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[–] 239 points 3 years ago (74 children)

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

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  • [–] 59 points 3 years ago (48 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 52 points 3 years ago (24 children)

    Not only was it not very successful, it's an old outdated Microsoft playbook from the 90s/early 00s and was targeted at closed source competitors and freeware, not open source software where you can just fork out a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.

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  • [–] 28 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 44 points 3 years ago (21 children)
  • [–] 25 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    Thank you for this article. It shows exactly what's Facebook's plan. They will join in, make their own implementation that doesn't work well, pass the blame to the other platforms that use the protocol*, which in turn pressures them to debug and slow down themselves around Facebook's stuff, and then they cut them off entirely.

    The correct attitude is to extinguish Facebook now. They're not welcome.

    *And yes, this would work. Users are absolutely gullible about this shit, even without ever being told anything directly. Look at Apple users and their blue/green speech bubble thing. Every single flaw with the system is Apple's fault - but the dumbass cultminded users see the green speechbubble and blame the other users for the flaws, not Apple. They literally just did the stupid tribalism comic and it worked.

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    [–] 132 points 3 years ago* (9 children)
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    [–] 126 points 3 years ago (61 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 154 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 97 points 3 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 90 points 3 years ago

    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.

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    [–] 114 points 3 years ago (17 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 52 points 3 years ago* (3 children)

    @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.

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  • [–] 24 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    @ninboy No, it doesn't make my public content private, but it would display my content alongside everything else that a threads user would see, which would make Meta's product more attractive to threads users. Increased threads userbase means increased ad revenue. Speaking of which, I'm now thinking about how content I created, not on a Meta-operated site, would be (as federation by default intends) displayed next to Meta advertising on their instance. My ability to prevent me-sourced content from reaching Meta's instance prevents me-sourced content from displaying next to advertisement I don't want it to be displayed next to.

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  • [–] 78 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (9 children)

    Meta should stay away from fediverse!

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  • [–] 43 points 3 years ago* (6 children)

    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.

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    [–] 60 points 3 years ago (7 children)
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    [–] 45 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (3 children)

    Lemmy should defederate from threads.net

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    [–] 43 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    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.

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    [–] 43 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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    [–] 35 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I really hope the fediverse can block out the meta crap…

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    [–] 34 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    @downpunxx

    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.

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    [–] 34 points 3 years ago (34 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 30 points 3 years ago

    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.

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    [–] 30 points 3 years ago (16 children)

    Has lemmy.world blocked meta?

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    [–] 28 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    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.:

    • instances would Federate only if the other side can provide a certain piece of information called X
    • X is protected by copyright law, therefore by default, instances are not allowed to provide X
    • However, X is released under a license which for permits to copy and distribute X under certain conditions
    • The conditions allow to tune who can legally federate
    • Conditions could be
      • The server software must be AGPL licensed
      • The instance must not be owned by a company with a certain amount of annual revenue

    Open question is, who owns the copyright of X?

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    [–] 26 points 3 years ago (8 children)

    Do you really need to import a CSV just to block a single domaine? Sounds over complicated

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