Comment on Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse
breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 11 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 convert 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.
thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Thanks for the feedback! You really don’t think Evan’s influential in the fediverse?
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?
Good question, I edited the article to clarify:
Yeah really, it’s not like they every trusted Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica … oh wait, they did.
Anyhow it’s not the core of their business model. The core of their business model is harvesting data and using it to sell and target ads (and sell other stuff), Alex Jones is just one more channel to leverage.
You really think most Republicans would block it?
breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 11 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.
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!
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.
thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
No worries on the tone and wording, it’s the internet, I’ve experienced far worse. And your feedback is helpful, so the time you put into it is appreciated.
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 – and people on the fediverse, who are much more split. “Influencer” is as good a term as any to refer to the first category of people.
In the statements I quoted were very up front about their agenda! Similarly in the section where I talk about their potential long-term plans if they decide to invest in this direction is consistent with Zuckerberg’s comments about his interest in a decentralized approach. But yeah, they’re also saying what they know people want to hear.
Fair, I’ve rewrittent hat section to clarify that this is only their current plan. It’s be really funny if Meta suggested taking the privacy-friendly approach knowing that Mastodon would try to talk them out of it 🤣🤣🤣. I still expect them to go with opt-in, but we shall see. I agree that if they go the opt-in route it’s not necessarily for nefarious reasons, in my view it really is in their users best interest. But that’s the thing about the embrace-and-extend strategies (whether or not the third step is to extinguish), the extensions are very often in the users interests, they just cause problems for the open alternatives.
On Cambridge Analytica, I agree the data flow was in a different direction, but still: they trusted Bannon and CA with it the data that was the most valuable asset in their business model. And (other than some bad press) it worked out just fine for them! So I guess we draw different conclusions on who they’ll trust with what in the future.
In any case though…
No, they have a other options here. One is to provide services that cooperating instances in “Meta’s fediverse” can use that involve sharing data with Meta, and create a win/win scenario for them to share the data. Think of Disney or some corporation that wants to target ads (using Meta’s services, in return for a revenue share) to people on their instances – and automate some of the moderation (by using Meta’s services). Why wouldn’t they harvest data and share it with Meta so that the services are more effective? Another is to provide a hosting service for corporations (and perhaps individuals) to have their own instances … it’s kind of a variant of the first one but packaged differently.
(And both of these apply to non-public data as well.)
In terms of blocking a DeSantis instance I agree it’s not surrendering control to them, I just meant that Meta could monetize the heck out of it even if all the instances i the current fediverse blocked it. If they had the infrastructure in place today, DeSantis and others would be paying to boost their instances’ posts to Threads (and also Gab and Truth Social and the instances that Fox News, Breitbart, etc are running). They might well miss the window for the 2024 US election but it (hopefully) won’t be the last election in the world.
breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
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 any 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.
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!” ;)
SulaymanF@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Their goal is to be profitable. Whether that means embracing standards for good PR or fighting standards if it benefits them, it doesn’t matter. Money matters.