This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Embrace, extend, extinguish. Only proven way to destroy decentralized, free, open source solutions.
First stage embrace might not even be malicious, but with corporations it will eventually lead to someone thinking: how can we monetize our position. It is just nature how business works.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
It's worth pointing out that the wiki article lists several examples of Microsoft using this approach but I wouldn't class many of them as successful.
Not only was it not very successful, it's an old outdated Microsoft playbook from the 90s/early 00s and was targeted at closed source competitors and freeware, not open source software where you can just fork out a separate version.
By all means block Meta instances if you want, but they have 3 billion users, they definitely don't give a shit about a "competitor" with a few hundred thousand users. If simply the presence of a corporation in the Fediverse is enough to destroy it, then it wasn't going to last long anyways. It's embarassing that "embrace, extend, extinguish" caught on around here just because it's a catchy alliteration.
Let me offer a rebuttal. The fact that this playbook even exists and is well-known is a cause for concern. Yes, Microsoft’s campaign wasn’t very successful, but that doesn’t mean Meta won’t try or learn from Microsoft’s mistakes. I ask: is the probability of this happening non-zero, and if so, is it lower than you’re comfortable with? For me, and many others here, that answer is no.
Moreover, this is a greater problem: Meta is well-known and has practically infinite marketing budget. They can spin their app as the de facto, causing many people to lose control of their data. By association, some people will blame the Fediverse and not Meta. Defederating signals that we are not willing to participate with them and tells potential Fediverse users that they will not be able to engage with us—and whatever they decide, we cannot impact more.
The crux of my argument is risk management. Defederated is a conservative measure to prevent possible issues in the future.
Google successfully did this to XMPP.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
It looks like articles today are saying that Meta is delaying integrating ActivityPub at launch.
That said, I'm not seeing how we get to the last E, extinguish. By its very nature, ActivityPub is decentralized to avoid total control. So even if Meta embraces the technology and wants to monetize it (because capitalism, of course), extending ActivityPub would (hypothetically) be open source - or they would fork it, diverging and making their version closed, and otherwise not function in full with other ActivityPub instances (like with kbin, Lemmy, and Mastodon). Without buying the platform from the developers in full, I don't see how ActivityPub or the greater Fediverse dies. And I could just be missing something obvious, so if you can explain how we get there, I would really like to hear and understand.
I guess the only way I could see it is if Threads got so popular that people literally stopped using the other apps - but I also don't see that happening, because anyone already using stuff like Mastodon are using it because Twitter, Facebook, etc, suck ass and they've moved away from sites like that.
EDIT: Thanks to the one person that actually replied, I saw I was on the right track at the end, but failed to see the obvious (as I assumed).
It’s hard to predict but the extinguish part would come from bigger non-Threads instances implementing compatibility with Thread-only extensions (in the interest of their users, or for money) and fragmenting the community. Threads then becomes the defacto ActivityPub standard. Maybe some instances stay true to the standard but with extremely reduced communities because now they can’t see what other instances are publishing. So now you have to decide between your ideals and your social network. At best, you’re back to square 0.
It happens in the extend part.
Large corporation will have much more resources, they will implement features and refactoring, which small open source teams do not have capability to implement. They will start pulling users because they support features that other do not.
This also means that they will start getting control.
And then finally they just cut the communication, and split the community. All the way they can claim to be working "for the community"
It happens in the extend part.
This is it right here.
If you need a real-world example look at the original web browsers:
NCSA Mosaic (the very first web browser) fully supported what would be later known as HTTP verison .9 . There was universal compatibility because there was only one browser supporting HTTP. Later Netscape Navigator would come on the scene and add functionality that was not supported in Mosaic (like the tag for example), but nothing hugely breaking page views between the two browsers.
Fast forward to Internet Explorer v3, v4 and v5 where MS would not only show all the pages that the prior browsers would, but they EXTENDED by letting HTML still work without following all the same standards. It was easier to write pages for IE than it was to the specification. Then EXTENDED again by MS added ActiveX to web sites meaning now ONLY MS IE could display these pages, and for a time that meant only Windows computers could. This is the Extinguish part.
