With the upcoming #meta#Project92 Fediverse service, there has been a, well, robust discussion of how to avoid threats looming. Those advocating mass-preemptive defederation make three cases for it.
➡️ To avoid data mining ...which Defederation does virtually zero to avoid any big tech entity scraping all the fedi public social graph today - Want proof?
see: https://is.gd/q8U2pv
The next argument is about poorly moderated P92 user posts and ad spam.
Which I'll discuss next.
Wrapping up: This isn't a new fight. OSS devs have been here before. Many times. And won.
We have all the tools, development energy & moderation tech to protect our people we need - without first strikes.
We have past #OSS & open tech fights to learn off of & as @atomicpoet & @erlend have argued well: being open - if they are - is a first crack in #Meta's armor.
We may get a window - if we both protect our people & don't act insularly - to run an #EEE campaign reaching out to THEIR users.
@tchambers@atomicpoet@erlend I'm curious - if they link to us, do they link us to them? Because it says you can become a Facebook user through Mastodon...
Having coming to #Mastodon BECAUSE my #UX on #Facebook was so abysmal, it amuses me to see that Zuckerberg thinks Mastodon users will go, “Oh! A doorway to FB! Gosh, I’ll just walk right through, then!” Been-there-done-that, you know.
➡️ To defend against being Embraced, Extended, and Extinguished.
This is a real risk, and others point to Google and Facebook and XMPP, or Google and RSS Google reader. Where a big entity takes over, then rug pulls or extends an open standard slowly into an non-standard, non-interoperable functionally siloed service.
This is a real risk. But you don't - and can't - defend against this by defederation. I'll explain why next. #EEEE
O would argue that Google didn't ruin RSS though. Then leaving left a huge void that no one was able to fill. Their product was just that good. They didn't do anything to disrupt RSS, the others just didn't do enough to make RSS happen.
As far as I remember, this was a long time ago. And I loved Google reader, and I did try looking for alternatives.
Heading into the 2010s, Google started aggregating everything together into "Google services", an all-in-one account encompassing email, chat, other things, and what was supposed to be their social media site, G+
Initially, this was interoperable through various protocols, notably XMPP and RSS.
What happened is they acquired enough of a user base, and then started breaking these protocols one by one. XMPP stopped working some time in 2013, I believe.
@davidlove It's actually a very open quetion how much Google killed RSS - by dropping support of Google Reader in 2013... versus how much Twitter and FB killed it, as more folks were migrating THERE to get updates from brands vs RSS feeds. Without question losing Google Reader hurt, but RSS survived and tried after, in a server-to-server way, and then in Podcating, where it took over the entire audio world as a format.
Last post on defending against #EEE: Until we get a robust test suite for #ActivityPub the risk is Meta or others "extend it" or the converse, support "almost all of it," but miss crucial bits.
Dave Winer mentioned once that Google leaving bits of RSS support out of Google Reader hurt the effort for years. (But it recovered and #EEE failed over time)
I'm working with a number of stakeholders now to see if we can build out an alpha of just this. Is crucial work. Want to help? DM me.
@tchambers Could you elaborate a bit more on the test suite? Is this to check the compliance of an entity using #ActivityPub is following the defined standard?
@abinmn Yes exactly. See this thread from the WC3 working group on exactly this:
"If someone came along selling you an ‘activitypub’ app or service— or a ‘fediverse’ or social ‘web’ thingo— In an open market where people lie, cheat, or bend the truth, how would you or any of us try to figure out if it was compliant and interoperable and actually interoperating?"
To the argument that we should defederate to avoid #EEE: We cannot avoid Meta's embrace of the open ActivityPub standard.
Even if the entire existing Fedi pre-blocked them. IG has 1.6 BILLION users. in one day just on their own they will be the size of the current Fedi's MAU and grow from there.
Instantly the biggest ActivityPub entity on the planet. With or without a mass block.
So if we can't stop the embrace, what can we do to combat the second E?
Will cover that next.
What would be interesting is if #Facebook / #Instagram adopted #ActivityPub to segment its users across different instances. It could have one instance or bridge for each state or even province, all federated to communicate with each other. Eventually each instance could have its own moderation team, privacy policy, jurisdiction-specific rules, hosting.
What would be interesting is if #Facebook / #Instagram adopted #ActivityPub to segment its users across different instances. It could have one instance or bridge for each state or even province, all federated to communicate with each other. Eventually each instance could have its own moderation, #privacy policy, jurisdiction-specific rules, (outsourced?) hosting.
@tchambers I'm just wondering how big the network traffic will be from such a humongous Meta instance (if they decide to onboard 1.6B users eventually) and if an average mastodon instance will be able to handle even a fraction of it...
@supernovae
I've been meaning to ask: who was actually at that meeting? It seems like it would be good to clear that up, if it hasn't been already, so that people will stop speculating and wrongly assuming.
Gosh, it's so weird, I scrolled through your posts & replies until I got to the post with Spongebob excited to meet with Meta, but the only mention of who went - that I found, at least - was when you said that it was 'admins from the discord'.
