What’s Meta up to?

  1. Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse

  2. Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you’re following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn’t available to the rest of the fediverse – as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol

  3. Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta’s own ends

Since the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads, the most obvious ways of exploiting it – such as stealing market share by getting people currently in the fediverse to move to Threads – aren’t going to work. But exploitation is one of Meta’s core competences, and once you start to look at it with that lens, it’s easy to see some of the ways even their initial announcement and tiny first steps are exploiting the fediverse: making Threads feel like a more compelling platform, and reshaping regulation. Longer term, it’s a great opportunity for Meta to explore – and maybe invest in – shifting their business model to decentralized surveillance capitalism.

  • @[email protected]English
    1•11 months ago

    On Evan as influencer, I’ve highlighted for a while the contrast between opinions of Eugen and other lead devs of fediverse projects, large instance admins, the people still on the SWICG standards body, and journalists who write about the fediverse – who in general almost all strongly support Meta

    I still don’t agree that frames them properly to people who aren’t aware of them. This relevant definition is: “a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.” Prodromou’s been working in decentralized social media for nearly 20 years. He’s an expert if anyone is. Would you describe a professor speaking on their area of study as an influencer even if influential and on social media? To lump the people who’ve done the most work building, troubleshooting, problem-solving in this space together as influencers rather than people with expert knowledge is an odd choice.

    I also don’t think many of those people would agree that they “strongly support Meta.” Just today on Mike McCue’s podcast Eugen said “I am no fan of Meta.” He supports federating with them because he thinks it’s good for the Fediverse. We benefit from their network effects without being subjected to ads or surveillance. People who wanted to join the Fediverse but didn’t because none of their network were on here can join. Their users can leave Meta without giving up their social graph and starting over. Organizations who’ve been on the fence about joining may decide to join. He thinks it’s good for us, good for their users, and presumably doesn’t care whether it’s good for Meta.

    One is to provide services that cooperating instances in “Meta’s fediverse” can use that involve sharing data with Meta

    Something similar to media outsourcing comments to Facebook. The problem is that what they’re tracking is… everything that happens on the server. If you took everything that’s tracked in Threads out of Threads, what would be left for an admin to do? If someone has root access how can they not have access to anything on the server? If you’re tampering with the thing they’re tracking, you’re tampering with the tracking. If it’s super locked-down hosting, Meta is ultimately the admin. I still don’t see how that doesn’t create serious problems. If the Alex Jones server decides to terrorize a bunch of families, how can they claim to not have an association? How would they not have pressure to defederate or cancel their hosting?

    And certainly, if you’re a user on a Meta or Meta-controlled server, they can track you. It still doesn’t impact us. They can track everything they do because they control their servers; they can’t track us because we control ours. Whether we federate or not also has no impact on their ability to do any of the Meta-Fediverse stuff. We can’t run up and smack the ActivityPub out of their hands and be like, “No! Bad Meta!” ;)

    • @thenexusofprivacyOPEnglish
      4•11 months ago

      On “influencer”, I don’t think we’re going to convince each other. I’ve sometimes described professors as influencers – Dan Gillmor and Scott Galloway leap to mind.

      I also don’t think many of those people would agree that they “strongly support Meta.”

      That’s true! Meta’s got such a deservedly bad reputation that very few want to see themselves as supporting Meta! And I agree that they’re supporting federation with Meta despite their real misgivings about the company, and they’re doing it because they see it as in the fediverse’s best interests. But still, Meta’s saying “we want to embrace the fediverse” and they’re saying “this is a good thing” and telling people that concerns are overstated … that’s supporting Meta.

      If the Alex Jones server decides to terrorize a bunch of families, how can they claim to not have an association? How would they not have pressure to defederate or cancel their hosting?

      The legal responsibilities and pressures are different for a service provider or infrastructure provider than for a social network. They’ll get pressure, and Threads (a social network) might defederate, but I wouldn’t expect them to cancel their services or hosting. Organizations like EFF argue that instrastructure providers should stay out of policing content – even for content like Kiwifarms. I should probably discuss this in more detail (or maybe do a separate post on this).

      They can track everything they do because they control their servers; they can’t track us because we control ours.

      If you’re on a server that federates with Meta and haven’t blocked Meta, then most things you do can potentially be federated to Meta at which point it’ll be tracked even if they aren’t using any Meta services

      Whether we federate or not also has no impact on their ability to do any of the Meta-Fediverse stuff. We can’t run up and smack the ActivityPub out of their hands and be like, “No! Bad Meta!” ;)

      That last statement is true. Still, in an alternatie universe where fediverse influencers said “we don’t want you” and the vast majority of instances chose not to federate then it would be similar to the Gab situation “Meta wanted to come to the fediverse, we said no we don’t want hate groups and genocide-enablers here, so they’re doing their own thing” with the addition of “they’re also calling it the fediverse but don’t fall for it”. But we’re not in that universe.