breakfastmtn

breakfastmtn , 27 days ago

Huzzah!

breakfastmtn , 27 days ago

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/ecd0950b-8fb2-4f66-8ce5-129e1a87446e.png

(there's a little arrested development in the mix too)

breakfastmtn , 3 months ago

I can't find a complete list, but McCue lists some examples here. These newly-federated magazines are apparently curated by the original 25 publishers in their initial test of federation. You can find the list of those publishers here. You should be able to find the magazines by searching for the publishers on Mastodon. Euronews' Russia-Ukraine crisis magazine, for example, is:
@russia-ukraine-crisis-euronews

I was able to follow all the publishers I tried. I also followed a few of the new magazines. Seems to work!

breakfastmtn , 4 months ago

Not the solution I was hoping for but it’s an extremely reasonable compromise. I’ve never heard of selective authorized fetch. Pretty sure he just invented it.

breakfastmtn , 4 months ago

@supapp

Releasing in beta soon!

breakfastmtn , 4 months ago

Unless I’m wrong, the unique thing here is that auth fetch is always off for the server. It’s on only at the user level and it’s only on at that level if a user has an active domain block.

That could actually solve a lot of problems for people. Admins are reluctant to enable it server-wide because it causes a bunch of problems. The biggest being that it breaks federation with servers running older software (Mastodon v <3.0 I think) and with other services (Pleroma, maybe others). It also uses more server resources. But there are always people who think it’s worth it.

breakfastmtn , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Ugh, at least they mention regulation and acknowledge XMPP still exists but this is one of the worst of these panicked scare pieces I’ve read yet. It’s filled with bad faith interpretation of quotes, poor analysis, and baseless speculation. The motto of all of these articles seems to be “if I can dream up a way to be scared of it, it must be true!”

How do you dismissively call Evan Podromou a “fediverse influencer”?! He’s one of the fucking co-authors of ActivityPub.

Their treatment of these two Mosseri quotes is just bad faith, fever swamp nonsense:

“I think we might be a more compelling platform for creators, particularly for the newer creators who are more and more savvy, if we are a place where you don’t have to feel like you have to trust us forever.”

“Eventually, it should also be possible to enable creators to leave Threads and take their followers with them to another app/server.”

They conclude that their (obvious!) goal is to be completely untrustworthy while giving people the false belief that they’re trustworthy. And the evidence? It’s all in the quote! He used the word “feel” and that can only mean a covert declaration of opposite day.

Same with the second quote. It’s “already clear that people won’t be able to move all their followers to other fediverse servers.” Why? It’s implied that the use of the word “eventually” means never (it doesn’t. look it up.). Does it matter that the quote is from a post talking about their gradual implementation of ActivityPub? Does it matter that moving accounts would logically occur near the end of that timeline? Of course not! We’re playing a game where we take a quote and manipulate it until it gives us whatever meaning we want. The other piece of evidence is that they haven’t decided whether federation will be opt-in or opt-out, which has nothing to do with moving your account. Make no mistake though, it is CLEAR that those quotes mean the opposite of what they say.

This is what the first quote means: ‘we can build legitimate trust by not locking people into our platform.’ Does that mean they won’t lock people in? No. But that quote isn’t evidence they won’t. Pretending that it is is tinfoil-hat bullshit.

Put the current fediverse to the side, and imagine a future of decentralized surveillance capitalism, where “Meta’s fediverse” filled with instances run by brands, politicians, celebrities, influencers, and non-profits – all doing harvesting data on Meta’s behalf

What a fucking nightmare that would be. Herd a bunch of crazy cats you don’t control for a rat’s nest of data without a simple way to use it to target ad deliveries (which is how they ultimately make money). Trusting someone like Alex Jones with the core of their business model? Riiiiight. And if they did it? So what? It would have no impact on Mastodon or the larger Fediverse. Even if Ron DeSantis had his own Meta-sponsored instance, everyone could just block it. I also fail to see how being in a direct business relationship with those people severs their connection. It’s a much stronger connection than them just having an account on their platform. And it just reintroduces the moderation problem this is claimed to solve. Public pressure would just shift from “ban user” to “block instance,” losing them the data and revenue anyway.

breakfastmtn , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Firstly, I didn’t realize this was your article. This is probably a good reminder that every article is someone’s article. I wish my tone and wording had been a bit less caustic, so apologies for being a bit of a dick in my comment and thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I think Evan’s influential, but it seems dismissive to call him an “influencer” without acknowledging his relationship to the Fediverse. His influence is earned, but the term often carries a negative connotation and is occasionally used as a pejorative. Although based on your reply, that doesn’t seem like it was your intention.

