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.

  • @[email protected]
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    681 year 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.

  • 🦊 OneRedFox 🦊
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    581 year ago

    Good call from the instance admins. Meta’s been a known actor for over 10 years at this point, which is more than enough time to observe their behavior (including up to a few weeks ago when they got fined for violating the GDPR). They’re not going to be participating in good faith and we don’t need to give them a chance to shit up the Fediverse.

  • GreenPlasticSushiGrass
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    431 year 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.

    • Lionir [he/him]
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      1051 year ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        51 year ago

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

        • alyaza [they/she]OPM
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          1481 year ago

          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
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            341 year 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.

          • The Cuuuuube
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            271 year ago

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

          • Melpomene
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            191 year 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.

        • Lionir [he/him]
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          411 year 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.

          • Melpomene
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            61 year ago

            Given the number of competitors they’ve killed or absorbed, you’re not far off. Heck, they even stomped Google.

        • @[email protected]
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          361 year 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

        • @[email protected]
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          301 year ago

          If there’s no issues then we can refederate at any later time.

          What is the harm in waiting?

          • Nepenthe
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            1 year ago

            Can’t find the source, but I did see a rumor they’ll be turning on federation a few months after the official release so as to not spring all of this place on a bunch of old people. So if they do that, they’ll already have their own ecosystem/culture in place. I’m also a bit worried the extended introduction is going to lull people.

            I think regardless, it always needs to be at the forefront of user’s minds that they’re not averse to playing it slow. Likely, they’ll be on their best behavior starting out, especially since having a working platform at all means making as many friends in the fediverse as they can. They’re not gonna come in swinging their junk around like spez.

            Acting the gracious benefactor will not stop them from leaving this place a haunted backwater once they gather enough standing to start gradually poaching users via shiny toys and high engagement. Theirs is always going to be a numbers game.

            This includes any new users too, and it’s something that can be mitigated more than stopped. I don’t see it as really a question that we stand to wither in the shadow of a recognizable name.

            Any niceties will be presumed by me to be a fakeout, and I’m personally pissed off that what was supposed to be a way to worm out from under the corporations semi-permanently stands to be drowned out immediately by corporations.

        • AnonymousLlama
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          211 year ago

          I think if this were a new player in the market, say for example a new social media platform that was going to venture into the fediverse, most people here would give them the benefit of the doubt.

          However this is meta, they shouldn’t take get the benefit of the doubt with how they’ve been operating over the last decade. There’s no good faith that they’ll be good participants

        • magnetosphere
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          181 year ago

          Corporations are motivated by profit. One of the ways Meta profits is by using your personal information for targeted advertising. For them, “community building” is a means, not an end. What else could you possibly need to know?

          If a known con artist asks you to listen to their pitch, are you going to “hear them out”, or slam the door in their face?

          • debounced
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            81 year ago

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

        • @[email protected]
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          71 year ago

          The same harm the inhabitants of the henhouse would come to if they decided to hear the fox out.

    • @[email protected]
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      481 year 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.

    • ikantolol
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      351 year 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.

    • Retronautickz
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      201 year ago

      Do you really think Meta wants to be “one of us”, that they plan to be on equal ground as the rest of the already existing instances managed by individuals and not by corporations? Are you that naive?

    • @[email protected]
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      151 year ago

      it’s the paradox of tolerance. We (fediverse) cannot be tolerant of the intolerant (meta in this case), lest we be destroyed by them. And do not for one second ascribe any benevolent properties to meta, they are evil through and through and have been pretty much since inception. Tolerating their presence would be akin to tolerating nazis, the second that happens I’m fucking out of here

    • Ertebolle
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      151 year ago

      The thing is that this isn’t really a marriage of equals; if Meta joins the Fediverse then Meta will swallow the Fediverse, simply by dint of having several orders of magnitude more users.

      It would be akin to India applying to become the 51st US state; if we let them in, they’d end up controlling 80% of the House and the Electoral College and the US wouldn’t really be the US anymore.

