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Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse
(privacy.thenexus.today)
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Firstly, I didn't realize this was your article. This is probably a good reminder that every article is someone's article. I wish my tone and wording had been a bit less caustic, so apologies for being a bit of a dick in my comment and thanks for your thoughtful reply.
I think Evan's influential, but it seems dismissive to call him an "influencer" without acknowledging his relationship to the Fediverse. His influence is earned, but the term often carries a negative connotation and is occasionally used as a pejorative. Although based on your reply, that doesn't seem like it was your intention.
I think the story of their public statements is that they've said everything you'd hope to hear. I've seen many takes that they somehow betray a hidden agenda, and that seems wrong at the very least. They undoubtedly have a bad past. Contrasting those statements with their history is obviously valid, as is analyzing them in relation to their business interests. Being skeptical or suspicious of their motivations is understandable. If they had the purest of intentions, the quotes would be the same though.
Do I trust Meta? No! I don't use their platforms because I don't trust them. I have an old Facebook account I don't use, but would treat as the white pages if I ever did. And I have an extension to trap them in a sandbox if that need ever arises. I left Instagram for Pixelfed, and I'm exclusively on the Fediverse. I have no intention of leaving for any for-profit service. I don't think I have to trust them or that they have to be trustworthy to their users to keep them from destroying the Fediverse though. I think the worst case is that we end up exactly where we are now, which is fine. I'm happy here now!
I completely agree that it could cause problems with moving your account if the default is opt-in. I think it's also important to note that they've only said that they're not sure what the default will be. That could be bad intentions, but it could also be for good faith reasons. For example, it could just be concern about their users. I doubt they haven't noticed the civil war that breaks out here every time there's an announcement about Threads. I wouldn't be surprised if they're waiting to see whether their users experience a tidal wave of harassment from this side. I also wouldn't be surprised if they did. On our side, it wouldn't surprise me if many admins end up defederating because it's just too much work to moderate content from the Threads side even if they don't have bad intentions.
That's apples and oranges though. They gave them data Meta had collected. The Meta-Fediverse would have them directly responsible for data collection. So they would need to admin those instances or trust that the admins wouldn't tamper with that data. If the data were tampered with, it could seriously damage their core business model. It would poison their user tracking and they'd be less able to sell (the myth of) surgical market segmentation. It seems far less risky to be a good actor in the Fediverse to keep regulators off their back and continue to harvest vast quantities of granular tracking data from their own server. That seems especially true in light of Cambridge Analytica where they were savaged internationally for being unbelievably reckless and irresponsible with the data they held.
Even if there are numerous instances collecting data for them, they could still only get publicly available data from non-Threads Fediverse users. If they do want that, setting up an instance is way more inefficient and expensive than just scraping it from servers.
No, but I don't think that puts us in a different place than we are now. There are "free speech" instances that don't defederate for any reason. They can't force you to see or engage with anything and will never be able to. We're not really surrendering any control to them.
No worries on the tone and wording, it's the internet, I've experienced far worse. And your feedback is helpful, so the time you put into it is appreciated.
On Evan as influencer, I've highlighted for a while the contrast between opinions of Eugen and other lead devs of fediverse projects, large instance admins, the people still on the SWICG standards body, and journalists who write about the fediverse -- who in general almost all strongly support Meta -- and people on the fediverse, who are much more split. "Influencer" is as good a term as any to refer to the first category of people.
In the statements I quoted they were very up front about their agenda! Similarly in the section where I talk about their potential long-term plans if they decide to invest in this direction is consistent with Zuckerberg's comments about his interest in a decentralized approach. But yeah, they're also saying what they know people want to hear.
Fair, I've rewritten that section to clarify that this is only their current plan. It's be really funny if Meta suggested taking the privacy-friendly approach knowing that Mastodon would try to talk them out of it 🤣🤣🤣. I still expect them to go with opt-in, but we shall see. I agree that if they go the opt-in route it's not necessarily for nefarious reasons, in my view it really is in their users best interest. But that's the thing about the embrace-and-extend strategies (whether or not the third step is to extinguish), the extensions are very often in the users interests, they just cause problems for the open alternatives.
On Cambridge Analytica, I agree the data flow was in a different direction, but still: they trusted Bannon and CA with it the data that was the most valuable asset in their business model. And (other than some bad press) it worked out just fine for them! So I guess we draw different conclusions on who they'll trust with what in the future.
