@rich jensen That's an interesting question. Part of my thinking in what I wrote above was that there's an immediate issue with Meta I'd like to see us respond to, but I also think we should also take a breath and come up with a more thorough general position, and it makes sense to articulate why, exactly, Meta is of particular concern. I'd say it's for reasons that are not unique to Meta; I described it as an oligopoly, and there are several other oligopolies that could potentially threaten the Fediverse in similar ways. Google, Microsoft, and Apple have each made power plays in social media, and there are doubtless smaller corporations that could do significant harm. I wouldn't be particularly happy if an oil company, for instance, made a big show of establishing a presence on the Fediverse, but I also wouldn't see it as an extraordinary threat, because oil companies aren't organized around predating on Internet communications.

@Andrew Shead "I will not sacrifice the Fediverse. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!"

@Fenn Martyn: I agree with you, but I think we need strategy instead of rapid response. Overall, this discussion is a good start.

@Andrew Shead Oh, apologies. I wasn't advocating for a rapid response; you just mentioned the Borg so I thought I'd quote Picard 😅

Two principles that I see in the sense check are:

Opposition to entities that condone the spread of anti-democratic ideologies

Opposition to the spread of dangerous misinformation (dangerous needs to be defined)

@Scott McGerik

I like it, and we can keep forward on that path on a very positive way.

We will federate with anyone who:

• supports diversity and respectful dialog,

• doesn't allow any type of discrimination based on any personal characteristics (origin, sexual preferences, skin tone, etc.).

• guards and takes care about the personal and private information of the people in it's instance.

• etc.

  All these values are written and should be signed by the person/s responsible for the instance/s (somehow identified, at least as an account responsible in the instance). Those signatures creates a "white list" of instances that federate that can be automatically added to all those who already signed it before.

(sorry the lousy writing, English is not my native language and I'm extremely tired, but didn't wanted to leave this for the last moment).

@Nithin Coca ncoca As I recall from switching instances to social.coop, the transfer required configuration on both ends. Meta could simply refuse to support that, or support it initially and later stop supporting it. Part of my concern is my memory of how Facebook, and Google, treated XMPP, in the classic example of "embrace, extend, extinguish". Both, initially, used XMPP as the basis for their chat clients, and supported federation with other XMPP servers. (Some computer games did this as well.) This meant that you could use your preferred client on your preferred server, and still communicate with Facebook and Google members. Later, Facebook and Google added unique features to their proprietary chat services, making federation more complicated and less reliable. Later, they fully de-federated. This was a major blow to XMPP, which had been rapidly growing in usage.

@Brian Vaughan This is a valuable historical example of the hazard. Thanks for articulating it. You are helping to persuade me toward taking FAANG / MAANA's persistent strategic attacks on the digital commons into account. I would probably support formation of a 'defederate-first' negotiating coalition with a specific set of demands FAANG-like entities would have to meet.

On another tangent, given the history of demonstrable damage. I wonder if there is any reparations provision that might be offered as a demand?

@Arnold Schrijver I've moved to this position more or less and will change my vote.

@Arnold Schrijver I can see the reason for preemptively blocking if blocking later could be “too late”.

But what is lost with a “wait and see” approach? What opportunity to combat predatory data tactics, and all the other things Meta is known for, so we lose by waiting - or at least waiting until we know their intentions.

@Bjorn Toft Madsen Hi Bjorn, you ask what is lost by a "wait and see" approach? I have been reading through the comments and from where I stand I see the existential risk of an "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy employed by big tech to kill open protocols a reason to not "wait and see". See this loomio comment for an example of how the strategy has been used.

I'd say giving Meta any time to use the benefits of a connection to the established fediverse to advertise their server to their facebook, instagram, and whatsapp users who do not have fediverse accounts currently, would hurt our chances (albeit only slightly if we only waited weeks) at keeping Meta from ending the openness of the fediverse. If we waited months or years, that could be enough time for Meta to establish itself,become the center of the fediverse (so to speak), defederate, and make us all decided if we want to join their walled garden.

Given that it was over a month ago since you commented, and a lot has happened that I'm slowly catching up on, can you say if what your position on this topic is currently?

@Matt S - matts I still broadly feel the same - although I could accept limiting our federation with Threads.

That said, Threads hasn’t even started supporting AvtivityPub and I’m doubtful they ever will. I still feel it’s too early to make decisions. I’m not arguing that we wait years either, just that the particular details over how Threads will federate with others will have a large bearing over whether we should defederate. I think waiting till at least Meta’s intentions for federation is clear would be a much wiser action. We are talking about imagined ghosts right now.

@Bjorn Toft Madsen Thanks for sharing!

@Dmitri Z.The current pact language is Meta specific. I agree it is not ideal but I think Meta's history justifies joining an emergency, pre-emptive response. As others have suggested, I believe social.coop should support the formation of a community of concern while drafting more general policy positions and demands.

@Rich Jensen Understood. Still, from me, a big -1 on a preemptive kneejerk defederating Meta, without a larger discussion. As members of the ActivityPub and Fediverse community, we worked really hard to be taken seriously, and specifically to provide an open protocol that all social media platforms should use. We should have specific criteria for defederating (even if they're specific to Meta), and only do that when they break those criteria (in which case, I'll be very enthusiastically pitching in on banning them and getting everyone to do that).

@Nathan Schneider "Would it have been better if Google had not created Gmail?" that's a clear "yes" from me.

Google has been on a years-long campaign to enact the "extend extinguish" parts of the choreography (most recent example I'm aware of is "AMP for email") which they couldn't even be considering if they'd been less successful with signing up users on the promise of compatibility. I've been running my own email servers for over a decade, and Gmail is the unparalleled #1 worst offended when it comes to exhausting non-delivery issues, requiring signing up for their non-standard, proprietary tools to have any hope of fixing, and with close to zero of their billions-of-dollars-large budget given to supporting email operators in using.

Gchat is a great example, where it used to be federated, and was turned into a walled garden immediately as soon as they thought they had enough of a captive userbase to do so.

@Ed Summers Hi Ed, do you know if a user blocking an entire server as in the docs you link to will prevent that server from accessing your data? Or does it simply block you from seeing any content or users hosted on that server? I don't see that clarified in the docs.

@Eduardo Mercovich So why is current policy to block/not-federate with instances based on such content not enough? As it stands, if an instance is allowing nazis and white supremacists to post freely, social.coop blocks/de-federates anyway, doesn't it?

@Chris Lott

Yes, totally so. I believe (not being a pro on this issue) that our general values allows us to not federate with Meta. But in this values there is no mention (that I know of) about privacy and selling personal information. We can add it. :)

Other issue to discuss in parallel is to analize the social/symbolic impact of adhering to the anti Meta FediPact...

This is a nice extension. Although I wrote earlier that I would prefer not blocking until we see, I'm also very comfortable with a pre-emptive block and a commitment to reconsider strategy when we know what they're actually doing.

I have a hard time understanding what people want to "wait and see" about, from a company with a track record like Facebook's? They are a known quantity.

I also don't understand the position that we should look for a broader rule, or a more permanent coalition, before acting on this case. We don't need an ironclad timeless principle of blocking to agree that Meta is not aligned with our values.

I really like what others have expressed in regards to principles; let’s find general policies on the basis with which meta can be federated with or degenerated from, rather than design something that targets Meta directly.

I’d also like to add a general caution around the use of defederation as a way of expressing disdain for behaviour in the past. If Meta does something we consider dangerous in regards to the fediverse, we can act. Why risk the upsides when downsides have yet to materialise. Let’s be practical about our actions, not political. Meta hasn’t done anything yet. Why would we not give them a chance to redeem themselves when there is no evidence of negative behaviour yet?

I have relatives on Instagram. Friends. Being able to connect with them in a way that doesn’t give meta anything meaningful seems a golden opportunity.

Meta will stress the fediverse’s ability to scale. We should wish for this! There are problems running at instagram’s scale that we won’t discover for years lest a large community joins.

@Bjorn Toft Madsen

Let’s be practical about our actions, not political. Meta hasn’t done anything yet. Why would we not give them a chance to redeem themselves when there is no evidence of negative behaviour yet?

