Technology
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Omg that thread was illuminating.
Key points are:
- xmpp was systematically killed by Google by "embrace, enhance, extinguish" where they federated, added bells and whistles, then de-federated after having essentially all users.
- meta systematically removes competition. It is naive to assume anything otherwise, and both meta and the fediverse is international, so governments have less ability to enforce (and enforcement via govs are mostly via the elite and interest groups)
- control over the fediverse can be lost to big tech via updates to protocol that can't be bug fixed fast enough, a fork being run on big instances via a compromised sysadmin selling out for cash or other benefits
- link sharing is about interesting content (not social inertia like messenger apps and social apps like Facebook) so it is not a perfect analogy.
- there is no negativity on the fediverse yet
- once users become the product (even partially), the fediverse will be driven to enshittification via the same pressures of big tech
Ugh. This crap makes me want to become a Luddite. I wonder if I can move into the Unabomber's old cabin in the woods. (I promise I won't make any bombs!)
friendly reminder that Luddites weren't opposed to technology, just wary of its misuse and how it was going to benefit the people higher up rather than the workers.
Reading this article I was constantly reminded of how Apple has designed iMessage in order to create an "us versus them" mentality. The amount of vitriol that some Apple users will direct at SMS texting is saddening.
More worrying than that, when directly asked about this by the "Mastodon Migration" user, Rochko's answer was not "I did not sign any NDA", no "I have not met with them", no "I have not heard any proposal from FB", no "I haven't signed any documents", and sure as fuck no "I'm not considering selling out and betraying you all", no, he said just "I am not aware of any secret deals with Meta".
That's a textbook application of the Suspiciously Specific Denial trope.
We have to assume he met with them, signed the NDA and is seriously considering whatever they're proposing, and there's rumors that they're gonna pay money to any participant servers, that would make them effectively vassals of Meta.
This, tbh
“Benefit of the doubt” shenanigans is corporate bullshit 101
Could mean nothing but it's a bad look to be having talks under NDA. We'll see how it turns out but I'm glad I never got invested in using Mastodon.
Companies like Meta don't do anything without an NDA. They probably reached out to Eugen and said "hey, we want to talk but first you need to sign this NDA." They could be asking for his grandmother's sugar cookie recipe.
Sure, there are plenty of reasons to loft an eyebrow at Eugen. Signing an NDA isn't one of them.
There's always the "I'm not signing any NDA, fuck you" answer. The fact that he went along with their NDA says something. He could have said no. Open source thrives on openness, and NDAs are the complete and polar opposite of openness.
Make them play on your own field. If they're the ones coming to you, it's because they see value in what you offer so you have leverage. The fact that they have money is irrelevant.
I mean, the real answer is that most open source developers aren't here for freedom at any cost. They're here like a startup... Waiting to be acquired for big bucks. Open source doesn't pay bills, and if a megacorp pulls up in a Brinks truck full of cash, I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of open source projects sell
This is why I trust GPL licenses over things like MIT. Fully permissive licenses are ripe for developers to sell out. GPL licenses ensure the code remains open and limits even what the original developer can do (so long as they merge a sufficient number of third party changes to make relicensing impossible). Permissive licenses allow developers to close off future updates should they desire. I haven't looked at the license of Mastodon's code to be fair, I'm just speaking in general.
Mastodon is AGPL 3, so no problem there, the problem lies not in the code but somewhere else. Even if Mastodon was closed source, we have other code basis like pleroma, etc. but if the main guys start marching into the wrong direction then this is the beginning of the end.
Came here to say this. Open source isn’t a noble crusade, and developers are not monks with vows of poverty.
Until we get unlimited gay space communism, people will always take the money and avoiding that truth and acting shocked when they do at least listen to the people with unlimited money will always lead to disappointment.
There’s no harm in going to the meeting to just listen to what they have to say. Why should he deprive himself of that knowledge? That would be dumb. Information is power. Just because he can’t run out and say “here’s all the things they talked about” doesn’t mean he can’t use what he heard to his and the FOSS community’s advantage. Maybe they disclose that they’re working on some $thing, and now he can start development of a feature that might somehow protect against that $thing.
I love FOSS and the community, but far too often their zealous nature cause them to make poor decisions. The world isn’t black and white. Stop treating it like it is. NDAs happen in business all the time for anything and everything. A lot of companies won’t even have a meeting with you/another company AT ALL unless an NDA is in place. It’s standard.
