Yikes.
This is a reminder to lemmy users, that this new meta expriement will use the ActivityPub protocol, meaning that it can interact with other lemmy instances, please urge your lemmy instance admins to de-federate from this crap as soon as it launches!
But why? Isn’t the whole point of federation that we can interact with people in other communities? Don’t we want these big platforms to adopt ActivityPub? Completely walling them off seems counterproductive
Not defending Meta, just curious
there is a very good chance that this project by meta is the thin end of the wedge
(edited to include “the blogpost”, link here)
Interesting and I’d say you’re right. If you were to see a mass adoption of the fediverse (such as Twitter imploding and mastadon becoming the replacement) there would be an immediate attempt by the big tech players to gain control of it in some way. And this is exactly how they would try to do it.
Also here is a blog post about how Google killed the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) using extend, embrace, extinguish.
What’s the alternative? They go with a non activity pub system and woo away all our users anyway?
realistically, yes :(
opinion time: not everything has to be about fast/unsustainable growth, in the pursuit of profit. i would prefer that the fediverse grows organically, and entices quality users, posters and commenters to join based on the merits of the service, and not on it’s access to inflated VC budgets, huge advertising campaigns, and exploitation of a first-mover advantage.
facebook/meta will slay us, because we are a threat to it’s profit model. why are we even contemplating negotiations with a tiger while we have our head in it’s mouth? it beggars belief…
I feel like there’s no winning if you’re a dev at one of these companies. Go with a centralized protocol, you get shit for creating a walled garden. Take part in federation, and people give you shit for that too. I think it’s genuinely amazing that we are seeing engineers that have made some of the most fundamental software that the internet runs on dip their toes into federation.
i don’t blame the devs, in the same way that you can’t blame a cog in a machine. it’s the machine that i’m complaining at here, not the devs
historically, big tech companies have exploited their dominant position to snuff out federated protocols in the past. why would they suddenly choose to take a sweet tone to fediverse/activitypub now?
meta has a few options here for Threads, i will list some routes:
- co-operate fully with activitypub forever and ever, always in alignment with activitypub protocol, always does the right/moral thing, makes a meager profit and growth for doing so
- all of option 1, but then after building up user lock-in and momentum, then start adding “meta-net” exclusive features to entice users to instances under their control. wait patiently until dominant market share established, and then stop federating outside of meta-net, to force non users to switch over. make a bigger profit and growth.
- all of option 2, but also compete with fediverse using the strength of it’s inherited capital from meta, to gain market share quickly. bribe and buyout instances to join meta-net through sheer weight of money, send frivolous lawsuits/dmca to crush the dissenters. astroturf comment sections on non-meta instances to sway public opinion. harvest all data from activitypub to keep shadow accounts on non meta-net AP users. make even bigger profit and growth
the machine is obviously going to take option 3 here. i feel sorry for the devs, who know full well that what they make can and will be used in this way.
If people want to crawl back into Meta’s clutches I’m not going to stop them. Don’t give the one nice thing we have to a corporation that only wants to exploit us.
Are you telling me this perfectly human looking human shouldn’t be trusted?
Who cares? I’d rather they stay away from here anyways.
Is there a fediverse version of Facebook?
Very roughly,
Lemmy and Kbin = Reddit
Masterson = TwitterSo what equals Facebook
I think Diaspora* is the federated FB alternative
There was also a crypto backed and “freeze peach absolutist” alternative, Minds, dunno how that one’s going
Presumably Facebook’s move into ActivityPub is to prevent or limit users moving to a decentralised alternative to Facebook?
Presumably Facebook’s move into ActivityPub is to prevent or limit users moving to a decentralised alternative to Facebook?
Diaspora as said was it long ago. Nowadays I guess the Movim project based on xmpp can give and experience similar to it.
Don’t we want these big platforms to adopt ActivityPub?
No. We don’t. The more hands they have in the fediverse pie, the more influence they have over it. The more influence they have, the more control. The more control, the more at the whim of their decisions you are. The more at the whim of their decisions, the more power they have over you.
This should be common sense at this point.
I don’t see how it would be possible to stop them to be honest.
You may be right - perhaps it’s inevitable, one way or another. I don’t know.
I’m passive at this point.
IMO this is such a shortsighted take and defeats the point of federation because of a knee jerk response.
There is the potential for federation to grow massively with the injection of billions from big tech.
There is the potential for federation to grow massively with the injection of billions from big tech.