They did an awful loof horrible things already, for many years. How many times someone must show bad faith and bad behavior until we start to take precautionary measures?

Anyway, the idea that it is coalescing (about positive values that we require to federate) is much better in every way, so in both cases, we cannot start federating with Facebook until they sign that pact (which they will never sign, or they loose the huge business of selling people's information). :)

I think this proposal needs work. Any first pre-emptive block in the fediverse's history (?) needs to try to limit future whataboutery and potential confusion. The AntiMeta Pact says Meta 'must be fought back against at every possible opportunity" but I think some here see blocking more as part of a 'wait and see' approach, which is different.

For me the question that lacks consensus on here is why pre-emptively block? If it's because of Meta's past behaviour; the fact they're an advertising giant; their demonstrated disregard for GDPR / right-to-be-forgotten; their history of embrace/extinguish such as with XMPP; their approach to disinfo/hate-speech, genocide-incitment-in-languages-their-mods-don't-speak, their 15,000 seemingly underpaid moderators etc – then I'd rather we adopted a generic policy against such actors, as I doubt Meta will be the last.

But, imagine none of these things existed. Would federating be ok? I'm pausing most when I picture a social network of 1 billion daily active users (3 billion across Meta) adding Activity Pub and joining a fediverse of 8 million (?) with ~1.5m daily active users. Even if Meta was faultless - joining would still make me nervous, on two levels:

• Technically - the potential firehose of 100-1000x more content and users. Is ActivityPub, social.coop and the wider fediverse up to it? Who covers the costs of the caching servers and human moderation around that increase? We grew ten-fold-ish at the end of last year and it seemed tough for all instance admins. I'd welcome some expert instance sys-admin / or ActivityPub spec-writers input on what Instagram being an instance actually means.

• Re-centralisation - If Threads was a success and rolled out across Meta, the Fediverse as it stands today would be a tiny (< 0.1%) fraction of an ecosystem that was mostly just one company. That removes the decentralisation at the heart of this project, that drew many of us here, and that company's decisions on moderation, tech, the way regulators treated them, the allowed behaviours of their users, etc – would dominate everything here.

So I support the idea of a block until Threads' launch, that's reviewed then and periodically after that. (and of course it might launch and never get more than a million actives). I also support adopting broader policies beyond the Mastodon Server Covenant about not federating with actors involved in non-consensual data aggregation, or who are shown to attack the commons and not give back. But not the proposal as it stands.

NB - since drafting this the proposal changed, I think this adds new problems. ie it now says "Meta, through Facebook, is infamous for condoning the spread of far right ideology and of dangerous misinformation" - some people may say the same of Mastodon + ActivityPub, the software + protocol that powers Truth.social and countless other extremist / disinfo platforms. ie there's sufficient arguments without doing a 'you're evil and we're the good guys'. I've seen disinfo and hate speech on our instance - thankfully removed, but who knows what would happen if we'd a million times more users.

@Nic "Meta, through Facebook, is infamous for condoning the spread of far right ideology and of dangerous misinformation" was present when I first posted. I only changed the title, and the text, "Therefore, I would like us to discuss whether we should support this move, and if so, how best to do so. As a starting point for discussion, I suggest the following", and those changes were intended to back off from framing this prematurely as a finished formal proposal.

@Brian Vaughan ah sorry - I was looking for what had changed and hadn't picked up on that. Thanks. FWIW, living in a country where Facebook helped make Brexit happened thru weaponised disinfo, I don't have a problem with the statement, so much as feel the fediverse isn't as strong in this area as we'd like to think, so it's easier not to build the argument on that.

Any first pre-emptive block in the fediverse's history

@Nic wasn't the (successful) isolategab campaign also preëmptive?

@Calix - thanks, I stand corrected. I thought that had happened afterwards. Have adjusted.

Facebook actively encouraged the genocide against the Rohingya people. Zuckerberg is a war criminal and needs to stand trial at the ICC. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ No federation with Facebook is the way.

I agree Meta's actions are concerning. I would also support a collective response to the risks involved. Yet this proposal has no actual goals, and it's not clear to me what this initiative would set out to practically achieve, and whether blocking Meta will accomplish it. I would happily support an effort that starts with practical goals and then develops a collection of interventions that we think will work on the basis of those goals. But without goals, I can't even assess the proposal.

Here are examples of possible goals:

1. Goal: getting them to be good stewards and neighbors (for example)

   1. Ask and pressure Meta and other companies to contribute resources and effort to the Fediverse in ways they can't claw back (lots of companies contribute to open source in this way)

   2. Ask and pressure Meta and other companies to contribute resources and effort to trust/safety in ways that are not exploitative like their other efforts

   3. Ask and pressure Meta and other companies to bring more people into the fediverse in ways that help it flourish through network effects

2. Goal: keep them out (for example)

   1. Force the company to abandon their efforts

   2. Reduce and limit the percentage of the Fediverse that they constitute

Those are just four examples— and the tactics would be different for each of them

One source of hesitation for folks seems to be the desire to form a coalition of servers before signing something like this pact in order to act collectively in blocking Meta and other instances that would be potentially harmful to the longevity of the Fediverse.

To me, the Meta Fedi Pact is a collective action and its signatories are a de-facto coalition (a federation even!). If social.coop signed on we could take initiative in building this loosely affiliated group of servers into a more organised and powerful network. Organising around an action point like this isn't premature, it's the best opportunity we have to build momentum around inter-server governance.

I'm not sure what the next step should be. I think there's sufficient interest in taking a public position of some kind against the threat of Meta's entry into the Fediverse, but it seems like we need some more discussion so that we can formulate a proposal that most of us will be happy with.

I see that quite a few of the Concern votes, are actually in general agreement about the overall nature of Meta and it’s potential impact to the Fediverse…

But would prefer a more generalized abstraction via specific rules that wouldn’t just apply to Meta, or creating a larger inter-instance structure that could deal with other future threats.

I appreciate and am in full agreement with those types of positions… so

Let us not let perfect be the enemy of good!

I think it’s also helpful to quote one of the ActivityPub designers

The point of a federated social protocol is actually NOT to be incredibly interconnected but to be very flexible in forming sub-networks. NOT to have a massive space but to have bespoke community-owned communities that can still be seen/discovered at-large if desired.

Wilkie

I'd support joining this pact. I think it's an important collective action against domination of the fediverse by one actor or by a small set of actors. The revelation that Eugen Rochko met with Facebook* under NDA is concerning and makes me even more inclined to support the pact. Giving certain people privileged access to information is a classic tactic to divide a community. Mastodon gGmbH's apparent acquiescence to Facebook creates all the more need for other servers to band together in standing up to Facebook.

*Also, I choose to call it Facebook instead of Meta because I think the rebrand is serving to obscure the fact that, actually, this company has a long track record, and we do not have to wait and see whether it will act in good faith or not. We know. The wait and see comments are, to me, evidence of an incredibly successful rebrand in that it seems to be making some of us forget the company's well-deserved bad reputation.

And if anyone thinks this specific app will be designed by an autonomous team within Facebook who are more benevolent than the parent company, consider that Instagram was long considered a rare success story of an acquisition that was allowed to develop autonomously based on its original values, and yet its co-founders quit a few years ago after the meddling from Facebook executives got to be too much for them, too (described at length in the book No Filter by Sarah Frier).

I missed the vote but I do not support this. I came to free/open source software (FOSS) from the social and economic justice movements. The participation of massive technology companies in the FOSS ecosystem is problematic in many ways and big companies like Meta and their actions must always be approached with skepticism. They do not share our values.

But social movements in the FOSS space have gained quite a lot from being able to build on the resources of big companies in areas of overlap. I think its hard to say that the open source movement has lost more than its gained by the participation of big tech firms—if for no other reason than they have so many resources and have done so much that even small areas of overlap can lead to net benefits.

We should be careful not to let Meta set the terms of their participation. We should create institutional arrangements that are resistant to cooptation. But banning/blocking them before they even start seems to be reactionary and quite possibly counterproductive.

This is exactly what I was going to say, but @Benjamin Mako Hill has put it much better than I could have. To add to this points, I want to encourage every supporting pre-emptive blocks to look at that from the POV of our relationships with people using fediverse servers owned by DataFarms, rather than our antipathy to their owners.

