#meta could be a threat for the #fediverse

With the codename #project92 or #barcelona , #meta launches a new project soon and nobody could care less than people who already freed themselves from big corps, but rumors exist that it might use the #activitypub protocol, which would make it a part of the fediverse.

Over night, one of the biggest data collectors on this planet, will own the biggest fediverse instance and will have access to a lot of data, which wasn't collected before, because not many people used the fediverse. But after Elon Musk showed his real face after taking over #twitter and the many problems on #reddit , a lot of people are leaving conventional platforms of multi-(m/b)illion-dollar companies and use tools from the fediverse. This is new, because in general, people would just go to another big corp and nothing changes.

This time the people are going to a place, which is controlled by the people. There are instances and every instance has it's own code of conduct. A place where no multi-(m/b)illion-dollar company can make money (yet) or is in control of anything.

History showed, that big corps could harm or destroy #foss (free and open source software), where the maintainers had ethical values, like Firefox trying to be privacy friendly. Since #google (#alphabet) made huge donations to #mozilla the browser is privacy invasive and it took years until a fork was able to remove all of it to make it a privacy friendly browser again.

In the 1990s, Microsoft had a strategy called "embrace, extend and exterminate" (#doctorwho reference not intended) to destroy competitors.

It could look like this:

- Embrace: Develop software compatible with the fediverse
- Extend: Add features to the world biggest instance which is not supported by other instances (e.g. closed source, pay wall)
- Exterminate: All other instances are worthless if federation doesn't work anymore with the biggest instance after an update

The code of #mastodon and other fediverse tools could be changed, so that smaller or even all other instances could be excluded, it couldn't be solved by a single fork this time, because we would need a fediverse 2.0 so all the forks can communicate with each other again, after removing shitty code hindering federation.

Another problem might be to convince people to leave the "invected fediverse 1.0" (which became a centralized platform) and come to "fediverse 2.0" (which is like the fediverse once was), because it's already hard enough to tell them to leave #whatsapp (or similar software) for a better alternative. Imagine they already left the bad thing, but then we tell them to leave the current system, too. I am not a pessimist, but at this point the big corp might win.

We could be strong and ban metas instance on any free instance, which is still able to make their own decisions. This could trigger the third huge wave of people willing to use something new (and free, like in free speech) or we could act like it's a friendly act of a big corp, which doesn't have financial interest at all and it's just cool to be connected with more people and everything will be fine. No offense, but this sounds really naive, because the wet dream of big corps is a totalitarian system, where they are in control of everything, watching every step of every person and not living in a free and democratic world where the people are in control of their own lives.

Big corps influence elections, the party you are voting and whole countries. Don't underestimate them and don't think their actions are good.

We should hope that the maintainers of mastodon and other fediverse tools (or activitiypub in general) are not capitalists, who throw away their values, and the reason why they started those projects, over board for money. But there is a lot of money to make, so the pile of money will be huge and it will be hard to say no.

The #fedipact isn't strict enough imho. The fediverse is like emails. If you want your emails not be scanned/slaughtered and your data sold to shady people/companies, you better not write important stuff to people who own a #gmail #hotmail #outlook #gmx #yahoo etc. address. With the fediverse it's a little bit different. Even the instances which aren't owned by meta could be a threat, because there is an access to the federated data. Instances that do not block meta should be blocked, too.

If you think I am polemic, please think about why a multi-(m/b)illion-dollar company wants to join the fediverse? Are they afraid of something, if yes, we shouldn't come closer, because powerful predators will attack if they are afraid. If the big corp is not afraid, the only other way is that they might slaughter the fediverse to get control and get richer.

In short: We build something very fragile like a sand castle and meta will be the bully destroying it.

The solution: Block meta as soon as their domains are known.

Addition: There are even rumors that admins of huge instances are getting paid to not block, but even advertise metas instance and they had to sign an #nda