The "Extend" step gets adopted because its attractive to users.
Here's a non-computer analogy:
Lets say your current car get 25MPG. Now lets says that Shell come out with a gasoline that would let your same car go 40MPG with zero changes. Just buy Shell gas now at nearly the same price as anyone else's and you get significantly more range. Most people would do it. Moreover, Shell buys Honda and starts manufacturing cars designed to work on that same new Shell gas could go 60mpg with even more power! So when you go to buy your next car 5 years later after using the gas, you don't want to turn down 60MPG with more power. That Shell/Honda looks very attractive! All this time all the other gas stations have been going out of business because few people want to pay nearly the same amount for gasoline that only gets a fraction of the range. In the end, ONLY Shell gasoline is being sold, and nearly everyone drives a Shell/Honda to get the most benefit. This is Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Unpopular opinion but defederating Meta is a terrible idea. What are people thinking will happen? Allow them to federate and you'll have mastodon users able to view and interact with posts from Threads without needing to be concerned about ads or tracking, without giving over any more control of privacy than they would to any other fediverse instance, and without needing to possess accounts homed within the Meta infrastructure.
Defederate them, and anyone who wants to interact with anyone on threads will most likely need to maintain a presence on both and handover more personal data to Meta than they otherwise would.
Defederating is actively hostile to fediverse users.
The idea is that at first threads.net will seem "normal", like all the other fediverses
Then they start adding features that either break against other servers, or straight up aren't supported, making threads.net seem more enticing just because all the neat features aren't on the other sites.
Think how Internet Explorer killed Netscape with all the Page Load errors caused by ActiveX, yet everyone wanted ActiveX sites.
Once they've walked through the path of least resistance and grabbed the bulk of the traffic, they just defederate from everyone.
Yep - best option is to defederate them well before they gain traction & start creating problem by not contributing back to the protocol in a way that benefits everyone.
I think after the community got burned by Microsoft & then google we’re finally learning.
People are concerned about Facebook/Meta trying to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish ActivityPub - if I've understood correctly.
You're acting like there's only two situations: The entire Fediverse defederates with them, or the entire Fediverse federates with them. That's not the case.
I, personally, do not want to interact with anyone using Threads, because Meta has a proven history of poor moderation and of manipulating the narrative for political gain on Facebook and I see no reason to think they won't do the same here. I am not the only one who holds this opinion. Those of us who feel this way can use instances that defederate with them, and have our way.
If you want to interact with them, you can maintain an account on an instance that does federate with them. You do not need to have a Threads account, nor does anyone else.
meta is not here to promote open networks. They will do more harm than good. If you want to learn more about how google achieved it with the XMPP you can read the story here https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html written by one of the core developers.
I don't want to interact with anyone on Threads. It is new and it is Facebook.
No worries once threads becomes big enough they will defederate from fediverse /s That sure will be hostile to fediverse users.
Meta joining the fediverse is like Raytheon joining anti-war protests. They are not there for sincere participation.
Big corpos don't want to take it over, they want it gone.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Scary stuff! Fuck google , Microsoft and facebook
If Meta is running a fediverse instance, they're doing it for money. Sure, I might be able to block Meta-sourced content from reaching me, but that doesn't prevent me-sourced content from reaching Meta - where they can monetize it.
Show me how to do that, and I'm on it like white on rice.
@Nougat It doesn’t prevent them now, as they can just easily crawl all of your posts on here because you are posting on a *public instance*. Defederating from them does nothing to make your public content private.
This is exactly my concern, I don't want my online activity to become another revenue stream for meta. If they can put ads next to our posts then we're back to working for free for the billionaires.
Meta should stay away from fediverse!
Yeah, not a fan of the ominous shadow threads™️ casts. I don't trust them not to flood the fediverse with assorted toxic garbage to push people back towards their walled garden platforms.
