I used to think that there would be 1, main ‘Fediverse’ with all of the ‘big instances’ connected to each other. The recent Threads debacle has shown me otherwise.
The point of the Fediverse is that there is no one single entity, or group of entities, dominating it all.
Right now it feels like whatever the big instances do, we kind of have to go along with to be a part of anything. As the Fediverse grows, there will be more options to suit different types of users.
I think it’s fine if big instances federate with Threads and it’s fine if they don’t. People can just join instances that align with what they want. It’s not like defederating means being cut out of the Fediverse, that’s not possible.
Great design. I’m eager to see how it plays out.
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The most reasonable solution I’ve seen so far, from the pixelfed and pixelfed.social creator
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.
FOSS ingenuity at work. All it needs is adaptation and adoption.
Authorised fetch has been a thing on Mastodon and I believe Akkoma too. I don’t know if Pleroma, Soapbox or Misskey have it though.
Authorized Fetch has been a thing for a bit on Mastodon at least - but as far as I can see it’s a global toggle rather than saying “If you present as a domain on the blocklist then you must be authorized to fetch this resource” (the selective authorized fetch I assume they’re talking about).
Never used Akkoma though, so I can’t speak for it.
Yeah the selective part I think is new. I believe Akkoma’s authorised fetch is similar to Mastodon, though I’ve also heard it came at the cost of breaking MRFs (essentially policies to handle incoming messages, that can be custom-written if needed)
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.
For the lazy:
After some careful consideration, I have decided to block threads.net on pixelfed.social and .art by default
However, users will have the ability to unblock the domain
Soon we will be selectively enforcing authorized fetch for accounts with domain blocks so as to provide the best of both worlds.
(I’m also shipping a command for :pixelfed: admins to easily add user domain blocks for all local users)
I’m eager to hear your feedback!
That’s a good solution. Keeps the all feed clear of threads content while allowing users to opt in
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I’m pro federate, but honestly, this seems fair. However Lemmy wouldn’t need it, as to see a threads post on lemmy, the person would have to @ the lemmy community in their post.
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Yep. And the ones that do know and want to post to our communities would probably have the right intentions anyway
All true, and making this a feature would simply be implementing the inverse of the new capability… overriding an instance level block instead of imposing one not already at the server level.
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I think you only made a case for having two or more levels of instance block, that already exist. One due to objectionable/illegal material that cannot be overridden, and another for something like threads where a significant number of users may not want to be opted in automatically, or want to block it due to purely ideological, non-illegal reasons, which would effectively be put in place by automatically adding the instance block to user accounts that can be removed at any time, which arguably can already be done with minor changes. That’s essentially what dansup is doing, complete with including a command for Pixelfed instance admins to apply the optional block to all user accounts.
That’s not how Bluesky does it. Sure it empowers users which is great but if there is a PDS for example with lolicon, one I don’t see it making past the content filters but if it did the BGS/Relay would blacklist that PDS
Jerry Bell did it first!
Good to see more reasonable people in all of this.
Did Dan ever get the messaging service Sup going? Tried to look it up, but his name being Dansup is throwing a wrench in my Googlefu.
@supapp@pixelfed.social
Releasing in beta soon!
Also searching for #sup in Mastodon has been a good way to find information about developments. Not so necessary now that there’s an official account I guess. :)
Thanks for the tip!
I am unreasonably excited about this. Where I live, there’s no decent options for Internet or cell signal. Which means normal calling/texting doesn’t work, and regular Wi-Fi calling/texting is choppy at the best of times. My whole family uses WhatsApp for everything. I’m hoping I can get them to switch to something like this once it’s stable.
Finally someone gets it!
I’m out of the loop
Last thing I vaguely remember about a defederation incident was honeybear or something like that upsetting everyone
Essentially, Facebook’s Twitter competitor Threads is gearing up to join the fediverse by integrating ActivityPub into their platform. Don’t take my word too much on this but I believe this is due to the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act which requires interoperability (similar to how iOS now requires sideloading in the EU). This is essentially their cheap way of complying.
