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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’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Not only was it not very successful, it’s an old outdated Microsoft playbook from the 90s/early 00s and was targeted at closed source competitors and freeware, not open source software where you can just fork out a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.
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.
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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Some instances will federate and some will block them. It doesn’t have to be all one or the other.
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
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
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.
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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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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.
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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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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threads will never federate.
