There is one argument I’ve seen missing in most of the de/federation discussions, that I think should be mentioned, and warrants it’s own discussion.
I’ve seen a lot of people mentioning that defederating with Meta means we have broken the promise of Fediverse, that you can use one account to interact with whatever service you choose, and that it should be inclusive.
But I don’t agree that’s the main idea. There is something that’s more important, and to make sure I’m not misinterpreting it, I’ll just directly quote various websites about the Fediverse I’ve found (I was just taking top results for Fediverse on DuckDuckGo, but I did select only the parts that are the most important point for me personally). But I do concur, I was not able to find a single source of truth, and I’m not really sure how credible the resources are, so please disagree with me if it’s wrong or I’ve chosen some no-name site that just matched my rethorics.
https://www.fediverse.to/ has the following sentence as the main hero header:
The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.
Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.
Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.
Another search result is for fediverse.party, which has the following quite in https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/ :
Fediverse (also called Fedi) has no built-in advertisements, no tricky algorithms, no one big corporation dictating the rules. Instead we have small cozy communities of like-minded people.
The page also mentions some link for knowledge about the fediverse. Some of them are only tutorials about how to join, but there’s also https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_the_Fediverse%3F , with the following part:
How does it compare to traditional social media?
…
Morals
- Traditional social media is neither social nor media. It is not made for you, it is made to exploit you and it is full of misleading ads and fake news.
- This is because the aim of traditional social media is to make a whole lot of money.
- The aim of the Fediverse is to benefit the people.
- The aim of traditional social media is to control and steer the users.
- The aim of the Fediverse is to empower the users to control the Fediverse.
I wasn’t able to find more websites directly about the fediverse, and I did not want to quote random articles. But for completion sake, here is a list of FAQ/About sections of websites that are about the Fediverse, but don’t directly support or imply the point of view I was trying to make (one that can be best summarized by the Morals in the last quite):
- https://fediverse.info/frequently-asked-questions
- https://fedi.tips/what-is-mastodon-what-is-the-fediverse/
- https://framatube.org/w/9dRFC6Ya11NCVeYKn8ZhiD
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
- https://the-federation.info/
The split seems to be 50:50, but at least for my DuckDuckGo search results, the https://www.fediverse.to/ is the first result you find, and that one is pretty clear about what Fediverse should be. I wanted to start a discussion about what do the users here see as a main selling point of the fediverse, and whether morals and non-profit nature of the instances is important to most of the users as it is to me, or whether you’d rather have interconnectness and inclusivness.
I believe the point of Fediverse is making sure no big corporate decision can ruin the whole thing for everyone. Since a huge amount of people will be using the Meta apps, a bad decision will mess it up for quite a lot of people.
I personally like the new Threads app. Most of my friends use Instagram and this is a nice change from the reels and all that crap. But I definitely think it should not join the Fediverse.
The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.
If thr Fediverse really is decentralized and open-source, then all of those other things are just suggestions. Nothing is stopping Meta (or me, or you) from launching an instance that has ads, investors, and sells all its data to people, whether that data comes from that instance or is discovered through federation.
But this will be a test of the protocols that underpin the Fediverse. I’ve read that the devs were extremely paranoid, and made sure that a bare minimum of personally identifying information is exposed between servers. The whole point of this is posting publically, after all, so some info needs to be exchanged. Meta already has access to our public posts just by scraping the instance, they don’t need to federate to do that. But is there anything more leaking out through Federation? We’re about to find out.
Nothing is stopping Meta (or me, or you) from launching an instance that has ads, investors, and sells all its data to people, whether that data comes from that instance or is discovered through federation.
You are right, they are only suggestions. But suggestions I would really like to se enforced, and that is exactly what defederation is for. If we want to uphold the values mentioned in the quote, and not let our content be monetized through federation, then defederating with those who don’t uphold the values is the solution. It’s as simple as that.
Meta already has access to our public posts just by scraping the instance, they don’t need to federate to do that.
While they don’t have to federate to do that, federation makes it a lot easier, because the content is served right to them. It also legitimizes them monetizing and stealing our content, because after all - that’s how the protocol works. While scraping for content is much more effort and grey-zone, since then they also have to somehow show it to the users - by impersonating us? By using fake accounts or bots? Probably, but that’s still more effort. And that’s what I take issue with. Meta would decide how is our content shown, they would be monetizing it and they would be using it to manipulate with their users (because as far as I know, the instance you are on is in full control of the UI, and the order in which content is shown and how), or watch and analyze how users interact with it. And I want no part in that, in spirit of the above mentioned suggestions.
The promise of Fediverse is that it is decentralised. Allowing each instance has its own policy is part of that.
Assuming the fediverse becomes mainstream one thing I hope to actually see is that existing company forums start to join the fediverse.
Think if you no longer needed to login to EA’s website to post about bugs to the Sims. Or if Prusa’s 3d printer community forums could also be found right here… Or any other existing community help forum.
The problem though is, that in order to get there, Meta and others have to bring the users and essentially show the way first.
I would make a simpler and more objective rule: no instance should host more than (say) 25% of active user accounts.
That’s a useful health check, but not a useful rule for de-federation. It’s more a sign that we have become lopsided and need to correct in other ways.
I think the solution for those against defederating with meta is to have accounts on instances in both fediverses and merge the feeds.
There is no “should be” when it comes to tools. Only what people use them for.
The bits about “ad-free” were clearly because who the hell would’ve thought Facebook of all companies would pop into the ActivityPub scene? I’m sure they would adjust that statement now.
But fediverse isn’t only a tool, but also a network and thus, a community. And a vision is pretty important for communities. So the question about what should be the main values and ideals behind the fediverse are important. If we would be only here because the fediverse is a tool - a social network - then there is a lot of better alternatives, with more content and better user experience. I mean, unless you want to talk about some super-controversial topics that would get you banned, there’s not really that much of a difference in how limited are you in the way you interact with Reddit, Facebook or Twitter, apart from the UI being a little bit more difficult.
And letting any other big player into the fediverse will only lead to them eventually bringing the difficulties in, as has been already mentioned in other posts - by extending ActivityPub, and using their teams to create difficult to implement but really handy features that any FOSS will have difficulties with implementing, causing them to be inferior and bringing people over to them.
This federation stuff is nothing new. Nobody calls emailing a network, they call it a tool. That is what ActivityPub is. This culture of glorification surrounding “federation” is silly.
I’ve though about it some more and I have realized something - while I definitely don’t want Meta to have any access to my content, so I will simply not be interacting with any instance that won’t defederate, if it would allow me to message people on Messenger with my account on a random federated server, I’ll be all in - but only use the instance for messaging. Which reminds me that I don’t really know how interconnected are Threads with the rest of Meta ecosystem - will you be able to message someone on Facebook from Threads? As far as I know, I don’t even think you can message someone on Instagram from Messenger, unless they have a FB account - at least I never managed to do that.
So I’m 90% sure that will never happen.