The fediverse has a strong hatred of Facebook, for various reasons (from petty things like “embrace, extend, extinguish” to much more serious things like Facebook’s compliance in the Myanmar genocide) and a “pact” was enacted of fediverse instances that are simply outright blocking Threads. Part of it is the fear that Facebook will federate its moderation problem and cause a headache (which, in my opinion, would be better dealt with by limiting Threads to followers only - Mastodon and Pleroma allow this).
Opponents of the Fedipact are optimistic this will help a more mainstream audience warm up to the fediverse. The fediverse has a reputation of being unwieldy and complicated to newcomers, and having a major platform like Threads integrating ActivityPub might help bring them in and see what it’s like. Toxicity is cited as a reason for defederating Threads, but IMO I see more toxicity towards newcomers and outsiders coming from the people already on the fediverse, so I’ve been quite apathetic to the Threads thing.
Yeah I’m in a wait and see with my instance. People act like it’s one and done. When they start they’ll be just another server to me. If they start becoming hostile and everything coming from them it’s terrible then I’ll defederate. Same as any other server.
People are worried about data being misused but, I’m sorry, that’s what happens when we publish to an open protocol. Anyone can use it however they want, and yeah, they’re are scum usage for it
Agreed. I think Lemmy is more public than Mastodon and co. which do have some privacy settings for posts and account follows, but ActivityPub is inherently a public protocol. Appreciate everything you’ve done for Poptalk btw!
In some ways, I trust my data more with a highly scrutinized company such as Meta than a random weirdo spinning up his instance with a home server in his cabinet.
That’s what I don’t understand about the pushback. Yes we all want privacy, but Lemmy here and the fediverse is not built around the idea of privacy. It’s literally a protocol that shoots out whatever you type to anyone who wants to listen. You can type on any server and it’s going to end up on any other server. Can’t be mad because someone like Meta is seeing that and going “Hm, we have servers, we could listen to that data.”
neither of you are looking at all the data harvesting that occurs on platforms like Meta and Reddit. Telemetry, keystrokes (not just submitted, but any key typed iincluding backspaced ones), and more, and NONE of that is harvested on this platform.
That’s why I’m not switching or anything, my user will be on my instance, but if they federate and users true the surveillance instance that’s on them
The controversy you are referring to is regarding specifically .world defederating Hexbear “preemptively” before the latter could federate with anyone, out of fear that the “annoying tankies” may overrun everyone else. Since Hexbear is a relatively small platform run by volunteers like .world is, and the basis on which the defederation was justified was shaky at best, a lot of users raised an eyebrow. There was a similar move by .world later on where they defederated from Lemmygrad, another “tankie” instance, due to alleged hate speech of which the admins failed to provide a single example, and it was clear as day that .world admins just wanted some excuse to defederate away “the evil communists”.
In this case, the situation is different, because it involves a lot more than just .world. A large, for-profit instance Threads, run by Meta, is opening up to ActivityPub, and people are afraid of the reasonable possibility that Meta is attempting to either destroy or absorb the Fediverse as a whole. Besides the shitty corporate attempts in the past, Threads is also overrun by a lot of algorithm induced hate speech and far-right extremism, and there is a legitimate concern that this will spread to instances that federate with Threads.
Hexbear (and others like Lemmygrad) are different in that they are still part of the Fediverse, they are run by volunteers like most instances, and remain federated with other large instances such as lemm.ee. But the fact that hate speech is rampant in Threads yet .world admins want to “wait and see” make the Lemmygrad defederation even clearer and funnier in retrospect, lol. I complained back in the day when Hexbear was defederated that I’d rather let users choose for themselves whether they wanted that or not, and I got told to go to another instance. Now that we are federating with Threads anyway, might as well do that.
Edit: Typos
You don’t have to look far on hexbear or lemmygrad to find people cheering on the murder of Israelis on October 7th or denying genocides like the Holodomor so I’m not sure what you’re talking about when you say neither instance is hateful. Meanwhileongrad is full of screenshots of ridiculous hateful bullshit.
Edit: I might add that they’re extremely ban happy and yet would cry when their rants were deleted or when they received bans for spamming on other instances. Blatant double standard. Shit, I’ve had comments deleted for “hate speech” from Lemmy.ml for saying that Hamas and Iran are a big part of the problem in the Middle East.