Our whole complaint about Meta et al has been that people are trapped in their DataFarms. Unable to connect with people on other services, and therefore unable to leave the server without losing all their connections there. If the rest of the fediverse blocks those servers, then it's us keeping those people trapped there. That seems like a terrible failure of solidarity.

@Benjamin Mako Hill

If FB is asking developers/maintainers/admins to sign an NDA before talking with them, could we create a Full Disclosure Agreement that their representatives have to sign before they talk with us?

Cory Doctorow uses this approach. :D

Dear all.

There are some points that are coalescing from this discussion and a tad more in https://social.coop/@dynamic/110579677650355358

Do we have a pad to draw a rough sketch among us that we can open for more open participation later? Anything like an etherpad may do, that is -by default- open to social coop members, and then can be expanded (in the same or other platform) for others to enrich...

Thanks a lot. :)

Late to the discussion. Observations:

1. This is a both-a-crisis-and-an-opportunity situation. Reasonable people can make reasonable arguments on both sides.

2. Our tools are extremely rudimentary. The situation is complex, but we have only one bit of choice: block or not block.

3. The impact of what we do here either way is minimal (<<1% of Fediverse user population). Unless we do it in conjunction with others, only we feel the impact, the rest of the Fediverse and Meta are largely unaffected.

4. Even if we did it in conjunction with others, the impact may be too minor to matter. According to https://fedidb.org/current-events/anti-meta-fedi-pact, the pledge so far only affects <400k users.

5. The tool we have is not even remotely up to the task. It is imperative to build up more tools. What those are we will have to learn, but I think:

   1. A set of values that a big part of the fediverse believes are important.

   2. A democractic process by which those values can be updated as needed. (Perhaps an instance with coop experience could have an outside impact on how to do this properly :-))

   3. A public pledge (with branding program) that allows server operators (and perhaps also users, and app developers) to publicly declare their adherence to these values.

   4. Pre-defined policies on how to interact with parties that do not conform to those values. This should involve graduated sanctions, not just black/white block/not.

   5. Some more software features from apps like Mastodon that allow more granular sanctions, like "not blocked but none of the posts from your server get shown in the federated timeline, or only shown behind warnings etc."

   6. Oh, and we definitely need a democratically governed test suite for interop, with a similar public branding regime, to make "accidental" incompatibilities just a tad more expensive in the court of public opinion.

   On the actual question: I'm fine either way, as I don't think it matters for this instance. IMHO we should focus our energies elsewhere.

I've summarized my thoughts on how this will go in this thread, which I won't repeat here in detail. I appreciate people's engagement. It seems to me there are two things at stake, and both are about profit:

1) Facebook is an entity promoting right-wing content

This is undeniable, and will happen on their fedi instance too. Their owners have a material interest in promoting this type of content, because the left threatens their profit margins.

2) Facebook is a $500B+ corporation looking to expand

Embrace, extend, extinguish is real, and something that Facebook has already done several times. They will absolutely do this with the Fediverse. Rumors exist that they plan to pay admins of large instances to federate with them.

A FediblockMeta is a minority of accounts but it's likely the most active accounts. So yes, I do think it's worth it, for the infrastructure alone.

It seems to me we can take the lead here by:

1) Helping create an Assembly across the #Fedipact, with representatives of instances.

2) Help smaller instances convert their infrastructure to a financially sustainable model (coops)

3) Create a set of standards for defederation, prior to #P92

4) Create a way for those standards to be shared

Agreed that we have momentum now. We can use it to react to Meta's takeover, or we can use it to proactively build something better.

I very much agree with what @Miloš has just written, and in fact I'd pulled up Loomio just now intending to post a link to that same thread they've just posted, along with what I thought was a good summary of the case against Meta/Facebook, https://privacy.thenexus.today/should-the-fediverse-welcome-surveillance-capitalism/

Perhaps we could brainstorm about how we could organize such an Assembly, and who we would invite specifically to start with. Such invitations would be a starting point, of course, because we'd want this to be open and public.

Responding to two themes I'm seeing here:

"the pact has minimal impact because it's a small % of fediverse users": There's no reason to believe the pact has reached full saturation. After all, we are still discussing whether to sign on or not. So why assume others are not also evaluating it right now, and may sign on soon? Our decision to sign on would encourage others to. (And as another member pointed out, those users disproportionately represent highly active users who would be open to organizing collectively with us in other ways.)

"instead of blocking, we should organize some kind of more nuanced/sophisticated/generalized collective response": In theory, great, but will that happen? On a timeline where it's still relevant? There is a risk of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. This pact is a form of actually existing collective organizing for an open fediverse.

To respond to the two themes:

1 - is signing onto the pact now good? i think, yes - but only if it is used as a temporary measure to organize something more. we can also always reverse the decision, the damage seems minimal to me.

2 - is social.coop a good place to start in organizing a fediverse assembly, jumping off from the fedipact? our democratic process and our know-how in the solidarity economy would be immensely useful to other instances. this assembly could then collectively wield much greater power, and come to decisions democratically as well.

I know it is highly rough (being very kind), but please think of this draft as only a starting point to ignite a concrete text and port to other document editing platform/service so we can collectively edit in a short term.

Please also forgive my limits with this language and my very limited knowledge of any technical aspect (which I suggest not to include on purpose, since tech changes fast and we are trying to have something more stable along time)...

This spark-like proposal is:

Positive fediverse (PosiFedi) agreement/ treaty/ covenant/ pact/ accord/ charter/ deal/ entente/ league/ clan/ confederation/ whateverisgoodandfunny.

We value diversity, respect, mutual care, equivalence and justice, and understand that they make us and our society more humane, resilient and regenerative, and our lives more enjoyable.

These values are human but extends to other, non human forms of life that have and deserve the same right to live and are as necessary as humans to keep our biosphere able to sustain life on our shared planet, an emergent property that is right now in great peril.

Based on these values and beliefs is that those who sign this agreement agree, in more concrete Fediverse terms, to:

- never tolerate discrimination of any kind, aggression in any form, misinformation generation and/or spread, denial of historical and present events and threats; we will instead foster civil, informed and respectful dialog and open participation.

- never share private information about other people (without their explicit, conscious and consensual consent?); we will instead take all the reasonable measures and actions to the utmost of our forces to assure the privacy and safety of the people on our instances.

- do our best to moderate in our instances all these and other forms of negative behaviors, to the maximum extent of our forces.

- share information about those instances or people who doesn't share these values and/or break these rules.

We will freely federate with those who agree and comply with these terms. In case of need, will support each other by sharing information and actions.

We will not federate with those who don't agree with these values. Also, failure to comply with the desired behaviors will trigger escalating measures, starting from throttling until total defederation, and their information and acts will be stored and shared among us.

WDYT?

@Eduardo Mercovich I think this is a good start. I notice a repeated use of an expression, "our forces", where I'd have expected, "our abilities".

@Brian Vaughan

Thanks a lot.😃🙏

Please, do edit whatever is needed, this was only a pebble to start kicking... 💪😅

@Eduardo Mercovich

I'd be generally on board with these statements as a description of our own instance's values, but I think this is too narrow and specific for defining who we would and wouldn't federate with.

1) I want us to have room to maneuver if there are other instances that either haven't thought things through carefully or adopt a more libertarian stance but are small instances that don't host bad actors at this time.

2) What do we mean by "not federate"?

a. I'm very comfortable barring our members from following friends on Facebook/Meta/Threads. I'm not comfortable barring members from following friends on mastodon.social until and unless mastodon.social becomes a pawn of a Facebook-like entity.

b. I would like to be welcoming of members who want to reach across the political spectrum to try to bring "the other side" around. This is something that https://social.coop/@[email protected] has written about explicitly (she has in fact been resistant to leaving Facebook behind because her goal as a communicator is to get U.S. Republicans to understand the importance of climate change as an issue). I think our instance should be a place where people like her can do their work, as long as they confine their work to the Fediverse and as long as things are configured in a way that keep their followers from harassing others.

3) Does talk of punching Nazis count as "aggression of any kind." I'm not really on board with punching Nazis myself, but I'd like to be able to have conversations with people who do.

