What’s Meta up to?
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Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse
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Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you’re following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn’t available to the rest of the fediverse – as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol
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Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta’s own ends
Since the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads, the most obvious ways of exploiting it – such as stealing market share by getting people currently in the fediverse to move to Threads – aren’t going to work. But exploitation is one of Meta’s core competences, and once you start to look at it with that lens, it’s easy to see some of the ways even their initial announcement and tiny first steps are exploiting the fediverse: making Threads feel like a more compelling platform, and reshaping regulation. Longer term, it’s a great opportunity for Meta to explore – and maybe invest in – shifting their business model to decentralized surveillance capitalism.
As if Meta could give a flying fart about activitypub as competition. They could not care any less if someone gave them money to care less.
I feel fairly confident in saying that the only reason they’re integrating federation is so that it won’t work because we all defederate them, this is beneficial to them because it means we cannot talk family members and friends onto Mastodon, they want to connect to their friends being on Threads. However, this pre-empts any EU legislation forcing them to be interoperable. They are, “can’t help it if the other side is not interoperating despite having the ability to do so”.
Maybe some of that but my sense is that given how prescient FB has been on buying companies that grew to become staples, like WhatsApp and Instagram I would say what they’re seeing here is something like the future of social media - even if tiny.
Unfortunately they can’t buy it, but they can do the next best thing: position themselves to take advantage of it, while in its infancy, and if possible control it while they can still throw their weight about before it takes off independently.
given how prescient FB has been on buying companies that grew to become staples, like WhatsApp and Instagram
- Whatsapp was bought for 19 bil, at a time when it was #3 in the US and dominant in major parts of the world. It’s buying it about 5 years too late to be “prescient” about it.
- Instagram was a better deal, but far from “buying it before it grows big”. bought for 1 bil two years after it launched it was already well on track for 20 million users. If they had bought it a year earlier they would have gotten it really cheap, granted. They bought it right after it exploded.
Now, I’m not saying Facebook wouldn’t love to buy competitors, but the examples are kinda weird, in particular WhatsApp. Plus again, the fediverse is so tiny the only reason someone at Facebook probably knows about it is because a lawyer told them to tell 3 engineers to get this done, by which point they didn’t even read the wikipedia and just told them to do it because legal says they should.
WhatsApp had 500 million MAU when it was bought up.
That’s 250x the fediverse.
They really don’t care.
Yeah, it’s been hilarious watching the fediverse think Meta gives a rat’s ass about either reaching them with content or getting access to their horde of memes.
This is about preempting regulation.
Meta would love nothing less than having their interoperability push still end up as a walled garden, and if I didn’t know better regarding their total disinterest about Lemmy or even Mastodon existing, would even suspect that the degree to which they’d be meddling in the conversion would be creating posts about how people should be irrationally upset and defederate from Threads.
Though they don’t care enough to be involved in the conversation at all, and know full well that the fediverse will hit scaling issues should it ever miraculously gain traction long before it is actually a threat in any way to their market dominance.
All that said, it’s still pretty hilarious to watch the inflated self-importance and slight paranoia that goes with it leading to bitter debates like this though.
What happened to the “extinguish” step?
I think it’s important to include that. Threads isn’t going to just happily coexist.
You should really read the article…
Indeed! But here’s the relevant excerpt
Of course, if and when Meta sees the fediverse as a significant threat, they’ll ruthlessly stamp it out.0
But right now, they’ve got a huge potential longer-term opportunity to coopt the fediverse as a basis for decentralized surveillance capitalism. It might not work out, of course, but keeping a neutered fediverse around might still be useful to Meta as long as it’s not a threat to their dominance (just as Google subsidizes the Firefox browser).
And in the short term, there’s money to be made – and regulators to try to influence – by exploiting the fediverse.
there isnt one, because even the ‘extend’ in this hyperbolic scenario isnt real
o0o0o0 the big ‘extend’ is threads users will get to use the threads app. puhlease. thats no extension of AP
everyones getting their sphincter tight over their own hate and nothing more.
