It seems that the #privacy strength of the #fediverse was that no one barely knew it existed, not that it was built on a rugged social protocol with privacy built-in. As this post by @@jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu has me thinking, how would you actually stop #Meta or anyone hoovering up the Fediverse? We couldn't even get search sorted with some Fediverse consensus and extended at a protocol level. There's folks who thought #noindex HMTL tags in #Mastodon were readable over #ActivityPub by other services with full-text search that had been around longer than Mastodon. And Google just easily indexed the Fediverse once it gained some popularity so it's publicly searchable anyway and will be even easier once they launch their Perspectives social search tab. Yet folks thought Universeodon's search patch was so egregious and worth their performative outrage, and again, that defederation would somehow fix things.

Jupiter Rowland

2023-05-26 06:54:55

@ophiocephalic 🐍 @Tim Chambers @Fediverse Report @Spread Mastodon As a #FederatedSocialWeb veteran and former self-hoster of my own private #Friendica and #Hubzilla instances, I have to say that I can hardly see literally absolutely the whole Fediverse fediblocking #Meta.

You have to keep a few things in mind.

First of all, the Fediverse is not only #Mastodon. Nor is the Fediverse only about a dozen big projects. The Fediverse is dozens upon dozens of big and small projects.

For the whole Fediverse to fediblock Meta, every single last one of them, even just recently launched private proof-of-concept alphas of brand-new projects which nonetheless will federate, will require not only a mandatory instance-wide blocking mechanism, but a mandatory standard blacklist with Meta's instance on it. Otherwise developers can't test-drive their new Fediverse server application without their test instance being defederated left and right for not blocking Meta.

Of course, this would also mean that everything that even only as much as understands #ActivityPub would require such a mandatory default blacklist with Meta on it. Even if it isn't based on ActivityPub. Even if ActivityPub is an add-on, a plug-in, maybe even third-party like in the case of #WordPress. Even if ActivityPub has to be manually activated instance-wide by the admin and then separately by the users for each one of their channels like in Hubzilla's case.

That is, putting Meta on the same list as all other defederated instances would probably be considered not enough. Blocking Meta would have to be hard-coded into the engine of the project itself, also to mandatorily roll it out to all instances of all projects. Instance block lists aren't part of the source code, and if they became that, lots of not-so-techy instance admins would end up with file conflicts they can't solve because the git pull involved in the upgrade would try to create a file that already exists.

Still, this wouldn't be 100% water-tight. An absolutely mandatory fediblock for Meta would mean certain death for lots and lots of small private instances. Admins of such tiny instances often only do the very bare necessities to keep them running. Sometimes they rarely or never even upgrade the underlying operating system, much less the Fediverse project running on it. Why should they? It runs. And an upgrade means a) a hassle and b) probably more of a hassle if stuff breaks.

Just to prove my point: There are still Mastodon 3.x instances in the Fediverse. There are still a very few running small instances of #Osada and #Zap, both of which have been discontinued on New Year's Eve 2022. These projects are no longer maintained. They won't get any updates anymore. They were superseded by #Streams, and not everyone who still runs these old projects wants to do the switch.

And then there are those projects that are technically still in development, but whose development has slowed down dramatically. Look at how often #Pleroma rolls out new versions. And Pleroma isn't exactly obscure, it has public instances. Or look at #Plume which counts as still actively developed, but whose devs barely find any time to do anything, so it often doesn't get any updates in many months. I don't even think that Plume has any means of blocking instances by blacklist.

So if blocking Meta becomes mandatory, you can fediblock an entire long-form blogging project out of the Fediverse with all its private and public instances because not a single instance will participate in blocking Meta, because not a single instance is even capable of doing that, because the capability is not included and rolled out in time, because the devs can't find the time to include it.

@ophiocephalic 🐍 @Tim Chambers @Fediverse Report @Spread Mastodon As a #FederatedSocialWeb veteran and former self-hoster of my own private #Friendica and #Hubzilla instances, I have to say that I can hardly see literally absolutely the whole Fediverse fediblocking #Meta.

You have to keep a few things in mind.

First of all, the Fediverse is not only #Mastodon. Nor is the Fediverse only about a dozen big projects. The Fediverse is dozens upon dozens of big and small projects.

For the whole Fediverse to fediblock Meta, every single last one of them, even just recently launched private proof-of-concept alphas of brand-new projects which nonetheless will federate, will require not only a mandatory instance-wide blocking mechanism, but a mandatory standard blacklist with Meta's instance on it. Otherwise developers can't test-drive their new Fediverse server application without their test instance being defederated left and right for not blocking Meta.

Of course, this would also mean that everything that even only as much as understands #ActivityPub would require such a mandatory default blacklist with Meta on it. Even if it isn't based on ActivityPub. Even if ActivityPub is an add-on, a plug-in, maybe even third-party like in the case of #WordPress. Even if ActivityPub has to be manually activated instance-wide by the admin and then separately by the users for each one of their channels like in Hubzilla's case.

That is, putting Meta on the same list as all other defederated instances would probably be considered not enough. Blocking Meta would have to be hard-coded into the engine of the project itself, also to mandatorily roll it out to all instances of all projects. Instance block lists aren't part of the source code, and if they became that, lots of not-so-techy instance admins would end up with file conflicts they can't solve because the git pull involved in the upgrade would try to create a file that already exists.

