this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Fediverse

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I love the fact that fediverse was built from the ground up to be free, federated and interoperable. I have two questions that may come from my lack of expertise / knowledge, so I apologise in advance if they are dumb.

  1. Bots can disrupt smaller instances:

What is stopping corpos from scraping everyone's posts and stuff from the fediverse and train their AI? What's stopping them then, to create loads of not accounts and spam / disrupt smaller communities? When an instances quality drops, the users may be more incentivised to migrate to bigger instances and go there. It's safe to say most Lemmy users are not going to spin their own instance and start communities from scratch. Meanwhile, the onslaught of bots can overwhelm these budding communities and instances.

  1. Corpos can flood the fediverse with ads and crap:

Threads comes to mind on this point and how many instances have chosen not to defederate with them. Besides, they can create bridges, and have repost bots in all instances to flood major them with ads. With generative content, it is so much easier to make a seemingly casual post about a product and mask it as an advertisement.

I've seen previous posts about people wanting to come because of their opinion about how certain countries behave. I feel the true evil are the corporates.

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[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 338 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Thankfully, there aren't any ads here. Just the thought of it stresses me out, and when I get stressed out, I reach for a Morley cigarette to keep my cool. The toasted tobacco and asbestos filter make for a smoother smoke, which soothes the throat. 9 out of 10 anti-ad, Fediverse, activists choose Morleys to keep up their pep and vigor in the fight against advertisement.

[–] artificialfish@programming.dev 46 points 6 days ago (2 children)
[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 6 days ago (1 children)

more like comedy silver, amirite?

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[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Who are you going to listen to? This guy?

Or Fred Flintstone?

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Winstons?! That's a baby's cigarette! And I should know because ~~our~~ the parent company of Morleys, Philly Mortis, used to own the Croft Food company, which has a line of baby foods. Also most pediatricians prefer Morley Juniors for the little ones anyway.

On a side note, I've got to appreciate the level of detail in that ad. His lighter works by rubbing two sticks together. I will never not be delighted by the Flintstones' anachronisms.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It's a really catchy commercial, too. "Winston tastes good like a...cigarette should."

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[–] Kualdir@feddit.nl 17 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Legendary comment, take your internet points

[–] BrutallyHonestPOS@lemm.ee 22 points 6 days ago (2 children)

thats another thing. no internet points, so no bots to farm them. upvotes really only indicate the quality of the post or comment that receives the upvotes. no way to use the total number of points to claim validity of your posts or to brag with them.

that being said, at one point we will need to figure out a way to identify and prevent bots that just post propaganda. while we wont have the problem of karmawhoring bots, they dont have the need to karmawhore and can try to spread their propaganda immediately.

[–] Kualdir@feddit.nl 16 points 6 days ago (7 children)

Upvotes on a comment are still internet points :p also this comment was just made as lighthearted fun not as something serious

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[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Smoking at recess helped me pass my math exams! 5×5 is 20 just like the number cigarettes in a pack of Morleys. And the number years subtracted from my life expectancy! Thanks Morley! For the maths.

Morley and you! The smarter combination.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

When you're done, look inside for coupons for other quality products from Croft Foods and Jenny-Ralph Mills among others. You could be enjoying the satisfying crunch of Let's potato chips and washing it down with a nice, refreshing can of Cuke, all while impressing your significant other by being such a smart shopper and protecting the family budget.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 24 points 5 days ago (2 children)

They already tried it. It's called Threads. It exists. People use it. And other instances have the choice to simply not federate with them.

To me (as unpopular as this sounds) that's the beautiful thing about FOSS and about Federation in particular. No one is stopping anyone from creating their own instance. Even Corporations.

It's the ultimate expression of "Anyone can do what they want, say what they want, believe what they want...but no one else is in any way obligated to listen to them/federate with them"

I know of companies that host small mastodon instances for their staff to communicate back and forth. I know of similar setups with lemmy instances. Anyone can use the technology for anything they wish to.

[–] BackwardsUntoDawn@lemm.ee 3 points 4 days ago

but with threads users have to opt into federation, and... no one does. almost every profile I check keeps it disabled. it even gives them a notice after a while like "hey, you're sharing with the fediverse, you sure you want to keep this on?"

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Well said. I personally don't get the opposition to Threads using ActivityPub. I like being able to follow Threads profiles without exposing myself to Meta.

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[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 100 points 6 days ago (1 children)
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[–] Skelectus@suppo.fi 68 points 6 days ago

If another instance started knowingly federating us ads, or fake content, I'd hit that defederate button very quick.

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 68 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Nothing. Instances will have to take it upon themselves to defederate, just like how a lot of instances all decided to defederate from Threads.

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[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 80 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (10 children)

Facebook tried and we scoffed.

It's called the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy of dealing with threats. Microsoft have been endorsing Linux recently for this reason.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Microsoft have been endorsing Linux recently for this reason.

I doubt that's still the reason, I think they endorse it because they're making a shit ton of money using it on Azure.

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[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 41 points 5 days ago (1 children)

There's nothing stopping them from hosting a massive instance. But people aren't forced to move there to interact with them.

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[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 63 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

What is stopping corpos from scraping everyone's posts and stuff from the fediverse and train their AI? What's stopping them then, to create loads of not accounts and spam / disrupt smaller communities

Nothing stops them right now. Currently they're causing effective DDOS by scraping manually and there's no good way to block them except by going to extremes.

