this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023

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Potential of a Meta ActivityPub client (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Whooping_Seal@sh.itjust.works to c/main@sh.itjust.works

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I am assuming many of you have heard about the potential of Meta creating an ActivityPub enabled client (TheVerge, PCMag etc. have made articles). I was just wondering what people's thoughts are on this, and if it came down to it should instances in the fediverse defederate from it considering it could be a case of Embrace, extend, extinguish.

There's a DefederateMeta magazine at !DefederateMeta@fedia.io if you're interested, which includes an anti-meta pact on cryptpad with the responses viewable on a seperate website if you care to see which instance admins have agreed.

I'm just curious what my fellow sh.it.heads think of this development in the fediverse, any input is appreciated!

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[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago

I would very much like to avoid Meta (FB, Instagram, Whatsapp and anything else Zuckerberg owns), Twitter and now Reddit influences in the fediverse. Not only do I not want to see content on their servers but I would also like to avoid giving them content from the fediverse and tracking info about fediverse users.

On a side-note, if you are referencing a community on another instance in a post like this next time it might be sensible to subscribe to that community from here so it is already cached when people see your post about it.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm going to be a bit different and say I would be okay with a meta service. If it gets more people into the fediverse. It could end up being a gateway into this realm for many people that may not have gotten here elsewhere. We shouldn't gatekeep people away from our community and also making us more insular. We should be open and able to interact with as many people across the fediverse as possible.

If we defederated from meta because of their ethics then we should all just leave lemmy because of the creators' ethics. We don't get to sit on our high horses AND use lemmy.

[–] spark947@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree with your sentiment, but I think its reasonable to not trust Facebook, especially around user privacy. One of the issues with federation is that it spreads your posts around a lot, and it is ripe for abuse. It sucks, because the only way to fight this kind of thing is to defederate. I generally think instances shouldn't defederate, except as a final resort as a matter of decorum. But, a pre-emptive block if any Facebook instance or technology makes sense given their reputation.

It will be I threshing to see if the activity pub standard can be maintained in the face of a giant company like Facebook. They have a lot of power.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't see what would be so bad with them having copies of data that we're already sharing multiple times across instances now and that are public for everyone to see.

[–] spark947@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's because you can start building profiles of people from metadata. I agree that the privacy issues with the fediverse are kind of part of it, and you shouldn't put anything on here you aren't willing people to see publicly because the content get's spread to so many different servers. But I would get why on a trust level, facebook would have less currently than instance admins.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nothing would stop them from creating a profile from just scraping the fediverse without even joining it. Them being a part of the fediverse or not (including whether or not they get banned from certain instances) matters very little if not at all for this matter.

[–] spark947@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm honestly not opposed to Facebook developing software that uses activity pub. It's an open standard after all. I get why you would want to de-federate it out of privacy concerns. I'm hoping that they make it open source, or that it introduces better federation navigation features that can get redeveloped in another client.

I'm not sure I would want to sign a pact that is anti this app, since I would think that encouraging ActivityPub adoption is a good thing. But de-federate from it for sure if it spies on users. I doubt facebook really cares about de-federation anyway, and will try to make their own ecosystem based around activity pub. I honestly doubt that they will federate to private instances anyway.

One pitfall: even if you de-federate, a market will probably emerge for content from federated servers and facebook might just start buying content from people who didn't make it, but are getting it by setting up instances that act as a middle man between facebook and other server. That is the only real risk I can think of, since it could have the potential to discourage widespread good faith federation.

[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree with you, a giant company pouring money and resources into the fediverse project in general can help it grow, at the same time there are folks that work in tech that want the time and money contribute to the federated model's success.

Ideally, if the federation model works, then we wouldn't have to worry so much about the community getting exterminated, its supposed to be pretty flexible to avoid centralization.

[–] spark947@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On the other hand, I think the concern about facebook spying on people through it's app is definitely warranted. Perhaps their should be some kind of licensing each instance maintains for what other federated instances do with the data? Someone is going to have to enforce privacy protections. Idk, the EFF should be all over this.

I guess I am not leftwing enough to atomically treat all for profit corporations as evil, but I definitely understand that they want to make profits and need to be given rules to play by so that they don't do bad stuff.

[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can see that, big tech isn't usually altruistic at all, I'm with you there. I just welcome the investment and audience if it means the fediverse stays healthy.

I think the bigger problem we need to solve is privacy from a legal perspective (at least in the US). Companies that mess around with our data need to be held accountable with real consequences when they misuse or mishandle it.

[–] spark947@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Exactly! The EFF definitely needs to start thinking about ways for admins to license their instance so their data can't be sold or commercialized in some way after it is federated. And it needs teeth too. I think we are in a unique position where we can have a bit of leverage over these companies if we have control of our own data.

[–] Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

I would personally support defederation from Meta-owned ActivityPub services, for what it is worth.

[–] carbon_based@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Read that article. If you want a corporate-free social network you got to keep if free of corporate.

[–] RoundSparrow@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

I think it's just a matter of time before there are alternate-federated networks for Lemmy.... different lists of federated servers that the install peers with.

I’m just curious what my fellow sh.it.heads think of this development in the fediverse, any input is appreciated!

I think performance problems with the Lemmy database lead to a lot more fragmentation... it didn't scale well and instances were telling people to spread around. That and the discovery of remote instances being unintuitive - plus the data replication problems (see: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3101) has laid a rather chaotic foundation. People are still trying to get their server installs up and running today, there are a huge number of servers, and I expect when those severs go offline there will be a mess left over of orphan posts, comments, etc.

I don't think anyone planned it this way, they were working for several years to create an alternative to Reddit and you find communities with mods who created them 3 years ago and stopped using Lemmy.... it will be an interesting year, for sure.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Please let's not have anything to do with this.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Could you repost this to !agora@sh.itjust.works please?

[–] Whooping_Seal@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Re-posted!

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you!

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