No, Mark Zuckerberg won't meet you in the lobby Chris Trottier.
Recently one of the fediverse's most ardent proponents of collaboration with Meta produced a long thread in which he details his argument for embracing the P92 gambit with open arms. This post is a response.
If you're wondering why he is not tagged or addressed directly in his thread, that's because Chris is want to block anyone who offers up even the most polite of substantive counterpoints. We'll just toodle along over here thanks. The intent is not actually to debate him, but to provide food for thought to those who might have been persuaded by his relentless advocacy to federate.
Trottier seems to believe that ActivityPub possesses extraordinary powers: "ActivityPub means that whatever of Meta’s userbase that’s exposed to federation will diversify into other platforms […] This diversification reduces the dependence of users on a single platform, giving them more choices and potentially drawing them away from Meta."
But he never acknowledges that Meta platforms comprise an algorithmically-governed censorship regime which repress information of many kinds - for example, the #joinpixelfed hashtag, which was banned on Instagram along with the Pixelfed account itself. Why would this entity allow pied pipers of the fediverse to frolic freely on P92 and evangelize escape from its enclosure?
For that matter, why does he think that would work at all? The userbase of Instagram will be prompted to join Threads. That means something of the existing network effect of that longstanding service will be transplanted in; and rest assured, there will be no account migration functionality provided.
In fact, the number of teen-dream travel-snap influencers who will, upon exposure to a single post by Chris Trottier on the magic of W3C protocol development, leap to wrench themselves away from the highly addictive and even financially-incentivized dependency on their established social graph and plunge themselves into the X11-Wayland religious war waged among the beloved catgirls of the fediverse is statistically very close to zero.
There is also an unsettling absence of agency in Chris's characterization of the lost souls of Meta, as if they're just sheep waiting for the good shepherds of decentralization to lead them to greener pastures. Instagram account holders are free to sign up for a fediverse account right now, and many have already done so - and by the way, the reverse flow is also quite possible for anyone here who wishes to connect to friends and family on Meta networks.
To open this "revelatory" "Pandora's Box" (his words) of the ActivityPub Rapture, Trottier proposes, with great bloviation, something called "lobby servers". As he describes: "Lobby servers can bridge communities. They act as intermediaries that connect different social media platforms, including Meta-owned ones, with non-Meta platforms. […] By federating with Meta, lobby servers can pull content from Meta’s network and redistribute it to other federated platforms. This syndication allows users on non-Meta platforms to access and engage with Meta users’ content, thereby exposing them to different perspectives and encouraging cross-platform interactions…"
The flowery language continues on, but he is not actually proposing some novel new technical development. There is nothing described which is not already part and parcel of ActivityPub federation. The "lobby server" is simply a rebrand of "an instance federating with Meta".
This Hotel California doublespeak is indicative of the most problematic aspects of the communications of pro-Meta luminaries. In a ploy more typical of the contemporary reactionary right, the values and intentions of the opposing fediverse opinions on Meta are inverted. Trottier's post begins: "Federation with Meta actually hurts Meta."
He continues, referencing the FediPact community: "… it’s not everyone’s objective to fight Meta, and there should be spaces where fighting Meta isn’t top of mind. Not everyone wants to be part and parcel of a fight, and that’s okay." So, in this new upside-down reality, the anticapitalists trying to save at least part of the fediverse from colonization by one of the most destructive corporations in the world "don't want to fight Meta"; the true revolutionaries are those eager to collaborate with that corporation.
The Orwellian trolling degenerates from there. He claims that turning away from P92 - a single vertical silo which may comprise tens or even hundreds of millions of users - will paradoxically harm decentralization, because all those little servers federated with each other somehow result in "fragmentation" instead. And the anarchists and marginalized communities in the FediPact? They're actually pro-police authoritarians! "To enforce total defederation will require whitelisting, and policing of that whitelist." The term "whitelist" is repeated over and over in this paragraph, which is a subtle dig in the direction of a general and very nasty propensity among pro-Zuck advocates to associate the FediPact with the "HOA" and the absence of diversity.
On the whole, the most visible proponents for Meta collaboration have been big-instance admins who have done neither themselves or their cause any good over the last couple of weeks. Chris Trottier is something of an exception. We have repeatedly noted people explaining that they were on the fence over the Meta issue, until convinced by Trottier's arguments. He may fancy himself as fighting Meta, but by relentlessly arguing in favor of federating with them, he is actually serving as their most useful and effective asset in the fediverse.
@reiver
Thanks for this link! It's intriguing; but a couple of things come to mind. These guys always talk in gushing New Age platitudes about the wondrous gifts they selflessly bestow upon humanity. Also, there's that issue of the regulatory threats looming overhead. They're going to work hard to sound like they're complying. I will continue to remain skeptical that vague language like this actually indicates account portability, but I agree that the rhetoric, at least, is a new wrinkle. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
It's amazing that some are claiming a Zuckerberg takeover is an opportunity to advocate for migration. The Zuckerbros imagine themselves frolicking freely as pied pipers of the fediverse, on a network controlled by the same company that banned the #joinpixelfed hashtag from Instagram.
The censorship algorithms will put a quick stop to any of that talk. And there may be no indication that it's happening from the perspective of Mastodon instances, leaving them to toot into the void unknowingly. How can they be so naive?
@dansup
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@dansup thanks for your statement (and ignore those rumors - bored people with need for attention tend to create conspiracy theories.) you and your followers know better!
@lapy so interesting to see all these fediverse names written in Korean! I removed the 'Join' from these hashtags just so I could see what it would look like: #마스토돈 (Mastodon) #미스키 (Misskey) #칼키 (Calckey) #플레로마 (Pleroma) #아코마 (Akkoma) #픽셀페드 (Pixelfed)
I just wanted to make a statement that would maybe get his attention, I would love to see Instagram on the fediverse, but I don't think it's likely.
If I could help their Barcelona project in any way, I'd totes be down, I think it could bring a lot to the fediverse.
Even if they are like the Bravo Real Housewives with they sus #joinpixelfed hashtag blocking, I still love Instagram and it's community, the world needs to discover the fediverse
@dansup I would not like to see Instagram on the Fediverse yet - its size would give it de facto control in setting standards. When it’s about 20% of the size of photo-oriented Fedi, then definitely! But we have seen embrace-and-extend happen a bunch of times, and Mark is a very different CEO than Matt is.
Instagram explore page with #joinpixelfedorg a non-existent hashtag
Instagram explore page with #pixelfed showing posts as expected, we'd expect either of the previous images for the #joinpixelfed hashtag
@pixelfed The Fediverse is slowly gaining momentum in the mainstream media*, so a very good ActivityPub-powered Instagram alternative (that they didn't create themselves) can seem very scary for Meta executives.
The biggest public broadcaster in the world, ARD, just launched their Mastodon instance https://ard.social. The ZDF also has their own instance at https://zdf.social.