In fact, I would prefer if they just used their own instance to scrape content instead of causing downtimes like they do now.

Corpos can flood the fediverse with ads and crap:

For that, the solution is simple, we can defederate.

[–] totallyNotARedditor@lemm.ee 9 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I'm new and still trying to learn. What would defederating imply? An instance being blocked by all other instances?

[–] haverholm@kbin.earth 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Exactly. See also Gab and Truth Social.

[–] totallyNotARedditor@lemm.ee 8 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Am I reading this right? Meta tried to be compatible with Lemmy and every server owned agreed to mass block them and leave them out?

[–] moody 16 points 6 days ago

Not every instance blocked them, but many did.

The fear of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish got a hold of the fediverse when Threads was originally announced.

[–] haverholm@kbin.earth 9 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Not Lemmy specifically, but the broader fediverse (and probably mostly the microblog part dominated by Mastodon and its forks)

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 37 points 6 days ago

Nothing, but instances can defed from them if they wish and they can't stop that either.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 11 points 5 days ago

Like others pointed out defederation, but to add the important bit for normies (don't mean derogatory at all) is that it is not meant to be a less complicated or more efficient experience, it is meant to have more (or actual) freedom and democracy.

Much like with gov politics, you have to be active to some degree or a few people can control everything.

So yes, when defederation needs to happen or communities moved (for much of that additional tools will streamline the processes in the future I'm sure), it's a bit messy, but it doesn't rob you or feed the megacorps pushing the society into more inequality.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 34 points 6 days ago (1 children)

They are already training on the fediverse. If something is on the public web, you can assume it's in some training data somewhere

[–] Kualdir@feddit.nl 9 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Wish ^there^ was a ~way~ to ~~easily~~ poison the input

But sadly this'll just be reality. The only thing we can do is either not use it or embrace it.

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[–] glimse@lemmy.world 23 points 6 days ago (6 children)

What is stopping corpos from scraping everyone's posts and stuff from the fediverse and train their AI?

That very real and enforceable "this comment cannot be used to train AI" crap some people add to every comment that definitely makes bots not scrape the comment, of course!

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[–] ShadowRam@fedia.io 25 points 6 days ago

1 - You can block/ignore entire instances. (spamming ones)

2 - If it gets big enough, you'll see legit instances band together and federate only among themselves (white-list, invite only to allow federation)

people will gravitate to these groups of instances if they are well moderated and keep that crap out.

[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Threads is trying to become that. We have a list of instances blocking Threads here: https://fedipact.veganism.social/

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Reminder that LW does not block Threads.net : https://lemmy.world/instances

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 17 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Has anyone even seen Threads content anywhere? I'm not blocking Threads on my instance either. Neither am I blocking Nazi instances. Not because I endorse either of those things. Just because I have never even seen them. Easy enough to rectify if they ever pop up.

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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 14 points 6 days ago

What is stopping corpos from scraping everyone's posts and stuff from the fediverse and train their AI?

Nothing. And they already have.

What's stopping them then, to create loads of not accounts and spam / disrupt smaller communities?

Moderation.

When an instances quality drops, the users may be more incentivised to migrate to bigger instances and go there.

Why would they do that when every instance has the same content?

Corpos can flood the fediverse with ads

I mean they can but no one would subscribe to them or share them, so no one would see them, so why would they bother making them?

about how certain countries behave. I feel the true evil are the corporates.

Sometimes the two are actually one in the same.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 6 days ago

Everything posted on the public web is potential AI training data, federation is completely irrelevant to that.

The rest of your questions has the simple answer that a priori there is nothing "stopping" any of that. You should choose an instance whose admins are looking out for things like that and keeping your experience enjoyable, banning spambots or defederating from spambot farms when they are discovered.

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 15 points 6 days ago

We would find out. We would defederate them

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 16 points 6 days ago

You can defederate from the corporate servers.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 11 points 6 days ago

There's no economical incentive to join the fediverse for large corporations - at least not yet. I think it'll take another 5 years before that happens.

The !boycottusa@lemmy.ca and !buyeuropea@feddit.uk movements would have to become mainstream first, because let's be honest, the fediverse is the actual contender to US social media. Although, right now it's really fediverse vs bluesky. Once someone creates a reddit clone on top of bluesky, then the fediverse will lose that battle, because people are uncomfortable with choice.

[–] fernfrost@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Well for the me reason there aren’t as many troll farms operating here in comparison to reddit. There are just not enough users here yet.

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[–] uienia@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

The fact that corporations sees the fediverse as inconsequential. The minute people flood it in larger numbers as they are fleeing the corporate entshittified internet, that is exactly what they are going to do though.

[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 9 points 6 days ago

Not much to do against scraping. On a small (but actively moderated) instance, a spamming bot will easily be detected and hopefully suspended. Generally, moderation is often better on smaller instances, so I'm not too worried about people migrating towards bigger instances - usually it's the other way round.

For 2. - dedicated corp instances will be defederated from many instances quickly. Bridge accounts on other instances need to be dealt with by the mods.

Yes, of course this can increase moderation effort. But spam accounts are way more easy to deal with from a moderation perspective than issues between real human users which usually takes wayyy more effort to deal with.

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