The original sense of EEE’s extend was pushing features that were not standard (to IE). An example would be for example if Threads implemented a stickers function that only worked in the Threads apps but to us only appeared as sticker-id:123456. Any features built around AP that worsens the experience for others can be seen as “extend”.
if users on my system want some bell or whistle somewhere else, groovy, dont let the door hit ya on the way out.
threads is not going to magically, silently create a dependency in my system. its exactly like SMTP. no one is attempting to EEE email.
i am not/will not receive anything from threads not in the protocol spec, and if my users dont like that they can go somewhere else. this is not a problem for me.
i dont care what the threads instance has to offer with regards to bells and whistles, it affects me not.
no one is attempting to EEE email.
Yes… they are?
Have you noticed how Gmail labels don’t work with other email providers? Folders and categories? Stars and Important? Many people have come to rely on these features and moving to other providers becomes a bit of a hassle. This is the naughty extension of e-mail.
Another great example is github. Git is open and interoperable, but most companies using github are stuck to it because they use Github also for issues, pull requests, and many other things.
Ugh, at least they mention regulation and acknowledge XMPP still exists but this is one of the worst of these panicked scare pieces I’ve read yet. It’s filled with bad faith interpretation of quotes, poor analysis, and baseless speculation. The motto of all of these articles seems to be “if I can dream up a way to be scared of it, it must be true!”
How do you dismissively call Evan Podromou a “fediverse influencer”?! He’s one of the fucking co-authors of ActivityPub.
Their treatment of these two Mosseri quotes is just bad faith, fever swamp nonsense:
“I think we might be a more compelling platform for creators, particularly for the newer creators who are more and more savvy, if we are a place where you don’t have to feel like you have to trust us forever.”
“Eventually, it should also be possible to enable creators to leave Threads and take their followers with them to another app/server.”
They conclude that their (obvious!) goal is to be completely untrustworthy while giving people the false belief that they’re trustworthy. And the evidence? It’s all in the quote! He used the word “feel” and that can only mean a covert declaration of opposite day.
Same with the second quote. It’s “already clear that people won’t be able to move all their followers to other fediverse servers.” Why? It’s implied that the use of the word “eventually” means never (it doesn’t. look it up.). Does it matter that the quote is from a post talking about their gradual implementation of ActivityPub? Does it matter that moving accounts would logically occur near the end of that timeline? Of course not! We’re playing a game where we take a quote and manipulate it until it gives us whatever meaning we want. The other piece of evidence is that they haven’t decided whether federation will be opt-in or opt-out, which has nothing to do with moving your account. Make no mistake though, it is CLEAR that those quotes mean the opposite of what they say.
This is what the first quote means: ‘we can build legitimate trust by not locking people into our platform.’ Does that mean they won’t lock people in? No. But that quote isn’t evidence they won’t. Pretending that it is is tinfoil-hat bullshit.
Put the current fediverse to the side, and imagine a future of decentralized surveillance capitalism, where “Meta’s fediverse” filled with instances run by brands, politicians, celebrities, influencers, and non-profits – all doing harvesting data on Meta’s behalf
What a fucking nightmare that would be. Herd a bunch of crazy cats you don’t control for a rat’s nest of data without a simple way to use it to target ad deliveries (which is how they ultimately make money). Trusting someone like Alex Jones with the core of their business model? Riiiiight. And if they did it? So what? It would have no impact on Mastodon or the larger Fediverse. Even if Ron DeSantis had his own Meta-sponsored instance, everyone could just block it. I also fail to see how being in a direct business relationship with those people severs their connection. It’s a much stronger connection than them just having an account on their platform. And it just reintroduces the moderation problem this is claimed to solve. Public pressure would just shift from “ban user” to “block instance,” losing them the data and revenue anyway.