Still, this wouldn't be 100% water-tight. An absolutely mandatory fediblock for Meta would mean certain death for lots and lots of small private instances. Admins of such tiny instances often only do the very bare necessities to keep them running. Sometimes they rarely or never even upgrade the underlying operating system, much less the Fediverse project running on it. Why should they? It runs. And an upgrade means a) a hassle and b) probably more of a hassle if stuff breaks.

Just to prove my point: There are still Mastodon 3.x instances in the Fediverse. There are still a very few running small instances of #Osada and #Zap, both of which have been discontinued on New Year's Eve 2022. These projects are no longer maintained. They won't get any updates anymore. They were superseded by #Streams, and not everyone who still runs these old projects wants to do the switch.

And then there are those projects that are technically still in development, but whose development has slowed down dramatically. Look at how often #Pleroma rolls out new versions. And Pleroma isn't exactly obscure, it has public instances. Or look at #Plume which counts as still actively developed, but whose devs barely find any time to do anything, so it often doesn't get any updates in many months. I don't even think that Plume has any means of blocking instances by blacklist.

So if blocking Meta becomes mandatory, you can fediblock an entire long-form blogging project out of the Fediverse with all its private and public instances because not a single instance will participate in blocking Meta, because not a single instance is even capable of doing that, because the capability is not included and rolled out in time, because the devs can't find the time to include it.

Facebook is now known as META and they want to build a META-VERSE.

Should you embrace it or stay away?

Youtube: https://youtu.be/_Dq8Dt3FZfI

Peertube/TILVids: https://tilvids.com/w/tvdCKxVKJcn7uZPTvbPyBW

#Facebook #FacebookMeta #Meta #Metaverse #VirtualReality #technology #deletefacebook

geotechdigital

2021-10-29 15:37:12

Stay Away From The Facebook META-VERSE

Here I talk about the facebook name change to META and about the dangers of trusting facebook to build a virtual world.

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#facebook #meta #metaverse

geotechland's profile - Liberapay

I am Geotech Land, I am passionate about gaming, opensource technology, nonprofit organizations and everything linux.

^Liberapay

Here I talk about the facebook name change to META and about the dangers of trusting facebook to build a virtual world.

Support me at:

💵 Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/geotechland
💵 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/geotechland

🛍️ Shop at EarthHero: https://earthhero.com/?ref=geotechland
Promo code for 10% off: GEOTECH

Follow me at:

🐘 Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/users/geotechland
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💡 Minds: https://www.minds.com/geotechland
🐦 Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/geotechland
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geotechlands/

Listen to the Geotech Talks podcast at:
🎙 https://anchor.fm/geotechland

Geoproton Linux Gaming:
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🔴 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwqay5v9orFEFNVb-VyL8jA

Watch (ads & google) free on:

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#facebook #meta #metaverse

I'm not very sure about the consequences of Meta probably joining the Fediverse, and after I have read here a lot of posts and opinions, I would say that almost all of them are based on rumors. We don't even know what Meta is really planing, which protocols they want to use and in which extent, etc.
First of all I don't think that the target of Barcelona is to do interact (with good or evil intentions) with the Mastodon communities. They real target in my opinion is Twitter, a big social network/market, with a strong crisis due to its erratic management. Anyway I see a high potential of changes and colateral damages to our communities, and some open questions, if they decide to federate.

1) The first one is about the federation. If several hundreds of millions of new users enter the Fediverse though a single instance, which consequences would it have, especially for small instances? It is possible to handle? I'm thinking about the size of the account table, account cull and administrative aspects.

2) I suppose that the federated timeline will be monopolized by Meta due to the number of users they have. How can be it solved? If I good understand the concept of silencing, that would affect the searcheability of users of our instances for Meta users and opposite (that is, we would lose the maybe only aspect in which both Meta and Mastodon instances can benefit).

3) Data privacy and data ownership. Taking in account the reputation and past activities of Meta, can we trust that our data won't be used by the company? Is it any way to protect from it? Or the only solution is not to federate? I hope there is any middle path, but I don't see it.

4) If Barcelona uses ActivityPub, it is safe to expect that Meta will introduce modifications which are not compliant with the standard. I don't know how problematic they will be, a good candidate is to block possible migration from Barcelona to Mastodon, but I have to say that it is the last of my concerns.

#barcelona #meta #twitter

My thoughts on Meta's strategy on launching an ActivityPub-based social network are simple.

Embrace, extend, and extinguish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Embrace: Look, we've launched a shiny new Twitter clone!

It's not an empty new social platform, like Google Plus was. You can already access all the content on Mastodon and all the other ActivityPub-based platforms!

We've seen the light! We now embrace open networks!

And it's so simple!

All you people who wanted to switch to Mastodon, but freaked out when you read the word "server" and thought it was too complicated for you, no fear! We've done away with the confusing choice for you! It's a super simple UX!

Extend: Our shiny new Twitter clone now integrates seamlessly with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more! You can even get notifications in Horizon Worlds!

Oh, we're not integrating our other platforms to ActivityPub. If you want one easy platform for Meta's social media platforms and ActivityPub, our Twitter clone is your only choice!

To advertisers and media, we'll let you boost posts too, for a tiny fee!

We'll feature you prominently on our new algorithmic feed.

So don't bother spinning up your own Masto instance, join us instead!

Extinguish: As of 1 July, we are depreciating support for ActivityPub.

Also, effective immediately, our privacy terms have been updated. You won't believe what we hid on page 76.

#Meta #Facebook #Zuckerberg #Twitter #Mastodon #Elon #ElonMusk @main @fediverse @technology