One concern I have about the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact is that it is explicitly to be signed by admins or mods. There's the practical question of, if we do decide to sign it, as it stands, who signs for us? But it also reflects a deeper problem with the Fediverse as it exists: there's so little expectation of democracy that it's simply assumed that only admins and mods make decisions for instances. I'd like it if we could negotiate signing it in a way that challenges that expectation -- like we ask that the signature have appended text to say they are signing on behalf of the membership of Social.Coop.

The scicomm.xyz response to the impending Big Tech invasion of the
Fediverse is well-reasoned and reasonable, it is a response that I can
wholeheartedly support, and it is one that social.coop should consider
adopting.

@Andrew Shead https://about.scicomm.xyz/doku.php?id=blog:2023:0625_meta_on_the_fediverse_to_block_or_not_to_block

(I had deleted my prior comment, because I'd already posted twice in a row.)

@Brian Vaughan Thanks for letting me know. I wondered why I couldn't find it, so replied to the Loomio email instead.

@Andrew Shead The part where Scicomm mentioned divide & conquer resonated with me. Information warfare is Meta's primary weapon, they use people's biases to influence their thinking. I have to wonder if this pact actually helps Meta because it tips our hand early, before federation choices are made, and has already created some division between us.

Yes, we're seeing the thin end of the D&C wedge, and you make a good
point. But, as the old adage goes: forewarned is forearmed. In light of
the Scicomm response, my feeling is that we don't need to be
signatories to a pact. We as an instance could acknowledge and adopt
the Scicomm response, put it on the wiki where we can all see it, adapt
it as needed, and act accordingly to meet circumstances as they arise.
By doing so, our instance will be proactive and ready for what happens
when it happens. We could also view the threat as a stress-test of the
Fediverse; we need to see if decentralization is as resilient as we
think it is; with something like the Scicomm covenant in place, we
should be able to manage any troubles.

@Andrew Shead That was a great read. Thank you.

How would people feel about using the fedipact as a starting point to create an infrastructure across instances? An Assembly of Instances, if you will, which could as its first act, adopt a set of common principles like what Eduardo posted. This assembly could also help instances become member-owner cooperatives, like social.coop.

I am open to criticism, so please pile on. :)

A "sub-federation" with a common value system would be amazing. I'm all for it. Only suggestion: make the initial requirements very low and very uncontroversial. Once it has enough mass, and the (presumably democratic, in some fashion, but lots of possible pitfalls ...) governance is reasonably stable, the requirements can be tightened. It would be considerably harder the other way around.

Here's a statement from kolektiva.social on opposing Meta/Facebook. https://kolektiva.social/@moderation/110612539820163987

As a random side-comment: I would support any type of connection to Meta for specifically communication that assists Meta users to understand the problems with Meta and how to leave.

So, imagine some fantasy (not technically easy) in which all replies to anyone from Meta have content-warnings and extra caveats urging people to leave Meta instances…

One last comment, we can ALWAYS defederate. That option can be used at any point. The reasonable question is why do we want to defederate preemptively? I think the answer is, honestly, "to punish them" which if you're honest about it, it an understandable position. They have done HORRIBLE things and to be clear, I'm not at all happy with them or trust them (I cancelled my account 5 years ago) HOWEVER, I do think we have more power if we wait. If the entire fediverse takes a wait and see attitude (with a clear hair trigger to defederate them) It provides a type of carrot/stick approach. It's in Facebook's best interest to play along. Will they? Who knows, but if we preemptively defederate, we take that option off the table.

I'm not hopeful Meta is "better now", I'm saying "don't throw away an advantage." We have more power if we wait.

@Scott Jenson I don't see how we would have any leverage later if we don't act now. Relative to us, Meta has unlimited financial resources, and it's got no more reason to respect our autonomy than a tiger has to become vegetarian. We can point to Meta's history, but it's a bit redundant, since controlling and exploiting markets is fundamentally what profit-seeking corporations do. This isn't about punishing Facebook. It's about protecting the one viable social media platform that's not controlled by a profit-seeking corporation. We need to keep what we've built intact, along with our principles. And we'll be stronger and better if we do so in some sort of federation with other Fediverse instances.

@Brian Vaughan I understand you point but still don't see how waiting harms us in any way. We can always defederate them. How is defederating them NOW more powerful a statement? To be fair, my point was directed as a stronger action of a large group of FediServers acting in concert. If a large group said "Behave yourself or we'll defederate you" that is a carret/stick scenario. Will Facebook care? Intersting question, I think they might. But even if you're correct and they won't care at all, then you're basically saying our actions make no difference. We have no impact on them. If that's true, then what is good for us? In that case, I'd still argue that waiting is better. There has been discussion that a bridge to Facebook may help others leave Facebook. That seems worth exploring. Keep the door open long enough to benefit us, not them. Like I said, we always have the option to close the door. I just see a few (albeit small) reasons to keep the door open. It costs us nothing. Why not keep the door open and see?

If you are worried that there is actual harm in keeping the door open, I'd like to understand your point better. I just don't see the harm in waiting.

@scottjenson You have to prepare for a disaster before the disaster hits. That's especially true when the disaster is going to directly impact communication. Social.Coop at least has Loomio as a secondary means of communication. What do other Fediverse instances have? I'd bet it varies a lot, and some don't really have a secondary means of communication. We can talk to them now. We may not be able to later when Meta is flooding timelines with technically-not-spam. As for carrot-and-stick: no, Meta isn't going to care what a Mastodon instance with 300 users thinks. They will barely acknowledge what the admin of a Mastodon instance with 100,000 users and a legal claim to the name "Mastodon" thinks, and that opportunity has been squandered already.

Years ago, I was a contract worker at Microsoft; I worked in Silicon Valley, in an operations center, monitoring "non-standard systems", i.e., Linux and BSD and Solaris servers from start-ups that Microsoft bought out. Microsoft was spending hundreds of millions to buy out small start-ups, and then would keep the engineers and the servers idle, because it bought them simply so that Google and its other competitors didn't buy them first. You have to understand that it's almost certainly the case that there are engineers working for Facebook who think the Fediverse is a great idea, and that's the sort of people they'd make the points of contact in the "embrace" phase of embrace-extend-extinguish, but they are not the ones driving the process. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that we will ever have a healthy partnership with Meta. Meta is out to absorb or destroy us. That's how Silicon Valley operates.

@Brian Vaughan We seem actually fairly close in our perspective: I don't trust facebook either and I expect they will likely be bullies. I also agree that what we do makes no difference to them. My point has always been collective action. But social.coop is a well run instance and can lead the way. Unfortunately, you still haven't answered my question: what is the harm in waiting? I don't want us to do a performative action with little impact. I do think there is a small chance that waiting can give us more information (see above). If Meta quickly confirms everything you're worried about, by all means close the door.

@Scott Jenson I'm not sure how I can be clearer, as in general, the most obvious danger will be that we will be overwhelmed and unable to communicate, unless we prepare ahead of time, as I was trying to describe. I can't know exactly how Meta will game this, just that I can be certain it will game this, because doing so is innate to profit-seeking corporations.

@Brian Vaughan I agree with you! We should prepare, we should have clear 'triggers'. I'm not against your proposal, I'm against your timing. You're not answering my simple question: What is the harm in waiting (just a little bit)?

@Scott Jenson We are waiting a little bit, to have this discussion and settle on a plan which we generally support. At least implicitly, that had to be measured against the loss of momentum in not signing the Pact immediately. The sooner we act, the more time we have to find allies through the Fediverse and prepare. Already many small and medium sized instances have pledged to oppose Meta, so we have some idea what allies we might have. Meta has already acted, by having a meeting with the admins of several large Fediverse instances and making them sign NDAs to attend. We shouldn't wait until they act again, and we can't know how long we have before that happens. It could be hours, it could be years.

@Scott Jenson The preemptive blocking assumption is wrong, or at least wrong for you to assume that is everyone’s position.

I do think we have more power if we wait

Power is the heart of the matter, and it’s important to look at past Corporate Embrace of Community Standards driven Technology.

For example XMPP. Google Embraced the standard in an effort to drive users away from MSN Messenger, and because it could compete with community driven products offering better UX, most users went to Google talk, creating a Hub and Spoke situation where the majority of users are on the Hub/Google talk instance.