Thanks for the feedback! You really don’t think Evan’s influential in the fediverse?
They conclude that their (obvious!) goal is to be completely untrustworthy while giving people the false belief that they’re trustworthy. And the evidence? It’s all in the quote!
No, I’m not saying their goal is to be completely untrustworthy. It’s a means to an end. And the evidence for them being completely untrustworthy isn’t the quote, it’s Facebook, Instagram, and Meta’s long history of being completely untrustworthy. I wrote about this in Wait a second. Why should anybody trust Facebook, Instagram, or Meta?. Do you trust them?
It’s “already clear that people won’t be able to move all their followers to other fediverse servers.” Why?
Good question, I edited the article to clarify:
if somebody’s following you on Threads but hasn’t opted in to federation, then when you move to an instance in the real fediverse they won’t be following you any more.
Trusting someone like Alex Jones with the core of their business model? Riiiiight.
Yeah really, it’s not like they every trusted Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica … oh wait, they did.
Anyhow it’s not the core of their business model. The core of their business model is harvesting data and using it to sell and target ads (and sell other stuff), Alex Jones is just one more channel to leverage.
Even if Ron DeSantis had his own Meta-sponsored instance, everyone could just block it.
You really think most Republicans would block it?
Firstly, I didn’t realize this was your article. This is probably a good reminder that every article is someone’s article. I wish my tone and wording had been a bit less caustic, so apologies for being a bit of a dick in my comment and thanks for your thoughtful reply.
I think Evan’s influential, but it seems dismissive to call him an “influencer” without acknowledging his relationship to the Fediverse. His influence is earned, but the term often carries a negative connotation and is occasionally used as a pejorative. Although based on your reply, that doesn’t seem like it was your intention.
No, I’m not saying their goal is to be completely untrustworthy. It’s a means to an end. And the evidence for them being completely untrustworthy isn’t the quote, it’s Facebook, Instagram, and Meta’s long history of being completely untrustworthy. I wrote about this in Wait a second. Why should anybody trust Facebook, Instagram, or Meta?. Do you trust them?
I think the story of their public statements is that they’ve said everything you’d hope to hear. I’ve seen many takes that they somehow betray a hidden agenda, and that seems wrong at the very least. They undoubtedly have a bad past. Contrasting those statements with their history is obviously valid, as is analyzing them in relation to their business interests. Being skeptical or suspicious of their motivations is understandable. If they had the purest of intentions, the quotes would be the same though.
Do I trust Meta? No! I don’t use their platforms because I don’t trust them. I have an old Facebook account I don’t use, but would treat as the white pages if I ever did. And I have an extension to trap them in a sandbox if that need ever arises. I left Instagram for Pixelfed, and I’m exclusively on the Fediverse. I have no intention of leaving for any for-profit service. I don’t think I have to trust them or that they have to be trustworthy to their users to keep them from destroying the Fediverse though. I think the worst case is that we end up exactly where we are now, which is fine. I’m happy here now!
Good question, I edited the article to clarify:
I completely agree that it could cause problems with moving your account if the default is opt-in. I think it’s also important to note that they’ve only said that they’re not sure what the default will be. That could be bad intentions, but it could also be for good faith reasons. For example, it could just be concern about their users. I doubt they haven’t noticed the civil war that breaks out here every time there’s an announcement about Threads. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re waiting to see whether their users experience a tidal wave of harassment from this side. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they did. On our side, it wouldn’t surprise me if many admins end up defederating because it’s just too much work to moderate content from the Threads side even if they don’t have bad intentions.
Yeah really, it’s not like they every trusted Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica … oh wait, they did.
