• ericflo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Am I living in a different planet from the rest of the commenters here? We have much more to gain from this than they do.

    • ccunix@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Not really no.

      The process of “embrace, extend and extinguish” has been used multiple times to destroy FLOSS projects from the inside.

      Of the top of my head:

      • Kerberos
      • Office formats
      • XMPP

      I’ve just got back from a run so my brain is not fully connected, so others can give other examples.

      Meta do not want to join the party for fun. They want to join because it is the only way they can smother it.

    • Numuruzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been reading up on this very thing today. Let me put it to you in paraphrase as I heard it. What we have to lose is a truly federated network - it has happened before, and it can happen again. Facebook, when faced with an app that most users preferred, chose to buy it, and now Instagram is just as big a project concern as the rest of Meta.

      You can’t buy a federated network, but you sure can improve on it, just as Google did with XMPP in days of yore. Once a federated chat protocol much as we’re on a federated social network, Google introduced Google Talk in 05, and federated it via XMPP in 06. They introduced a variety of features and QOL over the years, and being as big as they were, they held a vast majority of the users across all XMPP platforms.

      Then, in 2013, they announced that Google Talk would be phased out and as a result, a huge chunk of the federated community would be walled. All of a sudden, a thriving federated community was mostly just Google.

      People join just to talk to their friends, and to make friends; if most of those people went to Google for their features and most of their friends were there too, there was no big loss for them. It’d be like if Reddit used to be an instance all on its own and then suddenly decided to unfederate completely.

      That’s not to say that all this will happen with Meta, but I guarantee that is their goal.

    • cyd@vlemmy.net
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      1 year ago

      To me, the argument for accepting Meta into the Fediverse goes beyond gain and loss. What it boils down to is that if you run an Internet service, you have a moral obligation to make a good faith attempt to interoperate with anyone who’s using the protocol as intended.

      By a similar token, if you run a mail server, you should accept SMTP connections as far as possible. Yes, you can ban spam, but you should not ban connections from Gmail even if Gmail is a privacy-destroying bad idea. By all means, allow individual users to set up their own block lists, but this should not be done at the server level.

        • cyd@vlemmy.net
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          1 year ago

          Sure, just like you can run an SMTP server that blocks incoming connections from Gmail. It’s not illegal, obviously, but it goes against the spirit of an open, interoperable internet.

          • Five@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Clients are filtered out of the federated email system all the time. In fact, the major email distributors are so block-happy, it’s difficult to run a private email server anymore. If you want to guarantee your email gets through, you’re basically forced to use a major webmail client. If Facebook is allowed into the community, that will happen to ActivityPub too.

            Allowing large corporations to leverage their resources to dominate the Fediverse goes against the spirit of an open, interoperable internet.

          • Qazwsxedcrfv000@lemmy.unknownsys.com
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            1 year ago

            I agree with you on that. That’s why I find this anti-Meta pact or manifesto or whatever naive and premature.

            Just if there are people who insist on banning anything Meta, they are welcome to do so in their instances. Interoperability is still preserved. They are not adding anything to the protocol. Banning instances is part of the interoperability. I think this is where our opinion differs.

            • drkt@feddit.dk
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              1 year ago

              Just if there are people who insist on banning anything Meta, they are welcome to do so in their instances.

              Isn’t that what we’re doing? We can’t stop Meta from federating, that’s not a function of the protocols. We’re building a pact to defederate them from our instances.

            • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 year ago

              A lot of people came to Mastodon because it was a safe space for queer and marginalized communities after being driven away by the lack of moderation and ability to keep them safe on places like Facebook and Twitter.

              There’s good reason to be suspicious.

      • Shhalahr@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        To me, the argument for accepting Meta into the Fediverse goes beyond gain and loss. If you run an Internet service, you have a moral obligation to make a good faith attempt to interoperate with anyone using the protocol as intended.

        But that’s the thing: We don’t trust that Meta will be using the protocol “as intended”.

          • mycelium_underground@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Don’t forget that they have an obligation to their shareholders to continually grow profits. While their past is a red flag, being a publicly traded corp means that they will do everything that they can to keep alternatives from taking there market share.