Sure, of course it would grow. But at what cost? And then who effectively owns it in the end? There’s an inevitable outcome - one that you apparently aren’t aware of.
My take is that we should defederate them so that they don’t become the de facto instance in the Fediverse. That way, the Fediverse remains what it is now—open and truly decentralized. By defederating and discouraging them, we’re signaling to potential new users that they’ll be stuck in their own bubble.
Don’t we want these big platforms to adopt ActivityPub?
I certainly don’t. I abandoned Facebook years ago because of how BS they were getting with privacy concerns and social manipulation. Last thing I want is to bring those dumpster fires here. They join the platform, I will migrate to whichever Instances defed them or leave Lemmy entirely if necessary. Simply put, it’s been a breathe of rational, civil air here. While it is early days keeping that hostile-to-humanity crap out of here is obvious minimum we should be doing.
Don’t we want these big platforms to adopt ActivityPub?
No. We don’t. The more hands they have in the fediverse pie, the more influence they have over it. The more influence they have, the more control. The more control, the more at the whim of their decisions you are. The more at the whim of their decisions, the more power they have over you.
This should be common sense at this point.
I don’t even know if I disagree with “big platforms” using activitypub. Like Tumblr integration could be cool, but fucking facebook? Eww
If they can embrace and extend the fediverse you know they’re gonna extinguish it, too. They’re s bad faith actor, we don’t want them interacting with us or influencing us.
We want individuals to adopt ActivityPub. Whether that be in the form of hosting new instances or contributing content. We don’t want corporations here trying to turn it into something they can use to make a profit. Once it becomes about the money it is on a death spiral like everything else before it.
Were talking about meta here, this is a bait and switch attempt (I see it that way)
They launch their new twitter competitor, everyone moves over to their new twitter clone, they will try and hold the power on standarts of federation (like any big tech corporation that has a smaller rival that succedes more then them, see microsoft vs netscape for refrence)
If they will fail with that, they will try to seduce lemmy and mastodon instaces with monetization and big money handouts, were talking about facebook here after all, they are not short of scummy tactics
Yes. Three words: “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish”
A pratice as old as time, done and proved to work. It’s not even theoretical, it’s gonna happen. You either are proactive in protecting the network or we will be too late to do anything. Always works like that. If you think that giving the benefit of the doubt and wait and see is an option, then you already lost.
I’m don’t know how the federation protocol works exactly, but I’m pretty sure Meta can throw more resources into it than all the independent instances combined. Again, I don’t know anything about the specifics of the fediverse so I don’t know if that applies here, but generally once you control more than 50% of something that does not have a central authority - you became, de facto, that central authority.
There is incentive for competition from Google, Twitter, etc, that would cause federation as a whole to grow without resulting in a single authority taking over the network.
Another really big concern I have is that activity pub by definition shares all your posts with any instance that hosts your followers. So if you have a mastodon follower on FB’s activity pub/twitter replica, FB automatically gets your data even though you don’t use it
The type of things they get are
- Your profile
- Whatever you post
- Who interacts with your posts
Another really big concern I have is that activity pub by definition shares all your posts with any instance that hosts your followers. So if you have a mastodon follower on FB’s activity pub/twitter replica, FB automatically gets your data even though you don’t use it
I don’t understand why people call Facebook Meta now
I don’t accept that name
It’s Facebook
I believe they actually changed their corporations name to Meta. As crazy as that rebranding is.
They did indeed, but I hate them so much I will never abide by that.
Yeah but they largely get it because the name Facebook became so toxic and poisoned and it’s probably better just to force them to have to stay in the cultural millieu as Facebook, the company that runs psychological experiments on its users and creates profiles illegally on non-users as well. That pays to be installed on Android devices and not be allowed to be uninstalled.
I wonder how long it will take to tarnish the Meta name. Assuming it isn’t already. The concept of the metaverse is a complete failure and they also never really stopped being terrible with data harvesting.
“Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks.“
How the fuck did Harvard students act so stupid and give out their info like that? I thought they were like the smartest people in the US. 🤔
Most Harvard students are still just 18-22 year old “kids”. Think of how dumb/naive you were at that age.
Try telling that to a 18-22 yr old. You think you know everything at that age. Then you get older and realize no one knows any fucking thing
To be fair, when you’re at that age and come into contact with dozens of “adults” that never mentally grew past 12, you’re bound to think you’re “very smart”.