That’s apples and oranges though. They gave them data Meta had collected. The Meta-Fediverse would have them directly responsible for data collection. So they would need to admin those instances or trust that the admins wouldn’t tamper with that data. If the data were tampered with, it could seriously damage their core business model. It would poison their user tracking and they’d be less able to sell (the myth of) surgical market segmentation. It seems far less risky to be a good actor in the Fediverse to keep regulators off their back and continue to harvest vast quantities of granular tracking data from their own server. That seems especially true in light of Cambridge Analytica where they were savaged internationally for being unbelievably reckless and irresponsible with the data they held.
Even if there are numerous instances collecting data for them, they could still only get publicly available data from non-Threads Fediverse users. If they do want that, setting up an instance is way more inefficient and expensive than just scraping it from servers.
You really think most Republicans would block it?
No, but I don’t think that puts us in a different place than we are now. There are “free speech” instances that don’t defederate for any reason. They can’t force you to see or engage with anything and will never be able to. We’re not really surrendering any control to them.
No worries on the tone and wording, it’s the internet, I’ve experienced far worse. And your feedback is helpful, so the time you put into it is appreciated.
On Evan as influencer, I’ve highlighted for a while the contrast between opinions of Eugen and other lead devs of fediverse projects, large instance admins, the people still on the SWICG standards body, and journalists who write about the fediverse – who in general almost all strongly support Meta – and people on the fediverse, who are much more split. “Influencer” is as good a term as any to refer to the first category of people.
I think the story of their public statements is that they’ve said everything you’d hope to hear. I’ve seen many takes that they somehow betray a hidden agenda, and that seems wrong at the very least…
In the statements I quoted they were very up front about their agenda! Similarly in the section where I talk about their potential long-term plans if they decide to invest in this direction is consistent with Zuckerberg’s comments about his interest in a decentralized approach. But yeah, they’re also saying what they know people want to hear.
I think it’s also important to note that they’ve only said that they’re not sure what the default will be.
Fair, I’ve rewritten that section to clarify that this is only their current plan. It’s be really funny if Meta suggested taking the privacy-friendly approach knowing that Mastodon would try to talk them out of it 🤣🤣🤣. I still expect them to go with opt-in, but we shall see. I agree that if they go the opt-in route it’s not necessarily for nefarious reasons, in my view it really is in their users best interest. But that’s the thing about the embrace-and-extend strategies (whether or not the third step is to extinguish), the extensions are very often in the users interests, they just cause problems for the open alternatives.
On Cambridge Analytica, I agree the data flow was in a different direction, but still: they trusted Bannon and CA with it the data that was the most valuable asset in their business model. And (other than some bad press) it worked out just fine for them! So I guess we draw different conclusions on who they’ll trust with what in the future.
In any case though…
So they would need to admin those instances or trust that the admins wouldn’t tamper with that data.
No, they have other options here. One is to provide services that cooperating instances in “Meta’s fediverse” can use that involve sharing data with Meta, and create a win/win scenario for them to share the data. Think of Disney or some corporation that wants to target ads (using Meta’s services, in return for a revenue share) to people on their instances – and automate some of the moderation (by using Meta’s services). Why wouldn’t they harvest data and share it with Meta so that the services are more effective? Another is to provide a hosting service for corporations (and perhaps individuals) to have their own instances … it’s kind of a variant of the first one but packaged differently.
(And both of these apply to non-public data as well.)
In terms of blocking a DeSantis instance I agree it’s not surrendering control to them, I just meant that Meta could monetize the heck out of it even if all the instances i the current fediverse blocked it. If they had the infrastructure in place today, DeSantis and others would be paying to boost their instances’ posts to Threads (and also Gab and Truth Social and the instances that Fox News, Breitbart, etc are running). They might well miss the window for the 2024 US election but it (hopefully) won’t be the last election in the world.
On Evan as influencer, I’ve highlighted for a while the contrast between opinions of Eugen and other lead devs of fediverse projects, large instance admins, the people still on the SWICG standards body, and journalists who write about the fediverse – who in general almost all strongly support Meta
I still don’t agree that frames them properly to people who aren’t aware of them. This relevant definition is: “a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.” Prodromou’s been working in decentralized social media for nearly 20 years. He’s an expert if anyone is. Would you describe a professor speaking on their area of study as an influencer even if influential and on social media? To lump the people who’ve done the most work building, troubleshooting, problem-solving in this space together as influencers rather than people with expert knowledge is an odd choice.