Threads has already announced Full Account Migration, so with enough devs and designers can easily beat Mastodon, becoming the hub, making all these community run instances the spokes.

Our only power to prevent becoming a spoke to Meta is to never federate.

Another aspect of preemptive blocking, I assume for many folks, especially those who left Facebook, would be weary of handing over their data / social graph.

@Django I don't disagree that is a possibility and if that is indeed what happens, I support your conclusion. My point isn't that we shouldn't do this, but that we just wait 5 minutes and learn a bit more before we pull the trigger. If Meta actually does fully want a hub and spoke then defederate away! But let's just confirm that. Again, we there is no risk to just wait (a bit) before doing this.

@Scott Jenson Not sharing user data is fair reason to block them. In fact based on this point alone, I would suggest a new Poll be made with the question inverted: Do you consent to sharing Data with Meta Servers? cc: @Brian Vaughan

@Django But the whole point of the fediverse is to share all of our data openly. It's bit like saying Websites shouldn't be open to Google. This doesn't excuse Google but it also shouldn't affect who we are. Is this naive? Possibly, but I do think we arguing over who we want to be and what community values we want to have.

But again, I'm not taking this off the table, I'm not arguing with you that Meta can't be jerks. I'm only saying that we just need to wait a few minutes to get a better understanding. I'm not saying NEVER defederate, I'm saying "let's just gather a bit more info" for the simple fact that it costs us nearly nothing to do so. So why shouldn't we do that? Am I wrong?

@Scott Jenson Not everything is open. The protocol is open, virtually all of the software that federates is open (I guess not Meta/Threads). But not every post is open, there are public posts, Followers only posts, and Mentioned only posts. Folks are also working on end to end encrypted / Private messages as well. But yeah, it’s possible to have things generally open but with caveats, for example not everyone’s profile is indexable by Google.

@Django It would help if you answered my question: what is the harm in waiting a little bit?

@Scott Jenson

I usually translate company behaviour as personal actions to get a better perspective.

If someone who is a known bully, liar, fraudster, and, an aggressive parasite, started trying to hang out with you and your friends, would you feel comfortable?

Or would it be better to tell them to "F Off Right Now" when they first arrive?

From the way that FB has behaved in the past, they have to actively positively prove that they have good intentions going forward, and that cannot be guaranteed to continue.

FB employee's have the legal duty to increase FB's profits.

Nothing else.

No matter what FB says they will do, the person you have been talking with can be re-assigned at an instant's notice, and a different person with a different agenda will be assigned to their place.

De-federate, and Dis-trust.

Let them show by their positive actions whether they will be worth federating with.

And the instant that they change their behaviour patterns, is the instant that we de-federate again.

@Billy Smith and as I've said over and over in this thread, I agree with your concerns. My point is that waiting, just a bit, gives us MORE power not less. There is performative value in saying "F Off Right Now', but it limits us, especially if staying open a bit allows us to bridge refugees away from FB. I'm NOT saying FB will suddenly be an angel! They likely ARE going to be jerks. But waiting JUST A BIT before we pull the trigger allows us more wiggle room and opportunities.

But this is a heated issue, emotions are high and it just feels like people want the satisfaction of saying "F Off Right Now" which may feel good, but isn't the most powerful thing for us to do.

@Scott Jenson Many folks are repeating this story that (the mere of idea of) federation will somehow convince users AWAY from Meta. How many of the folks coming from Twitter mentioned their dislike, or even confusion at how federation generally or mastodon specifically works? Let's be pragmatic for a minute, Big corporation with army of developers, designers and UX researchers, can easily iterate their way to creating a great app/service that will likely drive adoption in the other direction.

If the core business of Meta is data the ONLY leverage is indeed to prevent sharing with them in the first place!

@Django I'm actually quite tired of talking about this and I don't want to appear to be the guy that keeps yammering on. All I'm saying is that you're right! I just don't see the problem with waiting. That's all I'm saying. You're not wrong. I'm just saying that waiting is a more viable political strategy. I am not disagreeing with you. But I'm done. I'm tired of talking about this. I'm out

@Scott Jenson A harm that occur without preemptive blocking is harassment and targeting of our users. Imagine you are a user that left FB because of an ongoing campaign of harassment and threats by bad actors on the platform. Waiting until you start getting attacked is worse than preventing attacks from happening in the first place. If a platform can't or won't prevent bad actors for whatever reason, there is no reason to wait for them to figure out how to act badly in the fediverse. It's like waiting until the guy with the knife stabs you before you close your front door.

@Dave Menninger Completely agree but it is guaranteed that there will be harassment and attacks? Or is that just a hunch? How do we handle targetting today? Do we ban everyone just in case? Of course not, we wait until we see activity and THEN we ban/defederate.

My point is that we just act on solid data, not conjecture. Be prepared, have clear warnings in place, the MOMENT Meta engages in anything we don't like, ban them! I"m not at all against being prepared and having a plan, but waiting A TINY BIT, to make sure we're extracting as much value as possible (e.g. supporting people that want to migrate over) seems worthwhile trying to maintain. I'm not against your concern, I'm against your timing. A short window seems prudent.

@Scott Jenson it is guaranteed, from my perspective. FB is well known to be unable or unwilling to disable repugnant groups and individuals.

@Scott Jenson I also want say that I only posted to give you an answer to the question you've been begging everyone else on this thread for. There are harms that can happen. You have agreed with this. Consider taking a break from this thread for some hours.

@Dave Menninger "Begging"? I have been nothing be respectful? It's hard to have an honest exchange when people are using emotionally charged arguments and can't even answer basic framing questions like "What is the harm in waiting?" I've pursued this for the simple reason that no one can answer it, or at least refuses to. Which means this forum has no value.

@Scott Jenson I've answered you (harassment) and so has @Eduardo Mercovich (system resources).

Last person to reply to this thread wins the argument! On your mark, get set, go!!

@Dave Menninger That's unfair, I'm NOT trying to win the this conversation. I'm trying to have a conversation but I agree, we are running out of meaningful exchange here. My point was that both of your answers were worst case suppositions, which while possibly true, would benefit from calmer heads and a bit more information. Waiting on defederation would give us that, but neither of you are willing to admit that waiting actually has very little risk.

I love the fediverse because people are more respective, polite, and the whole point is to have reasonable conversations. But clearly this isn't happening here and I'm being painted as 'an extremist' which is very odd to me as I've tried to be very respectful, and I thought we were having a conversation.

@Scott Jensonmy understanding is that you feel that the probability of harm is low, or that the window of time before such happens is reasonably long.

I feel the opposite. And even in the case of low probability or long time horizon, I don't accept any likelihood of harm.

I don't have to "admit" to any points that you have made that I don't agree with.

@Scott Jensonthis is a redirection of the question. You asked for specific potential harms, and were provided with some.

Now you'd like us to accept as given that the probability of harm is low, until we have calmer heads and concrete data.

Why don't I ask you to accept that the probability is high, unless you provide the data to prove otherwise?

Do either of us have that hard data that will show what will happen in the future. No, we don't.

My position is protective, because it assumes worst case. I want protection to be a primary value.

In your view, (correct me if I'm wrong) it is ok to accept some minor risk as a tradeoff for some benefits.

I do not have to accept this tradeoff.

In my view, the frame of "cooler heads and data" is actually an abdication of responsibility. It's kicking the can, and it is often presented from a position of privilege.

We can have different opinions. That's fine. I just want you to consider your base assumptions and maybe take a break from having to be right about something on the internet. Maybe take some contemplative time and write a persuasive essay for us.

#lastPostWins

@Scott Jenson

> ... can't even answer basic framing questions like "What is the harm in waiting?" I've pursued this for the simple reason that no one can answer it, or at least refuses to.

We -and many other here and in other already cited instances open letters- have responded that very clearly, at least as my understanding goes (and English is not my native language). There is almost sure damage on many levels: resources, social and inter instance relations, easy abuse of many people, personal information harvesting, etc. We have almost 20 years of completely consistent behavior from Fb that shows that this is their modus operandi and that it makes sense from their business model.

If this is not enough proof or enough dangerous for you, that's ok. But please don't say that we didn't responded.

> Which means this forum has no value.