There’s a reason second-year students are called sophomores. It’s a compound with the same roots as “sophisticated” and “moron”. It literally means “learned idiot”. It’s referring to the students who have a year of schooling under their belt, and think that they understand everything about the world. It’s basically referring to the Dunning-Krueger Effect, where people who know very little about something are the most likely to overestimate their knowledge on the topic.
Yea except I know I know everything so I’m built different
As a 21 year old I would be offended but then I remember I just admitted my exact age on the internet
Oh don’t worry, I’m still in that age range, I guess I’ll find out how dumb I am in a few years from now. 😅
You don’t get any smarter, just wise enough to know how dumb you are.
Nah, it’s just the kids of the wealthiest people and a handful of diversity admissions.
smartest people in the US
The problem is that that is a very low bar to overcome
This is still I think the most telling glimpse into who the “ZUCK” really is. Looking at what meta has become, how it has operated… No matter how professional and respectable he acts.
This is who he really is.
I don’t it’s a fair assessment - dude was just a kid.
I’ve watched some podcasts and interviews and I think he’s a much more complex of a person. I do genuinely think he’s thinks he’s doing good and I do think that Meta stuff is a net benefit to the humanity.
Even if you hate Facebook it brought people together in so many places, especially if you consider developing world.
Doing good does not absolve you of having done evil.
Zuck has utterly failed in preventing facebook from doing clear, preventable, harm.
I don’t get to walk free, no matter how many homeless people I feed, if I kill one.
The same should go for corporations. If they do evil, once, they should done. Not fined. There is no math which makes the bad that facebook does, necessary to achieve the good it does.
The same should go for corporations. If they do evil, once, they should done.
You kinda just gutted 99% of corporations. And done overall nothing for society because they already all reopened under different names.
Why are you assuming the legal framework for ending corporations couldn’t have mechanisms to prevent that?
For example, offending corporations could be broken up, and have their assets sold to their competitors. The resulting money used as severance for the employees, who didn’t necessarily do anything wrong.
A company can’t just “start back up” if you take all their capital. And no-one would re-invest in people known for taking legal risks that might make that investment go “poof”.
And 99% of corporations wouldn’t be evil if it wasn’t fucking legal, and basically required to compete!
I don’t think it’s even legal to give away a company’s assets without their consent, be they criminal or not.
And anyway, that’s easy to get around that too. Full of companies that already “”“go bankrupt”“” to avoid paying their due and then reopen with money magically appearing from “somewhere”. In the end to me it just seems the more rules/laws you add, the more the average person will suffer because of it while not really causing any for assholes.
“This thing would be illegal” is a pretty shit argument when changing the law is on the table.
And I see you’re a fan “anti-regulation” ideals. Did it occur to you that this system could entirely replace a shitload of micro-managing bs current regulation? And did you miss the part where re-investment in criminals wouldn’t be a thing if it was that expensive? The only reason it happens right now is because it is technically legal, and cheap.
That’s why limited liability is bullshit. You make the decisions, you go to prison for the crimes that come of them.
It’s kind of a gray area though. Do you just jail the CEO if a company does evil? What if it was someone else inside the company and the CEO didn’t know? And conversely, what if the CEO knew and is trying to pass off like they didn’t, how do you prove it? It turns into slippery slopes pretty fast.
My personal solution would be just to actually scale up the fines. If someone gets fined for something they profited from, it’s extremely stupid for the fine to be less than their profit. You’re basically telling them to do it again.
I mean, aren’t CEOs massive pay justified because they supposedly take on ultimate responsibility for the company?
If a company does something criminal under their watch, then even if they didn’t give the orders they have been criminally negligent - surely?
Now, mind, I don’t think that they should necessarily be the person punished most - the person’s down the chain more responsible should serve more time. But the person at the top shouldn’t get away free.
Regardless though I agree - fines with teeth are the most important thing.
I mean, aren’t CEOs massive pay justified because they supposedly take on ultimate responsibility for the company?
If a company does something criminal under their watch, then even if they didn’t give the orders they have been criminally negligent - surely?
Now, mind, I don’t think that they should necessarily be the person punished most - the person’s down the chain more responsible should serve more time. But the person at the top shouldn’t get away free.
Regardless though I agree - fines with teeth are the most important thing.
I do genuinely think he’s thinks he’s doing good and I do think that Meta stuff is a net benefit to the humanity.
The problem I see is that you’ve bought into his lie. He might “sound” genuine in thinking he’s done good, much like Bill Gates sounds genuine when he talks about his philantropic shenanigans. It’s all an act.
The only net benefit I see off FB/Meta is that it taught us how dangerous and shitty a centralized internet is.
