Some instances know their embrace, extend, extinguish history and some don’t.
And for those that don’t:
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
I still stand by that defederation as the only line of defense is a losing strategy. Keeping users siloed in Facebook’s garden shouldn’t be seen as a win for us.
Keeping users siloed in Facebook’s garden shouldn’t be seen as a win for us.
Sometimes the only winning move is not to play. If people hadn’t federated with google’s XMPP back in the day, google wouldn’t have had the same level of control it had to kill XMPP as a competitor.
We need to learn from the lessons of the past, and the past has resulted in the deaths of services when federating with corporations.
“We should debate them… And defeat them on the Marketplace of Ideas.” Yeah, right.
I never said defeating them or out competing them should be the goal. The goal should be the survival of services. And corporations will kill these services.
I don’t disagree with needing to not repeat past mistakes.
Hate to burst your bubble, but no-one was actually using XMPP with Google Talk except for open-source tech nerds.
And google stopped any chances of that ever happening. The Fediverse should just let itself grow gradually and naturally, as should have XMPP
How so? I don’t see the EEE in Google discontinuing XMPP support tbh.
They piggy backed on rapidly growing XMPP and then became lazy with keeping compatible with the rest of the xmpp federation and at some point the s2s connection stopped being feasible as they never implemented TLS for it, and did’t really care as most xmpp users were on their server anyways and thus did’t use the s2s connection.
Its not a typical nefarious EEE story, but it did a lot of damage to the xmpp federation anyways.
This predates Google Talk and is rather about the XMPP Gmail integration. Back then XMPP was the hot topic in tech circles (Twitter was even prototyped to be XMPP based) and people were switching to it and recommending it to others to replace ICQ/MSN/AIM etc. However, often they recommended others to use the Google XMPP service as back then Google was still naively seen as the “Do no evil” good guy, having just started up recently and giving away free things like previously unheared off 1GB of email storage etc.
So the situation is not quite comparable to AP and Facebook (and XMPP is far from dead), but it is still possible to draw some lessons from it.
So what?
Means there’s no incentive for Google to support it.
Then why did they once support XMPP?
What is your definition of win? Market share? Are you thinking in capitalist terms?
Nobody is forcing those people to use Facebook, and they are welcome to come here whenever they like.
The most free people. Best for society. Etc.
|They’re welcome to come here whenever they like .
Only if they know it exists and can still connect with the people and communities they care about. This is what the federated approach was supposed to fix, the silos, the community capture.
We know what Meta is, and we know our history, so we know Meta’s goal is to destroy the fediverse. Federating with Meta is not likely to yield your desired outcomes.
Can you explain what that means in this context? How does defederating Threads prevent Meta from extinguishing anything?
- Embrace: Join the fediverse with your existing user base that dwarfs the fediverse’s existing user base, and with infinitely more money.
- Extend: Use your size, in terms of users and capital, to steer the direction of the ActivityPub fediverse standard to your advantage and your competitors’ disadvantage. You see everyone else as a competitor because you are a corporation seeking to monopolize the user base for profit.
- Extinguish: See what Google did to XMPP for a concrete example.
Or what Google does right now with Chrome and web standards.
For those unaware of Google’s latest web browser malarkey: Web Environment Integrity
EFF/Cory Doctorow/Jacob Hoffman-Andrews: Your Computer Should Say What You Tell It To Say
Google is adding code to Chrome that will send tamper-proof information about your operating system and other software, and share it with websites. Google says this will reduce ad fraud. In practice, it reduces your control over your own computer, and is likely to mean that some websites will block access for everyone who’s not using an “approved” operating system and browser. It also raises the barrier to entry for new browsers, something Google employees acknowledged in an unofficial explainer for the new feature, Web Environment Integrity (WEI).
I genuinely want Gopher back.
I want to share information and to communicate. I don’t want every bowel movement tracked and monetizes. I don’t want 30 cross site requests when going to a news site. A single story should not require 10MB of JavaScript libraries.
I have no doubt that most of the authors of the original internet are aghast at what their high-minded creation has itself created.
The XMPP article was good, thanks!
But how would defederating prevent any of that?
It would make Threads unable to see content from instances defederating it and vice versa, preventing the Embrace step.
That’s a common misconception actually, any and all data available via federation is already public and easily scrapable even without running an instance of one’s own. Defederating only hides (in this case) Threads content from users on the instance doing the defederating, but the data is still public. Not to mention copies of it would still be fully available on any extant federated instances.
But they would still be unable to embrace (and, by extension, extend and extinguish) because users from Threads would be unable to interact with users from other instances. Basically, they’d be unable to get rid of a potential competitor using the EEE method.
But how could interoperability lead to extinguishing? That’s the part I don’t understand. By what means could Threads “extinguish” the network of instances that stay federated?
The same way we prevented any of that up ’till now: by doing our own thing on our own terms.
