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- cross-posted to:
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- [email protected]
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Maybe infinite growth doesn’t need to be the goal.
The core idea of the fediverse is the same as democracy - that nobody should control the whole. Both are similar enough to allow comparisons.
Threads in the Fediverse is like a powerful dictatorship trying to “deepen its bonds” with a small but democratic government. The dictatorship will eventually exploit the power asymmetry to control the democracy, direct or indirectly, effectively erasing it. In that situation, the best approach is to simply not play along the dictatorship. (Defederate Threads.)
Another threat to democracy is internal: the centralisation of control over the whole into a few hands. In the case of the Fediverse, this is the reliance on central systems (front-end software, back-end software, instances, discovery systems, etc.). I see what the author proposes as a “Universal Declaration on Fediverse Rights” as, potentially, a new mechanism enabling those central systems - who gets to decide what goes in that declaration?
So yes, I think that instances should defederate Threads and encourage other instances to do so. However, they should not do it too hard, to the point that you’re effectively dictating what others should be doing.
An important detail is that the author falls into the fallacy of conflating epistemic and moral matters. This is specially explicit here:
Because without believing in the existence of a objective truth (which they don’t, because they attribute themselves to moral relativism),
That fallacy has a deep impact across the text because the author believes that people can eventually agree on moral grounds based on reason. Often they don’t - because it depends on the moral premises that each adopt, and moral premises are not true/false matters to begin with.
the actual problem is that the Fediverse is internally shattered and cannot agree on anything, including basic moral rules and principles.
That is not a problem. That’s a feature.
You make a few good points, I will try to counter them.
The core idea of the fediverse is the same as democracy - that nobody should control the whole. Both are similar enough to allow comparisons.
True, its for separation of powers but this doesn’t mean there cannot be any central rules decided upon. For example the consititution of the united states. However, because the Fediverse doesn’t have a government, I think a better analogy would be a league of more or less democractic countries that work together. Of course they can agree to an universal declaration, like the united nations agreed on human rights for exactly the same reasons.
So yes, I think that instances should defederate Threads and encourage other instances to do so. However, they should not do it too hard, to the point that you’re effectively dictating what others should be doing.
Agreed. However, there is a difference between a constitution of a country and agreements between countries. For example, the NATO has an agreement with the US that if any NATO country is attacked, US will jump in. However, this is completely build on trust, if Trump decides to not jump in, no one will be able to stop him, meaning there isn’t any higher institution that controls the different actors in this agreement other than the actors themselves. This is why I think the analogue of a league of nations is better, because agreements can be much more loose here.
Of course, there would still be a question who would write this document, but the basic idea would be that if it was supported by many servers, it would be put up more or less by word of mouth. To do this most effectively, it would be good to create the document in a way that many servers willing to agree to it. For example through a ActivityPub commitee that exists anyways or a popular meetup of Fediverse servers. And eventually, the most reasonable one will be hold up by the most servers. I think of it as a dynamic process.
But yeah, there would have to be put some thought into it how to craft it and most likely we don’t have the institutions yet to do something like that.
That fallacy has a deep impact across the text because the author believes that people can eventually agree on moral grounds based on reason. Often they don’t - because it depends on the moral premises that each adopt, and moral premises are not true/false matters to begin with.
Could be true, I need to think about this longer. However, I still think that as a foundation, basic fediverse rights could be agreed upon through reason and that they could become effective tools against Meta and to improve the Fediverse in general. Of course, they shouldn’t be too detailed and let enough freedoms how to realize them technically.
the actual problem is that the Fediverse is internally shattered and cannot agree on anything, including basic moral rules and principles.
That is not a problem. That’s a feature.
I think its good that different moral rule sets can easily develop and implemented; but I think sooner or later it will become a problem, at the latest when more radical parts become pre-dominant. Its not like the Fediverse will automatically develop in a good direction. I don’t believe in a hierarchy-free, anarchic society. We need institutions and agreements to ensure that the Fediverse stays a good place.
It’s less about the separation of powers and more about the fragmentation of each power. As in, you should be able to ditch any governing power that you dislike, and curb down its influence on your experience to a bare minimum.
So perhaps the best analogy with RL politics would be a confederation with lax citizenship laws and federated entities being free to choose which other federated entities they interact with. With a key difference:
The Fediverse can be completely acephalous. And the reason becomes evident once you analyse the UN of your example - it’s effectively Europe and USA wearing a bunch of sock puppets, pretending to talk in the name of the “nations” (actually countries, but whatever) of the world. An acephalous Fediverse would not develop a similar problem.