Just to clarify- I didn’t claim that they aren’t hateful instances, deliberately so to avoid starting an argument. I mean, I will say that they aren’t if you want, but the point I was making was that .world admins did not provide any example in the thread where they announced this. You could be the worst criminal on Earth, and the judge sentencing you must still be expected to provide proof before taking further action. Likewise, no matter how “obvious” it seems that Hexbear etc are “hateful” instances, responsible admins are still expected to provide concrete reasons for defederation.
This isn’t just semantics. This is important because when you get into the specifics, when you force people to provide examples of Lemmygraders or Hexbears supposedly cheering on the murder of Israelis or denying genocides like Holodomor, no one is able to quote anything that can be remotely interpreted as that without engaging in really bad faith, other than maybe using sources such as circlejerk communities making fun of them (such as Meanwhileongrad).
Anyway, it’s honestly not that easy to find, because Hexbear and Lemmygrad themselves are circlejerks most of the time, so I’m not bothered by regular users not having proof or anything when stating that they dislike these instances. But when it’s the whole admin of a large instance, I expect more seriousness.
You had me go back and check and the .world admins did provide evidence of users planning to break .world rules in each defederation announcement post. You’re free to disagree with their conclusions but you’re wrong when you say they provided no evidence. Besides that, you sound like you’re sitting on the fence on whether or not they are hateful, I have receipts of the admins cheering on the Tiananmen Square massacre because it was a western plot or painting the CCP’s treatment of Uighur’s as a simple necessary anti-terrorism action rather than ethnic cleansing. Please don’t willfully look the other way because they don’t outright yell “gas the Jews”.
I also question why a “circlejerk” community pointing out the ridiculous shit said by leadership and regular posters on the instances isn’t valid. It’s a community dedicated to pointing out the glorification of authoritarianism found on these instances with direct screenshots and links to said bad behavior. The source should be irrelevant provided the information they’re sharing isn’t presented misleadingly. Some of the stuff on meanwhileongrad is definitely misleading or a screenshot of a post that ended up removed but there is a clear pattern from the top down.
I kinda don’t want to engage further in this conversation, but I don’t want to leave you on read so to speak.
You had me go back and check and the .world admins did provide evidence of users planning to break .world rules in each defederation announcement post. You’re free to disagree with their conclusions but you’re wrong when you say they provided no evidence
In the post about defederating Hexbear, the entire thread was in response to a post by a Hexbear admin calling for good behavior, and .world admin was rather deliberately misinterpreting and quoting them in bad faith. I read both of them, and while the Hexbear post was like “I know you all want to troll the libs, but please don’t do that, it will suck for everyone and it’ll get us defederated”, all that the .world admin seemed to understand was “hey, time to troll the libs!”. I know it was a deliberate misinterpretation rather than an honest misunderstanding because the .world post was leaving out the many parts of the Hexbear post where the admin was explicitly calling for civility.
The Hexbear post went off in a tangent I didn’t really understand where they talked about a few of their political views, and .world took that as a weird example of extremism that I also didn’t quite get, claiming that stuff such as opposing NATO is extremist. Admitedly, I haven’t gone back to that post, so I’m saying this from memory. Feel free to correct me. But sure, in that case, they did at least point to something as an excuse for defederation, even if wildly misinterpreted.
But when I said that they weren’t providing evidence for hate speech I was talking about the Lemmygrad defederation announcement specifically, where they claimed that the reason for defederation was hate speech rather than trolling, bad behavior etc. In there, they did claim hate speech multiple times, but not once did they provide an example of that. Which is what I was talking about.
Besides that, you sound like you’re sitting on the fence on whether or not they are hateful
I’m not. They’re not hateful. Calling for direct action in the form of violence towards the wealthy and towards genocidal governments such as Israel does not qualify as hate speech, because they are not considered protected groups. You are free to argue that they are misguided, or even dangerous, and it would be a legitimate disagreement, but hate speech is a concept with a rather strict legal definition. You cannot just consider stuff such as “eat the rich” or “death to israel” as hate speech.
