The exchange is about Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!
The exchange is about Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!
Monetizing and controlling user experience is their bag, not mine. I don’t have an expectation of perfect privacy here, but neither do I have an expectation of being milked and corralled into funneling my entire life through the platform to be harvested, which is exactly the entire model of Facebook.
Having Meta come in and be the 800lb Gorilla isn’t going to move things in any direction that is good. This isn’t some new company we know nothing about. We know everything about them, and we know above all else that the boundaries of what they are willing to do in order to monetize users is limited solely by what they are prevented by law from doing.
Here’s a raw link without me trying to hyperlink off of regular text, hopefully that will work: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
OK, I’ve read that link and it still doesn’t really explain how exactly Meta intends to monetise other peoples’ posts - “collect data from and monetise”, how exactly are they going to monetise other peoples’ posts on other instances, when they have no ability to e.g. serve ads to those people?
Well, it’s neither my desire nor my obligation to control your opinion on the matter.
It seems a pretty clear strategy given literally every single thing we know about the company. They’ve got a bunch of well paid smart folks who do just that for a living. I don’t need to be able to predict their moves to have a sense of what they will push for. There is literally not one single example of them doing anything else as a company.
I don’t think anyone is questioning your cynicism of Meta’s intentions or motivations, but the nature of the Fediverse is specifically designed to make it very difficult (if not impossible) for any one party to control the entire thing. It’s a question of how not if.
The worst thing I could see is something like the development of React where FB has an overwhelming advantage in sheer resources and ends up having a major influence on the direction of software trends. But that would still just be a popularity thing and would not actively stop anyone from doing their own thing. Maybe there is something in the license for ActivityPub that would let them pull a Google-vs-Oracle reverse engineering, but again that won’t stop other instances or developers from ignoring them if they wanted.
Knowing they want to do it, combined with their track record, should be enough reason to resist. We don’t have to understand HOW to be wary of it.
Edited to add - there is ample evidence it’s what they will try to do, and absolutely zero evidence that they intend to use us for anything but their own interests. It’s literally the one and only thing they have done as a company.
Here’s the rundown:
What? Defederating doesn’t fix that.
The solution is 1: to make sure users understand that it’s a bad idea to flock to meta’s instance, and 2: to implement that feature in the fediverse if everyone likes it so much they’re willing to leave. The solution is not defederating now because of the posibbilty that they do that in the future.
But meta cannot claim all the fediverse as accesible content. Therefore making it akin to using facebook and reddit. Separate services that serve different demographics
It’s not cynicism if the other party has a track record of behaving in an anti-competitive manner. The Fediverse became a competitor once it showed non-negligible growth.
It’s not cynicism, it’s weariness.