In this case (Threads), it means that, while we should promote defederation, how to deal with it should be, ultimately, up to each instance.
NATO example
I don’t pay taxes to any NATO country so what I’m going to say is solely based on the Fediverse situation, plus whatever I parsed from your example:
We should not need to rely on “trust” on first place. Instead a better approach is to acknowledge that people will fuck it up, they will do things that counter the best interests of the whole, and that the system needs to handle it.
For example through a ActivityPub commitee that exists anyways or a popular meetup of Fediverse servers.
What happens if said commitee becomes hostile, defending its own self-interests in detriment of the ones of the rest of the Fediverse?
I think its good that different moral rule sets can easily develop and implemented; but I think sooner or later it will become a problem, at the latest when more radical parts become pre-dominant.
Or we could leave those moral matters up to each instance to decide. And the ones screwing up on moral matters get isolated.
It’s less about the separation of powers and more about the fragmentation of each power. As in, you should be able to ditch any governing power that you dislike, and curb down its influence on your experience to a bare minimum.
I said separation of powers because you said the Fediverse should be like a democracy. Then it should have that. For me, democracy is first of all a better way to control those in power, which is why I think we shouldn’t think of the Fediverse as a democracy, because it isn’t; at least not currently. It’s not like you have a say in the general development of the Fediverse, because there is no real centre to it anyways.
So, I agree with you here, I just don’t think that’s what a democracy is. If the Fediverse would be a democracy, it would have government, a constitution, etc.
But as I said, I agree with you how we should think of the Fediverse: as acephalous. However, why should it be completely acephalous? Why shouldn’t servers make agreements with one another? The Fedipact is one of those, the badspace, too. And while I’m not a fan of the first one, its generally fine, if they don’t force people into it (like you said). Why then not try to do the same thing but with some actual principles?
What happens if said commitee becomes hostile, defending its own self-interests in detriment of the ones of the rest of the Fediverse?
Then many servers will opt out of it and it will become irrelevant. That’s the beauty of it. Because its only an agreement that is not controlled by any centrlized entity, its not as binding. The same as with the Fedipact: it wasn’t set up by any central entity and will not be enforced by it other than the community or powerful servers. But that the community and powerful servers will try to influence the course of the Fediverse is the the case anyways!
And the ones screwing up on moral matters get isolated.
For Nazi-instances, that’s easy, but for example in the case of Threads, it quickly becomes very complicated to agree on which instances should be isolated and which not. How do you determine that if not through speaking to other servers? And if you do that, you can just as well speak to them about common rights and write them down somewhere. It’s the same thing but with more transparency.
We cannot build the Fediverse without trust and mutual agreements. It will just not work; and we are also already doing it.
The US is a failed and corrupted state that we don’t need to recreate. It’s built on more wrong things than good. Keep your American propaganda to yourself and don’t infest the actually free fediverse with your liberal corporatist ideals.
And this isn’t even touching on the myriad of reasons for us not to federate with an entity like Meta. Not even gonna iterate on them because they’ve been infinitely chewed in and out.
It might have been fake, but weren’t there already reports of Meta blocking links/tags in relation to pixelfed?
If it’s true, they’ve already proven to be a bad faith actor. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already scraping data from every other instance that federates with them.
At the end of the day, one side will be right. My moneys on the anti-threads side.
I don’t like the “they haven’t done anything bad yet” argument for staying federated, since there are much better reasons for not doing so. They either have already, and we aren’t talking about it yet (ex. downranking fediverse content, those closed door meetings with admins), or they are going to once they need to extract a profit.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already scraping data from every other instance that federates with them.
I would be surprised if they aren’t already, and they’re likely scraping data from the defederated instances as well.
I think microblog instances should stay federated because that’s the best way to fight against threads. (longer discussion here: https://lemmy.ca/post/11771031)
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I don’t know why people keep spreading this nonsense. If your instance is publicly visible (which it is) then Meta is likely already scraping it. They do not need federation to do that.
They do it because they want to make the “Meta is already scraping anyway, so we should just all agree to their terms of service and start federating with them and become one big happy family”. It’s just good old anti-defederation rhetoric.
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How is that any different than the weekly defederatiosns here?
I don’t think it can but hear me out for a second. How about we just don’t grow? We’re not beholden to stock owners needing to see growth year over year. Can we just be happy with what we have?
100% agree with you. Growth must not be the goal, maybe a byproduct. Focusing on growth will eventually compromise the quality of our experience.