      • Gaywallet (they/it)
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        131 year ago

        While I appreciate the analogy, the electoral college is a seriously broken system which hasn’t protected proportional representation in a long, long time.

        • Ertebolle
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          31 year ago

          Oh certainly; my point was simply that in a system where population = influence, letting in a new group with several times as many people as all of your existing groups put together means that that new group effectively takes over.

          • BobQuasit
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            1 year ago

            And yet even if India did join the United States as the 51st state, It occurs to me that the billionaires and corporations would still be in charge. Which is to say, although the huge population of Meta is a concern, I fear the power of Mark Zuckerberg’s billions far more.

        • Bdking158
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          11 year ago

          The electoral college was never intended to protect proportional representation. The whole idea of equal representation in the Senate was to avoid high population states running roughshod over the smaller ones. This obviously dilutes the influence of higher population states and amplifies the smaller ones at the electoral college.

          The system is not broken though. It does exactly what it was originally intended to do 240 years ago. You just don’t agree with it’s intention and results

          • Gaywallet (they/it)
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            1 year ago

            The electoral college was never intended to protect proportional representation.

            Article 1 of the constitution very clearly lays out how electors are supposed to be chosen based on the census. To say that the house is not supposed to represent proportional representation while the senate represents non-proportional representation as a counterbalance is ignoring the long history of debate and the many laws passed to attempt to bring representation in the house in proportion with the population.

            The system is broken. We do not know the ‘original intent’ and anyone trying to argue for constitutional originalism is either completely ignorant of how literally everything changes with time or trying to enforce their conservative ideals through a guise of legitimacy.

            But this isn’t really the right place to have this discussion (we’re on a thread about defederating from meta) so I’m gonna withdraw now and not reply to any more responses about this.

          • blivet
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            21 year ago

            Each state gets a number of electors equal to its congressional representation (senators plus representatives). If the number of representatives weren’t capped it would go a long way towards making the Electoral College more representative of the population.

      • AnonymousLlama
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        31 year ago

        Yeah the size is what I think is most worrying. I’ve only just got here so I’m pretty keen on the content (which seems to be the regular content that was here before + a fusion of stuff from Reddit)

        I’m really not keen on having an influx of low quality Facebook posts here.

        I’m not the one to be on my high horse, thinking that these platforms or Reddit are beacons of enlightenment, but the comments here are light-years above what I see on Facebook, so I want none of that.

        • bathrobe
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          21 year ago

          @AnonymousLlama

          @alyaza @dcormier @Ertebolle

          75% of the posts I see on kbin are the worst low quality meme bullshit, significantly dumber and worse than the horrible stuff on Facebook.

          You’re worried that, what? Itll get in the way of the trash everywhere already?

          • livus
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            You need to curate your feed. That’s not what I’m seeing.

      • Maeve
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        11 year ago

        It’s basically what happened after the revolutionary war, and reparations were even paid: to slave owners.

        • Ertebolle
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          11 year ago

          Well yeah, and the 3/5 clause was essentially a compromise whereby the disproportionately populous areas agreed to accept partial credit for the share of their population that was enslaved.

    • Maeve
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      91 year ago

      It’s ok to not tolerate algorithms that promote intolerance for clicks and advertising.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 year ago

      I agree this seems kneejerk. If Meta refuses to abide by the standards of interoperability and openness then lock them out, but by doing so ahead of time the fediverse is committing the crime it’s pre-punishing Meta for.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      As much as I don’t think the pact will do much, it’s their right to defederate whichever instances they want. The protocol is still “open and interoperable” and this does not change that - in fact, this move is only possible because of that openness.

      Your argument only sounds kinda sane when applied to Meta, the same could be said about instances made by bad actors (spammers, for example). Please do further research before commenting on this.

      • Maeve
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        11 year ago

        What? Are you arguing tolerance of intolerance?

