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Meta can rage farm Mastodon without controlling it

Meta can introduce their signature rage farming to the Fediverse. They don’t need to control Mastodon. All they have to do is introduce it in their app. Show every Threads user algorithmically filtered content from the Fediverse precisely tailored for maximum rage. When the rage inducing content came from Mastodon, the enraged Thread users will flood that Mastodon threads with the familiar rage-filled Facebook comment section vomit. This in turn will enrage Mastodon users, driving them to engage, at least in the short to mid term. All the while Meta sells ads in-between posts. And that’s how they rage farm the Fediverse without EEE-ing the technology. Meta can effectively EEE the userbase. The last E is something Meta may not intend but would likely happen. It consists of a subset of the Fediverse users leaving the network or segregating themselves in a small vomit-free bubble.

Some people asked what EEE is:

oceane ,

It already happened. They sent their emails just in the middle of the Reddit migration. According to Foucault, powerful individuals use psychiatry, psychoanalysis, sociology, and social sciences to “discipline bodies and minds and make them obedient and submissive”. He called this concept “biopower”. For example, my most read blog post (which is French-speaking) details how it works in the scope of digital abuse and I’ve only started it two months ago, with almost 500 views on this one alone; it has 6 references and I’ve found other dispositives of power since.

There’s no reason to give them the benefit of doubt over not conducting experiments on unconsenting subjects precisely to drive us mad and (1) make instances defederate, (2) put large Mastodon instance admins under pressure and encourage them to defect, (3) cap the Reddit migration.

Facebook has probably exerced biopower without even starting its app. It was only a first strike and we can only expect more to come and damage control, especially by moving to Bonfire Networks ASAP and develop a culture of deescalating conflicts. Kinda difficult with so many abuse survivors here – Mastodon are first and foremost Twitter refugees, and not only does Twitter abuse its users, it also monetizes real-life abuse. (Its addictive character can be used as an illusion of solidarity as part of a “flight” coping mechanism, and how do you max out this illusion? Through moral judgements (gossiping). This especially makes sense in the context of a deliberate scarcity in attention, to put its users in concurrence, also leading to conflictual relationships. And so on.)

YellowBendyBoy ,

I don’t think Meta will find it a good use of their time to basically build automatic cross posting. People will do it manually with screenshooting and they need the social graph to measure if something is really rage inducing. And I don’t think mastodon users will care for threads posts if they’re not federated tbh

Yoz ,

I read somewhere that all the Admins are blocking Facebook on a firewall level so that they can’t touch any instance. Hope all Admins do it.

vegantomato ,
@vegantomato@lemmy.world avatar

They can just pin Reddit users against reality. That will do the trick.

spark947 ,

Can their be some sort of federation license that ensures privacy is protected between federated instances under financial penalty?

misk ,

So many knee-jerk reactions.

This is an open protocol with complete freedom to create apps and scripts. If this becomes an issue users could block certain interactions in a granular manner, for example block replies from certain instances.

XMPP being thrown around as an example makes me think people who do it weren’t there to witness it. XMPP by itself wasn’t really used by many but there were also many more popular messaging platforms at the time. XMPP wasn’t killed because it wasn’t ever alive other than short golden era when it was mostly a way to open itself to third party clients (Gaim, Trillian, Adium etc) which was very nice.

Next year EU is going to make all tech giants open in this way again. Mastodon can EEE Threads too by being a better implementation. It has no commercial pressure and Activity Pub and formatting tweets is not as complex as a web browser engine or a word processor document format which are way better examples of successful EEE.

If you defederate you’ll end up exactly where XMPP is.

tj111 ,

Next year EU is going to make all tech giants open in this way again

Can you expand on that?

misk ,

…europa.eu/…/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-an…

Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:

  • allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations

Example of the “don’ts” - Gatekeeper platforms may no longer:

  • treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper’s platform
  • prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms
  • track end users outside of the gatekeepers’ core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising, without effective consent having been granted
Double_A ,
@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Ok WTF does “EEE” mean? I’ve seen people throw it around as if it’s some totally common abbreviation. Even if I google for it, all I find is some horse virus.

misk ,

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

Embrace an open standard by using it yourself, start extending it at a pace competitors can’t (preferably obfuscating how it works), leave everyone behind.

A good example is Microsoft Internet Explorer back in the day. Web technologies like HTML and CSS are open standards and at the time fairly straightforward. Once Microsoft hit critical mass by bundling IE with Windows they took leadership from Netscape and started adding more and more proprietary crap like ActiveX which some sites opted to use because everyone was using IE anyway and people using other browsers were forced to use IE. This was also a major issue for Linux users at the time.

