until we are as the Fediverse strong enough to seriously resist this kind of corporate agglomeration. ^.^
The only response to a corporation specifically known for mass social manipulation is to defederate rather than let them get their hooks in. In your analogy, this is using our high speed engine and maneuverability to get as far away as possible before they just obliterate us.
What does it defend us against though? The only thing we get from federating with them is more users. Lack of users is the biggest reason people won’t use mastodon. Once threads starts federating it makes it easier to convince people to move. By accessing threads content from mastodon, meta gets no data from us other than the stuff that’s already public for anyone to see. You don’t need to give them device permissions, you don’t need an instagram account. I don’t see the issue. I don’t think all instances should defederate, some should so people have the option to not see threads posts though.
Social manipulation, brazen EEE or EEC. None of this is necessarily specifically about privacy, which I explained in the post, but about open and brazen manipulation.
What is EEE and EEC
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, and Embrace, Extend, Consume (my version of EEE, where an instance becomes so dominant that defederation would ruin the experience for every other instance and essentially locks them into federation to be useful).
True, not the first and definitely not the last. But (realistically) the fediverse is still in it's infancy.
Decentralization is not what makes it weak, it makes it strong, but allowing facebook and trying to keep the decentralised voice is like asking a baby to fight a lion.
Facebook is a known bad actor, they can't be trusted to join the fediverse. They are a wolf in sheeps clothing.
Facebook is the worst non Nestle company out there, but exactly zero corporations can be classified as sheep. If Google starts sniffing around don't think they'll be any better.
I used xmpp for years before Google talk federated, and I was so excited. I thought xmpp was finally going to be mainstream, but then they used their weight to control the direction of the protocol, then cut and run. Xmpp has mostly recovered and still a great protocol, but Google kind of messed it up before kicking it to the curb.
Edit: This page no longer exists, but as recently as 2020, Google had a page about how dedicated they were to open chat standards, 7 years after they introduced hangouts, which was once again a closed/proprietary protocol.
For what it’s worth, Eugen, the fellow behind mastodon doesn’t think this is a XMPP situation:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/
Eugen is either naive or is in cohorts with Meta. As a tech worker, I know firsthand how foolish can techbros be. He.probably thinks he can "negotiate an advantageous position" with Meta.