[Discussion] Potential of a Meta ActivityPub client

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/181146

I am assuming many of you have heard about the potential of Meta creating an ActivityPub enabled client (TheVerge, PCMag etc. have made articles). I was just wondering what people's thoughts are on this, and if it came down to it should instances in the fediverse defederate from it considering it could be a case of Embrace, extend, extinguish.

There's a DefederateMeta magazine at !DefederateMeta@fedia.io if you're interested, which includes an anti-meta pact on cryptpad with the responses viewable on a seperate website if you care to see which instance admins have agreed.

I'm just curious what my fellow sh.it.heads think of this development in the fediverse, any input is appreciated!

Reposting at the request of can, within the context of c/agora should this instance defederate from any future Meta activity pub enabled clients? From my understanding it is more so a Twitter-clone and I'd argue a more severe problem for Kbin / Mastodon, but it is still worth discussing here.

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Difficult_Bit_1339 35 points 3 years ago

If meta wants to harvest data they would just create boring no-name servers to pull down the data that they want. De-federation isn't going to stop that.

The goal isn't to create a system where there are no corporate instances. The goal is to create a network that doesn't rely on corporate instances.

This idea that we use use de-federation like a weapon will cause the Fediverse to fragment and then we're back where we started: 50 different social media services and a fragmented social media experience. De-federation isn't a super downvote button, its use should be limited to boring server-related things (spam, complying with laws, etc).

The strength of federated social media is that it is all available for everyone at all times via one account. Breaking the network into small chunks or having some central group decide who gets to have access to social media is the exact thing that the ActivityPub protocol is suppose to help people escape from.

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Makhra 19 points 3 years ago

Brushing this off as a data harvesting question seems a bit simplistic in my opinion as it ignores the concern for an EEE strategy.

What happens if they somehow manage to scale up and become the largest instance on the fediverse? Wouldn't they become that de-facto central authority? That would give them the ability to defederate instances which aren't following the "right" code of conduct, effectively silencing them for most of the fediverse users. They could push their own anti-features to the activitypub communication within their apps, forcing the rest of the instances to either follow suit and implement it, or break compatibility with that largest instance (not sure I explain that properly, but an example would be how microsoft and google forced their implementation of the W3C EME specification on Firefox).

Are we supposed to believe that after decades of building walled gardens and prioritising money over ethic, they had a change of heart and decided to embrace open platforms for the greater good of humanity?

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Difficult_Bit_1339 2 points 3 years ago

They already are the defacto authority on federation. If you're not on Facebook then you're cut off from THE social media network.

I understand the EEE fear. It's certainly a thing to watch out for going into the future. The way to win here is to outcompete them in feature support. If they have a closed proprietary feature that is popular then the FOSS community needs to strive for feature parity. That's always been the way you win in software. Linux is a prime example of this. Microsoft can't outcompete Linux in the commercial server space because the overall Linux development team dwarfs anything Microsoft has.

We're not going to strangle Meta out of the Fediverse even if everyone de-federated them. They can still support ActivityPub pub and the lack of any ability to communicate with the greater Fediverse removed any chance of users leaving Facebook. It allows them to market themselves as supporting open protocols and avoiding accusations of monopolistic behavior without ever being put in a position to have to compete.

Make them compete. Provide their users with better features, better privacy protection, more useful communities, etc. That's the only way to win the long battle imo.

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WheeGeetheCat 5 points 3 years ago

I say let them do the extra work and incur the cost of running separate instances or scraping instances and then injecting the content into whichever ecosystem they have users sign up on, rather than giving them an easy way to do it. They will have to have a stable place for sign-ups no matter what

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Difficult_Bit_1339 3 points 3 years ago

If Facebook made a Fediverse node it would dwarf the entire population of the existing Fediverse.

Cutting them off from what already exists wouldn't hurt them, it would ensure that their users couldn't migrate away while still allowing Meta to say that they're not a monopoly because they support open protocols.

This makes the EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) tactic a lot easier since they'd face no competition for users. A Facebook user couldn't see sh.itjust.works and decide that they'd rather use Lemmy than Facebook. They'd never be exposed to Mastodon and decide that they like it better than Twitter.

Meta already has all of the users federating with them means those same users can now be siphoned off by creating software that provides a better user experience than what Meta can provide with their services.

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