@hrefna@hachyderm.io
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

hrefna

@hrefna@hachyderm.io

SRE at Google. Queer. Poly :potion_polyamory: Trans :verified_trans: :nonbinary_potion: Engineer. Ace :flag_ace: Member of AWU-CWA. #ActuallyAutistic :rainbowinfinity: #UnionStrong

Opinions my own. Does not suffer fools gladly.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

hrefna, to internet
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

A few people have talked about how mass-block campaigns "worked on gab," but that's different on more than a few axes and I don't think it is comparable to #Meta.

Gab was/is a small, poorly funded, failing social media service filled with nazis.

Meta is a gigantic megacorp that already has multiple successful social networks and has a serious number of developers that they can point at problems.

Gab was a single server with little sway, Meta can do a lot more than that.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I may have strong feelings about the weakening of language of collective action to be an individual burden

"Mutual aid" becomes "one person gives money to another via a corporation that takes a cut"

"General strike" becomes "encourage people to take PTO"

"Boycott" becomes "tell people on social media that they are a bad person if they buy on a particular day"

It's like we've lost—or had ruthlessly crushed—the belief that real collective action drives change and lost any idea what it entails.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

It's like we've reduced everything to a matter of "ethical consumerism." Which is of course impossible—no matter your intents—because the very fabric of the system is stacked against us (c.f., The Good Place).

People seem to talk about general strikes on social media because they "can't" (won't) organize their own workplace.

Boycott Amazon on prime day because they don't feel like a real, organized boycott is within reach.

We substitute personal responsibility for collective power.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@jbenjamint Heh, you should hear my rant on "shorter showers" versus prior appropriation water rights and various agricultural uses.

hrefna, to internet
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Saw someone claiming that "pushing to defederate from #meta" is "collective action."

This is not, remotely, organized collective action. It's closest analog is probably mobilization, and on that front to me it bears more in resemblance to the "General Strike Now" pushes you see every now and again

Now I've had a few people ask "what can we do" and that is an excellent question

A lot of things. The situation is not hopeless, far from it, but it does mean looking at where you spend energy

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

First though, what are your goals?

If your goal is avoid #meta taking over the protocols and implementations then there is real work to do in improving both the technology and the user experience in the fediverse. So much real work, regardless of if you program, for making this a welcoming, safe place.

There are eight million stripes of things to do here, but none of them are affected by having a bunch of random instances defederate preemptively.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Are you concerned about Meta's influence on the world?

Do you work for a tech company? #Unionize your company. Especially if you work for a big tech company (cough member of #AWU here cough), but even if you don't. This will give you much more of a seat and more power to push back against bad behavior here. #UnionStrong

You can also pressure your congresscritters or EU regulators. You can mobilize people to engage in mass campaigns here.

Get data privacy laws and hold Meta accountable.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

When people say "I'm boycotting to support the union [that has not asked for a boycott]" I often find that countering such behaviors is met with "what, are you saying I should buy from said evil company?"

No. I'm saying that your behavior isn't supporting the union.

So too here: I'm not saying "YOU MUST FEDERATE WITH META" or "ALL IS HOPELESS."

I'm saying that your stated goals do not line up.

Curate how you wish! But if you want to actually make a dent in Meta there's real work to do.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Are you concerned about a flood of low quality posts from #meta and small services being overwhelmed?

Then the technology stack needs work here and there are a variety of trust and safety features that need to be considered. Even (especially) if you aren't a programmer your insights on trust and safety features could be invaluable.

It's good, solid work and has tremendous potential to make the fediverse better for everyone.

hrefna, to internet
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

It's not even that I think defederating preemptively from #meta is a bad idea. More of a "it just doesn't matter."

It's that it seems like a useless and performative action. It doesn't really do… anything. Even in the best possible cases, it just doesn't accomplish much.

What will work (or not) and what meta does (or doesn't do) has basically nothing to do with whether random servers defederate or even if there is a largely successful defederation campaign.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@marud It depends, what is your actual goal?

Because "keep meta off the fediverse" is barely a tactic. "Make the fediverse resistant to megacorp intrusions" is too nebulous.

What are you actually trying to accomplish?

There is work to do in improving the protocol, in improving the onboarding experience, in improving the startup experience for new server admins, in improving user safety, in improving apps.

There's also work in legal and social fronts.

It all depends on your aims.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@marud Domain blocking won't do much there, at all. They can scrape basically everything that isn't in a very limited set of categories from your instance through the (public) web interface as well, so that would be the place to address things and start making changes.

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Overall I'm kind of just of the view that blocking Meta's hypothetical server preemptively is just the most… performative, useless gesture

To annoy everyone who reads this for a moment, however:

It does encompass what many leftists (and liberals) seem to think of as "taking action." A nice moral test. Easy to pontificate about. Feels good. Let's you talk in grandiose terms. Easy for an individual to do. Largely ineffective both short and long term.

I swear we are our own worst enemies.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Point 1:

Meta's ability to scrape is not made worse by your defederating except in the most marginal terms.

