I’m unsure. A lot of people are saying yes, but they are also implying to do so preemptively which I don’t agree with. I would rather wait a few weeks and see what effect it has on this instance before making a decision.

Absolutely, yes. It’s hard for me to see federating with corporations such as Facebook Meta much differently than doing so with an instance run by spammers.

Yes, refuse to federate from the get-go. By the time the hostilities become open, it’ll be far too late not only to attempt to repair any existing damage, but even to avoid further damage coming down the line like a juggernaut.

Plenty of large corporations have shown time and again that SOP is to take over and kill any potential threats before they can develop. When a corporation finds another corporation using their resources for gain, even while still following terms and conditions, the lawyers come out and the fur flies. Why should we be pushovers just because we’re not rich and don’t have a legal fiction to hide behind?

The Fediverse is a direct competitor to monolithic social networks. That’s definitely how they see us, and it’s how we should see them. I know that there’s a “share and share alike” ethos behind all of this, and that blocking any entity arbitrarily feels wrong and unfair, but it really isn’t. I also know that, assuming that things go well, one day there will be successful business ventures that evolve naturally from the Fediverse, and the community is going to have to decide how to respond to those situations in time. But right now we’re a group of little pigs playing in a somewhat secure pen, and a huge, voracious wolf is asking us to open the gate so it can join in our game. By the time we realize that we haven’t seen Jerry or Louise for a while, the wolf will have changed the lock on the gate and spread rumors about us to the other animals.

If people still feel uncomfortable with refusing a large corporation “just because”, then make a policy: “Due to the dangers inherent in unequal business relationships, it is our general policy to refuse federation with any entity with an average annual turnover in excess of US$200,000.” You can always make exceptions, and even change the policy later, but it can ease your conscience that you aren’t unfairly targeting one entity without justification; you’re sticking to a sensible policy.

I vote no, but I highly suspect I’m in the minority. I think defederating now just fast forwards us to the end of the enshitification process people are concerned about. Feels like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot out of a fear that we might get shot.

I don’t think so, yet.

It’s programming.dev though. Do any Meta platform host a substantial tech community? I honestly have never heard of any, but I might be wrong. Maybe they should be joining us?

As a matter of principle: yes.

Don’t know how much impact threads will have on lemmy though since the types of content are so different, kind of like how I don’t interact that much with mastodon from lemmy. Maybe I’m wrong though in which case I hope someone more knowledgeable about ActivityPub can correct me.

Here are some good articles and responses I’ve seen on this topic:

• https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/06/19/not-that-kind-of-open
  • counter argument
• https://wedistribute.org/2023/06/john-gruber-no-understand/
  • rebuttals to counter
• https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
  • historic precedent and prevailing trends with open protocols

Yes.

I’ve already made my view on the issue known in other comments, but I’ve just stumbled upon an argument that I think is really important to consider, and should make de-federation an absolute must.

Allowing Meta in goes directly against the idea of Fediverse, and we should fight it as much as possible.

This is a literal quote from the main header on https://www.fediverse.to/

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

I’ve seen a lot of comments mentioning that defederating with Meta goes against the principles and main ideas of the Fediverse, that it should be inclusive and allow people to connect. But, judging by this main selling point of the Fediverse, it sounds to me like Meta shouldn’t be in the Fediverse do begin with.

Defederate!

Yes. We should avoid them like the plague.

Yes, because we already know exactly how this is going to go. Their need to constantly make more and more money means that we know TODAY what is going to happen: EEE. We know this because of Fark, Digg, now Reddit, and to a lesser extent Slashdot and StackOverflow. The profiteers aren’t interested in federating, or having well-run communities; they’re interested in money and nothing else. We know for an absolute fact that Meta needs to make money and they’re only interested in the Fediverse because they see money in it (quite simply: because if they didn’t they wouldn’t be).

I completely get “we shouldn’t strike pre-emptively” but if you wait until the third E it’s too late. But we already know it’s not pre-emptive because they’ve already enshittified their own communities. Ever tried scrolling through Arsebook recently without FBP and uBlock Origin? Article - article - ad. Article - article - ad. One item in fucking THREE is crap you’re not interested in. That’s what they want to force onto the Fediverse. We know it today. We have seen what they have done to their own stuff. So when they come sniffing round here we are completely justified in slamming the door in their face even if they promise to be nice this time, because we already know what they want.

“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” and you don’t have to look far. The influx of people into the Fediverse is directly caused by the profit-motivated enshittification of Reddit. If we don’t draw the line here then we have to retreat back from Lemmy and invent something else, which they will then want to enshittify.

Yes, I think we should defederate. Don’t give them free content, and don’t let them monetize Fediverse.

Also, I’m not really interested in having the millions of Facebook and Instagram users here, it’s one of the worst and most bland people and content internet can offer, right behind Tik-Tokers. I don’t see how it would add any value, other than moderation issues.

Yes