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Embrace, extend, extinguish. Only proven way to destroy decentralized, free, open source solutions.
First stage embrace might not even be malicious, but with corporations it will eventually lead to someone thinking: how can we monetize our position. It is just nature how business works.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
It looks like articles today are saying that Meta is delaying integrating ActivityPub at launch.
That said, I’m not seeing how we get to the last E, extinguish. By its very nature, ActivityPub is decentralized to avoid total control. So even if Meta embraces the technology and wants to monetize it (because capitalism, of course), extending ActivityPub would (hypothetically) be open source - or they would fork it, diverging and making their version closed, and otherwise not function in full with other ActivityPub instances (like with kbin, Lemmy, and Mastodon). Without buying the platform from the developers in full, I don’t see how ActivityPub or the greater Fediverse dies. And I could just be missing something obvious, so if you can explain how we get there, I would really like to hear and understand.
I guess the only way I could see it is if Threads got so popular that people literally stopped using the other apps - but I also don’t see that happening, because anyone already using stuff like Mastodon are using it because Twitter, Facebook, etc, suck ass and they’ve moved away from sites like that.
EDIT: Thanks to the one person that actually replied, I saw I was on the right track at the end, but failed to see the obvious (as I assumed).
It’s hard to predict but the extinguish part would come from bigger non-Threads instances implementing compatibility with Thread-only extensions (in the interest of their users, or for money) and fragmenting the community. Threads then becomes the defacto ActivityPub standard. Maybe some instances stay true to the standard but with extremely reduced communities because now they can’t see what other instances are publishing. So now you have to decide between your ideals and your social network. At best, you’re back to square 0.
It happens in the extend part.
Large corporation will have much more resources, they will implement features and refactoring, which small open source teams do not have capability to implement. They will start pulling users because they support features that other do not.
This also means that they will start getting control.
And then finally they just cut the communication, and split the community. All the way they can claim to be working “for the community”
It’s worth pointing out that the wiki article lists several examples of Microsoft using this approach but I wouldn’t class many of them as successful.
Not only was it not very successful, it’s an old outdated Microsoft playbook from the 90s/early 00s and was targeted at closed source competitors and freeware, not open source software where you can just fork out a separate version.
By all means block Meta instances if you want, but they have 3 billion users, they definitely don’t give a shit about a “competitor” with a few hundred thousand users. If simply the presence of a corporation in the Fediverse is enough to destroy it, then it wasn’t going to last long anyways. It’s embarassing that “embrace, extend, extinguish” caught on around here just because it’s a catchy alliteration.
By all means block Meta instances if you want, but they have 3 billion users, they definitely don’t give a shit about a “competitor” with a few hundred thousand users.
If they don’t give a shit then why do they add federation feature at all? It doesn’t make sense.
Right now it’s only supported for Instagram accounts right? So slap in ActivityPub and you’ve got an already working way to extend your app. It’s easy, it’s fast development, and it’s cheap. It makes tons of sense.
Also, Meta and the rest of FAANG are a company of a bunch of nerds with a history of open sourcing software. This isn’t some crazy play, this is completely normal for them.
Exactly. Which is why I believe that all this fearmongering is because of Meta’s reputation (rightfully so) rather than because Meta actually has a plan to destroy the fediverse. And it’s not the like the fediverse can be actually destroyed, people can always start new instances at any time.
My take was that most people 1) don’t want Meta/Facebook spam - low effort memes, propaganda, etc. and 2) don’t want their content to be used by Meta. The former seems pretty easy - just defederate and you don’t see any of their crap. The second is sort of a gray area… Whether or not you are diametrically opposed to Meta/Facebook or not, once you post your content to a public site, it’s available. I haven’t been here long, but defederation seems to work both ways, so FB would have to scrape content from known instances to get that content unless I’m mistaken.
FB could smoke any instance by DDOSing scrapes whether intended or otherwise, but once you post your data on a public forum, Meta could theoretically use it.
But to your comment - I don’t see what starting a new instance would do for anyone for #2. Any new instance is discoverable by nature, so FB can come knocking at any time for content whether you defederate or not.
- As if Lemmy currently isn’t overrun with low effort memes? Have you seen all those cans of beans running amok here?
- I imagine there are many parties already scraping content from the fediverse as we speak - that’s the nature of public web content.
I’m just here for the beans
As far as (1) goes, 90% of the content on Lemmy is just a Lemmy circlejerk, the remaining 10% is memes. What influx of “low effort content” could possibly make the discussions on Lemmy worse than they already are?
As far as (2) goes, you realize your data on Lemmy is open to everyone to scrape, not just Meta? Every single one of your upvotes is public.
Let me offer a rebuttal. The fact that this playbook even exists and is well-known is a cause for concern. Yes, Microsoft’s campaign wasn’t very successful, but that doesn’t mean Meta won’t try or learn from Microsoft’s mistakes. I ask: is the probability of this happening non-zero, and if so, is it lower than you’re comfortable with? For me, and many others here, that answer is no.