In any case though...
No, they have other options here. One is to provide services that cooperating instances in "Meta's fediverse" can use that involve sharing data with Meta, and create a win/win scenario for them to share the data. Think of Disney or some corporation that wants to target ads (using Meta's services, in return for a revenue share) to people on their instances -- and automate some of the moderation (by using Meta's services). Why wouldn't they harvest data and share it with Meta so that the services are more effective? Another is to provide a hosting service for corporations (and perhaps individuals) to have their own instances ... it's kind of a variant of the first one but packaged differently.
(And both of these apply to non-public data as well.)
In terms of blocking a DeSantis instance I agree it's not surrendering control to them, I just meant that Meta could monetize the heck out of it even if all the instances i the current fediverse blocked it. If they had the infrastructure in place today, DeSantis and others would be paying to boost their instances' posts to Threads (and also Gab and Truth Social and the instances that Fox News, Breitbart, etc are running). They might well miss the window for the 2024 US election but it (hopefully) won't be the last election in the world.
I still don't agree that frames them properly to people who aren't aware of them. This relevant definition is: "a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media." Prodromou's been working in decentralized social media for nearly 20 years. He's an expert if anyone is. Would you describe a professor speaking on their area of study as an influencer even if influential and on social media? To lump the people who've done the most work building, troubleshooting, problem-solving in this space together as influencers rather than people with expert knowledge is an odd choice.
I also don't think many of those people would agree that they "strongly support Meta." Just today on Mike McCue's podcast Eugen said "I am no fan of Meta." He supports federating with them because he thinks it's good for the Fediverse. We benefit from their network effects without being subjected to ads or surveillance. People who wanted to join the Fediverse but didn't because none of their network were on here can join. Their users can leave Meta without giving up their social graph and starting over. Organizations who've been on the fence about joining may decide to join. He thinks it's good for us, good for their users, and presumably doesn't care whether it's good for Meta.
Something similar to media outsourcing comments to Facebook. The problem is that what they're tracking is... everything that happens on the server. If you took everything that's tracked in Threads out of Threads, what would be left for an admin to do? If someone has root access how can they not have access to anything on the server? If you're tampering with the thing they're tracking, you're tampering with the tracking. If it's super locked-down hosting, Meta is ultimately the admin. I still don't see how that doesn't create serious problems. If the Alex Jones server decides to terrorize a bunch of families, how can they claim to not have an association? How would they not have pressure to defederate or cancel their hosting?
And certainly, if you're a user on a Meta or Meta-controlled server, they can track you. It still doesn't impact us. They can track everything they do because they control their servers; they can't track us because we control ours. Whether we federate or not also has no impact on their ability to do any of the Meta-Fediverse stuff. We can't run up and smack the ActivityPub out of their hands and be like, "No! Bad Meta!" ;)
On "influencer", I don't think we're going to convince each other. I've sometimes described professors as influencers -- Dan Gillmor and Scott Galloway leap to mind.
That's true! Meta's got such a deservedly bad reputation that very few want to see themselves as supporting Meta! And I agree that they're supporting federation with Meta despite their real misgivings about the company, and they're doing it because they see it as in the fediverse's best interests. But still, Meta's saying "we want to embrace the fediverse" and they're saying "this is a good thing" and telling people that concerns are overstated ... that's supporting Meta.
The legal responsibilities and pressures are different for a service provider or infrastructure provider than for a social network. They'll get pressure, and Threads (a social network) might defederate, but I wouldn't expect them to cancel their services or hosting. Organizations like EFF argue that instrastructure providers should stay out of policing content -- even for content like Kiwifarms. I should probably discuss this in more detail (or maybe do a separate post on this).
If you're on a server that federates with Meta and haven't blocked Meta, then most things you do can potentially be federated to Meta at which point it'll be tracked even if they aren't using any Meta services
That last statement is true. Still, in an alternatie universe where fediverse influencers said "we don't want you" and the vast majority of instances chose not to federate then it would be similar to the Gab situation "Meta wanted to come to the fediverse, we said no we don't want hate groups and genocide-enablers here, so they're doing their own thing" with the addition of "they're also calling it the fediverse but don't fall for it". But we're not in that universe.