The fediverse offers something radical - a new shot at genuine self determination and a socialised, self-governing internet. That shit spells B-A-D N-E-W-S for incumbent platforms (imo) and they're bad actors in general; they wouldn't think twice about smothering anything that threatens their short/long term profits. Who'se going to stop them?
Might be a little bit overly risk concious but goddamn. If I were them, I'd be trying to kill alternative ecosystems before they grew - especially if mine (metas) is both trash to use, and be used by.
Even worse, the Threads app is a privacy nightmare
I bet meta really wants to keep track of people in fediverse
Big corpos don't want to take it over, they want it gone.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Lemmy should defederate from threads.net
Same with Kbin. I would honestly go back to reddit sooner than I would accept being smooshed together with Meta.
Meta jumping on the Fediverse bandwagon would kill it one day. It's an EEE strategy. We need to keep them out. Defederate from them.
I tried to sign up for this junk and it immediately suspended my account at the end of the sign up process for some reason. Now it's demanding my mobile number to appeal it.
Get fucked Zuckerberg you tosser.
This is Microsoft's playbook, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish, it was use by Google to kill off XMPP - https://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2013/05/did-google-really-kill-off-all-xmppjabber-support-in-google-hangouts-it-still-seems-to-partially-work.html, now it will be used by Facebook to try to kill the Fediverse.
Why is this not more widely talked about? Please share this.
i'll join the voices saying this is bad for the fediverse, and bad for users in general. there are LOTS of normie users who are joining threads who will be shut off from learning about all the cool other servers if everyone blocks them. this will mean users who want to interact with them need to sign up on Threads, which is what we don't want.
what we want is that users on Threads see other servers, learn that they're better, and migrate over.
don't block Threads, show them how much better we are.
The entire fucking point of fediverse is that corporations can be disconnected when they try to come knocking. You're literally arguing against the reason the platform exists to begin with.
No offense, but I have plenty of ways of interacting with my 'normie' friends that don't involve whoring out my personal data. If someone insists they want to hang out with you but only when they're hosting a Pampered Chef party, they can fuck right off.
My first reaction is this sounds like a great way to onboard more folks into the fediverse - but is this a perhaps a paradox of intolerance? Does Meta as a corporate entity have a natural intolerance to the freeness and openness of the fediverse, and if so, does it need to be violently rejected?
I don't understand why this is even a question. Is the tragedy of the commons not taught in american education? Is Land Clearance(one example of many linked) and Enclosure not taught? (Serious question open to anyone, I do not know what history is taught outside major european countries)
This is essential basic history to understand how land developed from being a collectively worked upon thing, decentralised, owned by everybody that worked on it, into something that was owned by a tiny tiny number of people so that they could exploit it to the maximum degree.
Decentralisation is the creation of a commons. The goal of corporations is centralisation of power and monopoly. They are at complete polar opposites in goals. The entire point of the fediverse in the first place is to destroy the centralised power of web corporations who took what was originally a digital commons populated by thousands of sites and communities and through a form of digital enclosure turned it into a space controlled by a handful of companies.
Learn history other than the popular military shit folks. It is essential in analysing what affects you.
Spontaneous idea of how to use copyright law for keeping Meta out of the Fediverse (more for fun):
Introduction: Parts of the Fediverse, including Mastodon, are software licensed under the APGL license. This license is a great choice because it forces the ones running the software to grant users access to the source code. GPL for example would allow to run proprietary services based on GPL code. The AGPL does not. Companies like Meta and Google will likely not use AGPL code because it might force them to also publish their proprietary systems behind the scenes. However, this does not help much for keeping the Fediverse save. They simply implement their own software which will not be open source.
Therefore we may need another approach. Defederating is the simplest and in my opinion currently the best. It's easy and keeps people in control.
However, there could be some 'automatic' approach using copyright law. It's a hack which allows to use existing law to regulate the way instances can federate.:
Open question is, who owns the copyright of X?
Is there a way for a Lemmy user to block content from Meta's instance? If so, I'd love to.