It took years of regulatory / antitrust pressure, tremendous effort from Mozilla and their browsers, as well as big players like Google and Apple embracing KHTML (later forked into WebKit and then Blink engines) to unscrew humanity from that depressing era of internet history.

Web browsers working slightly differently is still an issue without anyone breaking compatibility on purpose. It was just so much worse when someone did it maliciously.

Elkaki123 ,

I agree with the sentiment, I’m not a fan of preemptively blocking meta on instance level, especially when everyone was touting about how the fediverse is corporation resistant and by design it is resilient because of it’s horizontal nature, but at the first sign of threat they resort to the nuclear option.

Having said that, Lemmy specifically lacks tools on the user level, especially blocking instances. If a user doesn’t want to associate at all that is understandable (privacy concerns, not wanting to interact with hate groups, etc) but right now they can only block communities and users individually, which would make it impossible to block meta.

Lastly, I feel there are avenues that haven’t been properly explored, like forcing them to open source if they want to federate. (On the grounds of privacy concerns and security) In practice that would be the same as blocking them, but it would laid out a good foundation for new companies that want to enter the space without having to discriminate on a case by case basis.

Problem is that blocking is the nuclear option and everyone blovking before something comes out, which no one knows the danger yet like a hate speach platform would entail, goes against the spirit of the fediverse.

misk ,

I don’t think Mastodon allows user blocking instance either but I don’t see why that can not change in the future.

I’m not sure forcing open source on other instances is the right way to go. I imagine that in the future there could be instances that offer more polished experience, maybe a really nice proprietary app, that are commercially funded. As long as we have open alternatives and interoperability then we should be fine. In terms of privacy it’s a matter of regulations.

I also fully respect choice of some instances to defederate from commercial platforms but in a rational environment it would be akin to subset of Linux users opting to use free software only with no binary blobs and things like that. Perfectly reasonable thing to do if that’s what your ethics / philosophy dictates. Just don’t think it’s something that is a net benefit to average person.

Elkaki123 ,

Good points. I’m sure there are other potential solutions to reduce the fear of EEE taking place here. I don’t really think EEE would work, since instances are supposed to be small and operate horizontally, it is kind of impossible to kill Lemmy as long as we understand that we need to spread out a little bit (otherwise huge instances being defederated hugely impacts the user experience)

One thing though, Mastodon does allow for blocking domains. I just tried it over Mastodon.online and also through the fedilabs app, both are working. Kbin also has that feature, wish they implemented it to Lemmy so that we can empower users to customize their experience without needing to self host.

Illecors ,

My reason for preemptively blocking Threads is much simpler - Lemmy exposes a TON of data from all instances. I simply don’t want to feed the data hog any more than absolutely necessary.

Elkaki123 ,

But a counter is that much of that information is already public and can be scraped, they aren’t gaining much on outside meta users that they aren’t already able to do.

Best advice at the end of the day is that for social media, unless advertised on privacy, never post anything you dont want to be public. And for cases like lemmy, expect even metadata to be available for anyone interested.

I understand the wish to not interact with meta, even if its for privacy concerns.

But Im a firm believer that it is the user first who needs to make that decision, not the instance. But as I said, Lemmy being the only one of the big fedi platforms right now that doesnt have a feature for instance/domain blocking user level kinds of screws this up.

Illecors ,

There is no technical way for the user to make this decision as data gets federated across instance databases, not users’ browsers. I do run my own, which is what enables me to make this decision, and anyone agreeing with it is welcome to come along.

Elkaki123 ,

When you say that there is no technical way, you sre referring to users not being able to block instances right?

If it’s that I don’t think it is that difficult to implement, Mastodon already allows for that. And also the app “connect for lemmy” in its last update has given the option to block instances user level, I don’t really know yet if it blocks all users from that indtance from appearing or only communities as I haven’t tested it yet.

Regardless to say, if we can get the appropriate tools this definitely could be a decision for users to take, if we make it so that they can completely block any and all content coming from a big instance.

Illecors ,

A user blockin visibility of content is very different from that content not being federated.

sotolf ,

You forgot one E, Enshittify ;)

mojo ,

They already have been lol. The whole fedi is up in arms about it and it’s already dominated the conversation without any algorithm!

avidamoeba OP ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

🤯👏

d4rknusw1ld ,

Man I was actually excited for threads. Then I had to see EVERYONE without the option to just see things I followed. Then it sucked immediately.

Sprinkled3450 ,

I can see a lawsuit down the line targeting the big lemmy/mastodon instances. I don’t know how it will work but corporations will come up with some sort of discrimination claim if they are not allowed to be federated.

credo ,

I don’t see this winning, but I do see SLAPP suits and harassment bring an issue for our administrators. You also have to consider LEO investigations and cybersecurity requirements. This is something folks need to understand and harden themselves for now, or get out of the game.