          • sznio@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Meta already had federated with XMPP back in the day, then dropped it when it was convenient.

            They are gonna do the same for the fediverse. All they want from us is the starter content so that their service isn’t empty for the first two months. They literally don’t want to do the work that reddit founders had to do - generate content and pretend there are users to a new blank platform. After that the federation features are going to become legacy.

            Not cooperating with corpos is a matter of principles.

      • Qazwsxedcrfv000@lemmy.unknownsys.com
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        1 year ago

        Basically the sequence of events as claimed by the author is that:

        1. XMPP small niche, small circles
        2. Google launches Talk that was XMPP compatible
        3. Millions joined Talk that could coop XMPP in theory
        4. The coop worked only sparingly and was unidirectional, i.e. Talk to XMPP ✅ but XMPP to Talk ❌
        5. Talk sucked up existing XMPP users as it was obviously a better option (bandwagon effect + unidirectional “compatibility” with XMPP)
        6. Talk defederated

        This demonstrated exactly the importance of reciprocity. If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature. Also frankly it is Meta that has more to lose than the fediverse at this moment as the bulk of users and thus the content are with Meta.

        • fiah@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature.

          HARD disagree. Meta has been fighting dirty since their inception. There is no reason to put even the smallest bit of trust in them, and every reason to do the opposite. Everything they touch turns to shit, it follows then that you should never allow them to touch that which you hold dear

        • Spzi@lemmy.click
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          1 year ago

          If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature.

          These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore. If you let them gain that much ground, it’s too late to isolate them without doing even more harm to your own network.

          Also Meta is not a startup with unknown reputation. Meta plays dirty, that’s a given.

          • Qazwsxedcrfv000@lemmy.unknownsys.com
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            1 year ago

            They are already big. They have the users. They have the content. That is why they stay afloat with their ad business. That makes them valuable. It does not hurt if they are really sharing the treasure trove with us (which does not appear to be case after all if Verge is right). Rather laughably, you can say they have hurt us enough they can hurt us no more.

            • Spzi@lemmy.click
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              1 year ago

              Sorry for being unclear. What I meant is:

              These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore [as a presence in the fediverse].

              When they run the most and the biggest popular communities on their instances, do most of the development, offer the best tools and services in the fediverse, they have become too big to ignore.

              If they then start playing dirty, it is too late to defederate them. They will play dirty. Let’s not make ourselves dependent.

        • Kissaki@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Didn’t XMPP just lose to better messenger competition then?

          Did the [unidirectional] connection really make a difference to XMPP and its users?

          • Qazwsxedcrfv000@lemmy.unknownsys.com
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            1 year ago

            Didn’t XMPP just lose to better messenger competition then?

            It is perfectly valid to describe the outcome this way. I agree this is indeed the case. Google Talk gave way to other options deemed better too. Actually it did not gain much traction in my country either.

            But I guess it is the sucking of XMPP users and the whole feeling of getting “betrayed” that makes people holding a grudge toward megacorps Google-alike.

      • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Happy to report that XMPP is alive and kicking 🙂

        (And thanks for sharing, I am with Ploum on that)

    • mycelium_underground@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      A naive planet. Google embrace, extend, extinguish. For profit companies do not want a free community taking away from their ad revenue and they see that the fediverse is something that could take users away from their platforms.

      If you trust meta, I’m sorry but your an idiot.

    • repurpose8513@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Imagine making an open protocol and shocked pikachu facing when corporations use it. So are we gatekeeping now? Isn’t the whole purpose of Fendiverse so people can set up their own servers with their own rules with no gatekeeping?

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        There’s no gatekeeping about who can use the protocol, but individual instances can gatekeep who gets to federate with them. There needs to be a subset of the Fediverse that does not federate with Meta, if this is to survive as a community outside of corporate control.

    • kartong@social.fossware.space
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      1 year ago

      i think it’d be nice if i could finally follow / interact with my family again, since i havent been on facebook in years. idk