Federation with #Meta actually hurts Meta.

It is an existential threat to the very core of Meta’s social media monopoly. Surprisingly, if the goal is to fight against Meta’s hegemony, the most effective strategy may be to federate with them.

“But Chris,” some of you might state, “Even you agree that it might be better to defederate Meta – and you’ve even set up notmeta.social for expressly this purpose.”

Yes, because it’s not everyone’s objective to fight Meta, and there should be spaces where fighting Meta isn’t top of mind. Not everyone wants to be part and parcel of a fight, and that’s okay.

Let’s first acknowledge the technology through which federation happens. #ActivityPub is an open standard protocol that enables the decentralized social networking that powers the Fediverse. It allows different social media platforms (#Mastodon, #Calckey, #Kbin, etc.) to interoperate, meaning that users on one platform can communicate with users on another platform. Federation is the process by which these platforms connect and share content, forming a decentralized network.

The most important thing to understand about ActivityPub is that, more than a technology to merely send and receive messages, it’s also a common ruleset – a gentleman’s agreement that everyone will play nice when sending and receiving messages.

Now when Meta opts to use ActivityPub, they’re abiding by the agreement: to play by the same rules as everybody else. Should they renege on this agreement, they are no longer using ActivityPub. They’re using something else.

But let’s assume for a moment that Meta is abiding to use ActivityPub, and they indeed will play by the same rules. Knowing Meta, this is a tall order – but still, let’s assume.

ActivityPub means that whatever of Meta’s userbase that’s exposed to federation will diversify into other platforms. This is because, through ActivityPub, smaller platforms can connect with each other and offer a combined user base that competes with Meta’s centralized network. This diversification reduces the dependence of users on a single platform, giving them more choices and potentially drawing them away from Meta.

This creates an erosion of Meta’s network effects. Meta’s entire monopoly is based on ownership of their platforms’ network effects, where the value of the platform increases as more users join. Suddenly, by federating, Meta no longer own the network effect. This is because federation challenges this by breaking down barriers between platforms, allowing users to interact regardless of the platform they are on. This reduces the exclusivity and advantage Meta holds, as the network effects become distributed across multiple interconnected platforms.

Federation also gives Meta’s users power that they never previously had. Federation promotes decentralization by giving users greater control over their data and interactions. With ActivityPub, users have the freedom to choose which platform they prefer without sacrificing connectivity. This user empowerment threatens Meta’s control over user data and engagement, potentially leading to a loss of influence and advertising revenue.

ActivityPub poses a tangible threat to Meta’s monopoly on social media. By choosing to federate, Meta might be opening Pandora’s box. The moment Meta’s users receive a message from a server not owned by Meta is the moment they’re exposed to something else beyond Meta’s control. Inevitably, this will create more diversity of ActivityPub-enabled platforms – not less. This will erode Meta’s network effects. For people who use Meta, the power of decentralization – giving them more freedom – will prove revelatory.

Of course, this is a fight. And just because Meta federates doesn’t mean it’s game over. In the next post, I will explore what Meta is hoping to gain by joining the #Fediverse.

Why #FediPact is important (1/3)

The #fediverse should all agree to never federate with #Facebook

#FediPact is an agreement between all current Mastodon instances to never federate with #Facebook, in response to the #Meta corporation's recent announcement that they will be making Facebook compatible with the #ActivityPub standard, and thus allow Mastodon and other ActivityPub services to federate with Facebook.

Most of the arguments I hear in favor of federating with Facebook come down to trying to expand the reach of the fediverse and Mastodon in particular. If people on Facebook can interact with Mastodon, this can only grow the fediverse and make it more relevant. This is a failure to recognize the real threat of Meta.

This pro-Facebook sentiment is usually accompanied by accusations of #FediPact supporters being irrationally dogmatic, overly paranoid about advertising and other for-profit ventures, overly concerned with privacy, and/or ignorant of how technology works. The attitude here is "Don't be so paranoid, just try it and you will see the benefits." This is a straw-man argument against #FediPact.

(1/3 continued)

#Mastodon #Kbin #Lemmy #Pixelfed #PeerTube #Fediverse #Facebook #Meta #FediPact

I don’t think #Meta’s goal is to kill the #Fediverse.

Their goal is to kill #Twitter.

And the way they want to do this is by saying, “Hey, we’re no predatory monopoly—we’re just supporting open standards!”

You see, if they don’t support something like #ActivityPub, and merely use their own proprietary network effect, then they are doing something outright monopolistic. Then regulators will start demanding higher and higher fines. And Meta’s already paid lots of fines, they’d probably prefer to not pay more.

But the Fediverse means Meta is just following web standards—one that’s validated by the W3C, no less. Nothing to see here. Regulators, we’re just being good citizens of the web.

Of course, Twitter can offset this problem by also adopting ActivityPub. But I don’t think they’ll do that. Apparently, neither does Meta.

Eh I'll bite:

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Lemmy, is in fact, a part of the Fediverse, or as I've recently taken to calling it, the Threadiverse. Lemmy is not a protocol unto itself, but rather another free software server of a fully interconnected Fediverse, made useful by the ActivityPub protocol as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium.

Many computer users interact with a version of ActivityPub every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of ActivityPub which is widely used today is often called Mastodon, or Lemmy, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the ActivityPub system, developed by several independent projects such as Mastodon, Lemmy or Kbin.

There really is a Lemmy, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the Fediverse they use. Lemmy is the implementation: the program in the server that allocates the messages to the other servers that run in the Fediverse. The implementation is an essential part of the network, but isolated by itself; it can only interact in the context of a complete federated network. Lemmy is normally used in combination with either instances of itself, or of similar projects of the Threadiverse such as Kbin: the whole network is basically ActivityPub with Lemmy as a node. All the so-called Lemmy servers are really nodes of the Fediverse!

#Lemmy #Kbin #ActivityPub #Threadiverse #Mastodon #Fediverse

Hello fellow citizens of the free and open web, it is me, Ben Brown. You may remember me from that social network from back when social networks were cool, or maybe from that one open source project that blew up.

Hi, it is great to see you again.

First off, corporate owned social media always sucked, we always knew it. It is past time for us to have better options.I am so glad for the #Fediverse and #ActivityPub and Mastodon and other projects for breathing new life into the indie web, where it is possible for us to own what we post and use whatever tools we want. I couldn’t resist building something!

My new project is called SHUTTLECRAFT. It social media server … FOR ONE.

What does that mean?

It is very small and lightweight open source app that runs nicely on services like Glitch, but it has most of what you need to host your own personal social media account.

It’s got a microblogging tool, to make posts. You can customize the design with HTML and CSS. You can follow people on Mastodon or other services and interact with posts and send messages. People can follow you on Mastodon, or with RSS. You run it on your own server so you own and operate the data and the code and the whole service. And you can hack the code and make it weirder so that we can all be part of a better, more diverse and more interesting web.

No billionaires or mega-corps required!

I made a 3 minute video showing how it works:
https://www.loom.com/share/a6441bcebdc64f54b5010c95eae1e180

Though this a personal project and only a few weeks old, with tons of stuff still unfinished and yet to build... you can get the code right now and run your own right now! The official site also has a 3 minute walk through of setting up an instance on Glitch. It is pretty easy!

https://shuttlecraft.net/

Or go straight to for the code:

https://github.com/benbrown/shuttlecraft

Thanks to everyone who has already tested this or sent feedback or contributed code. Y'all rule.

Own your posts!! Make it hard for them to monetize you!