this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.

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founded 2 years ago
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alyaza@beehaw.org
remington@beehaw.org
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non-stickied PSA: Beehaw has signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact (beehaw.org)
submitted 2 years ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org
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although this is unlikely to substantially and directly impact us and is a more immediate concern for Mastodon and similar fediverse software, we've signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact as a matter of principle. that pact pledges the following:

i am an instance admin/mod on the fediverse. by signing this pact, i hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse. project92 is a real and serious threat to the health and longevity of fedi and must be fought back against at every possible opportunity

the maintainer of the site is currently a little busy and seems to manually add signatures so we may not appear on there for several days but here's a quick receipt that we did indeed sign it.

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[–] Kwikxilver@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

Really pleased to hear this. I will be staying on Beehaw for the foreseeable future, I'm on the same page as the admins.

[–] lemor@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

More instances should consider this pact.

[–] LollerCorleone@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

As a user of the fediverse, I appreciate you for doing this.

[–] GreenPlasticSushiGrass@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Meta is not a brand new, fresh-faced corporation that maybe needs a chance to prove it's good intentions in the fediverse. It is an established entity that has a history of killing competition and often being on the wrong side of social issues. It should be rejected from federation outright because of its track record, if nothing else.

[–] HealGirl@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Fuck meta and fuck Facebook. No one wants this place to become like that dogshit site. Fully support defederating from any meta owned instances

[–] Satiric_Weasel@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

I guess I'm the odd one out when I say I fully support this decision. I do not trust Meta, I Do not trust their intentions, and they have given me no reason to trust them.

Thanks Beehaw.

[–] PelicanPersuader@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

Good move. Fuck Zuck.

[–] static@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm not shure, there are a few good arguments against plain blocking of Meta.

This article is mostly against federating
https://privacy.thenexus.today/should-the-fediverse-welcome-surveillance-capitalism/

it does highlight contra's:

John Gruber describes the Anti-Meta Pact as "petty and deliberately insular" and suggests that the whole point of ActivityPub is to turn social networking into something more akin to email, which he describes as "truly open."1

Tristan Louis says "The anti-Meta #Fedipact can only achieve one thing: make sure that #ActivityPub loses to the Bluesky protocol."2

Dan Gillmor suggests that "preemptively blocking them -- and the people already using them -- from your instance guarantees less relevance for the fediverse."

[–] alyaza@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

counterpoint:

  1. we don't like Meta
  2. we have very specific goals on this instance that Meta is totally antithetical to
  3. we're quite open about not being open-fed with everyone and this is not out of character nor a contradiction of previous blocks we've made
  4. our priorities are not "fediverse first" or "ActivityPub first", they're Beehaw first. the fediverse and ActivityPub are mostly tools for us to an end, and we don't accept some obligation to prioritize the greater health of those over our own thing.
  5. even if you don't care about the rest of that simple logistics prevail here--we absolutely don't want to be responsible for potentially tens or hundreds of millions of additional users. that is not a thing we can ever commit to, and we will almost certainly sooner shut down the instance or completely defederate than eat that influx (particularly with Lemmy's limitations right now).

overall, i would say this falls into the camp of "not a thing we're realistically going to reconsider".

[–] dcormier@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I’m disappointed.

“The fediverse is open and interoperable!”

“No, not them.”

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well, we've defederated with other people in the past (and will continue to do so in the future most likely). Federated systems are not an all or nothing situation. IMO that's the biggest draw and improvement over a distributed system for social media.

[–] bananahammock@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I agree, but why defederate before knowing any details? What is the harm in hearing them out

[–] alyaza@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

it's literally Facebook. i think we've heard and seen more than enough to from Mark Zuckerberg and the platform which actively continues to be one of the worst vectors of online harm, misinformation, and advocacy for social and political violence (among many, many other ills). particularly with respect to our instance: their project can get fucked as far as i'm concerned.