It prevents that specific strategy that would culminate in extinguishing. The idea being to siphon users away from other platforms, then add features that other platforms won’t or can’t implement, and use that to create an image of their own platform being better, having more features. If they succeed at having a lot of users oblivious to what’s happening, they will use those features, and when they don’t work for people on other platforms, they will blame the other platforms instead of their own, further cultivating the image that other platforms are broken/unreliable. In the end, they leave other platforms unable to compete, forcing users to either have a “broken”/incomplete experience, or migrate to their platforms. (Or leave the fediverse entirely). Or they can simply stop federating at that point, after users have left for their platform, cutting off the rest of the fediverse from content hosted on their platform.
The way defederating prevents a strategy like that is by cutting them off before they can get a foothold - they can’t make users feel left out if they don’t get to influence their experience in the first place.
Also, if the best people are on the instances threads can’t see, their userers will feel left out.
The important part, from @kev@fostodon.org:
This conversation will be off the record.
Ahaha, fuck no. If someone did go, please spill that tea.
The color codes and symbols aren’t at all propagandist.
I mean technically, but it’s not like it’s trying to be subtle about it. From the page:
I believe that Facebook represents one of the gravest threats to democracies around the world […]
The point is to discourage instances from federating with threads.
Lol what democracy
It’s not over yet, friend. There are still things worth fighting for, and still so, so much more we could lose. Don’t give up hope.
What
A flawed democracy is still better than no democracy
Oh lol they changed the interface. Just a day ago or so the colours were the opposite.
edit: proof
Yes, the second edition seemingly have had design changes.
I thought the same, then I saw the quote at the top of the page and realized it wasn’t strictly for information tracking
Just like red and green lights! :D
Huzzah for data visualization. This effect is happening all around you, in all sorts of content.
Nice, props to whoever made that site.
https://veganism.social/@nm should have added in the desc.
Huh. You’d think more instances were blocking, given the amount of buzz.
Being generallky in favor of letting individual users make this call that’s… mildly encouraging. Of course I happen to be in an instance that is blocking, so…
It’s worth noting that this still splits Mastodon pretty much in half. That’s arguably a bigger concern than anything else Meta may be doing. They may not even have to actually federate to break Mastodon, which is a very interesting dynamic.
It’s worth noting that this still splits Mastodon pretty much in half.
Not half, much less than that is blocking Meta. It seems the split is ideological, which means there will likely never be a fediverse where we’re all together, alongside Threads. I speak of experience, I went straight to AUTHORIZED FETCH and whitelist on my masto as soon as I saw how many just didn’t care. But I don’t care about Zuckerbots dropping out of my field of view and they’re probably happy they don’t have to deal with someone as paranoid as me; believing that Meta would exploit us given the chance. So, win win?
Oh, hard disagree on the last part, at least.
As always in left-leaning spaces, the best way to disarm any threat of reform is to wait for whatever purity test over a random issue to trigger a schism, sit back and watch. It’s not even the first time it happens to Mastodon specifically.
In this case, a potential competitor that already has a reputation for being overcomplicated and having bad UX now needs an extra FAQ item called “can I interact with Threads from Mastodon?” and the answer is “it depends”.
It’s terrible, self-destructive and worse than either a yes or no call. Zuck boned Masto by federating a handful of employee accounts only AND he’s still going to get the plausible deniability in front of regulators from federating with whatever’s left. I’d be impressed if I thought Meta did it on purpose instead of it being entirely self-inflicted.
Thanks for putting this in words, I had been struggling thinking about what was bothering me about this.
Hey can you help me reword the commenter above you about what they meant? I had a hard time fully understanding it, maybe I’m not updated enough about Meta to understand what exactly Zuck wants to have plausible-deniability about?
I can only tell you what I read it as: it’s about the current increase in regulations from the EU, this can be specifically read as a way to avoid getting regulated by DMA which aims to make any massively popular services have to have crossplay or compatibility methods that any other competitor can use.
It’s basically asking any service to have a standard way of interoperability with everyone else, which ActivityPub can be considered for social media, and Meta is using federating with ActivityPub based services while getting blocked by them as a plausibly deniable way of interoperability without actually having to do that because they’re blocked by most of the other services and they can surely find ways to block other popular servers by claiming that those servers are not doing as good of a job at moderating, allowing Meta to have their cake and eat it too basically.
I hope this helps, I tried to cover every possible way to explain it that I could think of. I tried to see if ChatGPT can help but I felt it was lacking.
It’s not just ideological. Many people and instances on the fediverse have minorities using them. These minorities rely on it to share and discuss in safe spaces. The federation of threads is a threat to these safe space.
This is not an exhaustive list. For example, Instagram Threads profiles are available from kbin.social, which is not listed here, though.
True, but I got it hot off the press- Creator have been at it since last night so it’s still first edition of dynamic lists. He also said that there was missing information (like what you mention I assume) but wasn’t able to get the info from the instance.
