this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
113 points (100.0% liked)
Fediverse
19 readers
2 users here now
This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
founded 2 years ago
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Hmm... sounds a bit too idealistic to be true, especially given how Facebook has acted in the past. I appreciate his hope for the future, but I think he severely underestimates the lengths to which FB will go to monetize and control users on their platforms.
Here's the scenario I don't like. Threads scrapes my OC on a federated server, then reposts it to their users with advertisements. Now, not only has FB taken my OC without getting my permission or even informing me, they're now garnering profit from it. If this were a print publication, this would plainly be copyright theft. And if I want to remove my content that's now hosted on Threads without my permission, there's no possible way for me to do so - I can delete the post and hope their federated server does the same, but given how hard they make it to delete a FB account, I'm not terribly optimistic.
It's no wonder #threads isn't launching in Europe - there's no way in hell this kind of thing is even remotely GDPR compliant.
Anyone willing to give Meta even the slightest bit of the benefit of the doubt is at best incredibly naive and at worst an outright idiot.
That's an interesting point. Can anyone take your original content and repost it to make money? As I understand it, anything you create is theoretically copyrighted at the moment you created. You're not required to file a copyright, at least not in the United States.
Sure they can. Stack overflow is one example. Any business operating on user driven content will be culpable. When you agree to the EULA and it tells you "what you post here belongs to us and we grant you a license to publish it yourself", you're signing over ownership of your content in exchange for a license to replicate it. That's how social media all works, all the EULAs work that way. FOSS is no different.
Dude a federated SO would be a dream. Imagine actually be able to post something without it being flagged as a duplicate of a 10 year old outdated question.
US copyright starts at the moment of creation, but the issue here is really enforcement. To get a copyright enforced, you have to bring a civil suit, which is considerably expensive in terms of both time and money. If you're going after a company as big as FB, your expense dramatically increases while your likelihood of getting a favorable judgment drops. And even then, you're probably only looking at getting the content taken down, not a monetary award, because in this scenario it would be near impossible to tell how much ad revenue your specific content generated for FB, or how much was lost to FB if you were getting ad traffic revenue from your content on another platform that's now going to FB.
While these potential problems exist with or without FB in the picture, as any instance owner could theoretically do the same thing, the difference in scale combined with how FB treats its users (cattle) is what's making my alarm bells go off. There's so much potential for abuse, with very little benefit to the existing users of the Fediverse.
I’m a technical sense, that is a feature not a bug of federated platforms
Look I don’t want to be combative here, and my sincere apologies if this response comes off that way but here goes
IMHO this is already the way activitypub works. Platforms that choose to federate, are able to pool their posts and the like. And yes instances can make money off of content posted on other instances. That’s not a bug it’s a feature.
On the other hand, meta sucks and I’m not sure if I’d really want to federate with them either. So like, idk lol, just spitballing
100%. The open and public nature of the fediverse is something everyone should be considering every single time they post on a federated platform. I don't want to federate with meta because ew , but it would be absurd to think that a public platform like this isn't gonna get scraped to hell anyways.