I got a notification on #Facebook that #Meta plans to use my posts etc. for training #AI and said they were using the Legitimate Interest justification for doing it.
Anyone over the age of 30 who has spend any time in tech-adjacent spaces still cheering for #BigTech "joining" the #Fediverse is fucking deluding themselves. We've been through so many cycles of this shit over the past twenty years, how some people can still trust #facebook to do anything remotely ethical is beyond me.
They're not here to join, they're here to destroy. This is just the most cost-effective, PR-friendly way of doing it.
I'm of the opinion that #threads should not be engaged with in any way.
Not because I think it's a threat to the #fediverse, although it could potentially be.
Not because I think it will bring a huge amount of bad actors that will harass users on other instances, although that is definitely a risk.
My reason is simpler; #Facebook has done so much evil, society eroding shit, that I don't work with them on principle.
And Facebook knows that as well, which is why threads is instagram branded.
I need more folks to know who are talking about #Meta or #Facebook joining the Fediverse that the company has coordinated with the federal government in the US to remove people from disability benefits.
No, I'm not joking. Many folks on disability know better than to EVER post pictures on that platform as they've been used against them. Or to ever talk about having a slightly better day for their ailments than usual. Having them spy on the #fediverse is NOT okay and will actively make this platform less safe for many disabled people. That #FediPact should be seriously considered.
Instagram und Facebook gibt es demnächst für zehn Euro monatlich. Dafür entfällt die Werbung. Das Tracking und die Analyse des Nutzerverhaltens aber bleibt. Im #Fediverse hingegen gibt es weder Werbung noch Tracking. Soll heißen: Bedankt euch mit einem Dauerauftrag bei eurem Admin - auch 1€ ist schon schön als Einstieg. 🎃
If your instance admin is speaking favorably about #facebook joining the #fediverse, get out now before they start feeding your data to the company partly responsible for overturning several elections (by violating data privacy laws with impunity). The company that demonstrates a clear conservative bias with every act.
Looking for a safer instance? Try this list of spaces with admins of integrity.
The #ActivityPub plugin for #Wordpress is an absolute game changer when it comes to reader engagement. I published a #blog post yesterday and it already has 8 comments and 7 of them are from #Fediverse. The total number of comments is actually much higher, the plugin doesn't handle reactions to comments yet.
Meanwhile the blogpost has received 4 views from #LinkedIn and 2 from #Facebook.
Embrace: what they are doing now, launch a competing but compatible service with that of Mastodon. The vast majority of users, most of whom don't care about the privacy and intimacy of the Mastodon network will go with the brand with the most name recognition.
Extend: attract users to their centralized network with features like search, which they have the resources to do but the rest of the Mastodon network does not. But also include features for tracking and advertising, sell this as a good thing, "a better place to grow your perasonal brand, your business."
Extinguish: after attracting a critical mass of users large enough to decimate the user base of the competing Mastodon network, queitly remove compatibility with the Mastodon network, this will effect only 10% of Mastodon users because the other 90% will be on Threads. "Who cares if we lose contact with that tiny minority of old Mastodon users, they should have just joined Threads by now anyways, they still can. It has search, and more people voted for it with their patronage it, and you don't have to think about what instance to join, its easier!"
Enshittification: without any real competition to keep people from leaving for an alternative, start exploiting users for more and more content for ad revenue, exploit advertisers with ever-increasing costs of ad revenue.
They are scared to death about losing control over the Internet that they had gained over the past 15 years or so, and they are fighting to take that control back for themselves. We built this, but now a corporation like Meta/Facebook feels they have the right to exploit it for all its riches until it is destroyed.
Don't let it happen. #Fediblock is the only way to protect our home-grown community from corporate take-over.
Point blank, a mass Fediblock isn't going to work with #Meta.
The cold truth is that people will use #Barcelona whether it federates or not. Even if it fails, Barcelona will probably have more users out of the gate than almost every project save Mastodon. Hell, it will probably eclipse #Bluesky too.
And even if you convince every server to defederate -- which you won't -- this will not be a PR coup for the Fediverse. Newspaper headlines won't blare "Fediverse successfully resists Meta." Instead, they will probably follow @gruber take with "Open source zealots complain that an open protocol is open."
Again, as I've said countless times, I'm not saying you should federate with Barcelona or any Meta-owned property. If you want, defederate. The joy of the Fediverse is freedom of association.
But a mass Fediblock doesn't solve a few important problems with Meta, and perhaps makes them worse.
The most critical problem is that Meta users need to migrate away from Meta-owned social networks. Until now, a migration path has simply been unfeasible to most. But when Barcelona gets launched, it is possible that many of them will become aware of a greater Fediverse.
How to build that awareness? By interacting with them through services beyond Barcelona.
This approach works. I've interacted with many Mastodon users through services beyond Mastodon, and this has resulted in adoption of other Fediverse software. #Calckey is a case in point.
However, there's a bigger problem concerning Meta: Fediverse replacements for Meta-owned social networks aren't getting mass adoption. And it's not because these apps aren't good.