On kbin/mbin you can look at https:///federation it has a list of known instances and right at the end is the list of defederated ones.
That’s just like on Lemmy 18.5, which seems easily detectable by the system. Thanks for sharing, you’ll find links to the author and post in my comment. You could contact him there I think.
Thanks for this
There seems to a mistake saying that Threads is not blocked by lemmy.zip, when we defederated them months ago.
I know you did, so I went over to double check. Didn’t find any threads.net under the “Blocked instances” section when I searched the “Instances” page. Because blocks have been moved to it’s own tab. The search was running the last few days from what I understand so my first guess is that it’s expecting the 18.5-style instance overview, didn’t find threads.net (again, since it’s under a different tab) and wrongly tagged you.
I’ll link this convo on Mastodon so the creator can check it out.
Thanks for the understanding and help 😊
We’re all in this together.
https://veganism.social/@registrert@mastodon.sambands.net/111604033659552504
It’s somehow fun to see instance rules adding a clause about We do not federate with organization involved in Genocides
And a pitty that Meta is that Bad !
Am I the one who finds X federated in the status of this website as that instance is not federated ?
It also confuses me that it says like that instance is federated.
Yes. I get the idea, because federating with them is the “negative” option, but honestly it’s just confusing and overly opinionated for an infographic.
X = Federated = Bad
It’s not rocket science.Yeah X is the other hellsite.
We gotta pump these numbers up
Is Lemmy.world not going to defederate from Threads? Did I miss something?
Thanks so much for the link!
Time to migrate my account then ¯_(ツ)_/¯
That’s Mastodon.world or is that the same as lemmy.world?
Same admin.
I was right to avoid making my account there then lol
though ig you can just migrate accounts now with 0.19
Instead you went with the tankies and think that’s somehow better? lol
Much better. It’s modded directly by Lemmy devs and they don’t defederate well-modded instances.
Btw, “tankie” isn’t much of an insult if you meant it like that, the same way “woke” isn’t much of one to the people conservatives use it against. Fighting against economic inequality and discrimination are good things.
The Lemmy devs, who are also tankies, yeah.
Tankie is as much of an “insult” as Nazi is. Spreading disinformation & insults and glorifying Stalin and Mao while defending modern ruscism is just as vile and should be cancelled just the same. And it’s funny you say well-“modded” instances. I assume you mean moderated, which isn’t even done properly on Lemmy.ml itself, as they completely ignore reports of insults & disinformation from tankies.
Whatever. Thanks for showing your true colors. At least I can tag you appropriately now.“Anything that challenges my worldview is disinformation”
lmaoLemmy.ml does a great job keeping homophobes and nazis out, better than .world at least.
Lemmy.ml user using a hexbear hosted picture in a classic self-own. 🤡
If you’re such a fan of starvation then please, do us all the favor.
Stalin and Mao were glorious and the tankies are correct.
If you’re such a fan of starvation then please, do us all the favor.
What is fedipact?
“i am an instance admin/mod on the fediverse. by signing this pact, i hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse. project92 is a real and serious threat to the health and longevity of fedi and must be fought back against at every possible opportunity”
fedipact.online
This makes it just confusing? The pink heart = good, but the red cross = good too? But again the red cross seems bad as green = blocked.
Sorry I don’t get it.
- green checkmark = blocked
- pink heart = blocked, signed fedipact
- yellow exclamation mark = limited
- red cross = not blocked
Thank, I’m probably an idiot :-)
Edit: I’ll get to it (my instance is small, I’m not very knowledgeable about the nitty gritty stuff, can I do it from Jerboa for example, or is it in some config file? I remember putting someone on the whitelist and thus blocking the whole fediverse…)
It’s a silly hashtag för instances that are in a “pact” to block Threads
why is silly
Because the people signed the pact did it long time ago, before any details about Threads federation was known. It was a typical fedi kneejerk reaction.
You’d have to be a dumbass to federate with these megacorps lol. We’re here precisely because of the decisions of one such company.
I guess majority on fedi are dumbasses in that case ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Mastodon is pretty fucked up anyway because everyone is on mastodon.social.
The key detail about Threads is that it’s owned by Meta. That’s the reason to block Threads. It was known back then, so there’s nothing silly about it.
is facebook
Not nearly enough.
This is why I love DBZER0
I hope LW limits federation
Have the admins said anything? Why are we federated with them?
Yep. They don’t care and they’re going to keep federation with Facebook so “users have the choice to opt out”
Mastodon’s largest instance is letting them in too
The new Lemmy 19 allows users to block instances so that’s not unreasonable for the largest instances. Gotta show new users that users have control.
username checks out
Lol lemmy world admins are all chuds
Good. On one hand it’s good to see fediverse stuff coming mainstream, on the other hand the last thing we want is a load of celebrities and brands trying to cannibalise said fediverse as an opportunity to corner the market instead of genuinely useful resources for communication