I also don’t think many of those people would agree that they “strongly support Meta.” Just today on Mike McCue’s podcast Eugen said “I am no fan of Meta.” He supports federating with them because he thinks it’s good for the Fediverse. We benefit from their network effects without being subjected to ads or surveillance. People who wanted to join the Fediverse but didn’t because none of their network were on here can join. Their users can leave Meta without giving up their social graph and starting over. Organizations who’ve been on the fence about joining may decide to join. He thinks it’s good for us, good for their users, and presumably doesn’t care whether it’s good for Meta.
One is to provide services that cooperating instances in “Meta’s fediverse” can use that involve sharing data with Meta
Something similar to media outsourcing comments to Facebook. The problem is that what they’re tracking is… everything that happens on the server. If you took everything that’s tracked in Threads out of Threads, what would be left for an admin to do? If someone has root access how can they not have access to anything on the server? If you’re tampering with the thing they’re tracking, you’re tampering with the tracking. If it’s super locked-down hosting, Meta is ultimately the admin. I still don’t see how that doesn’t create serious problems. If the Alex Jones server decides to terrorize a bunch of families, how can they claim to not have an association? How would they not have pressure to defederate or cancel their hosting?
And certainly, if you’re a user on a Meta or Meta-controlled server, they can track you. It still doesn’t impact us. They can track everything they do because they control their servers; they can’t track us because we control ours. Whether we federate or not also has no impact on their ability to do any of the Meta-Fediverse stuff. We can’t run up and smack the ActivityPub out of their hands and be like, “No! Bad Meta!” ;)
On “influencer”, I don’t think we’re going to convince each other. I’ve sometimes described professors as influencers – Dan Gillmor and Scott Galloway leap to mind.
I also don’t think many of those people would agree that they “strongly support Meta.”
That’s true! Meta’s got such a deservedly bad reputation that very few want to see themselves as supporting Meta! And I agree that they’re supporting federation with Meta despite their real misgivings about the company, and they’re doing it because they see it as in the fediverse’s best interests. But still, Meta’s saying “we want to embrace the fediverse” and they’re saying “this is a good thing” and telling people that concerns are overstated … that’s supporting Meta.
If the Alex Jones server decides to terrorize a bunch of families, how can they claim to not have an association? How would they not have pressure to defederate or cancel their hosting?
The legal responsibilities and pressures are different for a service provider or infrastructure provider than for a social network. They’ll get pressure, and Threads (a social network) might defederate, but I wouldn’t expect them to cancel their services or hosting. Organizations like EFF argue that instrastructure providers should stay out of policing content – even for content like Kiwifarms. I should probably discuss this in more detail (or maybe do a separate post on this).
They can track everything they do because they control their servers; they can’t track us because we control ours.
If you’re on a server that federates with Meta and haven’t blocked Meta, then most things you do can potentially be federated to Meta at which point it’ll be tracked even if they aren’t using any Meta services
Whether we federate or not also has no impact on their ability to do any of the Meta-Fediverse stuff. We can’t run up and smack the ActivityPub out of their hands and be like, “No! Bad Meta!” ;)
That last statement is true. Still, in an alternatie universe where fediverse influencers said “we don’t want you” and the vast majority of instances chose not to federate then it would be similar to the Gab situation “Meta wanted to come to the fediverse, we said no we don’t want hate groups and genocide-enablers here, so they’re doing their own thing” with the addition of “they’re also calling it the fediverse but don’t fall for it”. But we’re not in that universe.
Their goal is to be profitable. Whether that means embracing standards for good PR or fighting standards if it benefits them, it doesn’t matter. Money matters.