Not going to at least hear what they had to say was stupid.
That he signed the NDA at all means he's been bought, or is planning to be.
Everyone in open source knows those are tools to shut down prominent voices from being able to call out abuse and rally support. They just make sure to hit every needed talking point in the meeting, and now he legally can't condemn anything meta does because it is "covered by NDA"
It's just one of many shitty ways corporations try and exert coercive control over OSS
That's bullshit.
Especially without knowing the terms of the NDA. It could just be that they can't talk about Metas App Specifics, and/or that the NDA is limited in duration, so they may be able to talk about everything once the App is out.
Yes, it could be what you are talking about, a complete gag order, but "NDA" as a term is way to broad to say that for sure.
It just says that he currently values knowing more about Metas plans higher than being able to tell us about Metas plans.
I mean, depending on the timeline, one could check if there's any interesting PRs by him, that may infer something about Metas plans.
Oh bravo, you miserable dingus.
What does this mean for the fediverse? I presume because it's split up into a million loosely connected pieces, we should be largely insulated from corporate invasion and interference. You can't get us ALL, motherfuckers!
Meta joins, and makes it super easy to onramp from instabook
Meta slowly starts not following the protocol, forcing the protocol to adapt since they have 90%+ of the users
Eventually, Meta decides to abandon the protocol, and from the perspective of their users, we just went offline
Same playbook Google used (XMPP).
Us going offline as in we cant view meta and they cant view us? That seems like a fine outcome
The problem is human nature. Content, activity and funding for development will drop off very hard and it'll likely become like XMPP is today, aka bloated, a mess of standards and basically forgotten about.
Meta just want to suck all they can out of a promising technology and it isn't their first trip at the rodeo. See Occulus as well. People are right to want to keep Meta at arms length.
Don't spread FUD about XMPP, please 🙂. It works wonder, it's in fact everything I've ever wanted for personal/family chats and large IRC chatrooms alike. It also happens to be one of the easiest things I ever had to self-host thanks to how wonderful and batteries included ejabberd is. I have developed several clients and bots/integrations in several languages thanks to how versatile it is.
Fun fact, it has a PubSub component which is (IMO) technically superior to the fediverse more lightweight and more flexible.
If one thing, the great XMPP rediscovery is overdue if you ask me 😉
From his own comment, he's signing the NDA because it's the only way to find out what Meta want, and he figures knowing is better than not knowing. At no point has he indicated that he's going to work with them at all, and an NDA doesn't give them control or any guarantee of cooperation.
£5 says he comes back and says "I can't discuss details because of the NDA, but... no" and it goes no further.
Eugen isn't the Fediverse. At least for the Twitter Exodus most Masto instances used a fork that allowed for longer posts than Eugen liked. There's 0 reason to care about what he's doing, he can't control the network.
Well shit. I thought this might happen. I mean it‘s only a talk for now, but I suspect further that there will be some sort of money offer in an effort to start the "embrace" part of embrace, extend, extinguish and with the NDA we won‘t know if he took the money or not.
So for those who care about not embracing Meta, it‘s the canary in the coal mine. I‘ll switch to one of my safer Lemmy instances now I suppose before I get too attached to this one, see y‘all around under my new identity.
I'm genuinely confused why so many people are reacting so quickly to this news like it's the end of Mastodon. We can't conclude anything just by virtue of the fact that he signed an NDA. We don't know the terms of the NDA. It could simply be that he can't talk about Meta's specific plans.
More to the point, as the originator of the network and the one in charge of the source code, I feel like it's his responsibility to be informed of what companies like Meta are planning to do. If an NDA is the price of admission to that knowledge, and provided that the terms aren't egregious, he should go.
The thing people don't seem to understand is that you're always going to have to sign an NDA when talking to a company about unreleased products or features, regardless of which company it is. It's standard operating procedure. I've been avoiding Mastodon for the past week since there's so many bad takes that have started trending.
My guess is, that Meta will try to control the public image of the name Mastodon. Yeah the Software itself is OpenSource and protected under AGPL-3, but they still can buy Mastodon GmbH and use that to tie their name to Mastodon for the broad public.
This just got really, really ugly.