[–] UnshavedYak@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Yea, i'm not sure how much benefit of doubt we should be handing Mark Zuck of all people. There's few people in the world who make their intentions more clear than him. Not that i'm trying to paint him as evil, i'm not and i don't think he is, but i also see no reason to expect self-run instances to offer an olive branch to him.

We should be vary paranoid about Embrace Extend Extinguish in these communities.

[–] Cube6392@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Anyone here into cross stitching? I'd like to send the Zuck a cross stitch that just says, "Get Fucked"

[–] alyaza@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

ahhh, now i think it'd be a funny collaborative idea to send him a fediverse communal "Fuck Off!" blanket

[–] Melpomene@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I'd also add that they have, in the past, conducted unethical experiments on their users to attempt to manipulate said users' emotional state. I'm just a cross poster here, but I respect the stance.

[–] sour@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

because history

[–] debounced@kbin.run 1 points 2 years ago

And just so happens to be the same pesky thing people refuse to read, color me surprised. 🙄

[–] fiah@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 years ago

before knowing any details?

before? facebook is almost 20 years old, they've had plenty of time to show us who they are and they have. If you have any doubt about their moral fiber then I suggest you pull your head out of your ass and enter the fucking 2020s

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

The details are under NDA and Facebook has a really bad history of having a terrible moderation culture. I don't see any reason based on their past history to believe that they will change.

It feels kinda like giving a gun to a serial killer and just waiting it out. It's an exaggerated analogy but I think it illustrates the point well.

[–] ikantolol@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

there are instances in the past where big players acquire the small ones and while at first they seem to be cooperative, it ultimately destroys the small players, one such case is XMPP the open chat protocols long before we have Matrix, killed by Google

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

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

I guess this is a cautionary action, better to grow slower rather than be killed by Meta.

[–] bear_delune@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago

Don’t pretend like Meta is going to be open and interoperable.

You can’t look at their history and think letting the fox sleep in the hen house is a good idea. The house is for hens.

[–] JackGreenEarth@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (3 children)

@alyaza I am conflicted on this. While I feel like it's probably the right thing to do as Meta would just destroy the fediverse if it entered it, it makes me uncomfortable that this network that is supposed to be so open and connected with each other can be so easily and glibly made into what is essentially yet another privately controlled website.

[–] RiikkaTheIcePrincess@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Who says it's "supposed to be [fully] connected?" Who gets to decide for everyone that no one is allowed to block, no instance is permitted to separate or shape its own view of the network? What's the difference between what you want and Reddit? One solid mass of "everyone must be mashed together at all times and nothing may be done to protect against harmful parts of the network" seems to betray the point of federation far more than some instance(s) blocking others or just straight-up forming their own clique (in the graph theory sense) or separate network.

Basically my thought here is: defederation is the point of federation or else it would just be distributed hosting.

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

This has always been the reason I don't believe in distributed models of social media. Federation also means defederation and that's good.

[–] retronautickz@fedi196.gay 1 points 2 years ago

Quoting the FediPact:

Openness for the sake of openness is meaningless. Two things that are very valued on fedi are consent and freedom of association. The whole point of the fediverse is that instances are free to choose who they talk to. We don't have to federate with the likes of gab, for example. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell, chasing a capitalist pipe dream

[–] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You are on kbin, your experience will not be affected by this.

[–] livus@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

As someone else on kbin I'm really hoping Ernest will enter this pact too.

Meta's "embrace extend extinguish" is a threat to us all.

[–] chloyster@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Best instance 🙏

[–] TeryVeneno@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Your pfp is really cool

[–] chloyster@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

Thank you!!! Shout out to the amazing https://twitter.com/AWolfhardt who did it!

[–] Festivity8529@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The link to the pact nearly blinded me. Animated falling hearts and bright pink background. For a minute there I thought I travelled back in time to the 90's. Also I hasten to add that everyone blocking Meta seems like quite an unfederated thing to do. That said I hate Meta, block 'em.

[–] wet_lettuce@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

That combined with the lack of capitalization is off-putting for some reason. It grates on me and I can't put my finger on why.