CEO of Meta, which recently joined the newly founded #SocialWebFoundation, suggests that there is "no causal connection" between social media and teen mental health.
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Evan Prodromoureplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@stefan @wendinoakland you and I agree, mostly. I'm part of a cooperative instance, and I want our collective to thrive.
I also think it's great that companies have to engage with the Fediverse now. We have a powerful model and a powerful movement and they can't ignore us any more.
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Evan Prodromoureplied to Evan Prodromou last edited by
@stefan @wendinoakland also, I really hope this is *not* your last word on the topic. You have a valuable perspective that I really appreciate, and skill with communicating it. In particular, I think your writings on how new implementers should engage with the Fediverse are important.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Meta by itself is not a significant enough threat, but the fact is that Mastodon is also in this foundation. These are some pretty big names with a large amount of funding and influence on the web. I am fearful that their influence will sway the conversations on what fedi needs overall. If we go to one of their missions https://socialwebfoundation.org/long-form-text-on-the-fediverse/ this is a pretty low priority in my opinion.
for this project, the Social Web Foundation will convene implementers and other stakeholders for a long-form text workshop to discuss data structures, interactions, and page formats.
What does that mean? Are they going to go around asking instance software developers about this? Are they going to ask themselves about this? Why are we focusing on this when we have other issues to worry about. I am worried about the implication that these underlying issues will be drowned out with features that are niceties at best, and unwanted at worst. I've seen how tumblr was so successful at building a facade over their decaying infrastructure. How https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-fined-102-million-for-storing-passwords-in-plain-text-110049679.html meta was storing things in plaintext pretending everything was okay. I don't want issues like forwarded reports to be swept under the rug and not given proper attention because the people up top are more focused on making it a content distribution platform for stakeholders.
RE: https://transfem.social/notes/9yq1pladclg00029 -
Evan Prodromoureplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@stefan @wendinoakland this is such a good point. I think that ad-supported instances exist, and that is kind of between the users there and the service providers, as long as the users have the choice to leave and take their data and connections.
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Evan Prodromoureplied to Evan Prodromou last edited by
@stefan @wendinoakland putting ads into the streams that go *between* instances is a much bigger deal.
My instinct is that it just shouldn't happen. However, I could imagine some people on the Fediverse might want the choice to follow an ad-supported account.
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Evan Prodromoureplied to Evan Prodromou last edited by
If there are going to be ads on some streams, I'd want them clearly marked at the protocol level, so they can easily be filtered by the recipient, and treated differently than other content (for example, not put into search results or the fediverse feed).
I'd probably also want a flag on the account to show that it is ad-supported, so followers are informed before they follow.
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Evan Prodromoureplied to Evan Prodromou last edited by
@stefan @wendinoakland but honestly, I think there are more important things to work on.
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@puppygirlhornypost2 @stefan @wendinoakland yes, we are going to talk to developers about it and come up with guidelines and maybe an ActivityPub extension for long text.
> Why are we focusing on this when we have other issues to worry about.
Ooh, good question. If you were setting priorities for a Fediverse-related non-profit, what 2-3 projects would you want it to work on in the first year?
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Moderation tooling honestly, we're missing a lot of things on this platform.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] To come back to this, defederations are not defined by the standard. There's no standard behavior for what should be done when an instance defederates from another. Mastodon severs all the following/follower relations during a defed, misskey (and sharkey forks) do not, allowing for defederations to be reversible. It'd be nice to sit down and come up with what a defederation looks like and how it should be implemented. Personally I don't think that all defeds should sever the connection (so perhaps defining "Soft defed" would be a useful thing to do in this case)
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to Evan Prodromou last edited by
@evan @wendinoakland Thank you, I appreciate you saying that. And that you're engaging with critics, as far as I can tell, in good faith.
Nothing is set in stone yet, and conversations like these are crucial, even if they're difficult, and can easily get emotional. I'm sure you understand that everyone speaking up does it out of love and care for something you've helped create.
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@evan @wendinoakland But for me, the bottom line is, welcoming Meta is a huge mistake given their impact on the world, and disrespectful to all those who want the fediverse to succeed.
When Threads were announced, I was on the fence about whether to federate with them. I understood the benefits. With memories of their deeds slowly fading, I was willing to "see and wait".
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by [email protected]
@evan @wendinoakland I highly recommend reading this article, if you haven't yet. After putting everything in context, I just could not justify being anywhere near that company.
Untangling Threads - Erin Kissane's small internet website
Meta's Threads service is joining the Fediverse, and I think there are some things about Meta—and about Fediverse mechanics—that it's important to include in that conversation.
(erinkissane.com)
And just to add, --
"great that companies have to engage with the Fediverse"
Absolutely, this probably feels like a huge validation of your work, and those of everyone involved.
I just want it done on our community's terms.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Some software allow for "allowlist" defederation too, which means that by default users are not allowed to federate unless they've explicitly been allowed. Only some software supports this (I believe akkoma? I'd have to look). It's my opinion that in order to began the building blocks of making an inclusive platform for everyone we need to look at how instances do defederation, suspension (deactivation and activation of actors) along with "silencing" which is the fedi equivalent of shadow bans. Things like markdown can come later (I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I hate the inconsistency between misskey's mfm and how mastodon, akkoma, pleroma has markdown) I'm just saying that out of the priorities you're gonna want to have the tools necessary to protect the network before some of the cosmetics.
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@puppygirlhornypost2 @stefan @wendinoakland that's not *entirely* the case -- we mention blocking incoming content in the non-normative appendix -- but I get your point.
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@evan @wendinoakland One more "last thing" to add. It would be nearly impossible to make a list of companies everyone here would agree on to steer the fediverse the right way.
But Meta is in a whole other league, see this pair of polls:
https://mastodon.social/@mcc/110663712542031369
https://mastodon.social/@mcc/110663714020414745(Note that this was conducted before Matt Mullenweg went off the rails, definitely would be interesting to re-run this.)
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Evan Prodromoureplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@stefan @wendinoakland I think the Fediverse is worth fighting for. I'm glad that so many other people do, too.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Honestly, how I would start off with this is by making a list of instance softwares. Looking at their strong suits. It’d be easy to go from there into a sort of “compatibility matrix" listing what other software has to offer. Consider some of the various moderation tooling in order to find "gaps". So, an example inconsistency I can point out here is how actor deactivations are handled. In misskey, I can deactivate an actor (it’s part of the suspension process) but I can reactivate it by unsuspension. The problem is that akkoma does not actually see that as a reactivation? It ignores it and the actor in question is still considered deactivated to the remote akkoma instance unless there’s manual intervention. Some of these things may not be possible to fully encompass within spec, but making a general guideline for software to follow is a step in the right direction. What kind of actions should someone starting off making instance software look into? There’s a shocking gap in coverage between what the specification defines and how instances are expected to behave.
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Evan Prodromoureplied to Stefan Bohacek last edited by
@stefan @wendinoakland yes, I have read this many times.
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Stefan Bohacekreplied to Evan Prodromou last edited by [email protected]
@evan @wendinoakland Right. And that means that you didn't feel that this behavior should exclude a company or an organization from participating in SWF?
To me, doing so would be on the same level as excluding a country from the Olympics, while allowing that country's athletes to compete as "neutrals".
I understand wanting everyone to have their say, but this looks like condoning their actions.