I think that Facebook is trying to kill the Fediverse and Twitter, before either becomes a real competitor.
It makes sense when you look at the big picture; Facebook’s power is mostly Facebook itself (connecting people), Instagram (sharing pictures), and WhatsApp (“private” [eh] messaging). Microblogging has a small market in comparison with those three, but it opens a door to them - so both the Fediverse and Twitter have room to expand right into FB’s turf.
So in the case of the Fediverse, if my reasoning is correct (dunno), the third “E” would be the traditional “extinguish”, not “exploit” as proposed in the OP.
Idk as long as Meta services keep forcing you to sign up for an account to view anything of value I’d imagine a lot of people will look for alternatives elsewhere.
Nothing more annoying than trying to look at the menu for a local restaurant/business page for a local business and seeing “sign up for Facebook to view this page.” Much of the utility for any kind of discussion or shared info online (imo) lies in the ability to access it quickly via search and without being forced to login.
as long as Meta services keep forcing you to sign up for an account to view anything of value
Threads doesn’t do that, and won’t be able to if it wants to support ActivityPub federation.
Don’t you have to have an Instagram account to use Threads? Every service on the fediverse makes you create an account. And all of them can put all its content behind that account; nothing in ActivityPub prevents that
An account is required to post on Threads. It is not required to view content posted on Threads, which is different from Facebook and Instagram.
ActivityPub means that servers other than Threads will receive content from Threads which they can serve to visitors.
Ok. Your point was that you can view Threads content without a Threads account and even if they required an account to view Threads content, users with other fediverse accounts could still see the content because that’s how federation works.
Sorry, i misunderstood your point .
None of those things sounds inherently bad to me.
They might not be inherently bad, but they’ll be likely bad depending on how it’s done, and Facebook isn’t to be trusted.
Just for the sake of example:
- What if Threads develops features that work well with the ActivityPub protocol, but since they’re closed-source they cannot be implemented by Mastodon instances?
- What if Threads implements asymmetric federation - where Threads users can interact with outsiders’ content, but outsiders cannot interact with Threads’ content?
- What if Threads has some bullshit term of agreement like “by using our platform you agree to have your data collected, and if you’re seeing this you’re already using our platform”?
- etc.
Note that Facebook has a long story of user-hostile decisions; as in, this crap wouldn’t be below its moral standards. So, while most of the time this would be FUD, in this case it’s just F, no uncertainty or doubt.
Exactly. And they’ve already done your second and third bullets!
What specific features do you have in mind that could be implemented in a closed-source manner that couldn’t be reverse-engineered and implemented by open-source instance software too? It’s not easy to come up with such a thing, and it’s unclear what benefit it would serve Meta that they can’t accomplish by just not joining the Fediverse in the first place.
If Threads implements asymmetric federation, I’ll shrug and ignore them because I’ll never see their content and it won’t ever affect me.
Doesn’t Threads already have a bullshit terms of service? That’s my default assumption for any website, really. But even if they don’t, ActivityPub is an open protocol and so of course my data is being collected by who-knows-how-many organizations already. Meta doesn’t need to do anything new at all to get access to it.
Sorry for the wall of text.
What specific features do you have in mind that could be implemented in a closed-source manner that couldn’t be reverse-engineered and implemented by open-source instance software too?
The features don’t need to be impossible to reverse engineer; they could be costly enough to do so, rely on other FB/Meta platforms, or demand server capabilities past what you’d expect from typical Mastodon instances. For example:
- implementing some data format that is decoded by the front-end
- allowing you to access content from FB/IG/WhatsApp from Threads
- “we now allow big arse videos”.
and it’s unclear what benefit it would serve Meta that they can’t accomplish by just not joining the Fediverse in the first place.
Killing a bird and a baby mammoth with a single stone, before they grow and invade your turf.
