Just confirming this is me and my post.

I literally just posted an image of this elsewhere, let me get my other account it’s on.

We literally CAN not use Facebook.

That’s not what I was saying, or meant to say. I was saying they are tracking you regardless of whether you do or not. Why allow that to extend further by embracing them into the fediverse? I also don’t think they are inextinguishable, I think there a wide, wide range of ways to fracture then consolidate.

Alas, time will tell and we can only hope it amounts to nothing and all us worrywarts are proven wrong as Meta does nothing but integrate then occasionally serve ads (with of course, all the background tracking).

Out of curiosity and completely unrelated, do you have an Android phone? Not Google? If so, it may be worth checking your active processes running under dev services, there may be a Meta Services and Meta Services Manager running in the background. It’s worth disabling these from the apps list, they literally don’t do anything but serve up ads and track you.

On by default through many phones and carriers, gotta love it.

and I easily left both of those.

Right, we left there over much smaller reasons than Meta. If Meta is heavily involved in ActivityPub, where to next?

Yes? We’re already using not-their-version,

Right, but for how long would we be able to do this? If Threads does federate and get popular, even worse, the communities here get heavily integrated with Threads, wouldn’t it only be a matter of time until Meta makes a push to keep users on their platform over this one?

Then you don’t use their version.

We come full circle here, if you’re not using Meta’s federated ActivityPub, it’s a ghost town because the goal is for Threads to replace us. What are you doing here on Kbin when all of the communities it is part of is now over on Meta’s instance?

I don’t know if it’s as simple as “don’t use it”. This is Meta we are talking about. You literally can’t not use Facebook to get away from it’s tracking, they track you regardless.

I also don’t really have a horse in the race. I’m with you in that yeah, I’d probably find somewhere else too. But I’m thinking long term with our space here, regardless of whether 41% of instances are defederated, Meta’s involvement is a bad thing due to their immense wealth and, in my opinion, high likelihood they will implement changes that we can’t get away from. I’m not so sure it will be as simple as not using their version. I also don’t think it’s wrong for people to be aware and vocal about this, even if it may not immediately affect us in the moment. Again, we left Reddit over basically the complete inverse of this situation. Reddit closing 3rd party apps to get users into their app vs. Threads adoption of these 3rd party apps to get data from these users.

Why would we be okay making it so that developers and users have to work around finding Meta-stripped builds when we can just… Mitigate how much Meta is able to do it in the first place?

Oh yeah that’s my mistake, it was a plugin for WordPress, not ownership. It looks like it was co-authored by someone as part of W3C to be an internet standard, but I don’t know if that changes much.

It’s mostly that if something somewhere can be bought, Meta will try to. I don’t see any reason to extend any open arms. Just because something is open source doesn’t mean that ownership won’t change or changes can’t be implemented or influenced.

That aside though I also feel that any integration is just asking for an invitation to reckless abandon. I think I mentioned in the previous comment, what happens as Meta begins making contributions to the open source protocol? As people looking to run their own instances come across a Meta build due to SEO? Maybe Meta money starts getting thrown at W3C and the co-author - who knows man. At that point, are we just going to use whatever forks that get Meta’s stuff stripped out from it?

Why risk 100m Facebook and Instagram users for the “potential growth of Masto-lemmy” when it seems like the very obvious reality is that Threads would just leech users from here after some integration then “oops Threads doesn’t support ActivityPub instances all your communities are with us now sorry!”. Not to mention the imposed tracking, dark patterns and monetization - which from my understanding instances can set fetch authorization, alongside defederating it would mostly prevent the data scraping? However I’m not entirely clear on all that.

Anyway, not trying to claim that I’m extremely well versed in the subject or the specific logistics of how it works, I just don’t see a single reason to trust Meta or why there would be any reason to federate with them.

I also personally have no issue having separate spaces for separate things, so to me the integration just seems a bit much. Some people have told me that’s a positive for them, and that’s cool. If I could functionally have one and actually interact in full I’d probably just use one account too. I occasionally view microblogs on Kbin alongside my subscriptions, I browse through here (Beehaw), both slrpnks lemmy and Mastodon instances, all different accounts. If I were interested in the content I’d have made a threads account (but the posts I get shown from Instagram don’t really pull any interest).

If someone is interested in using Threads, why not just use it there? I don’t entirely understand the reason we would need Threads to be seen in the same space as Twitter posts and Reddit threads all alongside our microblogs and posts (if say, Reddit and Twitter were also to federate). It just seems so much more centralized compared to the nature of the decentralized instances, I could see Meta’s interest here being to make their version of WeChat. A space where you have Microblogs, Forums, Marketplace, and games all in one spot no need to ever use anything else.