I have receipts of the admins cheering on the Tiananmen Square massacre because it was a western plot or painting the CCP’s treatment of Uighur’s as a simple necessary anti-terrorism action rather than ethnic cleansing. Please don’t willfully look the other way because they don’t outright yell “gas the Jews”.
Irrelevant. My point in this argument isn’t that they don’t do this, it’s that the .world admins should have cited specific instances of this happening in the sticky post they made about defeding Lemmygrad. That said, a lot of the time people claim to have seen this, either the context is a lot more nuanced than that, or they are circlejerking and roleplaying the “tankie” stereotype. Specifically with the Tiananmen Square thing, it’s more likely the latter. My own experience lurking Lemmygrad is that people in there actually don’t like China much either, so I’m a bit surprised that .worlders keep saying that they do.
I also question why a “circlejerk” community pointing out the ridiculous shit said by leadership and regular posters on the instances isn’t valid
Circlejerk communities are by design unfair. They crop stuff out of context to laugh at it. It’s funny, but it’s not at all rigorous and may not be cited setiously. A lot of the time it’s screenshots of posts that have either been removed, downvoted, or there is a reply calling bullshit that has been cropped out of the image, and these are outliers to the community that are treated as the average opinion. Other times, the context is all there and the funny bit is just the disagreement between the circlejerk community and the source material, but circlejerk posts are ALWAYS presented misleadingly. The point is to laugh at it, not to do some rigorous examination of the line of reasoning.
Anecdotal, but a few days ago I saw a .world user claimed they had met someone on Lemmygrad that stated that being gay was imperialistic, and they actually did link to it. The link was pointing to a c/tankiejerk thread with a screenshot about a post that did actually say that. Granted, the post itself was bullshit. However, as shown in the screenshot itself, the post was downvoted, and the submitter was… someone with the @lemmy.world suffix. It’s okay that this post was screenshot and uploaded to c/tankiejerk to laugh at it, but it’s not valid to extrapolate that post’s content to the entirety of Lemmygrad when it was already downvoted and posted by a .world user in the first place. This is the kind of bad faith I’m referring to that revolves around these defederations IMO.
Threads is also overrun by a lot of algorithm induced hate speech and far-right extremism
Pretty sure you’re confusing Threads for Twitter. Threads doesn’t contain any more of that than lemmy or mastodon already does, and it’s probably less, so such handwringing is overstated. They’ve already implemented a “Restrict” setting in addition to blocks and mutes, and frankly their handling of blocking and how people can interact with your account after being restricted or blocked is already more effective than what’s here or on mastodon.
Thank you. People on the Fedi fail to realise how similar they are to the places they call out. This disinformation and misinformation is insane. People don’t care to be accurate nor honest. I don’t get how anyone can attempt to claim any moral superiority
Most instance admins are federating with Threads/Meta. Even if you block the instance yourself, it doesn’t prevent you from seeing Threads users’ comments and the hate, harassment, and extremism on that platform from spreading throughout federated instances.
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That’s not even remotely true . If you block the instance it prevents your content from being shared with the blocked domain and you do not view content from that domain.
That is how it works in lemmy blocking instances. I think you commented in another section talking about other fediverse platforms.
I don’t think I was clear enough here in that I’m discussing lemmy exclusively. Not other fediverse platforms.
Hexbear.
I feel like honeybear suits them better. They seem sweet like honey in how they support minorities and protected classes, but then they support viciously genocidal dictatorships like Russia and China
there is no one single entity, or group of entities, dominating it all.
This is what Zuck wants to change with Threads.
It’s not. He wants to create a social media that exploits its users without being accused of monopolistic behaviour.
All the tasty data collection and surveillance with none of the calories.
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But the fact they can just defederate makes it much harder.
How does defederating make it harder?
Edit: Since so many people are misinformed: No, blocking Threads on an individual basis is not a solution. This only blocks posts from Threads showing up in your feed. It does not block Threads users’ comments from spreading hate and extremism throughout federated instances, and lemmy users will still be subject to potential harassment from Threads users. (See the harassment of the LGBTQ+ community on Threads for examples…)
Here’s a comment of mine that states my argument against federating with Threads.
