 Facebook/Meta starts talking about the "Extend" phase of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish as predicted: "โYou could imagine an extension to the protocol eventually โ of saying like, โI want to support micropayments,โ or โฆ like, โhey, feel free to show me ads, if that supports you.โ Kind of like a way for you to self-label or self-opt-in. That would be great,โ 56 comments
@serapath Have a strong standard that doesn't allow for such extensions. I've been saying that since many years.  @jwildeboer Hope it stays independent enough and will be able to protect against these kinds of attacks ๐  @serapath @jwildeboer FEP process doesn't prevent people from extending the protocol, in fact it has the opposite goal. But it protects Fediverse by decentralizing standards development. It doesn't dictate what is a standard and what is not, instead developers decide for themselves which FEPs they want to implement, and eventually some FEPs may become de-facto standards @silverpill @jwildeboer i am mich in favor of everything becoming a de-facto standard. if works and we dont need anything else.  @jwildeboer @serapath I don't think this is possible with ActivityPub. It might work with a much more centralized design, and with some very heavy cryptographic intervention. But even then, I'm not sure. All protocols are extensible. Good protocols include a structured mechanism for extensibility; bad ones don't. @jwildeboer @serapath and are you specifically saying that you'd want to prevent commercial activity on the fediverse at the protocol level? That's something that's much more enforceable at the social layer, with server policies. From reading over your thread, I feel like there may be some values that you think are implicit in the fediverse, and that you want to enforce at the protocol level. It may be worthwhile to a) enumerate what those values are (non-commercial, FLOSS?, ...) and consider other structures for advocacy or enforcement. @jwildeboer @serapath The main parallel I can think of here is amateur radio. In the US, and I think in many countries, ham radio bands are restricted to non-commercial use. Part of the licensing procedure is learning what kind of transmissions are considered non-commercial. And participants enforce the requirements with each other. It would be hard to enforce these rules at the protocol or equipment level, though.  @jwildeboer  In my experience it's not only @Gargron . Otherwise more of the rest of Fedi would at least have defederated (and possibly enabled authorized fetch). @project1enigma Yeah it's not only Gargron. But since such a sizeable portion of the Fedi (by user numbers) is Mastodon, and Mastodon is run overwhelmingly by Gargron's will, it is very much to do with Gargron. @Ooze @Felipe_B @project1enigma Not sure if a message was lost here, but while you're right that he doesn't influence your moderation policy or the settings you choose, he chooses what settings are available to you within the Mastodon software. For months he has been undermining opposition to Meta by making statements about Mastodon's technical capabilities that are not supported by its actual technical capabilities. People believe him, because he's Gargron. He shapes a lot of things. @Ooze @Felipe_B (And this will in turn enable more divide and conquer. Also part of the usual strategy to break a movement that is perceived as a possible threat by big organisations) "It's not our evil plan, you people are already doing it" is the typical argument for Divide and Conquer. Unsurprisingly they bring that argument too: "For instance, fediverse advocate and co-editor of ActivityPub Evan Prodromou @evan created a paid Mastodon account (@evanplus) that users could subscribe to for $5 per month to gain access. If heโs on board with paid content, surely others would follow." (the irony being of course that Evan did this with standard ActivityPub, no changes needed) I have raised the alarm bell already several years ago. Explained how the (at that time mostly dormant) Working Group at the W3C that is responsible for #ActivityPub must be reinvigorated (that happened) and must became a loud defender of the #fediverse (that didn't happen) or else we risk losing our ecosystem to fragmentation and infighting. And that infighting is already visible in the comments. Divide and conquer always works and costs close to nothing. Unfortunately.  @jwildeboer that's why it's being done. Also there's neither penalty nor deterrence to doing so... @jwildeboer Ads and advertising are (unfortunately) too much of a wedge. I see it with creative folks who argue that they need to eat. And they're not wrong but it's incredibly nuanced in social spaces. There's a big risk of losing a sense of any space where you just connect with other people when everything is just reaching into your wallet. Mutual aid and people sharing their work (which deserves compensation) is different but all money looks the same to people seeking to maximize profit. @clarablackink @jwildeboer #fedipact does not prevent people from maintaining a presence on fb/threads, which still dwarfs the entire fediverse in size. that fact is simultaneously why defederation is imperative, and why it should be no real loss @bug @jwildeboer You're right and I think there are plenty of people who grasp this. It's just that there's a marketing mindset that sees any empty wall as ad space and it requires a certain amount of community awareness and vigilance to say, "this isn't ad space", especially when someone can begin to throw large enough quantities of cash at it. I think sometimes well meaning people get caught up in that marketing mindset without grasping what gets lost. @bug @jwildeboer To say nothing of bad faith actors like Facebook. I was on Instagram before they acquired it, I hate that they're doing this again over here. @clarablackink @jwildeboer all it takes is recognizing that the wall is not actually empty, it's already inhabited by cultures (insert a fungus or moss analogy here) @jwildeboer why do you think the SocialCG should be a defender of the fediverse? What does defending the fediverse mean to you? @jwildeboer Hi, genuine question because I don't want to loudly splain people. Why are you specifically mentioning EEE and not privatization? @jwildeboer that's why the #FediPact is important and I'd stress that sooner or later it'll be necessary to defederate not just #NSAbook / #StadiBook but instances that federate with them!  @jwildeboer The main problem isn't meta. The problem is big "free" as in "free beer" Fedi instances cosplaying as platform capitalists. At this point, I don't really care anymore if they're doing it because they're stupidly-naive af, for their own little fascist agenda and/or to sell out eventually. This shitshow has to end for fedi to survive.  @jwildeboer If ads are opt-in parts of the protocol, and not shown and not spread around when I'm not in Meta, that's perfect. @forthy42 What will happen in that case is that they will claim they can, unfortunately, not allow your instance to federate with them as your instance does not meet the minimal requirements wrt support for whatever extension they deem necessary. And as they talk a lot about moderation, they could even g0 as far to say that only instances that pay for their (Metas) moderation work are allowed to federate. Which can be for free if you "just" support their tracking, ad and other extensions. @jwildeboer I have no problems NOT to federate with scumbags, anyhow. BTW: thinking about that, it has become increasingly difficult to operate your own E-Mail server, and federating with scumbags (GMail, Outlook) is one of the bigger problem. They want to be the only game in town.  @jwildeboer LOL, as if anyone would run a Fediverse instance with those "features" enabled. The idea of the Extend phase is that the extensions are useful and people want to use them! @jwildeboer "Feel free to show me ads"... No, don't feel free to show me ads. i know how social media evolves. "Show ads on 'blah'", and then 'blah' finds a way to inject into our streams across all instances... and then we're back to using pi-holes. Not that I stopped using my pi-hole. @jwildeboer Paiderated user experience in the paidiverse. They dream of zombies who will ask to see ads, advertisersโ sweet nirvana.  @jwildeboer Tech bros always trying to speed run the product decay cycle these days... @jwildeboer extensions have always been a part of the ActivityPub design. https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/#extensibility Extensions in ActivityPub are optional.   @evan@cosocial.ca @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net stop pretending to not know what eee is  @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net yep. No surprises there.
Except to those that will still be crying out "no that's not what they mean!" as the enshittification clearly sets in all about them. Also, fuck techcrunch for that dark pattern bullshit of putting an article snippet with Read More at the end, so you load that new article thinking you're showing more of the same article.
@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net @jwildeboer So they want to turn Fedi into yet another content mill they can put a toll booth on, wrapped in a bunch of corporate soft-speak to elicit soft and fuzzy feelings while speedrunning the tragedy of the commons again Got it @jwildeboer the only reason this fediverse stuff is the future of social media is because it doesn't include the way of doing social media that meta and twitter are. The second they try coming in here, we shut it all down and move it over and open it all back up without them @jwildeboer and the funny thing is that thereโs almost no chance any of the embracinginstances will profit from the association in the end  @jwildeboer I tried to understand, bit all I read is, how meta might be giving all those nice little tools and "experiences" to the fediverse, so we can eventually start making money. Because that's what life is all about. @maikek@digitalcourage.social @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net they gain another protocol they have pretty much full control over  @jwildeboer what if as a community we take control of this narrative and out innovate the corporateโs in order to keep this open to all and prevent centralised control? We find a way to incentivise content creators thatโs built in and non intrusive. Could we put together an open forum on this, Iโm happy to help with servers and tech support to enable this discussion. @Ric I sketched a possible solution using what already exists at https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/112399126046747371 I think that a very simple proof of concept can be spun up in a few hours, using an existing Patreon account and OAuth. Extending from there to a more decentralised way of handling the flow of money will be far more complex. But the basics are already available, IMHO.  @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net I mean tbf, neither of those extensions would be very useful for the general population of the fediverse, and threads is at a poit right now where they don't even support most of the functionality of general fediverse... @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net oh yeah, they'll extend the protocol, but they won't implement it properly |
Gregory's Server
@jwildeboer
yes and it will happen.
the big tech standard bodies are theirs anyway and it is what fediverse embraces.
if an instqnce doesnt, it left the generally accepted consensus mechanism i suppose.
whata your take on defending against this?