Absolutely agree with you as well. Natural growth as a byproduct would mean that those that wish to stay in the fediverse like what the see and stay with the community.
We will absolutely grow. But „organically“ as every other community that stays healthy does. Most people are just used to the inflated expectations that start ups have.
But yes, I dont see a reason to force growth, especially not with meta.
I don’t think it needs to be our goal, but I think if the fediverse gets popular, we should let it grow. I see this place as an infinite green space for people to come and feel free to discuss their interests. Lemmy’s communities ensure that it scales, because you only join ones that interest you. Then the community can enforce whatever spirit of discussion it wants to maintain and people can create another community if they want to try something different.
My thoughts exactly. Growth is a byproduct of quality. Similarly, if the Fediverse grows too much and quality starts to slip, we should also let it shrink until quality comes back. I think our aim should be quality, and anything else is just a side effect.
Yes. The argument that we need to grow is a capitalistic one imo. This isn’t a capitalistic platform afaik. Small communities are naturally better, I think.
Plenty of non-capitalist organizations also seek to grow.
Yes, but organic growth has its limits unlike capitalistic growth. We can’t grow infinitely and if we grow fast, that growth might be gone as quickly as it arrived.
Now we are trying to make a less obvious headlines to push pro meta propaganda, right?
We, the signees of the fedipact are not in fear. We know that meta has a horiffic track record of both human rights violations and data security violations.
Its actually the core reason why I decided to make a new community at [email protected]. Those who think that corporate greed and shareholder primacy are cancer in our society are very welcome.
The Fedipact is deeply regressive. It follows web2 logic, meaning, it treats the arrival of Meta, like it delt with problems in web2: it uses defederation like cancelling - although cancelling heavily depends on the network effects of social media, most of which Meta owns. While in web2, it was possible to isolate people that one was at odds with through this, it doesn’t work like this here, because the cost to do so are much higher, when in web2 they were zero. You are basically trying to cancel the thing that gave you cancelling. This is why the Fedipact will be neither effective against Meta, nor other similar problems in the future. Most of this stems, I think, from the fact that the Fediverse is overwhelmed with the situation and doesn’t have a better solution, and that it hasn’t really understood network effects and how they work in the new, federated social web; so, it falls back in old, regressive behaviour.
We‘re not cancelling anyone. We‘re shaping our world like we see fit. You should try it, its great.
That’s great, but you are not alone in this world. You cannot just pretend like Meta doesn’t exist. Actually, it will be the most powerful instance in the Fediverse. Its a new reality the Fediverse finds itself in and you just want to opt out of it and carry on like before. I understand it, but I just don’t think it will work.
Your wording shows that you‘re fully convinced that meta is some kind of deity. Instead, they’re a cancer that spreads through the internet and the real world by now. We‘re not ignoring them, we‘re effectively boycotting them.
For a short best of of meta‘s misdeeds, visit the fedipact.
Your wording shows that you‘re fully convinced that meta is some kind of deity.
Nope, just a company. I know that it has done some bad things. I just don’t think your strategy is effective.
We‘re not ignoring them, we‘re effectively boycotting them.
How can you effectively boycott something without social media? The Fediverse has ca. 2 million active users, Meta services have much more. If boycotting something means cutting yourself off from most of social media, nobody will notice and it won’t hurt Meta a bit. Its the #deletefacebook all over again.
You can think that my strategy isnt effective. I just couldnt care less to be frank.
I‘m not cutting myself off from most of social media more than when I left facebook, twitter and then reddit.
You got it backwards mate. They are following us because we‘re gaining traction. We‘re just going to stay ahead.
They are following us because we‘re gaining traction. We‘re just going to stay ahead.
Agreed.
It’s fine. I guess we want to achieve the same thing but with different strategies. Let’s see what the future will bring.
The typo in the title is really jarring for me. It’s losing, with a single o 🥹
It’s nice to let your soul loose once in a while…
Yeah same. I know what they mean but it’s not what’s there and it’s hard to take it seriously 🙈
Meta’s moral shortcomings are even more reasons to federate with them and try to win over users and pressure Meta to implement better digital rights as well.
“The terrorists moral shortcomings are even more reasons to negotiate with them and try to win them over.”
Don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Also the article sets up defederation from Meta as if it doesn’t do anything. I don’t think that’s true though.
The terrorists moral shortcomings are even more reasons to negotiate with them and try to win them over
You’re not negotiating with the terrorists (Meta), you’re engaging with the public to explain why the terrorists are bad and why they shouldn’t buy what’s being sold.
