Project92 and the Fediverse - A Smarter Battle Plan to Protect the Open Social Web
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With the upcoming #meta #Project92 Fediverse service, there has been a, well, robust discussion of how to avoid threats looming. Those advocating mass-preemptive defederation make three cases for it. ➡️ To avoid data mining … However, defederation does virtually zero to avoid any big tech entity scraping all the Fediverse public social graph today - Want proof? See here: is.gd/q8U2pv But what if they merge that Fediverse data with their own internal data from IG isn’t that worse than just scraped data?

It is expected to be 2-3 months before Threads is ready to federate (see link). There will, inevitably, be five different reactions from instances:

  1. Federate regardless (mostly the toxic instances everyone else blocks)

  2. Federate with extreme caution and good preparation (some instances with the resources and remit from their users)

  3. Defederate (wait and see)

  4. Defederate with the intention of staying defederated

  5. Defederate with all Threads-federated instances too

It’s all good. Instances should do what works best for them and people should make their home with the instances that have the moderation policies they want.

In the interests of instances which choose options 2 or 3, perhaps we could start to build a pre-emptive block list for known bad actors on Threads?

I’m not on it but I think a fair few people are? And there are various commentaries which name some of the obvious offenders.

  • @[email protected]English
    45•1 year ago

    From what I understand, they’re likely trying to kill the fediverse by making it irrelevant (embrace, extend, extinguish) seeing how it’s finally starting to grow, since they can’t just buy it up this time like they’ve always done to competitors.

    Even aside from that though, their algorithms designed to retain user attention by any means necessary are definitely going to seep into and poison the fediverse, at least indirectly, if they’re federated.

    Not to mention they could easily run ads as normal posts and boost them artificially; they are an ad company after all. Wouldn’t put it past them.

    Not federating with them means we don’t have to deal with all that, and the fediverse can just continue to grow naturally as it’s been doing.

    Federating on the other hand means a very real risk of permanently halting the fediverse’s growth in favour of corporations’, like Google did to XMPP

    • NineEnglish
      4•1 year ago

      That’s a good point. Would it not make more sense to block/de-federate when they start being bad actors rather than preemptively block? I’m not saying that preparing is bad, I think it’s very much need and valid to assume they will be bad actors. I would like to be wrong and believe that being good hosts is better for their bottom lines. I do not expect them to do anything good because it’s the “right” thing.

      • @[email protected]English
        41•1 year ago

        If there’s one company you should preemptively block, it’s Facebook. They have a track record of destroying anything and everything they touch and there is zero reason to think it won’t be the same this time. From this post:

        They aren’t some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They’re a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:

        • Helping enhance genocides in countries
        • Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
        • Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make “facebook” most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
        • Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
        • Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren’t able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
        • Even now, they’re on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.
        • NineEnglish
          20•1 year ago

          This is the best response I’ve seen. Abso-fucking-lutely made it clear why it’s impossible to trust meta in anyway shape or form. Thanks!