No, I’m not saying their goal is to be completely untrustworthy. It’s a means to an end. And the evidence for them being completely untrustworthy isn’t the quote, it’s Facebook, Instagram, and Meta’s long history of being completely untrustworthy. I wrote about this in Wait a second. Why should anybody trust Facebook, Instagram, or Meta?. Do you trust them?

I think the story of their public statements is that they’ve said everything you’d hope to hear. I’ve seen many takes that they somehow betray a hidden agenda, and that seems wrong at the very least. They undoubtedly have a bad past. Contrasting those statements with their history is obviously valid, as is analyzing them in relation to their business interests. Being skeptical or suspicious of their motivations is understandable. If they had the purest of intentions, the quotes would be the same though.

Do I trust Meta? No! I don’t use their platforms because I don’t trust them. I have an old Facebook account I don’t use, but would treat as the white pages if I ever did. And I have an extension to trap them in a sandbox if that need ever arises. I left Instagram for Pixelfed, and I’m exclusively on the Fediverse. I have no intention of leaving for any for-profit service. I don’t think I have to trust them or that they have to be trustworthy to their users to keep them from destroying the Fediverse though. I think the worst case is that we end up exactly where we are now, which is fine. I’m happy here now!

Good question, I edited the article to clarify:

I completely agree that it could cause problems with moving your account if the default is opt-in. I think it’s also important to note that they’ve only said that they’re not sure what the default will be. That could be bad intentions, but it could also be for good faith reasons. For example, it could just be concern about their users. I doubt they haven’t noticed the civil war that breaks out here every time there’s an announcement about Threads. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re waiting to see whether their users experience a tidal wave of harassment from this side. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they did. On our side, it wouldn’t surprise me if many admins end up defederating because it’s just too much work to moderate content from the Threads side even if they don’t have bad intentions.

Yeah really, it’s not like they every trusted Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica … oh wait, they did.

That’s apples and oranges though. They gave them data Meta had collected. The Meta-Fediverse would have them directly responsible for data collection. So they would need to admin those instances or trust that the admins wouldn’t tamper with that data. If the data were tampered with, it could seriously damage their core business model. It would poison their user tracking and they’d be less able to sell (the myth of) surgical market segmentation. It seems far less risky to be a good actor in the Fediverse to keep regulators off their back and continue to harvest vast quantities of granular tracking data from their own server. That seems especially true in light of Cambridge Analytica where they were savaged internationally for being unbelievably reckless and irresponsible with the data they held.

Even if there are numerous instances collecting data for them, they could still only get publicly available data from non-Threads Fediverse users. If they do want that, setting up an instance is way more inefficient and expensive than just scraping it from servers.

You really think most Republicans would block it?

No, but I don’t think that puts us in a different place than we are now. There are “free speech” instances that don’t defederate for any reason. They can’t force you to see or engage with anything and will never be able to. We’re not really surrendering any control to them.

breakfastmtn , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

On Evan as influencer, I’ve highlighted for a while the contrast between opinions of Eugen and other lead devs of fediverse projects, large instance admins, the people still on the SWICG standards body, and journalists who write about the fediverse – who in general almost all strongly support Meta

I still don’t agree that frames them properly to people who aren’t aware of them. This relevant definition is: “a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.” Prodromou’s been working in decentralized social media for nearly 20 years. He’s an expert if anyone is. Would you describe a professor speaking on their area of study as an influencer even if influential and on social media? To lump the people who’ve done the most work building, troubleshooting, problem-solving in this space together as influencers rather than people with expert knowledge is an odd choice.

I also don’t think many of those people would agree that they “strongly support Meta.” Just today on Mike McCue’s podcast Eugen said “I am no fan of Meta.” He supports federating with them because he thinks it’s good for the Fediverse. We benefit from their network effects without being subjected to ads or surveillance. People who wanted to join the Fediverse but didn’t because none of their network were on here can join. Their users can leave Meta without giving up their social graph and starting over. Organizations who’ve been on the fence about joining may decide to join. He thinks it’s good for us, good for their users, and presumably doesn’t care whether it’s good for Meta.

One is to provide services that cooperating instances in “Meta’s fediverse” can use that involve sharing data with Meta

Something similar to media outsourcing comments to Facebook. The problem is that what they’re tracking is… everything that happens on the server. If you took everything that’s tracked in Threads out of Threads, what would be left for an admin to do? If someone has root access how can they not have access to anything on the server? If you’re tampering with the thing they’re tracking, you’re tampering with the tracking. If it’s super locked-down hosting, Meta is ultimately the admin. I still don’t see how that doesn’t create serious problems. If the Alex Jones server decides to terrorize a bunch of families, how can they claim to not have an association? How would they not have pressure to defederate or cancel their hosting?