I bet they said something like “we don’t use most of that information, we just need access in case we add a new feature in the future that uses it”. And then it’ll come out that they’ve always been using it, and it’s been associated with your identifying info. And then their server will be hacked (because the admin password was “meta123”) and the all the info will leak. The modern internet sucks.
They tried to use the same excuse with their privacy policy for oculus. ie they can even watch the cameras if they want but they promise they won’t…
pinky promise
deleted by creator
We need massive punitive fines for misusing data farming. Data leaks of health and financial information should literally put billion dollar businesses out of business for good.
If they can’t manage the data they don’t deserve it, full stop.
I’m asking myself how people can accept these conditions. There is a huge work of education on privacy to be done.
There should be some sort of OS-level flag that appears before downloading to inform users along the lines of “This application requests access to more permissions than typical apps in this category do. Are you sure you wish to proceed?” Maybe with a link to an informational site about how apps can use your data and why protecting your privacy is important.
At this point we should really be petitioning Congress. Yeah, I know, I know, but still.
Whilst that would be fantastic. I highly doubt google or apple are even going to entertain the idea, especially when you want to download one of their apps.
one of their apps
I know Apple Bad ™, but they’re probably the most privacy-focused big company in existence. With their current model/values/whatever, they would never collect enough data to need to slap that warning on any of their apps.
Huh. Honestly, fair enough. To be honest., I don’t usually look into any companies at that much of a deeper lever. So I just assumed they’d be the same.
I’m actually shocked that any company values privacy at this point. It’s definitely reflected in the price, since you’re not subsidizing your cost with your data for ads, but it’s still refreshing to me. I hope they stay that way. I’m a hardcore PC user, but I like having my phone stuff private/locked down so I’ve been on iPhone for a long time.
Mee too at this point. I’m not a huge fan of apple devices as I like my stuff being open. It’s just a shame I’ve gotta use android. I know I can root my phone but I can’t be arsed dealing with it all
I had fun on my G1 and G2, installing CFW. The G2 was a fucking pain because it had some anti-CFW bullshit that would reflash to stock unless you disabled that. Early Android phones went to shit so quickly and became soooo sloooooow though, so ya kinda HAD to use CFW.
As a lifelong PC person, I couldn’t love iOS more. It’s stupid efficient and fully featured (now, it definitely had issues and limitations when it was new.) At this point, I’m always confused when folks say they need Android for customization or whatever. There’s precious little that stock Android does that stock iOS can’t do now.
Apple is a company I could see making it a priority, because they tout privacy as a major selling point of iOS. There are entire ad campaigns about it. It’s not perfect, but they’ve done a lot in the name of privacy, even when it costs them money (e.g. all the bad press that came out about iOS when they added a notification for when apps were accessing your clipboard…and it turned out a shit ton of apps were just scraping your clipboard all day).
Google, though…yeah. Android has some privacy control, but in reality they’re mainly following Apple’s lead so as not to lose customers who care about privacy. I don’t think they actually give a damn about consumer data, as long as they get their share of tracking done. There are more privacy-oriented ROMs out there, but the average consumer is never going to use anything other than the version of Android that came with their phone.
It would be nice if there was some third-party entity that performed privacy analysis of popular applications and provided a score on some sort of privacy index that could be featured on that app’s storefront. It’s a shame that we are just left to assume how much of our data is probably being harvested and there’s nothing to be done about it.
We need to force them to. They will never do anything to regulate themselves voluntarily.
Whilst that would be fantastic. I highly doubt google or apple are even going to entertain the idea, especially when you want to download one of their apps.
The Aurora Store for Android has this warning. I steer people I care about to Aurora Store for this reason.
I think what people need are clear examples, concisely expressed, of the explicit harm experienced by forgoing a certain quanta of privacy, since the benefits are apparent (eg gain access to a certain service/community/etc).
You’d think the dystopia of China and what they did to Hong Kong would be enough. We hear scary stories about China that you think people would want not want that here. Or episodes of Black Mirror.
None of that can be explained by allowing private companies to collect digital data.
What you’ve posted is a great example of scaremongering.
Again, if you want to advocate for privacy, you need to make a direct and explicit connection. Not this tinfoil hat, arm waving general conspiracy thinking. It’s not compelling
I think some System of a Down lyrics are useful here.
“Why don’t you ask the kids at Tienanmen Square Was fashion the reason why they were there?”
They could have saved time by just saying “Everything”
Or “yes, even that”
Crazy thought, but people don’t need Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, any Twitter replacement, etc. I.e. ya’ll don’t need ‘social media’.
