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A 45 minute "round table" with multiple rando masto instance admins? That doesn't sound like enough time for the table to get very round.
It sounds more like 5 minutes introduction, 30 minute presentation by Meta, 10 minutes Q&A. But oops our presentation ran just a bit long, and I really do have a hard stop at noon so we really only have about 5 minutes for questions thanks for all of the valuable feedback we'll be sure to circle back offline.
Ah, I see you've taken part in Bullshit Corporate Meetings™ before!
a true person of culture!
What a horrible click-bait title. No one and nothing was "destroyed" here. He replied in a polite manner to a company whose goals do not align with his own.
This conversation will be off the record, as the team may discuss confidential details that should not be discussed with others
Translation: Nobody needs to know how much money we offer you as a bribe.
My guess is that anyone attending will have to sign an NDA. That will make it hard to speak out against Meta joining the federation. If someone does say anything, the Meta lawyers will destroy them.
They did with the last one. That's why there's so much distrust about it.
Anywhere Meta goes ads will follow and privacy will flee.
What an absolute legend. Also, I do so solemnly swear that any instance caught federating with meta is going straight in my hosts file.
You have been warned.
share the list, I'll add them to my pihole!
I am looking for a new instance because my admin is on the fence.
Kinda shook at the Meta-supporting comments. They should not be anywhere near the fediverse. Meta is a business first and the users are the product. Companies now just want to maximize profits, minimize costs, and hoard wealth for... rocket ships? Fediverse itself is community-owned, independent, and decentralized.
With how new all of these controversies are, it's kinda baffling that people are still defending this company. They're going to continue to exploit anything and everything for profits. It wouldn't even surprise me if the genuine reason they're interested in this concept is because they want to take what's open-sourced, adapt it, and commercialize it. I would imagine they're thinking, 'why invest in a brand new backend when we can profit off of an existing one, unrestricted.' And this "meeting" that they're forming is basically a free forum for them to learn and ask questions about how they can exploit the Fediverse and find any way to profit off of it. "Off the record" anything is shady as fuck.
Exactly, off the record means the expectation is Meta will be given free expertise to gain an edge on their competitors. Don't give diddly squat to actors who want to commercialize your content. It will never end well for you, only Meta.
I need meta to just stay away from the fediverse forever
Fuck Meta and all they stand for.
FB: We're confused why someone would sign up for a social media site set up by somebody in their dorm room, tell us how to be more like you.
Meta also: forgetting how their original IP, Facebook started in much the same way.
It's hilarious for Meta to invite some person who happens to run a server to an "off the record" conversation with "confidential details that should not be shared with others" anyway. LOL.
The only "confidential" information that's likely to be involved in such an exchange would be some kind of bribe for the person to shut down or assimilate their infrastructure with Meta's. It's not like they're going to reveal Meta's trade secrets to someone they believe to essentially be a competitor or anything.
I find it a tad amusing that this news about Facebook's latest attempt at fucking over the Fediverse is where I hear about the pixelfed project for the first time.
I don't think they "destroyed" Meta. Meta was polite and they were passive aggressive? What is there to celebrate?
Personally, I'm not planning on using the Meta service, but I'm not a fan of pre-emptive defederation either. The vast majority of P92 users will have 0 clue what federation/activitypub is, let alone actually log into Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin, etc. For them, they will forever think of themselves as @username, not @username.
I'm totally fine with Meta releasing an app who's posts are exposed via ActivityPub, along with being able to consume other posts via ActivityPub. If anything, I would like to think it'll drive more people off the Meta platform and into Mastodon, as moving to a federated app doesn't mean they have to completely break connections with their network on-platform with Meta.
Overall, I'm more in favour of allowing a personal user to choose to defederate from specific instances, because regardless of what happens, if Meta joins, there will be other companies getting on the bandwagon, and endlessly splitting up based of which instances federate with which others will eventually lead to the whole damn thing falling apart and the big players becoming the de-jure instances anyways.
I mean, the vast majority of Lemmy/Kbin users migrated from Reddit, as did the vast majority of Mastodon users from Twitter. I'm fine with keeping things open to help facilitate more user growth to community run instances, while also having a place for the less tech-savvy to get their feet wet.
The vast majority of P92 users will have 0 clue what federation/activitypub is, let alone actually log into Lemmy, Mastodon, Kbin, etc. For them, they will forever think of themselves as
@username, not@username@meta.com.
There's an argument to be made that that's exactly why everyone else should defederate preemptively.
Meta is going for a price run on failure it feels like, I worked for a company bought out by (no names to prevent breaking my NDA) them super publically and then a year or so later firing 90% of the staff and replacing them (for no reason) and leaving a skeleton crew.
And as expected things have just been on a steady decline ever since. The people running the show at Meta have to be off their rocks on coke.
They just wanted your former company to not exist anymore. That's what they do: see competition and eat it.
On the one hand I can totally understand this reaction by Kev, on the other hand, by completely locking off all discussions like this, means that there's no way to change things for the better.
Granted, it's Meta, they're not to be trusted, but still, a discussion, if one has the time, wouldn't be too bad an idea.
I think it would be incredibly naive and foolish to believe Meta has any kind of pure motives for this.
One of the biggest corporations in the world reaching out to its competitor to try to get them to talk "off the record" about "confidential details"... Sounds like a pretty blatant scheme to get them to reveal confidential details about their competitor's product.
Or maybe Meta has broken with decades of its own conduct, and several centuries of capitalism, in order to reach out in good faith to their competitor. LOL.
Its a really immature and niave response from Kev. Information is power, he's chosen to operate without knowledge for internet points.
Meta think there is potential to enlarge their market and make money, Kev's response won't impact their business making decisions.
Kev should have gone to the meeting to understand what Meta are planning. That would help him figure out how to deal with Meta entering the space.
I don't expect he could shape their approach but knowing they want to do X, Y or Z might make certain features/fixes a priority so it doesn't impact everyone else
I think you are insinuating that because meta has money and power, he owes it to the community to hear them out. That's a capitalistic perspective that seems centered around either making money or having a larger 'market'. I wouldn't assume that this is the status quo for everyone involved in the fediverse.
Also, if Meta isn't willing to share its plans publicly, only to the owners of the largest instances online, I question their motives.
Sitting to an off the record coveraation will be used as a hook agaiant you in the future.
They have enough lawyer money to bleed you dry, and your attendance (probably sign some NDA) will be used as basis.
Granted, it's Meta, they're not to be trusted, but still, a discussion, if one has the time, wouldn't be too bad an idea.
It feels like Meta has to pay like a billion dollars in fines every few weeks in europe for violations. And they don't seem to plan on stopping (based on the fact that it happens every few weeks). Even faintly hoping that you could even have the smallest chance of moving even the smallest gear in Meta by appearing in such a meeting is complete delusion.
Meta intends to harvest content and kill off competition before it poses a threat.
I wonder if Gab was invited. It would be hilarious if the only instances willing to federate with Meta were Nazis.
This has me thinking, is there a space set aside for putting profits over people instances out and center so admins can preemptively defederate and/or block them?
I haven't found one yet but I am rather new to this.
I think it'll be harder than that, even.
Meta doesn't need to spin up an instance to abuse user data on the fediverse, they just need an app that can read it. A hypothetical meta fediverse app could allow users to select their own instance and still read and collect data on the connected instances. As far as I know, there is no way in the protocol to prevent this.
It‘s not just about the data—which is bad enough but as you said they could just write a crawler to get at it. The question is why would they want to federate and why now? Meta being Meta the most likely reasons are terrible for the fediverse and it reminds me very much of Google and xmpp. I saw a really good writeup on this yesterday: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html