Also, I was not trying to debate the issue here. I was looking for recommendations for alternative instances… I’d appreciate anyone actually responding to my comment.
Original comment: Anybody have recommendations on a decent instance that won’t be federating with Threads? Maybe one that allows community creation but isn’t full of tankies?
I’m jumping ship from .world if they go through with federating with Threads. Such a shame to see the effort put into building this great instance come undone.
This place decided to disregard what the majority of their users want and turn the neighborhood to shit way faster than reddit. I thought we’d at least have a couple years before instance admins started selling out to such a shitty company that’s going to make the fediverse a less safe place for their users.
Meta will also do anything they can to EEE and I’m not convinced the fediverse is as invulnerable to such exploitation as some users seem to be.
Just because Lemmy.world doesn’t agree with about defederating with meta doesn’t make them sell outs. Like you said, you are jumping ship; just like the fediverse intended.
For better or worse, Lemmy.world is intended to be a catch all instance for normies so it makes sense why they would not defederate from meta.
I disagree that they aren’t selling out.
I consider it to be as such when this move isn’t supported by most of their userbase, they misframe that blocking Threads is a viable solution for the rampant issues with hate/extremism, and the decision puts their users at risk (both in the form of extremism/harassment and exploitation by Meta).
It’s an inch towards becoming mainstream, but the costs outweigh the benefits IMO. I believe it’s hypocritical to defederate from exploding heads and then turn around and federate with Threads.
I think misleading users into believing they can block Threads (only the posts), making a decision against the majority of their community’s wishes, and instead subjecting them to potential harassment, misinformation and exploitation is selling out.
You’ve mentioned that the majority of Lemmy.world users support defederating from threads. Do you have a source?
As someone in the “wait and see” group I’m curious how many people really are in each group.
If the majority of users on Lemmy.world does not want to be federated with meta then Lemmy.world will lose those users and then no longer be the power they currently are with influence over the fediverse.
Also I believe it’s disingenuous to equate explodingheads, which was defederated for being extremely toxic due to its lack of moderation and meta which presumably has more resources to devote to moderation than any fedi instance (of course they are still terrible at it)
I’m for defederating with meta when the time comes because I don’t think that their influence is healthy for the fediverse and don’t think that most admins could handle the burdens that would come with federating with them. Lemmy.world (and mastodon.social and a few others) is a big enough instance that they could handle those challenges. I’ve said before that if meta only sticks to the open source AP spec then the risks are much less and so that should be the criteria for federation
woohoo! we got moderated content!!! cant wait for all the “organic” ads that pop up in my feed from users spouting the benefits of Tide^TM brand soap!!!
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There are lots of hypotheticals here.
I expect the lemmy.world admins to block servers that are frequent sources of hate and extremism. I don’t expect them to speculatively block servers because some people guess they might be. I’m pretty skeptical that a majority of users want preemptive blocking. I don’t, and the votes and comments I see in most conversations on the subject suggest that’s a position held by a very loud minority.
I’m not sure Threads users will be all that interested in interacting with Lemmy. It’s an awkward UX to participate in Lemmy conversations from Mastodon, and I believe Threads has essentially the same format. Threads is likely to have a bigger impact on Mastodon servers, and I don’t think any of us can reliably predict what that impact will be yet.
I disagree on user support. Look at the posts heavily discussing the matter, and also pay attention to the vote counts.
Also, it’s not a hypothetical when there is already a systemic issue and the company has a notorious history. Look at my comment here for my fleshed out argument on this subject with citations.
I wasn’t intending on debating the issue here; I was only looking for recommendations on alternative instances.
Can’t you block threads yourself once .world updates to 0.19.0?
That’s such a misinformative false ‘solution’ people keep peddling…
No, blocking Threads on the individual user level does not stop comments made by Threads users from showing up on federated instances, even for users who block Threads.
That means users who block Threads will still see hate/extremism and are still subject to potential harassment by toxic Threads users.
I think there are many reasons to block threads but is toxic users one of them?
There are lots of toxic users on Lemmy too. Should we be blocking lemmy.world or lemmy.ml because they have a few toxic users too?