Anyone know Meta’s track record with data?
It’s got to be great if they ask for all this /s
Let’s not forget that they were fined $5 billion for deliberately misleading users about how their personal data was used in regard to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that effectively swayed over 200 elections all over the world, including both Brexit and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Seriously, everyone seems to have forgotten about that shit and it’s fucking insane.
Precisely why I don’t use Facebook anymore. Fuck 'em.
I never heard about this. What happened here?
Cambridge Analytica was a company that used machine learning algos on Facebook user data to target hyper-specific political propaganda to many small segments of voters, rather than few large segments. They spent years testing and refining their process in the developing world in preparation for deployment in the West.
Steve Bannon was the VP. As soon as they pulled off Brexit, he left to head up Trump’s campaign using the same techniques.
To add to what others are saying, I’d recommend taking a look at the documentary The Great Hack.
I can see you put in /s but for anyone who really doesn’t know Meta(previously Facebook) was basically constantly in court for various data violations. Anything you give them, they will be selling it and rarely will it be within their own guidelines let alone the law.
Lol not sure why people are surprised
Yeah, as people would expect seeing something else here.
Stay fucking away from facebook, meta and zuckerberg as much as you can people
I (and probably others) are surprised that it’s so brazen. I think most companies wouldn’t dare do this. Not because they’re morally superior, but because it’s such a bad look.
I don’t think it’s surprising to anyone that has seen any of Metas terms before. The people on FB that repost all the BS about Facebook charging for access probably have no idea that they are the product. Too many people would gladly give all that info away because they don’t know any better
Fuck off Zuck you fucking weirdo
Seems reasonable. Where do I put in my social security number and mother’s maiden name?
Lol fuck that, I’ll stick with mastodon
I think they’re using an instance of mastodon
No. They’re using the fediverse, which includes instances of mastodon, but they are making their own client/web portal/whatever you wanna call it. They’re making their own version of the thing that mastodon is, and their versions will be on the same network that mastodon is on.
I understand that ActivityPub ≠ Mastodon however from their UI it feels like a fork of Mastodon with all the Meta bs on top, i might be wrong but it just feels like they saw the opportunity and took. I say this because of even the naming of the app which seems like a direct reference to the Mastodon threads.
Idk what you’re talking about. Mastodon is just an ugly-looking Twitter, and Twitter used the term threads long before Mastodon did. They’re all just copying Twitter
Maybe connecting it with the threads of mastodon is a stretch, and I am not talking “Idea wise” who they’re copying I’m talking about the literal code of the meta app, it’s a goldmine for them a prebuilt app with most of the features you need and with a protocol that is having some kind of active community? Now maybe they didn’t literally fork mastodon, but the fact that the app seems clearly not finished, It’s like put together in the few weeks a lot of code was probably used or referenced. Now I can’t confirm or deny this, just saying that if they wanted to take the easy route, they definitely could have and from the record of such large corporations I can definitely see them do this.
So, what do they not collect?
Tax returns
I’m sure that counts under, “Other data”
Dirty laundry.
Hi mcepl.
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Your innermost thoughts, but only because they haven’t figured out a way to get them yet.
That’s a big nope from me lmao. Mastadon seems to have alot of the important accounts I follow from Twitter. Liking it so far, no algorithm playing with your feed, no corporate advertising (unless you subscribe to it), no blue checks spreading insane conspiracies.
I’d love for this to be true for me (if only to use ivory) but the only things I manage to find are mirrored Twitter accounts, which I assume aren’t forever.
Did you just manually look for the things you cared about?
Yes. I’ve searched manually for most of mine based on my people i follow on Twitter, they are not all there, and they will be missed. I’ve got a few mirrored accounts I’m following, but it’s not the end of the world if they get cut off from the blue bird (they are mostly sports team feeds). I have also gone back to RSS feeds for my news feed. I like the social aspect of Twitter, it’s just turned into a hate platform that scientifically exploits its users by making it addicting to doom scroll. And the interactions I’ve had on Mastadon/Lemmy are way more wholesome than there, fediverse really does remind me of the early days of Digg/Reddit/Twitter.
Makes sense. I mostly used Twitter as a news aggregator, as yeah, people are often too toxic on there (though there are some funny people I miss seeing).
I wrote my previous response then realized maybe I should just use rss again. Thank you!
It’s missing something first born son I think.
Don’t allow Zuck and the billionaire anti-democracy tech bros into Federation.