On one side you have Twitter/X; it bleeds money and Musk is an idiot, but he has enough money to throw at the problems until they go away, and he has a “vishun” about an “errything app” that would clearly compete with FB/IG/WhatsApp. On another you have the Fediverse; it’s small and negligible but it has potential for unrestricted growth, and already includes things like Matrix (that competes with WhatsApp) and Friendica (that competes with FB).
From Meta’s point of view, Twitter/X is by far the biggest threat. It could be addressed without federation, but by doing so would feed Mastodon, and a stronger Mastodon means a stronger Fediverse and this power would put Matrix, Friendica etc. in a better position. With federation however they can EEE one while killing another, and still advertise the whole thing as “I don’t understand, why you say that we have a monopoly over online communication? We’re even part of a federation? Meta plays nice with competitors. I’m so confused~”.
“Some data format” is still a pretty vague handwave, IMO. What would they implement that other Fediverse users would need to care about? Some kind of proprietary image or video format? I don’t see how that would gain traction.
Fediverse users can already link to FB/IG/WhatsApp content. Are you suggesting embedding it somehow? I’m not sure how that could be done in a proprietary manner that other implementations couldn’t copy.
“We now allow big arse videos” is definitely not a feature that couldn’t be reverse engineered. Instances can already do their own hosting, or not, depending on the resources the host wants to dedicate.
I’m sure that Meta would just love to be able to push a button that made all their competitors die. Everyone wants that button. Look around threads like this and count how many users would love to push that button themselves and wipe Meta out with it. But I’m just not seeing how Meta is going to do that by federating. As long as everyone keeps on their toes about how their resources are being used and what extensions they’re adding to ActivityPub - something that they should be doing regardless of whether Meta is involved - the Fediverse seems pretty solid against attack to me.
Note: I did read your comment fully, but I’m going to address specific points, otherwise the discussion gets too long. (Sorry!)
“Some data format” is still a pretty vague handwave […]
It is vague because there are multiple ways for Threads to screw with the Fediverse through data formats. But if you want a more specific example:
Let’s say that Meta creates a new image format called TREDZ. It fills the same purpose as JPG, but it’s closed source. The Threads app has native support for TREDZ images, but your browser doesn’t render it.
If you access a Mastodon instance through Threads, everything works well, since the Threads app has support for other image formats. However, since your browser and current Mastodon apps have no support for TREDZ, pics in this format fail to render. You get broken content as a result, and probably some Threads crowds screeching at you because you ignored their picture, saying “u uze mastadon? lmaaao its broken it doesnt even pictures lol”, encouraging you to ditch your instance to join Threads instead.
And you might say “reverse engineer TREDZ, problem solved”. However:
- reverse engineering is costly and time-consuming
- Meta has professional coders in a paycheck, Mastodon relies mostly on volunteers
- Meta could easily encumber TREDZ with all sorts of nasty legal shit, like parents, and aggressively defend them.
As such, on a practical level, it would be not feasible to reverse-engineer TREDZ. And even if it was, the time necessary to do so is time that Threads is still causing damage to Mastodon.
Of course, this is just an example that I made up on the spot. Meta can think on more efficient ways to do so.
I’m sure that Meta would just love to be able to push a button that made all their competitors die. […]
Yup. As you said, everyone wants that button. But due to the difference in power, Meta is closer to get that button than Mastodon is.
the Fediverse seems pretty solid against attack to me.
The protocol might be solid, but the community isn’t. Communities stronger than the Fediverse died; and the Fediverse has the mixed blessing of decentralisation - the death of a part doesn’t drag the other parts to the grave, but the survival of the other parts doesn’t help much the dying one either.
Actually, I’d say “let them use TREDZ and destroy themselves if they want, problem solved.” In this day and age nobody wants a proprietary image format, and if Threads won’t display in a browser they’ve just blown one of their legs off.
This is a general problem with trying to make Threads depend on proprietary formats, they can’t do that and still have it work in an ordinary web browser.