Maybe you deleted the post where you said the names of who actually was at the meeting? (Those blueberry pancakes sounded good though, and the peppers and tomatoes from your garden are beautiful btw)
Tbh I think you owe it to stux and dansup (and this community) to extend that olive branch of being open about this. If you're saying that it sucked having people react badly toward you, imagine how those two felt, having not even gone to the meeting!
@supernovae
Well I think people are concerned because they have questions that no one is willing to answer, and ending hostility is probably going to require some recognition of that, and some honest communication that sets people's minds at ease.
There can't be secrets like this if we're a decentralized network.
@tchambers Simple answer, Build your community. Make your instance a real community with a rich local feed and members that interact. This will make you and your users impervious to anything big social can throw at you.
So, to avoid the "Extend" of #EEE, which is the real risk point, what can be done since mass defederation won't protect ActivityPub?
This isn't a new battle. Tons of efforts to #EEE open tech fail. As @emc2 has put well #OSS software has fought and won this battle many times. As @davew the godfather of RSS & Podcasting said: "Podcasting has withstood countless attacks like this, and has always been left standing as unsullied as ever."
@oceaniceternity@tchambers@emc2@davew maybe the core web technologies are story. HTML/CSS were dominated by Internet Explorer. Even setting new standards. But enough people fought back, the standards were better drafted and we still have this largely open web based on these core technologies. ActiveX never won. Java applets neither. Flash, gone. XMLhttprequests were standardised, and now we have fetch, ES6, wasm. Chromium (Google & Microsoft) are def in a position of power, but the industry is still catering to other rendering engines.
No company ever tried to #EEE more than Microsoft tried to kill Netscape and own a proprietary browser. And in the end they had to fold to an open source Chromium with multiple stakeholders. And Firefox lives.
@murb@oceaniceternity@tchambers@emc2@davew even older, both JScript and J++ were early attempts at controlling the narrative that failed. (and I'm not convinced that TypeScript isn't JScript 2.0)
I generally avoid the JavaScript ecosystem, so I'm not the best source. I thought typescript was an attempt to add types onto JavaScript to make it more suitable for long-term, large-scale development.
@emc2@jakeosx yeah, was kinda trolling, I kind a like simpler programming languages ... ;) (but main point was that, TypeScript is not running directly in any Browser iirc, which was the case with JScript (not sure about J++)
J++ was 100% Microsoft's attempt to do a hostile takeover of java, back during the whole sun vs. Microsoft java war. It flopped pretty hilariously, as I recall.
Worth noting that java was not OSS back then (though it did have Linux support)
First: Innovate and outcompete. Esp where you can do things giants can't. We can always outcompete Meta at being more private, ad-free, better moderated, more open. We need to compete on UX.
XMPP may have been hurt by FB and Google's rug pull but my recollection was more like this user when asked why did XMPP die and SMPT thrived?
Fedi clients, server software will need to just be better - something #OSS devs have done for years. And we can too.
BTW, re-reading this Hacker News post on XMPP reminds me of some claims against the Fediverse. Things we should be fixing and improving at light speed. (And I think are being upgraded fast)
@tchambers Yeah, but I gotta tell you: I’m JUST a user here, and so far my UX is WAY better than it ever was on FB, and comparable to what it was on Twitter. But over there, my UX degraded - that’s why I migrated. Degraded=migrated. The same thing is happening to Google and Amazon, i. e., continual degradation. There’s a tipping point when the user doesn’t matter anymore. If you get big enough, you can sacrifice all kinds of UX on the margins-you just pretend they were never there.
What else can defend against the "Extend" of #EEE?
Having a broad set of OTHER allies inside the tent of stakeholders. Growing the base of those who "embrace" it to even out the power dynamics.
And btw, defederating developers PREMPTIVELY before they launch a single activtypub server, is the fastest way to make OTHER potential developers run for the hills. (Actually to run to Bluesky)
The last thought for the night on this is what I think is the most important. Up next.
Last thought on #EEE: We need to support our standards makers STAT. The best defense against "extend" is a clear line of what we are defending.
#ActivityPub has needed a robust "test suite" to test compliance for a while & good efforts were unfinished. They need to be picked up at warp speed. To see an example of his working for other tech see: https://webmention.rocks/
The creator of the Wordpress ActivtyPub plugin said that he wished he had this.
More on why in my last post next.
There is precedent for this, and it works. Something like this exists for Java, as a kind of inter-implementation compact (I used to work for the OpenJDK group). It specifically acts as a way of preventing EEE within the JVM community.
➡️ To defend against poorly moderated P92 users & ad spam.
We have all the tools for that now - as users & as admins, and deal with exactly this from poorly moderated servers EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. And if we find ANY server not responsive THEN we block. Protecting our users is our 1st job but we have all we need - WITHOUT first strike defederation.
The third argument I'll look at next is to avoid #EEEE - "Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish."
@tchambers there is no question that meta is incapable of properly moderating their platforms. You are telling your users that someone(s) must get hurt before you will do anything. Moderation is never simply reactive, there is also a pro-active element to it as well. And we have overwhelming evidence that federation with meta will cause harm to people commonly targeted for harassment and abuse. This breaks the first item of the Mastodon Server Covenant.