The argument is that we aren’t going to win this with sheer numbers or funding, so we need to slowly get people to understand why they are better off picking Mastodon/Fediverse over threads. Every instagram user is already being tossed into Threads, and you can’t bring those people over if they never see posts or content from the Fediverse
you can’t bring those people over if they never see posts or content from the Fediverse
It’s still possible. Reddit didn’t became popular because it federated with Digg.
When Lemmy will become the reference for human provided answers, people will join. How fast it will happen depends on how bad the experience on Reddit becomes.
That’s a good point too :)
Maybe. But that’s a big maybe. It could equally be that Threads becomes the most powerful entity on the Fediverse and what they do becomes law (like shutting off a certain instance).
Yea the other part of my reasoning is to try and prevent them from getting to that point.
The short version of which is that our biggest selling point is “Join Mastodon, you can see all the same content and do the same things, but it’s run by a non-profit instead of Facebook”. Defederation means we lose that point, and it’s going to be very difficult for Mastodon to compete with the money and manpower that facebook has.
“Join Mastodon to see content that you can’t see otherwise” will have a much harder time competing with “Join Threads to see content that you can’t see otherwise”
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In principle, yes. But if 99% of users are on one server, then that server has a disproportional amount of power in the network. If they choose to defederate another server, it’s essentially a death sentence.
Only if the users on that server treat it like a death sentence.
Most users would probably jump away from that server in that case, so in all likelihood they would.
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It is different because if we defederate in the first place, then perhaps 99% of users would not congregate in that server.
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That is not really true and anyone who actually believes that is in for a rude awakening.
See I think that you’re a bit confused because when they say that or things similar to that what they really mean is that no one person controls the fediverse. Not that there are no laws or rules because they’re absolutely are.
For example if you go around spouting bigotry you will find yourself banned from a majority of public federated servers, and if you are on a server that you are not the owner of you will likely find yourself banned from that one. The fact that it’s decentralized does not mean that it doesn’t have rules or is some kind of free speech safe haven.
XMPP hadn’t, until google put his hands on it.
If you defederate with them, I thought they could still see you.
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I think we’re up to 16 now. The Fediverse is being ruined.
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We need some basic rules,
- No single direction federation
- Users own their content and can licence it as they feel fit
With these 2 it would be hard to fuck up
Users “owning” their content in that way would be the instant death of the Fediverse. If anyone can put whatever nonsense license terms they want on each individual comment or post, how could that chaos possibly be federated?
A better approach would be to recognize that if you’re posting your words up on a giant billboard you’re not going to be able to control who sees them.
Users “owning” their content in that way would be the instant death of the Fediverse. If anyone can put whatever nonsense license terms they want on each individual comment or post, how could that chaos possibly be federated?
A better approach would be to recognize that if you’re posting your words up on a giant billboard you’re not going to be able to control who sees them.
Would quotes fall under fair use or copyright infringement?
According to a quick Google search (I’m no expert on copyright law), a sufficiently original email is automatically copyrighted. What constitutes “sufficiently original” seems to be pretty arbitrary.
So I guess if you post a short story, that’s automatically copyrighted. Commenting “this” is not. And then there’s a huge grey zone in the middle.
I think the same basically applies to… Anything. I mean a sufficiently original book is copyrighted but a sufficiently unoriginal book is not. Substitute book with any kind of media you want.
Makes you realize how finicky copyright is.
Is there single direction federation right now? I don’t think there is?
Also it would probably be more realistic for instances to put a default license on content. Users don’t want to bother choosing a license and most users wouldn’t even know what that means.
100% have instance user defaults etc those who want to custpmise further can do so its already part of peertube and pixelfed.
I mean there are a shitload of reasons to not federate with Threads, but I feel like “it will federate ads to your server” is kinda the only one I should need to mention.
how can the Fediverse grow without loosing its soul in the process?
It can’t? Rather obvious that the “soul” of a community is defined by it’s members and the bigger the community the more mainstream this soul will become. Maybe the federation mechanic offers some solutions here, but that remains to be seen.
Many people like simplistic garbage. You can’t convince them to like something better, as that creates demands on them to grow as a person, when they likely have other priorities in their lives that demand their attention more forcefully.
This is why McDonalds is the worlds most successful restaurant. Not because it is good, but because it is undemanding.
So, when people think we can pull users from the McDonalds crowd with superior quality, it just makes me laugh.
Are you sure you don’t mean a Universal Declaration of Fediverse Independence from Reddit, Threads, and Twitter/X?
The soul is always lost