#Pixelfed is an #Instagram replacement. It is also one of the slickest apps on the Fediverse. Yet, Pixelfed only has 150,000 registered accounts.
#Friendica is a #Facebook replacement. It's been around since 2010. It is a mature product that does many things very well, but Friendica only has 17,000 registered accounts.
The software is great but we are failing to effectively market the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Now I'm trying my darnedest to change this, and so are many people. But facts are facts. Fediverse alternatives to Meta are a blip on the radar.
Refusing to federate with Barcelona won't change this. How do I know?
Because we don't federate now, and the status quo remains intact.
Meanwhile, Meta is practically gifting Pixelfed and Friendica an opportunity for federation, and it would be foolish to not consider broader implications.
How is it that more people aren't considering this opportunity?
Dare I say that most people -- including devs -- suffer from myopia concerning what the Fediverse is. The Fediverse is not Mastodon, and it is wrong to view the Fediverse solely through the eyes of Mastodon.
And I'll go further: by focusing Barcelona on text, I suspect that Meta is likewise making the same mistake of viewing the Fediverse as a "Twitter killer".
What they may not be considering is that the Fediverse might be a "Meta killer" too. And connecting Barcelona to the Fediverse is opening a can of worms Meta hasn't entirely considered yet.
If Barcelona is indeed text-based, what will happen when a Barcelona user encounters Pixelfed and asks, "Why does this post show reels? And why can't I do the same?"
Believe me, this is the kind of content that triggers migration.
We need to think bigger than Fediblock. Yes, for your own mental health and safety, you may not want to federate with Barcelona. However, there needs to also be a means for Barcelona users to encounter content outside Barcelona.
Perhaps there needs to be "lobby" servers that help Barcelona users enter the greater Fediverse -- helping them make the switch beyond Meta.
Alex Norris made this entry of Webcomic Name that perfectly describes Fedi right now.
Fedi grew out of groups forced out of places like Twitter and Facebook. It is a space built specifically to protect everyone here from the systems that did it.
When we talk about #P92, #Facebook, #Meta, #Bluesky, and newcomers who immediately want changes to make them more like other spaces, this is exactly that in 3 panels.
In Nebraska muss eine 19jährige nach einer Abtreibung ins Gefängnis, weil Facebook ihre privaten Nachrichten an ihre Mutter, in denen der Schwangerschaftsabbruch besprochen wurde, der Polizei übergeben hat.😡
:facebook: ☣️ FLOSS.social was launched in the (now small) Mastodon signup wave at the end of March 2018, as a result of the #Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Since then, #Meta has shown little to no sincere interest in reforming their culture of abusing their users' human rights of privacy.
As a result, there is no reason to suspect they'll be any different if they join the #Fediverse, and our instance will respond accordingly.
Folks, the reason #Facebook/ #Instagram/ #Meta/ Zuckerberg hasn’t launched #Threads in the #EU isn’t because the EU is determined to protect your privacy, it’s because the EU is determined to protect The Single Market (peace be upon it) from anticompetitive behaviour. It’s because they’re using Instagram to launch Threads and sharing data between them (and not with EU startups that might want to use that data too). It’s #antitrust, not #privacy. It’s markets, not people.
“The Kansas Reflector published an artical about Meta censoring environmental articles about climate change — deeming them ‘too controversial’.
Facebook then censored the article about Facebook censorship, and then after an independent site published a copy of the climate change article, Facebook censored it too.”
I and others have talked a lot about the #Facebook / #Meta#FediVerse issue over the past few days, analyzing their strategy, and possible responses, and why pre-emptive blocking isn't an effective measure.
This leaves the question of "what should we do?" So....
ITT: actually effective measures for building the resilience of the FediVerse and #ActivityPub, informed by the experience of the #OSS movement.
Don't be naive, people. #Facebook is only interested in collecting more data and to connect that data to profiles to feed to the ad machinery. If #ActivityPub can be used for that, they will give it a try. That's it. That's all. It's still Facebook.
With the Zuckerberg takeover impending, there's a lot of confusion circulating about the use of user-level and instance-level blocks, and how our online expressions can be secured against Meta. Everyone who objects to their accounts being mined by the Zuckerberg entity for data collection, AI ingestion, monetization, and possible ghost-profile building needs to understand this problem. Here's information to clarify.
Neither a user-level block, or an instance-level block, will protect our posts from Meta data-mining by default on a Mastodon instance. Posts won't be delivered directly, but can be ingested by other means; if, for example, users on Meta-federated instances boost them.
However, both user and instance blocks will totally prevent post delivery in all cases IF your host instance has enabled the functionality called Authorized Fetch.
By default, Authorized Fetch is off on Mastodon instances and most haven't turned it on. If this concern is important to you, you might want to respectfully reach out to your admins and let them know. Remember that they are working hard to provide and sustain online community at no charge. It's likely they won't be very familiar with it and will need time to look into it.
"The newly released documents reveal how Meta tried to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors, including Snapchat and later Amazon and YouTube, by analyzing the network traffic of how its users were interacting with Meta’s competitors."