If you feel this is the case, from your POV there is no point in following this conversation. Please stop now then.

Just to clarify, I didn't like that affirmation at all and I feel it as aggressive because we are here putting our time and attention to collectively understand a very clear danger that seems to be arriving to our front door and -again, collectively- define some action/s. But for you, all this time and attention has no value. What's even more, you are saying that this whole forum (an open, democratic, respectful space) has no value. I believe it's very clear why I -at least- can have some negative feelings about what you said.

In the future, please do think it twice before saying something so obviously aggressive like that again.

For my -and others- care I will take a break from answering anything from you. I hope you understand -as I do- that it is for the better of everyone here.

Best...

Yes, there is, and it is very concrete: small instances will be flooded way deeper than what they can handle. The last Twitter migration will be reduced to nothing compared with millions of Fb accounts running wild to the Fediverse.

What is wrong with asking Fb to sign our values (there was a proposal a few days ago) and then letting them in? It's gentle, it's clear, it's civil and respectful for all parties.

However, if they don't want to sign a minimal set of shared values, we know what to expect (BTW, we already know it now, but let's give them a chance).

@Eduardo Mercovich If those shared values could be a general list all instances could sign up for it would be much more powerful (and practical) Meta would sign one document an 100s of servers would say "ok, you're in" (there is no way Meta will sign 100s of agreements)

Something like that is what we've been starting to draft in https://www.loomio.com/d/AZcJK6y2/discussion-support-the-anti-meta-fedi-pact/96

If others feel it's ok, let's put in cryptpad, edit it at will and then share it to be signed with other instances. :)

@Eduardo Mercovich It seems to me that it would be a good idea to go ahead and do that, and perhaps create a new thread to discuss drafting the statement, specifically.

@Brian Vaughan Thanks a lot. :)

I'm not very good with Loomio or discussions so I ask you please to start that, but at least I've created a cryptpad with the text to work on: https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/5xxQZvxvjfAP2eQTYenLuWOZ/embed/ (cryptpad is new to me, but it seems to work for this and more).

How does it looks?

@Eduardo Mercovich thanks for doing this! I suggested calling it the Cooperative Fediverse Charter, and left a few comments in there about whether we want to only federate with signatories, or if we should openly federate by default.

@Ed Summers Thanks a lot for seeing this important issue. Yes, I added your suggestions and now it is better.

So we 1st federate openly, but if something smells like misalignment of values we can ask an instance to sign this charter. Failure to sign and/or comply can lead to defederation.

Thanks a lot... :)

Thanks for continuing this process @Brian Vaughan and recognising the range of views.

Could it be helpful to separate the essence of the Pact's proposal 'to not federate with Meta for now', from the second, more political decision of signing the Pact as a collective?

The Pact is worded as a confrontation with Meta, who it says "must be fought back against at every possible opportunity". There may be people here who don't feel like they want that fight, but who also don't want to federate with them, just for the simple maths of a 3 billion daily-active-user social network group federating with a 1 million daily-active-user social network group, feeling daunting. I'm trying to think of analogies where a 3000:1 ratio doesn't leave the smaller of the parties completely diminished, if not destroyed. Homeopathy?!

So, could we have two proposals to vote on? 'Sign the pact', and 'don't federate with Meta yet'?

@Nic There's also the statement that @Eduardo Mercovich has drafted for us to collaborate on. And the notion of calling for an Assembly. I'm wondering how group all these things.

@Brian Vaughan That is a much more constructive framing from Eduardo, tho my guess is it could also trigger a long discussion. Perhaps consensus is easier to find/check on an action (ie de-federate) than a statement?

If there's community consensus for defederating then that's also a clear expression of the need for a statement or policy (which obvs can be drafted in parallel)? But it avoids letting the syntax getting in the way of the logic… (ie people saying I want to do this, but that sentence is problematic to me for this or that reason)

Thanks @Brian Vaughan /\

I'd say, let's parallelize. ;-)

Okay, so do we want three new threads, or four?

That would be one formal vote on endorsing the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact, and one formal vote on not federating with Meta. Then a thread for drafting a public statement. Would we want a fourth thread on calling for an Assembly of Instances, or would that be part of the purpose of the public statement, and therefore part of that discussion?

@Brian Vaughan

If we're moving forward with the Asssembly of instances idea, I think it needs to be four threads, but I think that that one and the public statement thread belong on a longer time horizon than the Pact and federate or not federate thread.

As a reminder, here's our wiki on how to make a proposal.

Here's what I'm thinking we should do next, through Loomio:

1. A formal vote on the policy with regards to actions to Meta sites on the Fediverse. I think it would make most sense to use a ranked choice vote, with four options: Pre-emptively block any such site that Meta may create; block any Meta site unless it meets certain conditions; block any Meta site if it meets certain conditions; do not commit to any special actions with regards to Meta sites on the Fediverse.
2. A formal vote on the proposal to endorse the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact. I think that running this vote would have to be conditional on the outcome to the prior vote; we obviously shouldn't promise to pre-emptively block Meta if we have decided against doing that. Also I think we should communicate that whoever is signing, is signing on behalf of Social.Coop.
3. Create a discussion thread for collaboratively drafting the statement @edumerco started. The preceding votes would influence the content of that statement, I think, particularly if we're specifying conditional actions.
4. Create a discussion thread for the possibility of calling for an Assembly of Instances, possibly using the Pact or the statement as a starting point.

Also, on #1, I'm not sure what would be the best way to frame it, procedurally, about the positive or negative conditions. I was imagining referring the question of defining the conditions to some sort of committee, based on what people might say in discussion, or maybe referring it to some existing working group. Anyone have any thoughts?

@Brian Vaughan

Unfortunately, I don't have any specific thoughts on process. I hope that some people familiar with past decision-making can chime in here...

I think it's definitely time to put up a proposal for 1 in Loomio and really like the idea of a ranked choice vote, with the choices that were listed. I think staging the decisions will be good for not giving members too much to digest at once? Thanks @Brian Vaughan for continuing to advance this discussion -- do you want to write it up?!

@Matt Noyes @emi do @Mica Fisher @Sam Whited @Flancian as CWG Ops do you think this is the right approach to start with a proposal for 1 listed above? It seems like the issue of defederation is one that CWG has had to discuss before, and that perhaps you have decision making power for already?

@edsummers , thanks for tagging people to discuss process.

It's become urgent. Meta announced today, July 4, that threads.net will launch on July 6. Wikipedia has links to a few articles about the announcement.
Threads (app)

I definitely want to hear advice about process, but I think we should get the formal vote started today. The decision would probably be reached after threads.net has gone live.

@Ed Summers The CWG Ops Team has defederated from instances, based on reports from users, or on tips from other admins. But, this seems to me like a good thing to decide collectively. This discussion is a great example of members starting a discussion and self-organizing. We recently approved the proposal to create an organizing circle, which might be helpful for coordinating action once decisions like this are made by the members. https://www.loomio.com/p/OI8kEjVz/social-coop-organizing-circle-proposal

I was preparing a poll, a ranked choice vote, on options for Social.Coop's response to Meta. However, if I'm understanding the bylaws correctly, it is required to include an option to block a proposal, to indicate a belief that a proposal violates our principles, and a block is weighted more heavily than other votes. I don't see a way to include that as an option in a ranked choice vote, so I don't know how to handle this, procedurally.

@Brian Vaughan I've never noticed that the by-laws are so prescriptive about the type of poll. I guess it's best to follow the by-laws as best you can, and keep the poll simple and easier to interpret? When looking over past polls I didn't see any with a block option, but maybe I didn't look at enough of them.

@edsummers Maybe the best option then is to say that if anyone wants to block, they should say "block" as a comment, and we'll calculate the results manually if that happens.

@Harris nothing is stopping any `social.coop user from signing up for a threads.net account if they want to participate there

@Calix Sure, but if that's the solution we offer people who would like to connect with their friends and family, I think that makes migration away from the indie Mastodon servers more likely, not less? I only have bandwidth for so much social media. Like that's certainly a solution but it seems like it encourages the problem we're ostensibly trying to prevent.