Most people don’t even know what’s a proprietary image format. From their PoV it would be “shitty broken Mastodon doesn’t show images properly”. And they would still pressure Mastodon users to switch.
if Threads won’t display in a browser they’ve just blown one of their legs off.
I’m not sure but I think that a similar strategy could work for browsers, using a web plugin.
But even if Meta decided that Threads is unavailable from browsers, it wouldn’t be blowing one of Threads’ legs off. There are far more mobile than desktop users nowadays; and if they want to EEE the Fediverse, they need numbers for that.
Here’s five examples that they’be already done:
- Signing up with an Instagram account
- Automatically following everybody you follow on Instagram
- The ability to follow a thread on Threads
- Seeing content from anybody on Threads in your app
- Communicating with people on Threads who haven’t opted in to federation
(Edited for formatting)
Fair! Good and bad depends on your perspective and how successful Meta is. It’s only the last bit about “using selfishly for Meta’s own ends” that I see as inherently bad. In general though I’ve writen elsewhere that I think it’s a great opportunity for the fediverse – I talked about about why in In Chaos There Is Opportunity and probably will say more in a later post in this series.
I’d say that the vast majority of economic actors - both companies like Meta and individual people - are generally acting in a selfish manner. It’s one of the great successes of modern market economies that most of the time that selfishness can be harnessed to serve the public good in various ways, so I’d want to see more detail about what exactly they’re doing before calling it bad.
I’ve certainly never said I trust Meta, just that I don’t think they’re the maniacal evil overlords many of these discussions are portraying them as.
OK, so, if you don’t trust Meta, and think they’re generally acting in a selfish manner, why do you think that they’ll freely let people move from Threads to the fedierse and make it easy to take all their followers?
Or phrased somewhat differently: it’s clearly good from their perspective to say that people can move their followers. Do you think it’s also always better for them to also let people easily move all their followers (which Meta is able to monetize while on Threads) to some other instance (where it’s harder for Meta to monetize them)? If there are situations where it’s not better from Meta’s perspective, why do you think they’ll make it easy – or even allow it?
I don’t expect anything in particular from them. My position all throughout all of this is that we simply shouldn’t be committing to defederate from Threads preemptively before they’ve even had a chance to show what they’re going to actually do.
There are plenty of situations where companies “open up” in ways that may not seem to be immediately in their self-interest but that actually work out to their benefit when you consider larger strategic goals or even just the good will it gets them. Meta just so happens to be very active in developing and releasing important open-source projects, for example their release of the LLaMA AI models basically sparked the same flourishing of open source large language model development that StabilityAI’s release of Stable Diffusion did for the art generators. Maybe you can come up with ulterior motives for all that, but the end result was still a positive one for the open source community. The same could happen with Threads and the Fediverse.
Sure, Meta – and Google, and Microsoft – is good about funding open-source projects when it suits their interest. Given where they are relative to Open AI and Google, releasing LLaMA as open source made a lot of sense for them. If they decide to seriously invest in fediverse compatibiilty they might well do something like release an open source client toolkit that would provide full functionality on Threads, whatever subset of Threads functionality Mastodon and maybe a couple of other platforms suppport, and has adaptors so that the community can support other platforms. Right now there isn’t a good solution (nobody uses the AP C2S standard, Mastodon’s API is the defacto standard but there are compatibility problems and quirks) so it benefits the community. And, it would have support for Threads functionality that other platforms don’t support, so it benefits Meta more than everybody else.
But we were specifically talking about why they’d make it easy for people to move away from Threads to other platforms. Do you think that’s in their business interest?
Jokes on them. I may exploit their federation too. I’m curious what a bunch of nerds could come up with to, lets say, spice up some threads users experiences…
Yeah and I don’t think it’s fully sunk in to Zuckerberg and Mosseri that they now have to be regulars on the FediBlock and FediBlockMeta hashtags
FUD