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          I’m arguing the protocol was designed this way for a reason. Each instance is meant to be able to implement their own policies and defederate who they want, exactly what Beehaw is doing here. The idea that this is against the spirit of the protocol is entirely inaccurate. Hope that clears it up.

    • TehPers
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      1 year ago

      Regardless of how untrustworthy Meta as a company is, it also tends to hold the kinds of “mainstream” social media platforms that I have actively been avoiding for many reasons, including their communities. Beehaw has already defederated from other instances for having open sign-up and a disproportionately large number of users on them who needed moderation actions taken, and I can see a Meta-run instance posing the same kinds of problems.

      Plus, like others said, it’s not impossible to federate later if it ends up being an overreaction. It’s just that Meta and its userbase already exist, so it’s possible to make pre-emptive judgement with that knowledge and correct the judgement later, potentially avoiding a flood of unwanted content.

  • Deebster
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    301 year ago

    Good. To quote WarGames:

    The only winning move is not to play

    Meta is at best looking to profit from the Fediverse, and more likely looking to extinguish it. I think blocking them at the borders is the only solution.

  • @[email protected]
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    271 year ago

    Thanks for the transparency. I personally think this is the right move. Meta shouldn’t be trusted, based on their previous performance. If they do something to change that then we’ll see, but I’m not expecting them to change their stripes.

    Been catching up on all the NDA drama on Mastodon, it’s really caused a rift between some users and instance admins. Felt a bit like an ‘aww it’s all grown up’ moment to see Mastodon having a scandal.

  • @[email protected]
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    251 year ago

    This is fantastic news and applaud this decision. I used to work in digital marketing and having seen how Facebook, (and Twitter, Google, etc.) makes their sausage and how they operate, I advise everyone get off Meta/FB, or really any centralized social media platform for that matter.

  • @[email protected]
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    251 year ago

    Good choice, who wants to deal with a hundred thousand instagram users sitting in between every fediverse user.

  • @[email protected]
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    241 year ago

    I 100% agree with this decision. At first I wanted to give Meta a chance, just to get a big player in the Fediverse, but after reading this article it totally changed my views.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 year ago

      I just finished reading it. I must admit that I wasn’t blown away at the start. But the last few paragraphs, especially about the “Embrace, Extend, Exterminate” strategy really convinced me.

      I did not remember that Google chat was once a XMPP client and that they pulled the plug on this.

      Anyway, I’m totally convinced that the fediverse is most probably better off without Meta. Although, I’m not sure how the fediverse admin can really block them. At some point, some people will want to see meta’s stuff.

      It almost feel like we need a legal organization around the fediverse. Just some unorganized random people won’t save whatever we have here. If we still want this to be as free as possible, there will be a time where a giant company will fuck thing up and we may forget why we didn’t want them here in the first place.

  • @[email protected]
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    231 year ago

    I hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse.

    I suggest to rephrase with this better: “I hereby agree to block any instances owned by, governed by, supported by mostly, funded by only or affiliated with Meta, its subsidiaries, major involving partners and influenced involving affiliates should they pop up on the Fediverse.”

    LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I do not provide my suggestion “as a legal advice” but as a thought to share that may be considered or configured by legal experts. I will not be held liable for any error that any revision upon or any derivative from my suggestion may cause.

    • Retronautickz
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      141 year ago

      This pact isn’t legally binding, but more of a moral “I stand against Meta” thing

    • Kryostar
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      61 year ago

      @xptiger @alyaza I don’t know what it is about Legal disclaimers… they seem kinda scary. Just reading “LEGAL DISCLAIMER” is enough for me to gulp and loosen the tie.

      They sound very… Legal… and… and Disclaimery.

    • TWeaK
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      21 year ago

      Look at you, coming in with your legalese.

      Godsspeed.

  • Azure
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    231 year ago

    I appreciate the work you all do. Im a heavier lurker than particpater and i see little fingers of you all taking care of beehaw for us all the time and it makes me smile 😁 good work everyone!