@Harris this was the situation so far already – that if people's friends and family were on Facebook but not Mastodon, then Mastodon users needed to make a choice whether to have an account on both, or to pick one – and still is the situation now until Meta switches on federation. Some people probably left the fediverse to go to Blue Sky, some might leave for Threads (although I doubt there's much overlap between the people that Mastodon and Threads appeal to), which is definitely sad, but compromising what makes the fediverse good in the first place to try and prevent that seems like exactly playing into the first step of Embrace / Extend / Extinguish.

@billysmith I'm not familiar with how that works, but it sounds like it may have been a better option for this vote. Where can we read more about it?

@Brian Vaughan

The main page about the LHS Trustee elections can be found here: https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Organisation/Trustees_Election

They link to a full description of the voting algorithm here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_single_transferable_votes#Meek

When you vote the preferences are ranked according to what each voter wants, and weighted according to the ordering, a la secondary-preference voting.

We found that including all of the options without a "Nothing below this line" option, meant that people would find their votes being counted towards options that they did not want.

Including a "Nothing below this line" means that the secondary preferences for the undesired options do not get counted.

@J. Nathan Matias I think your new position may corellate to ranking #2: 'Defederate first and set conditions to federate'above #3: 'Wait and see.'

@benjamin melançon ranking #3 as your top preference indicates a stance of 'Wait and see not 'defederate first'. Was this your intention?

@Will Murphy block noted. Fwiw, my assumption was that this was still effective 'reading of sentiment' not a direction to Admins. I'm looking forward to a next iteration yes/no resolution of direction to defederate.

@Will Murphy it appears that the bylaws have interpreted your Block as a 'then lets do nothing'. This clearly isn't what your rankings suggest, or what the consensus of the vote suggests - but are a byproduct of your block and the rules around blocks ("Proposals with Block require at least 9 times more Agree votes than Disagree and Block votes in order to pass."). Perhaps @Brian Vaughan can let you reconsider if you didn't realise this is what your action would do? Otherwise either the bylaws or Loomio voting feels open to question, as they are not able to reflect demonstrable consensus, but do consume notable amounts of volunteered time.

@Eamon Caddigan Loomio dev here. I'm new to the group and enjoying seeing how you're all using the app (and making quick improvements on the fly). Poll options actually have a name and 'meaning' field. The meaning field is not in use here, but it would help a lot. I'm considering what the length limit for name should be and how to encourage use of the meaning field.

@Robert Guthrie thanks!

Social.Coop is already a multi-platform organization: Mastodon, Loomio, Open Collective, Matrix, Git.Coop, Meet.Coop, Nextcloud & Jitsi, via Mayfirst.coop, others? So there is precedent for this. The admin demand involved is what motivated a recent discussion and vote on a proposal to form an organizing circle. https://www.loomio.com/p/OI8kEjVz/social-coop-organizing-circle-proposal So, we need to get the organizing circle up and running to be able to organize the labor involved, but no reason not to discuss it!

As we take these discussions forward, it may be useful, for those not deeply familiar with the consequences of de-federation, to unpack a bit more the implications of the decision in plain language.

E.g.

• 'immediate defederation, no conditions' = no messages will be exchanged with threads.net / users of threads unless a future social.coop decision reverses this policy; whereas

• 'federate but be prepared to defederate on certain conditions' = social.coop users will be able to follow and see content from threads.net users, and have their content seen and interacted with on threads.net. If threads.net actions on data use or moderation violate the principles developed by social.coop, then social.coop admins would be empowered to cut off threads.net, and social.coop users would lose their threads.net followers / following, and ability to interact across the two.

@Tim Davies It sounds like the first is SUSPEND, and the second is do nothing? What about LIMIT?

I regret that I have not had time to participate in this vigorous discussion. From what I have gathered, I have an additional proposal: whatever decision is taken on this issue, that it be time-bound, and revisited in 12 months. Let's take a wait-and-see approach to the Meta situation (either way), and revise strategy appropriately.

@Thomas Beckett

This approach means allowing FB to track everyone for a year before defederating.

FB will NOT delete that data when requested.

It's why they didn't launch in the EU, as FB's normal M.O. will be in breach of the GDPR.

You do know that FB tries to track everyone, not just the people who use FB, but also all of the people that are connected to them via their social interactions even if the people being tracked are not FB users, yes?

This pattern was one of the reasons that the GDPR was created.

My current guess is that FB will keep all of the data, and continue to track everyone, but they won't make the data available to anyone who hasn't signed their NDA.

This is the pattern of behaviour that FB has been following for years.

The tracking data is where FB's primary profit-margin comes from, and they won't let go of that without a fight.

Can there be more clarity around whether this means a LIMIT or a SUSPEND?

A LIMIT on Threads means that nobody on Social dot coop will see content from any Thread users unless they explicitly follow them. This means that if somebody from Threads hurls hate speech at you, you will not see it.

A SUSPEND on Threads means that users of Social dot coop can’t follow people on Threads even if they want to, and users on Threads can’t follow users on Social dot coop even if they want to be followed.

With a LIMIT, any individual user can still personally block the entire domain if they want, and will never see any content from Threads, and will not have their content visible to anybody on Threads, and Mark Zuckerberg cannot access their personal data or their precious bodily fluids.

I’m fine with a global LIMIT. But personally I know there will be people I want to follow on Threads. Preventing social dot coop users from following people they want to follow feels like an overreaction. “EEE” is not a good enough reason — this is political posturing and won’t affect Meta in the least. Even though I personally strongly dislike Meta and wish everybody used Mastodon instead, this is not realistic.

@jsit I assumed implementation details should be worked out after deciding our intentions.

@Brian Vaughan But these are very different moderation actions. I’m not sure how you can decide whether to do “one or the other” of them without knowing which one you’re talking about.

@jsit I had first run a sense-check, asking if we should collectively sign on to the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact. A slim majority favored that, but the discussion led me to think that there might be more support for defederating from threads.net under certain conditions. So I tried to articulate what I thought was a reasonable range of conditions for defederating, from pre-emptively, to not necessarily doing so at all. That was already a lot to jam into a single vote; I thought that if we defederated conditionally, we'd have to make do with a very general sense of what sort of conditions, coming from the discussion attached to this vote, and set up some sort of committee to determine those conditions in detail. If we did, after all, vote to pre-emptively defederate, then I would have proposed a formal vote on signing the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact. I wasn't aware of the difference between a LIMIT and a SUSPEND, but important as that distinction is, that isn't the main question to be decided here. The question here is whether we, collectively, believe that Meta's threads.net is, definitely or possibly, an extraordinary threat.

@Brian Vaughan The leading poll option reads: “Social coop will defederate threads dot net.” It’s not at all clear what this means if limit vs suspend isn’t clarified there. How can one vote on “defederation” if one doesn’t know what that entails?

@Jay Defederation means suspend.

@Django How are people voting in this poll supposed to know that?

@jsit Defederation means severing federation. As far as I can see from reading the documentation, LIMIT doesn't sever federation. So it's not defederation.

As this thread points out, limiting won't help at all.
https://octodon.social/@siege/110666824291864135

@Brian Vaughan I think you are being disingenuous. People use “defederate” ambiguously, and it’s not made clear here which meaning is implied.

What your linked thread points out is that Threads users will still be able to see your posts on social coop even with a Limit. This is true, but they can also see your posts if they are logged out and looking at your profile.

Again, anybody who is individually worried can Suspend Threads themselves, and their content will not be visible.

@Jay I think @Brian Vaughan has actually done his best to bring this topic up in a constructive way, and has also synthesized a very complex discussion. We may not all agree with each others positions, but I think things will work best if we assume positive intent.

@jsit It's not disingenuous. Defederate means to de-federate. It means to sever the connections that constitute federation. Retaining federation, as LIMIT does, is not defederating. I was just looking through Social.Coop's announcements through Mastodon, and on one occasion, we had limited mastodon.world and techhub.social, and on another, mastodon.social. These were described as temporary measures to deal with transient problems; I don't recall anyone describing them as defederating.

And these were fundamentally different situations than we're discussing with threads.net.

@Jay sounds like LIMIT is also the way to go for the goal of communicating to people on Threads and recruiting them to leave it and join better servers… anyone who wants to do that could actively seek out places to post anti-Threads messages to Threads users. Right?