And certainly, if you’re a user on a Meta or Meta-controlled server, they can track you. It still doesn’t impact us. They can track everything they do because they control their servers; they can’t track us because we control ours. Whether we federate or not also has no impact on their ability to do any of the Meta-Fediverse stuff. We can’t run up and smack the ActivityPub out of their hands and be like, “No! Bad Meta!” ;)

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago

If you mean from the Fediverse side, it’s not really possible. At least not from Mastodon.

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

You should pop over there now if “Everyone screaming at each other about Threads” is one of your interests.

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago

If you follow someone on threads, they’ll only get your username, server name, profile pic, and server IP. That’s the same thing any remote instance gets. They’ll know if you like/share/comment on their content because you’d be telling them. Besides that, they can’t know anything. They only interact directly with your server, so they won’t even be able to tell if you see or click anything you’re subscribed to. In order to track you, they’d have to get info from your server (that isn’t collecting it to begin with). They also don’t have a reliable way to connect the sliver of data collected to an identity to serve ads to.

Really, the only reason they can collect as much about their users as they do is that they control their servers.

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago

From my post below: “If you follow someone on threads, they’ll only get your username, server name, profile pic, and server IP. That’s the same thing any remote instance gets. They’ll know if you like/share/comment on their content because you’d be telling them. Besides that, they can’t know anything. They only interact directly with your server, so they won’t even be able to tell if you see or click anything you’re subscribed to. In order to track you, they’d have to get info from your server (that isn’t collecting it to begin with). They also don’t have a reliable way to connect the sliver of data collected to an identity to serve ads to.

Really, the only reason they can collect as much about their users as they do is that they control their servers.”

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

They benefit by being able to say to regulators, especially in the EU, that they aren’t a monopoly that locks people into their ecosystem. They avoid expensive legal battles, fines, and possibly being forced to open their other, more lucrative silos. These are lesser benefits, but they also get cred for doing something cool, get to position themselves as a better alternative to Twitter, and might get to say that they beat Bluesky to full federation.

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago

Their last EU fine was $1.3 billion. That’s change-how-you-do-things money. The EU is getting more serious about tech regulation. It also made Apple add RCS support, which they swore they’d never do.

This feature lets their users to move to ad-free mastodon instances including those that signed fedi-pact.

I don’t think that’s possible. You have to be federated. Suspended servers can’t connect at all so there’s no way to transfer followers or set a redirect. It’s not something you can just choose to not respect - suspension is something done to untrustworthy servers so requiring them to honor it would completely break it immediately. If they signed the fedi pact and didn’t act, that’s not really on Meta.

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago

If they use a Mastodon intermediary, there’s a 30-day cool down. If they use their own, they’d have to expose the IP to do it so it would be discovered. I don’t see how it would benefit them to do that. If they did, that’s some sketchy, bad faith shit and they’d be universally fediblocked pretty quick.

I also don’t think they can monetize non-threads users because they can’t send them ads. It would be difficult to connect you to a Meta account to serve ads to because they only have your user name, profile pic, server IP, and server domain name. In most cases it’d be impossible. You’re pretty well protected because Mastodon servers treat all remote servers as untrustworthy and don’t give them any info.

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago

They’ve honestly done exactly what they’d said they would so far. They always said it would federate eventually, but not at first. They were even clear about it with their early adopters/influencers. They later clarified that it would be in 2024 and they’ve just started a small trial of limited federation a few weeks early.

Mike Masnick has covered it a lot. He’s consistently reported that they are surprisingly determined to federate. I don’t think there’s a downside for them. They aren’t connecting either of their cash cows and Threads isn’t a huge moneymaker for them. It seems more an opportunity to head off the EU regulators (and poke Twitter in the eye).

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago

Servers pull content based on subscriptions (follows). Meta can’t push content into the Fediverse.

breakfastmtn , 5 months ago

I think we’re talking about two different things. I’m saying that servers ultimately choose what they receive. People worry that Meta will flood Mastodon with unwanted content but content has to be invited in. Although it’s more accurate to say that users have to be invited in, like vampires, to serve content. People seem worried that federating means inviting in all the vampires.

When users on server A follow a single user on server B, it doesn’t matter if server B has one user or ten billion, server A receives content from one user. The only way to receive all content from a server is to have at least one person following every user on the remote server.

So Meta can’t flood Mastodon with unwanted content because you only receive content from users you explicitly ask to receive it from. You aren’t connected to the firehose when you federate with their instance.