HandOfDoom ,

The moment I start seeing Meta content here is the moment I leave. People are being very, VERY naive in thinking that the Fediverse is immune to corporate interest. Judging by the Mastodon response, we are already seeing that it’s not.

Thedogspaw ,
@Thedogspaw@midwest.social avatar

Then block meta you don’t need to leave make them leave you were here first we built this space not them don’t surrender to meta

zos_kia ,

The whole point of open protocols is that anyone can use it. Just block any instance you don’t like and you’re good!

Squiglet ,

In email world, gmail became so successful that now its a problem when they decide to blacklist any other email domains that Alphabet don’t like. We should never allow profit driven entities get their foot in the door. We should develop a strong immune system against such profit seeking groups/companies etc. We should remain open to people, non-profits, universities and the likes only.

zos_kia ,

I think the immune system is federation itself. Everything is in the open, users have the control, how do you develop a competitive advantage in that context? I think it’s the end of “winner takes all”.

aditya369007 ,

What does EEE stand for?

variouslegumes ,

Embrace, extend, extinguish

avidamoeba OP ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

EEE. Some useful context.

Risk ,

Embrace-Extend-Extinguish

An example

MentalEdge ,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

It’s the three steps process for killing an open source competitor. First you adopt it, start using it, then you improve on it, but keep these improvements to yourself, then you break compatibility.

You now have the bigger better version of the exact same thing, and no-one else gets a slice.

nukul4r ,

en.wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis…

For an excellent writeup how Google used this to kill XMPP read this (and an explanation why this is a real concern for Mastadon/Fediverse):

ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-ne…

Kolonel_Kahlua ,
@Kolonel_Kahlua@lemmy.world avatar

Endorse-Expand-Extingush or some variation. In essence you:

  1. Adopt the technologies.
  2. Expand within the community and inflate user interaction.
  3. Cut off the free elements / monopolise the platform

You’ll see loads of historic examples of this and various theories on how Meta intends to do it. Fascinating if not depressing reading.

15liam20 ,

Enroll, Engage and Enrage

EuroNutellaMan ,
@EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world avatar

Estonian E-boys Enterprises

Double_A ,
@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Eastern equine encephalitis

It’s some virus that causes brain infections and is transmitted by mosquitos. Meta developed it to make people stupid so they like their content.

Annoyed_Crabby ,

The first thing that will happen if Thread user trying to brigade Mastodon is Mastodon will defederate Thread, and that’s the end of the story.

avidamoeba OP ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Rochko didn’t sound that trigger-happy in his blog post from yesterday and he’s (the Mastodon team) running some of the biggest instances. And so I think it’s still an open question which instances would defederate and when. Maybe mastodon.social won’t defederate ever. That’ll cause a massive split.

alternative_igloo ,

I have to agree, that blog post was concerning in its openness to Meta joining ActivityPub. Any fediverse user who knows a little internet history should be very worried right now

Dark_Blade ,
@Dark_Blade@lemmy.world avatar

Along with Facebook, we’ll also have to be prepared to deal with bought-out Fediverse platforms who’re willing to federate with Meta. Do whatever to cut them off.

Haha ,

FFS from Reddit to Facebook??? I am d‘losing all I can to avoid any of them!!!

ShittyKopper ,

I believe, with Authorized Fetch (what Mastodon calls secure mode) blocking intermediaries won’t be needed, as instances will have to cryptographically “authorize” themselves to receive/send data, and you can just say “no” to any requests coming from threads.net, acting basically as a “defederation enforcement mode”.

I could be wrong though, haven’t caught up on the exact details.

amanneedsamaid , (edited )

If accurate, this is awesome!

EDIT: Couldn’t another solution be allowing users to block entire instances, i.e. block Threads? That way even users using an instance federating with threads would have a choice. Not a solution on a large scale, but could be useful.

PeleSpirit ,

I did from Mastodon but I’m not sure you can from Lemmy. hachyderm.io/@crowgirl/110663465238573628

amanneedsamaid ,

Thats great! I doubt lemmy has implemented that yet. (At least to the point users can easily interact with it). But doesnt seem too difficult to implement if need be.

breadsmasher ,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

If instances defederate from threads, the users rageposts wont even be seen on mastodon

avidamoeba OP ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Yeah, that’s the Meta-free island scenario.

Thedogspaw ,
@Thedogspaw@midwest.social avatar

What I want to know is how them federateing does to lemmy thats my home meta better not f it up

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