@Aaron Wolf It’s also the way to go if users will just plain want to follow Threads users. I know I will.

@jsit You could just make a Threads account.

@Brian Vaughan But I do not want to make a Threads account.

@Jay that's compatible, as long as this happens and you do follow Threads users, please consider regularly making side-note comments to them inviting them to leave Threads or otherwise expressing concerns about Threads.

Consciousness-raising is more important than purism IMO

I had assumed that threads.net would "play nice" at first, and try to build up trust. However, it has become obvious that it has no intention of playing nice at all. On its first day, users are reporting that threads.net is promoting hate groups, including Libs of TikTok, Moms 4 Liberty, and Gays Against Groomers, and the fascist politician Marjorie Taylor Greene. This is already significantly worse behavior than from most Fediverse instances Social.Coop has already defederated. The only qualification here is that threads.net has not yet enabled its ActivityPub bridge.

@Brian Vaughan and also seems to have accessibility issues: https://mashable.com/article/threads-alt-text

@Brian Vaughan

FB are not playing nice with even their existing users:

https://mas.to/@BlackAzizAnansi/110664803472255089

More on Threads and unmoderated bigotry.

https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/far-right-figures-including-nazi-supporters-anti-gay-extremists-and-white-supremacists-are

In fairness, apparently Threads moderators removed a post by Libs of TikTok for offensive content.

If defederation is implemented, are we talking about limiting or suspending per https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#server-wide-moderation? I'm much more comfortable with limiting than a full suspension, because it would still allow me to follow reasonable accounts on threads.net.

Email is the mostly important and widely used federated network service on the Internet.

I have hosted my own email server for nearly 25 years because I do not want to trust my personal communication infrastructure entirely to large companies I don't trust. I have helped host email for many other people through organizations like social.coop for many others who feel similarly but don't have the same technical skills.

That does not mean I don't want to ever send or receive emails from people who use Google (GMail) or Microsoft (Outlook, Hotmail, etc). Doing so would make it quite impossible for to communicate with many people I care about and work with, including—I'll bet—most of the people in this thread.

Centralization of email within companies Google and Microsoft has had many negative impacts on email and I think we should learn from that experience. But it seems clear that we stand more to lose more than we gain by simply blocking Threads before anything happens.

@Benjamin Mako Hill This points to the heart of the matter for me, and the analogy with email is accurate. It's not so much that we don't want to communicate with loved ones and creators and organizations on Threads as we want to avoid the threat they represent on two fronts:

1. Embrace and Extend - as we've discussed, the anticompetitive practice of pretending to join an open system in order to dominate or eliminate it.

2. Data gathering - Lest we forget Cambridge Analytica and how they used Meta/Facebook's data-driven microtargeted ads to get Trump elected and Brexit to "yes." What are they really after? Our real names and locations, our likes, social connections, and enough metrics to build a psychological profile on us. The question is, can we allow communication with Threads without letting them profile us?

@Michael Potter Reason #1 is important but I don't see how preemptively defederating is helpful. If they join and extend the protocol in ways we don't like, we can choose to defederate then. Preemptive defederation feels like destroying property to prevent someone from stealing or vandalizing it. Or not making money because you don't to have someone take it from you later.

Reason #2 is interesting but also doesn't feel like a reason to defederate. I'm completely confident that Meta already has public Fediverse data and will continue to get it. Many people do! They will only get private data like DMs to the extent that individuals chose to communicate with people on Threads. I have written about exactly this situation in relation to email in a pretty wide read essay: https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours

It's a real concern but it's a choice I'd rather make an individual when communicating with my GMail using friends. If something were sensitive, I might not send it to a GMail users. I am absolutely confident that I benefit more from being able to send email to GMail users than Google gains from having copies of those emails. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. Do you disagree?

I too am interested in adding Lemmy/Kbin to social.coop. Now that Reddit is pushing so many out it would be great if we could support an alternative.

Point of process: the ranked choice vote is not something that can constitute a formal decision according to the bylaws. It does not, for instance, clearly state a proposal or allow for blocks. There is a guide to making proposals here: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Make_a_proposal

@Nathan Schneider thanks for pointing to the process. As you probably saw it did come up in the discussion leading up to the creation of the ranked choice vote. I guess we need to close it early and restart?

I personally think that the proposal was quite clear, can you say more about how it wasn't? Instructions for blocking were also included, even if there isn't an explicit choice for that.

@ntnsndr I will again emphasize that we had several weeks of discussion, in which I repeatedly asked for advice on process. No one offered advice, and no one objected to my suggestions for how to handle process. I delayed submitting a formal proposal specifically to solicit advice on process, but the fact that threads.net had officially announced its launch meant that we were running out of time. I specifically asked about how to include a "block" option, then suggested it be spelled out, and that we would tally votes manually if necessary to account for blocks, because I couldn't find a way to do it through Loomio.

It doesn't seem appropriate to me to object to the vote halfway through the voting process, when a quarter of the membership has already voted.

@Brian Vaughan sorry that I missed part of the discussion. I did actually offer advice on how to make the proposal bylaws compliant when I shared the wiki page on how to do so, before this proposal was created. I don't want to be a huge stickler for the rules. The structure of this vote makes it a bit hard to evaluate according to the bylaws. But perhaps it will be unambiguous enough.

I don't mean to malign Brian's work here. I know from experience that running a contentious vote in this co-op is tricky!

@Brian Vaughan I think for the sake of clarity and process members should decide on whether or not to make an afirmative direction to defederate (suspend). My preference would include the post-action committee work detailed in #2. The current split of the defederate vote between two options muddies the call for action even though combined they represent almost 60% of the sentiments expressed.

@richjensen3000 Two of the four options entail creation of a committee, so we probably should be thinking about a process for forming that committee, in a manner as compatible with established processes as possible. I'm not sure how we'll assess the results of the other vote, but of course it bears on the interpretation of the results of this vote.

Since we have had at least one vote to block, there's also the question of how to assess that. I'd thought it should be treated as a vote for #4, taking no action, but weighted as nine votes. That's based on my understanding of the way a block vote would normally be assessed.

Loomio allows downloading the CSV of the votes, and it's calculating ranked choice votes by a simple point system. In this case, someone's first choice gets four points, their second gets three, and so on. So I think a block vote should count as 36 points for the option of no action. I won't be able to post my recalculation of the vote until well after the vote concludes, tomorrow evening my time. It would be a good idea for other people to try the math; I'm trying my best to be fair and honest, but I am obviously not disinterested.

The character limit for vote comments is small, so I'm putting my full response here instead:

I don't think any poll which ties a judgment to a narrow course of action can represent an actionable proposal - it is closer to a political push poll. If I had to express my view in the structure of the choices here it would be:

We assume that Threads intends to be a threat to the Fediverse, but federation will actually benefit us more than it benefits them.

Having the walled gardens open up the gates through federation is, for me, the win condition for the Fediverse. It is the goal that drives my involvement here and the creation the Immers Space worker-owned cooperative that creates Fediverse software. For us to collectively build up another wall around that garden would be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Make no mistake - I believe that Facebook's intentions are bad and they will do everything in their power to federate in a way that draws and traps people into their network. However, I also believe this is an historic misstep by a leader prone to recent historic missteps and our best opportunity to bring vast numbers of people out from under Facebook's thumb.

What this really comes down to is a simple question: do you believe that the cooperative model is able to provide a social media experience that better meets the needs of people than the extractive model? If so, then it must follow that federation with threads will bring more people from them to us than vice versa. When they open up federation, they will greatly reduce the social cost of leaving their network as people will still be able to stay in touch with their existing friends, and I believe that cost - Facebook's current practice of holding your online connections hostage - is the primary barrier keeping people from moving en masse to the Fediverse.

Therefore, in order to pursue our vision of collective liberation, we must find a more nuanced approach than defederation that maximizes our ability to connect with the people that use Threads and show them what's possible outside the corporate social world while minimizing the harm to our membership (and there are real, material harms to consider here as Facebook enables fascists that incite vigilante violence against vulnerable groups). Part of the problem here is that the options Mastodon gives us for regulating contact with specific instances are woefully inadequate for this situation, but we must demand and/or build better ones in order to pursue our cooperative's vision.