@smallpatatas That's a good argument for Limiting an instance, since public posts won't automatically get fed to the limited instance in either direction. Also a nice upswing: Someone trying to follow from the limited instance will always need authorization to follow, even if said user's default policy is to allow all followers.
@BalooUriza@smallpatatas Which gets us back to the key point: we already have effective tools we can use to protect ourselves. Use the scalpel first, and if that fails, then fine - bring out the sledgehammer.
@tchambers@mjf_pro@BalooUriza No one would say this about Gab, and Meta has done far more harm in this world than gab could ever dream of doing. Attacks on trans people are rampant on fb - any other server would immediately have that sledgehammer come down.
@smallpatatas Nobody says this about Gab because nobody normal would use Gab. Normal people do use Meta, much as we may resent it. Do you want to show normal people there's life beyond corporate hellscapes or do you want to lock people into a silo? If you want to invite people out of the silo but you're concerned the silo is badly moderated, Limit, not suspend.
For the purposes of this discussion, "normal" is being used as shorthand for "not a fascist".
@tchambers
On the "out-compete" remarks. It's silly to talk about competing with one of the richest corporations in the world. We don't need competition, we need cooperation. Philosophically speaking, valorizing competition as intrinsically good is what's driving this civilization off a cliff.
But practically to this issue, we would win by cooperating on a unified fediblock. Not only would it protect this network and its users, but it would visibly humiliate and defy an enormous and universally despised corporation. It takes guerilla tactics for the weaker combatant to win an asymmetrical war
@tchambers
Linux is thriving because it's a community which survives by cooperating. Linux doesn't really compete with the proprietary OSes in the markets they dominate. But this is all rather academic to my original point. Imagine what the effect of a unified fediblock would be to Meta. It would ruin their unveil. Wouldn't that be fun?
@ophiocephalic My answer is they wouldn't even notice in terms of new user sign ups and growing to do the "embrace" part of the "embrace, extend, extinguish." That wave of them embracing the ActivityPub standard at scale is happening even if the entirely of the Fedi said no.
@tchambers
It doesn't matter in the slightest whether or not they use AP, or what the numbers are. What matters is whether or not this community survives, whether or not people feel safe here, whether or not we are supported or exploited
@tchambers
Simple fact is that certain admins - and you weren't one of them - chose to cooperate with Meta and hide information from their communities on the fediverse. We could unite and cooperate, but instead, we're divided. There will definitely be a schism. The fediverse will be torn apart. It's a bad outcome, but you advocate this over a unified stand
@ophiocephalic My hope: that folks in the defederate now, consider that there may be a smarter way to fight than first strikes that still protects our people.
And i hope that they also see that those admins who are in the "monitor like a hawk with your finger on the button" are equally wary of Meta and will be protecting their users at every step of the way appropriate to what we see - and ready to systemically act if called for.
@tchambers
Tim I am here to tell you that we are definitely fediblocking Meta and absolutely nothing will stop us from doing that. We are choosing a schism here, everyone needs to understand that. There will be no competing with a corporation who federates and dominates with a billion users. They will rapidly censor anyone from a fediverse instance who advocates for migration, just as they did to the join-pixelfed hashtag on instagram. I just wanted to point out that we could, all together, have chosen differently. We could have chosen to cooperate, keep each other safe and give Meta a bloody nose in a single blow. Best of luck to those instances who choose to become ancillary to Meta
@ophiocephalic
If they did a big push to their 1.6 billion IG users (who knows if they will but they could) literally days later they would still be larger then the entire monthly active user base of the Fedi - even if we did a full preemptive block.
@tchambers
So what? Imagine the news cycle if the fediverse united and said no to Meta. There are many things to value and care about besides raw numbers
@ophiocephalic@tchambers It’s actually not silly. Think of it in terms of mom & pop vs Big Business. Mom and Pop focus on the experience, get intimate with their guests and actually connect. We can do the same. Big companies don’t like to take big gambles design wise and aren’t on the ground taking feedback from users. We have that ability to connect with users directly and see what works, can take liberties with design etc
@damon@tchambers
My point has more to do with the value system through which we view the issue. I actually think Masto is in some ways already superior to the corporate networks. But here's the thing. We can either cooperate with each other in the fediverse... or some of us can cooperate with Meta, by say, signing their NDAs
@ophiocephalic@tchambers But, you said compete so that doesn’t really reflect your first sentence. Irrespective to that, everyone has cooperated on some level. The NDA’s are standard and to protect Meta. Everything known about their project has come by way of inside leaks and not public from Meta themselves. Any business worth anything would’ve protected secret information.
@damon@tchambers
What the NDAs have done is to permanently destroy trust between those who signed them and the rest of the community. No amount of rationalization will change that. The signers chose to cooperate with Zuckerberg and hide knowledge from the rest of us on the fediverse
The Fediverse is not 100% public, but also there is immense value in federation for Meta, it allows them to merge their social graph with the Fediverse Social graph, which can provide them a ton of insight they would not otherwise get by scraping.
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