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Esther is looking for a server

@RobertoArchimboldi @allenstenhaus first, that’s not what’s happening. Facebook is building a new platform that uses ActivityPub and is supposed to be “Twitter-like”, we’re not talking about the thing that is facebook.com.

The problem is the amount of capital and power they bring. They can easily become the biggest participant in the network with some marketing effor and suddenly everyone who doesn’t want to lose connection to all those people on there is under a lot of presssure to not ever defederate them. This gives them a tremendous amount of power to shape the fediverse in a way they want, which is likely not what’s good for the network.

And with FB’s known lack of moderation, this introduces huge amounts of s-am, hate, and harassment, making the entire network less usable and less safe for marginalized people.

21 Jun 2023 at 8:05 | Open on strangeobject.space
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Roberto von Archimboldi

@esther @allenstenhaus I see, thank you. So the objection is that they become mastodon.social but at a massive scale and this will stop the fediverse being weird and friendly.

The issue is not that it kills the dream of a ubiquitous, federated commons. That's helpful, thank you

21 Jun 2023 at 8:48 | Open on kolektiva.social
Esther is looking for a server
Roberto von Archimboldi

@esther @allenstenhaus on the second, I don't see how that dream is realised with or without Facebook, which was part of my confusion with the objection to Facebook. I kept seeing stuff about XMPP and thinking, but nothing killed XMPP. It was and is just niche to use jabber. People stopped using Google messages when smart phones came along, because WhatsApp was much more convenient on a phone.

Do you think, by the way, that a ubiquitous, federated commons is compatible with the fediverse being friendly and weird? It seems to me that it's not.

Maybe I have also mischaracterised what I take to be the powerful objection. It is so much that Facebook will stop things being friendly and weird, it is that they will make the fediverse commercial. Afterall the super weird have always carved out a little corner of cyberspace, be that IRC rooms or livejournal/dreamwidth. It's more that Facebook will be like Google wrt Android. We have ubiquitous adoption of a largely open OS for phones and no real control over them, plus data mining and surveillance. Is that more the objection?

@esther @allenstenhaus on the second, I don't see how that dream is realised with or without Facebook, which was part of my confusion with the objection to Facebook. I kept seeing stuff about XMPP and thinking, but nothing killed XMPP. It was and is just niche to use jabber. People stopped using Google messages when smart phones came along, because WhatsApp was much more convenient on a phone.

21 Jun 2023 at 9:54 | Open on kolektiva.social
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