Yeah, that should be possible, back it up with the GDPR as well.

One idea I have is that if you look at posts from their instances, they could embed images or other content that tracks you the same way the Facebook Pixel does.

Stupid question, couldn’t instances just say they don’t allow scraping specifically from Facebook in their ToS and then report them for GDPR violations if they do?

As in say that have the ToS says that “we’ll give your data to other instances because that’s how the Fediverse works, we won’t give your data to Facebook” and also “Facebook is not allowed to federate, and is not allowed to pull data”.

Then just say that your data subjects don’t consent to any data pulling by Facebook, and Facebook scraping your system even through ActivityPub is a violation of GDPR.

I mean that Lemmy and the Fediverse is not big enough for Russian troll farms and US ad agencies to start up massive numbers of instances and drown us in bullshit, like with email. If it goes that way, blocklists will sadly not be enough.

German-speaking countries in Europe. Deutschland (Germany), Austria and of course the Confœderatio Helvetica (Switzerland).

I’m from another nation-oriented instance that has an outsized presence, right next to Duitsland.

My guess is:

• Germany is a big, populated country
• People from DACH also gravitate towards feddit.de
• The culture kinda gives itself to the project
• The NL and the EU are the main funders of Lemmy
• The government itself is embracing the Fediverse

Yeah, but then the blocklists themselves become a centralized feature. I’m not saying “don’t block the fascists”, just that it’s going to be hard to maintain a blocklist.

I can totally see the Fediverse going the way of email, as in you need a reasonably large amount of capital to maintain a well-respected, not defederated-from server.

Not really, and it’s not that big of an issue in general. Most of Europe has laws against the non-educational/historical display of authoritarian symbols for example.

Also on point to the topic, the municipality of Amsterdam runs its own Mastodon instance which is read-only.

aren’t we also getting access to the value created on their platforms too

I guess we are, just as we had access to Reddit’s value. That’s the fear I guess, this is just part of the business cycle.

First, they are going to provide value, be real nice until they are latched on, embrace the platform. Then they are going to start providing value to the instance owners by developing mod tools, better ways to more easily connect instances, maybe even some AI powered spam filter to block malicious instances, extending the.

Finally we’ll realize they own the thing as they extinguish competitors by removing compatibility to “unverified” stuff in the name of security and we realized Meta has succeeded in extinguishing the free Fediverse.

It might not be like that, but it has been so many times.

Okay, but are those people really joining the Fediverse, or do they just continue to be Facebook/Instagram/Whatever users while having access to the value the Fediverse creates?

The counterargument seems to be that if the Fediverse’s learning curve is too high, then it might wither and die. It’s growing now, but good question about the future.

So here’s an idea, why doesn’t someone get in front of Meta on this one, and implement the SSO service they use (it has a public API for all the “log in w/ Facebook” stuff) into a few Lemmy or Kbin instances? The purported value of it being easier to join for Meta users is still there then, right?

I think the story he’s telling is mostly coherent.

The whole point is that Facebook’s business model is fundamentally incompatible with the current vision for the Fediverse, it’s like Steam announcing they will be seeding torrents from now on. They have an ulterior motive, and a track record including enabling genocide for example, so they are not to be trusted, they are doing it so that they can take value away from the Fediverse, not to add to it.

I think the problem about the discussion is that there is a false dichotomy being pushed that if you don’t like Facebook, you are “anti-corporate”, thus you are a socialist, thus you are a Stalin-sucking tankie.

I’m not “anti-corporate”. Corporations are a great tool when used correctly. The problem is that Wall Street owns Big Tech, and it’s a great tool in their hands. Ask yourself the question why Wall Street might be interested in getting an “in” to the Fediverse.

And to be honest, it’s not hard to be specifically anti-Facebook when they have enabled multiple genocides and have served as weapons in an information war against most of the democratic world.

I mean he’s not wrong.

The Fediverse is made by altruistic people, or at least people whose primary motivation is not to make as much money as possible on their creations. Facebook is not that, and is incapable of not being that, so a lot of caution is warranted.