So, recently some fediverse admins (mostly Mastodon) and the founder of Mastodon, Eugen Rochko (Gargron), where contacted by Meta/Facebook for an NDA meeting. We know nothing about it, but we’re pretty sure that it was about this project92 thing that Meta/Facebook is creating to “compete” with Twitter.

So a lot of Mastodon admins already singed a pact to immediately block any Meta/Facebook activity in the fediverse as soon as it comes up. My Mastodon instance, fosstodon.org hasn’t singed that pact and I’m pretty worried.

The following image is an screenshot of Gargron and dansup (creator of Pixelfed) talking about this. These posts were deleted, even from the wayback machine.

  • whofearsthenight@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Facebook’s biggest problem has always been the people that use their products spreading hate and misinformation

    Facebook’s algo drives this. It’s a choice that they’ve amplified this content.

    The article you replied to (not behind a paywall for me for some reason?) talks about how they open sourced their LLM AI for research purposes.

    Can’t comment much on this one, so I won’t.

    WhatsApp is still fully end to end encrypted

    still because wasn’t it like that when they bought it?

    they’re pushing the same on messenger now

    Now, as in, they didn’t design it that way to begin with because it wasn’t the profitable thing to do. They have to compete with iMessage, and further, they gain just by being able to tell every cop shop “sorry can’t do it bro.”

    Their targeted advertising has rightfully gotten a lot of scrutiny, but there’s a lot of misinformation behind it, like “Facebook is listening to my calls” and “Facebook is reading my message data”, which they’ve denied and there’s no actual evidence of. I have family with small businesses that wouldn’t have made it through the pandemic without their advertising platform.

    Glad your family made it. Unfortunately, though, this is the masses not understanding how technology these days really works. They don’t have to read your messages or listen to your calls because they’re doing that all over the web and through their own users. The truth is more nefarious because for most people “listening to my calls” is scrutable, while adding tracking cookies across the web or computing social graphs based on your contact info being shared without your consent by a few of your friends, or doing some ML on every photo shared is not.

    I don’t think that they have any place in the fediverse, honestly I’d be surprised if they wanted in on it anyways

    Agreed.

    If I were to guess this meeting was probably a job offer if anything lol.

    Disagree. Fediverse and it’s growth as it stands now is not good for Facebook, so they’re trying to head it off at the pass. I’d be willing to bet this meeting was a feeler for them and I hope Eugen and others are smart enough of to say basically nothing, and they’re continuing the grand tradition of embrace, extend, extinguish.

    Is Meta evil? No. They’re probably not a standard deviation away from any other org in terms of how many are “evil” but their incentives today all align to a worse outcome for humanity. It’s kinda worse - it’s a collection of incredibly smart people compartmentalized enough from the “evil” the org does. Actually, don’t know that I would say “evil” so much as “sociopathic.”

    Meta should get no passes, and be met with absolute scrutiny related to the fediverse.

    • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Facebook’s algo drives this. It’s a choice that they’ve amplified this content.

      Facebook’s algo drives interaction, human interaction with this content amplifies this content, just like pretty much every other algorithm. Ragebait sells unfortunately, but this isn’t anything new. Seen any news channel since the 24 hour news cycle was introduced?

      still because wasn’t it like that when they bought it?

      This is a response to “everything Meta touches turns to shit”. WhatsApp is a fine example.

      Now, as in, they didn’t design it that way to begin with because it wasn’t the profitable thing to do. They have to compete with iMessage, and further, they gain just by being able to tell every cop shop “sorry can’t do it bro.”

      No, because it wasn’t a priority when Messenger was built in 2011 lol. Don’t rewrite history with what you know today, I don’t know if you remember the internet back then, but it was the wild west. Data privacy was not a concern to many.

      The truth is more nefarious because for most people “listening to my calls” is scrutable, while adding tracking cookies across the web

      This one is more subjective, because to avoid the tracking you can just not use Facebook. If they don’t have your personal information they aren’t tracking you, they only know some person somewhere interactioned on a site that has Facebook Pixel. They don’t even collect your IP address, hence why they use cookies for tracking here.

      Not to mention this is all to sell targeted ads, so “evil” would be dramatic imo. Just a company doing what a company does.

      or computing social graphs based on your contact info being shared without your consent by a few of your friends,

      This isn’t true until actual proof is provided.

      or doing some ML on every photo shared is not.

      Also subjective, just don’t use Facebook if you believe this to be the case. Their ML models don’t care about you if it can’t target you with ads.

      Is Meta evil? No. […] Actually, don’t know that I would say “evil” so much as “sociopathic.”

      “Meta is evil” is what I was discussing. Sociopathic sure, just like every profit driven corporation, but to change this we’d need to unwind our society from profit driven entirely, which I’m all for, but that’s a whole other conversation.

      I’m just really hoping that this place doesn’t get obsessed with Facebook ragebait like Reddit did.