If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature.
These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore. If you let them gain that much ground, it's too late to isolate them without doing even more harm to your own network.
Also Meta is not a startup with unknown reputation. Meta plays dirty, that's a given.
It's the first and only lemmy app working on my old 2015 android phone.
Great to have backwards compatible options. I also like it :)
They are, I get results. My worry is they are not aggregated/unified. Some lemmy instances don't have 'lemmy' in their name, and I'm not sure if they would show up in a search "X + lemmy".
Ok, but you can only do that if they already joined the fediverse. I replied to "the powers that be must never be allowed to join the fediverse". It's also questionable if everyone will block them.
The article is not about single persons who might be trolls or whatever to qualify as a “bad guy”. But about megacorporations like Meta.
Yes, sorry for being unclear. I meant the bad 'guy' Meta. Maybe continuing with 'entity' would have been better:
we can be sure some entities will join
ensure only good entities enter
The best way to deal with them is-in my opinion-to not cooperate and defederate them as soon as they start to enter.
I tend to agree. Still quite new to the topic.
I'm worried this will not be enough in the long run.
Imagine Meta provides more original content, a higher user base, more engagement, more activity. That alone would make it interesting for many other users, further increasing their relative attractivity.
Additionally, they could invest in the codebase, and implement some of the community's dream features, some nice mod tools, search engine discoverability and whatnot. On a fork which lives on their instances, of course. Services which work if you federate with them.
They have the resources to rase the stakes higher and higher. The incentives are objective, real, advantages for users, communitites, mods and admins. Isn't it only a question of time / stake height until significant parts of the fediverse choose to cooperate for various reasons?
We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.
How could that be done? Anyone with the resources can host an instance, and there are plenty of instances with a low entry bar.
If the fediverse grows enough, we can be sure some entities will join not because they share our values, but because they see our value.
I don't see how we could prevent that or ensure only good guys enter. The fediverse is open by design.
the powers that be must never be allowed to join the fediverse
How are they not allowed? How is it checked, how prevented?
As I see it, they can freely use the code, freely set up instances, freely create user accounts on their own or other instances, with 'independent' users, employees or bots.
The only thing stopping them is the current fediverse's insignificance. We're just not tasty enough, yet. But if we become, how could we disallow them from joining?
Let them join…and be ignored.
I see the threat in the sheer developing power of these giants, making all the shiny tools people were wanting, making their service too attractive to be ignored.
I disagree on moderation, I don’t think any #Fediverse admin would trust #Meta enough to use their software for moderation.
I found the example interesting in principle. We can think of varieties besides moderation. What other features are highly requested and sought after?
What about an easy way to find, join, and engage with even niche communities? Comm lookup and joining is wonky, especially when coming from small instances. Another related feature is user-side grouping of similar comms into one multi-community. Or being able to easily move between instances, relocate your account. Better indexing for web searches.
The list of possible features, ranging from QoL to Enablers, is endless. Big companies with coding experience can easily dominate the scene, and make it hard to not join them or use their service. Their mere presence could spell dependence.
Like I heard we're using lemmy 0.18 now. Would you voluntarily still use an older version, like 0.9, when you can just as well use 0.18?
The first step is a UX disaster: https://join-lemmy.org/
Only 2 clicks / pages down the road you can start registering an account, and you don't see what the experience might be before that. Instead, you're being presented tech talk about servers.
You might argue it's not actually lemmy but just the landing page. I argue, it's so good at being a scarecrow, most people visiting lemmy haven't seen anything else except for that page.
The inner lemmy is pretty fine, I agree. Some parts are still confusing. For example, most people will not figure out they can search for content from within a specific community by carefully configuring the drop downs in the general search form. Most will look for the search directly attached to the community.