I dunno, I just feel like the desire to consolidate everything into a single bitty package is asking for a disaster. And to an extent, I genuinely can see this being the start of that path.

Anyway, sorry to get so long winded. Maybe I can take advantage of this idea and develop an app to centralize your Fediverse, Reddit, Twitter, Discord, GameFAQs and any account you can think of all in one spot. Then you can just interact from all of them as a single master user posting from each individual account as you come across the content. Support for all that will probably get pricey so I’ll just charge for extended account integration, maybe I can make my own subscription based off this to cover the cost (/s but feel free to use it!)

Buying out WordPress?

There’s no reason to not block threads. If someone wants to use it, they can go there and use it. There’s absolutely 0 need for the fediverse to have Meta anywhere near it.

Say Meta does get federated. How long until they begin making contributions to ActivityPub? Before Meta decides it’s a worthwhile purchase?

Fetch authorization and defederate.

Oh yeah, I don’t mind the activitypub level of interaction. It’s neat that if I wanted, I could mostly just use Kbin and get a full experience.

Like you, I moreso meant a single app led by a corp

Yeah this is the one, and it seems easy to see exactly that process taking place. I don’t think it’s so much the data concerns, alone at least, nor even the potential for content. I think many would agree that, to some extent having a larger user base available could be a good thing. It just so happens that 1) the user base is “more accessible” at best and potentially dangerous at its worst (not all of threads is friendly) and 2) it’s Meta. There couldn’t possibly be a reason for them to pursue this other than not having their grasp on it. I see no reason to trust it.

Someone you like on Threads and nowhere else. Use it there then. You can view them if it’s federated? Will that still be the case in 1, 2, 3 years? At which point you’ve integrated so much of your instance into Threads that when support for ActivityPub is dropped or whatever change gets made, well, you may as well stick with Threads…

There’s just no good outcome. I am an optimist, for the right perspective and reason devil’s advocate is always worth a glance… and this? This has no good causes behind it. Man, what is it with all the big corps and apps trying to tie everything into one single spot like WeChat. Can’t people just scroll Mastodon then X then Threads then Lemmy then Kbin then Facebook all separately like a normal mass consumer?

It’s Meta. Why even attempt to let them? What event in their history makes anyone go, “oh, yeah, that would be good.”

It seems the idea is that it gets so big that it either can’t exist without it or leeches the userbase. I’ve not really seen any explanation either, but I’ve come up with an idea around it. For example, in my experience Lemmy.World is filled with the type of people who would use Threads (from responses I’ve gotten about corporations like Spotify and Apple - heavily praised and no negativity about them). As threads and .world users interact, over time there becomes a dependency between those instances due to the community connections that are made. At a certain point, one or the other does something to encourage usage - that would be Extending.

For how long would something like activitypub be able to hold out? If Meta begins making contributions to it? Or if after that dependency, Meta makes a chance to how their federation works internally and fractures the point of activitypub by making instance runners/users pick one or the other. Or worse, Meta flat out buys Automatic. There goes the Fediverse.

FWIW - I’m not informed or have any idea what I’m talking about in this regard. I’m fully guessing and postulating, I don’t even think I’m parroting what I’ve read somebody else say about it because, like I said, I’ve yet to see an explanation how the extinguish would function in this example. Historically I have an idea, but the circumstances here are different, ish.

But, this is Meta we’re talking about. I don’t think we’d be any happier federating with Reddit if the opportunity arose because these companies have historically shown they will pull teeth to get what they want, no matter how many people’s teeth they have to pull.

“Well can they?”

I don’t know. Maybe not? Do you want to let them try? Why let them? By defederating, it’s like having a glass wall where yes, they can see everything looking in, but the interaction is mitigated. Ifnthe example I brought up is accurate, any changes .World decided to make with Meta in mind would not affect the rest of the instances that have defederated, since we don’t even see that stuff from them in the first place.

Comparatively, slrpnk.net currently is federated with .World but not Threads, so if .World makes changes, those may be seen from instances that are federated with it?

From my understanding, a specific post on .World that has interaction from Threads and slrpnk.net. Threads and .World would see everything while Slrpnk.Net would only see federated instances and .World comments.

We are about 1.5m here in the Fediverse. Threads is already 100m. That’s quite a large number of things to be missing, so it’s possible that there’s a large number of conversations that defederated users are only seeing half of? That could be another example that pushes Extinguish.

Anyway, sorry for any confusion or nonsense - I wrote this in a hurry on my phone, but I also wanted to lay out my thoughts and understand to see if it’s at all in the ballpark. Shit, just use me as Cunningham’s Law.

I was assuming they meant the end of the fediverse world, but yeah it’s quite grandiose.

Reddit will definitely send you PM’s for vote manipulation