Point 2:

If I were looking to #EmbraceExtendExtinguish I wouldn't be limited to a single server and I wouldn't be deterred by a few servers who are deciding not to talk to me.

You think Meta is going to shrug their shoulders if the instance of 10 people, foobar.example.baz, decides to not federate with them?

If everyone defederated with them do you think they would just give up?

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

Point 3: ActivityPub is exceptionally weak against a corporate attacker.

Hell, mastodon last I checked doesn't even support the latest version of linked data proofs or whatever that spec is being called this week

It would not be hard for a corporate entity, in the name of security (not even features), to start pushing their own extensions here that aren't backwards compatible and start listing servers that aren't on their spec as "insecure" or "not standards compliant"

They'd even be right.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@maegul Oh I don't think individuals or groups curating their experience here is a bad thing, I just don't think that it changes anything, and I think trying to get others to curate their experiences in your way is… a problem we see crop up in fediblock discourse entirely too often already.

It all goes back to goals. If the goal is curation then sure, I guess. If the goal is "keep FB from seeing my data" then I have bad news. If the goal is "push meta off the fediverse" then I have worse news.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@werawelt Only if they block traffic that doesn't abide.

Much more likely is that they put a little red sticker on it that reads "THIS MESSAGE WAS SENT IN AN INSECURE WAY" and spread FUD about anything not owned by them to a few million people.

tchambers, (edited ) to random

➡️ #Admin #Indiewebsocial

With news of the probable launch of Meta's #Project92 I wanted to make clear this servers policy:

"Don't preemptively strike meta w/ a fediblock, but stay vigilant with eyes wide open and a finger on the block button."

The same as we do for all servers.

They can be blocked instantly if they violate our terms of use, and as admins are in a far stronger position if we do so than vs before.

I hope all #fediadmins to consider taking this same policy. 1 of X 🧵

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@mastodonmigration

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what are the content rights that any mastodon server operating under right now?

Because that answer is not clear for the vast majority of them.

But no, whatever the license terms are for Meta and their users doesn't matter just because your service "federates" with theirs. Not unless there is an active decision made to abide by the terms of their API which is signed somewhere by someone who has the right to sign.

@tchambers

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@mastodonmigration

The privacy policy for my server says what my server is allowed to do with. Not what any other server in the fediverse is allowed to do (unless it says otherwise, explicitly).

To the extent other servers may operate under an implied license or fair use contract, it doesn't change the terms under which I published it. There is no agreement in place that "to use this API you must agree to these terms" that the person who has the right to do that has agreed to.

@tchambers

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@mastodonmigration

If I write BSD code and you include it in your GPL'd code it doesn't change the license that my code is originally under.

My agreement is with my server. It doesn't change the license my content is under just because my server has a deal with someone else, and it certainly isn't changed just because they make an API call without any such agreement.

I'm curious what corner of contract law you are looking at that says otherwise?

@tchambers

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@mastodonmigration

So it seems you agree that Meta can't, in fact, relicense my content to something else entirely just because my server made an API call.

Glad we are all on the same page.

@tchambers

fancysandwiches, to random

A lot of admins of larger Mastodon (and other Fediverse) servers are showing excitement for Meta launching an App in the Fediverse. Their reasoning mostly being "growing the Protocol is good!". Most feedback, is met with different versions of "growth is good". I want to take a minute to push back on this narrative that all growth is inherently good, because it absolutely is not. This type of thinking stems from the Silicon Valley VC crowd, where they pursue growth at all costs.

hrefna,
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

@tchambers

I would say that it is likely the first pass is going to be a somewhat centralized system, but I wouldn't hold my breath that it would stay that way. It's essentially trivial for them to shard it in the future.

That it actually can talk to m.s is actually very interesting, because that indicates that they aren't just "using ActivityPub" but actually implementing to the mastodon standard, at least to some extent.

@jdp23 @J12t @edendestroyer @fancysandwiches

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

It feels like this idea that "oh this is what happens when you build on other peoples platforms" is the same argument that people who build leaky abstractions on top of their database in the name of "being able to switch databases quickly" use.

Past a certain point you aren't swapping databases and, if you did, your half-assed abstraction layer won't actually help.

Do you know how hard it is to support one API correctly? Let alone to build in any sort of flexibility that's actually useful?

hrefna, to programming
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

#Java's reputation for being "slow" was cemented before some of the people who are claiming it were born and it hasn't been functionally true since before they were in college.

That's should give an indicator about how long it takes for "everybody knows that" to die.

(No I don't want to see your 1337 microbenchmark that "proves" your point either)

hrefna, to random
@hrefna@hachyderm.io avatar

I really wish it were easier to describe just how bad things were for us in the 1990s (and 80s and 70s… but I'm focusing on the 90s for right now). Just how much how many of us were affected by the death of and what that conveyed.

There was a mass epidemic of homophobia. DOMA and DADT are both products of this era. Sen Jesse Helms called us "weak, morally sick wretches." Sen. Lott said that being gay was like alcoholism, kleptomania, or a sex addiction.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/how-america-got-past-the-anti-gay-politics-of-the-90s/266976/

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