It’s false to consider the userbase on lemmy.world and Threads to be analogous. I have documented the very real problems with Threads in this comment here.
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On the other hand, interacting with Lemmy from a Twitter style timeline sucks, so I doubt we’ll see any Threads people on here.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I’ve seen people interacting from Mastodon here already.
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What are boosts?
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Would you create a community, and if so, what kind?
I created !vans@lemmy.world and have been planning on trying to revive my efforts to grow the community, but I’m sure hell not doing that if Threads is being incorporated. I’m instead going to strip the community of all of the content I posted.
I also want to create a community for my city, but I’m never going to do that on an instance that allows Threads/Meta incorporation. Also have wanted to recreate r/OldSkaters from reddit.
If I wanted to deal with Meta, I’d make an account on one of their privacy/rights-infringing platforms.
As established already, blocking Threads does not block user comments from showing up. Even if it did, I still would not host a community on an instance federated with Threads unless there was a way for the communities themselves to fully block Threads interaction.
But the only way to fully block Threads is by defederating from it.
In a Mastodon level this is not true. Blocking Threads.net prevents you from sharing your content with them and for their content to show up. Pixelfed has also enabled user level Authorised fetch which will prevent Threads.net from attempting to fetch that users content
That’s good to know. Thanks.
I don’t get, even if you are part of .world and they are federated with threads.
Can’t you just personally block all threads?
You personally can defederate without it affecting anyone else.
No, that’s a half-measure at best… It only blocks Threads posts from showing up in your feed. It does not block Threads users comments from showing up on federated instances, even if the individual user personally blocks them.
I am legitimately fearful for LGBTQ+ users, as their community members have already been harrased on Threads by the far-right.
Nothing ever stopped you from creating you own instance. With blackjack and beers.
Except for time, money, and technical knowledge…
Also *blackjack and hookers!
So, you have absolutely nothing to offer but somehow you think we should be giving any weight to your opinion?
Nice strawman attempt! There’s no reason for me to even argue with you when your argument is a fallacy and automatically invalid.
Using your ridiculous logic, you must think the vast majority of lemmy users don’t hold any value or merit? Because the vast majority of us are not hosting our own instances.
Being an active and constructive user, creating and moderating communities, and fighting misinformation are positive qualities for online communities.
Edit: I’ve also been donating to Ruud since my first week on this platform, so that’s yet another reason your argument is totally incorrect. But I’ll definitely be stopping my donations if Threads ends up being federated with.
If the “vast majority of lemmy users” start demand things from their admins while excusing themselves from contributing in any meaningful way, yes, I’d disregard their opinions as well.
“Skin in the Game” is important. If you are not willing to risk anything for what you believe in, then how do you expect anyone else to take you seriously?
If the “vast majority of lemmy users” start demand things from their admins while excusing themselves from contributing in any meaningful way, yes, I’d disregard their opinions as well.
Boy, you really ought to consider taking a critical thinking class at your local community college or something…
You’re still trying to build a strawman argument. When your foundation is compromised, you don’t keep building on it…
It’s clear you’re going to use disingenuous argumentative tactics and fallacies. If your next comment is just as juvenile, I’m not going to bother responding. Again, these arguments are invalid upon arrival, being logical fallacies and all…
For someone with so much time to go to classes at community colleges, surely you can spare some minutes to run your own instance, no?
Here you go. Go create your own instance and show us how it is done.
Same. So what if someone doesn’t want to federate/defederate, but I don’t think people should be hassling admins to defederate
You can always, as a client, block individual instances in your settings
I agree, the original idea of the fediverse is awesome. However, I believe the big players will decide almost everything about it in the end, simply due to influence on decisions being made.
But it’s fine. I’m kind of happy as long as big tech is not running it, and as long as it doesn’t have ads and user tracking, and other poison.
I’m kind of happy as long as big tech is not running it
Wait for it. It’s coming. That’s why Meta is doing this. We’re in the “embrace” phase of “embrace, extend, extinguish”.
I don’t see how to avoid it, unless the courts step in. The only reason why we’re using the World Wide Web instead of the Microsoft Wide Web is because the US sued Microsoft and won.
FOSS 4 Life, bb!