Great, just what we needed. Looks like he ignored the risks of facebook (or meta, i still prefer to call with the already stained name) killing the fediverse. Hopefully nothing comes out of this discussion.
I doubt he's ignoring anything. And I know nothing but I think it's a little unfair to bash him for this.
Meta does not need the Fediverse to create a ready-populated instance all of its own. It doesn't need to federate with anyone, it can probably kill Twitter and Reddit with a single stone (if it pours enough resource into moderating and siloing). Just stick a fediwidget in every logged in account page with some thoughtful seeding of content and it's done.
The danger of federating with Meta is much the same as not federating. It has such a massive userbase it will suck the lifeblood out of everywhere else whether or not it can see us.
The possible silver lining is that there are other very large corporates which can do the same (some of which have said they plan to). We could all end up with multiple logins on corporate instances simply because we have accounts with them for other reasons. And that means a lot of very large instances with name recognition, and easy access, making it much harder for any of them to stop federation and keep their users to themselves.
Being federated with one or more behemoths might well be hell. Some instances won't do it. Moderation standards will be key for those that do. But multiple federated behemoths can hold each other hostage because their users can all jump ship to the competition so easily.
This is much, much more complicated than just boycott or not. They cannot be trusted one tiny fraction of an inch but this is coming whether we like it or not. We need to work out how to protect ourselves and I'm starting to think that encouraging every site with a user login to make the fediverse a widget on their account pages might be the very best way to do it.
I think it’s a little unfair to bash him for this.
I don't. He would not have agreed to Facebook's NDA unless he was planning to sell the Fediverse out.
So what if he doesn't talk to them? The protocols and code are available for anyone, and instances are open for federation. Facebook could, without any sort of consultation, deploy their own instance of Mastodon with their own fork of the code and keep all their changes to themself. If they're going to do it anyways, it'd be better to work with them on it.
The know large instances might defederate from them, that's why the NDAs.
Eventually, Meta will do to the fediverse what Google did to XMPP. I hope I'm proven wrong.
It's not about getting the code. They have the code, have for years, and hate it because it forces an open system.
This is about forcing people in "positions of power and authority" over mastodon/lemmy/kbin servers to conform to facebook's wishes so that they can destroy a competing platform.
Google XMPP or Microsoft Word Document style.
It's been done before, the only reason for people to cave now is they're getting paid.
Mastodon is AGPLv3. That means if you allow someone to communicate with a server, you must offer them the modified source code. Not just when you distribute the modified code like in the GPLv3. So even if they forked Mastodon their code modifications would need to be made available.
However iirc ActivityPub itself is under a more permissive scheme (I think it's predecessor was using the MIT license?) so Meta could use the protocol itself.
Eugen is proof that the fediverse requires distributed (not just decentralized) ownership.
Meta could be doing the same thing Truth Social did: set up a giant Mastodon instance and leave it at that.
They don't need an NDA for that, and he certainly knows better than to sign one.
This is fishy to the extreme
Aral Balkan has been posting about surveillance capitalism/centralised networks and corpotate landgrabs for years and said this the other day
I personally think it's a bad idea, but I will try to judge the action instead of the person given how dedicated he likely is to the fediverse in general
🤦♂️
Again, another thread where two billion people joining our network and meeting us where we are ... is somehow bad. If embrace extend extinguish is really the worry, then we have a bad protocol that needs extension to be usable by those 2B people, and we should fix that.
Ah yes of course, a few people living off donations are supposed to outperform a multi billion dollar corporation in amount of features and polish within features.
The protocol doesn't matter. Look at lemmy vs kbin. Kbin has "extended" features like microblogs & different UI. There's plenty of people that like those features and thus are using kbin over Lemmy.
Just imagine kbin were much more attractive than Lemmy. More people would start signing up there. More people start "microblogging". Maybe there'll be other features introduced, and Lemmy can't keep up with the nice things being added.
One day kbin decides not to federate with Lemmy at all anymore. Most people are on kbin at this point, Lemmy doesn't have the same quality/amount of features. Now the average user has a choice: do they care about kbin being asses and leave kbin? No, of course not, not if the features really are nicer.
Now replace kbin with Facebook. Or Google, that's exactly what they did with XMPP.
The only thing that is able to save from the triple E attack is the users actually caring enough about open platforms and deciding to not use the non-open ones. Or actually having more resources than Facebook, good luck with that.