Moreover, this is a greater problem: Meta is well-known and has practically infinite marketing budget. They can spin their app as the de facto, causing many people to lose control of their data. By association, some people will blame the Fediverse and not Meta. Defederating signals that we are not willing to participate with them and tells potential Fediverse users that they will not be able to engage with us—and whatever they decide, we cannot impact more.
The crux of my argument is risk management. Defederated is a conservative measure to prevent possible issues in the future.
Honestly this is just pure paranoia because nobody has given a solid reason as to why they would give a single shit about the few hundred thousand users here. Your only argument is “well it exists, so maaaybe they’ll use it but better” which has no basis. As for losing control of your data, you have no control of your data here. It’s public information. Any person, corporation, computer literate cat, etc can already scrape everything you post here. Don’t mistake anonymity for data privacy.
Like I said, block em, defederate, whatever measures you want to take are an option, but for the love of god let’s just stop parroting nonsense at eachother because it sounds clever. I came here to get away from reddit culture.
I just wanted to say, I am by no means technical but your position is exactly what I was thinking, if an open source project can’t survive when it’s competitors start using it, then it’s never going to survive. The whole point is for it to be interoperable, resilient, and antifragile, and there are plenty of open source projects that achieved that. Competitors switching over to open source is a natural progression of any open source project if one assumes it is successful.
So we’re all pro federation and decentralization, until we aren’t… I think this is a very preemptive and paranoid measure, but thankfully it will work out just as the technology was built for, some will block, some wont, everyone will make their choice, and be happy in their corner of the internet.
Ever heard of Mastodon blocklists? I mean defederation has been happening for a while.
But I think that’s fine. Instances should have every right to block instances that they disagree with.
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Big corpos don’t want to take it over, they want it gone.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
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My first reaction is this sounds like a great way to onboard more folks into the fediverse - but is this a perhaps a paradox of intolerance? Does Meta as a corporate entity have a natural intolerance to the freeness and openness of the fediverse, and if so, does it need to be violently rejected?
I don’t understand why this is even a question. Is the tragedy of the commons not taught in american education? Is Land Clearance(one example of many linked) and Enclosure not taught? (Serious question open to anyone, I do not know what history is taught outside major european countries)
This is essential basic history to understand how land developed from being a collectively worked upon thing, decentralised, owned by everybody that worked on it, into something that was owned by a tiny tiny number of people so that they could exploit it to the maximum degree.
Decentralisation is the creation of a commons. The goal of corporations is centralisation of power and monopoly. They are at complete polar opposites in goals. The entire point of the fediverse in the first place is to destroy the centralised power of web corporations who took what was originally a digital commons populated by thousands of sites and communities and through a form of digital enclosure turned it into a space controlled by a handful of companies.
Learn history other than the popular military shit folks. It is essential in analysing what affects you.
As a product of American eduation, I can say resolutely that no, that was absolutely not taught.
Of course, this is partially because American education sucks and partially because we never HAD common land here: everything was privately owned, after it was stolen from the people who already lived here, and then most of it had people who had no say in the matter enslaved to work on it for the people who stole the land.
Of course, this is ALSO not really taught, because it’d make people feel sad and make the US look kinda bad, so it’s always talked about but you get like, a week of coverage on both subjects, at most.
It’s all but against the law in Florida (maybe other states as well?) to teach that aspect of history. Wouldn’t want the white kids to feel guilty for being white… because they know about things that happened in the past.
This is Microsoft’s playbook, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish, it was use by Google to kill off XMPP - https://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2013/05/did-google-really-kill-off-all-xmppjabber-support-in-google-hangouts-it-still-seems-to-partially-work.html, now it will be used by Facebook to try to kill the Fediverse.
Why is this not more widely talked about? Please share this.
Unpopular opinion but defederating Meta is a terrible idea. What are people thinking will happen? Allow them to federate and you’ll have mastodon users able to view and interact with posts from Threads without needing to be concerned about ads or tracking, without giving over any more control of privacy than they would to any other fediverse instance, and without needing to possess accounts homed within the Meta infrastructure.
Defederate them, and anyone who wants to interact with anyone on threads will most likely need to maintain a presence on both and handover more personal data to Meta than they otherwise would.
Defederating is actively hostile to fediverse users.
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People are concerned about Facebook/Meta trying to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish ActivityPub - if I’ve understood correctly.
People keep saying EEE as if that’s a point in and of itself without really explaining how in this instance
Some instances will federate and some will block them. It doesn’t have to be all one or the other.
I just won’t be apart of any instance that chooses to be federated with Meta. There are many people like me, and I hope kbin and most lemmy instance owners are aware of this.
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If Meta is running a fediverse instance, they’re doing it for money. Sure, I might be able to block Meta-sourced content from reaching me, but that doesn’t prevent me-sourced content from reaching Meta - where they can monetize it.
Show me how to do that, and I’m on it like white on rice.
This is exactly my concern, I don’t want my online activity to become another revenue stream for meta. If they can put ads next to our posts then we’re back to working for free for the billionaires.
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threads will never federate.
