Crossposted this in case of takedown. Hope this isn't breaking the rules.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1370464
Original Title: At least one lemmy.world admin accepted an off the record meeting with meta, and they won't tell you about it.
Edit: I cannot confirm if the Original OP is telling the truth or lying, figured I wanted more people to see this so you can decide for yourselves who to believe.
Edit 2: Archived Link: https://archive.is/aJrnU
Edit 3: Hmm... Interesting... The original post was taken down instead of admins making a response. I mean, if I were an admin with nothing to hide, I'd just simply say "I did not have a secret meeting with anyone representing Meta/Facebook" then maybe lock the thread if stuff gets too out of hand. Deleting a post is not the right thing to do, and even if you are innocent, now you just made yourself look bad.
Edit 4: I appreciate the fact that the mods elected to use the lock thread option instead of outright removing this post. I do not agree with your decision, but I respect the fact that you left this post up. Alright, so that's the end of this, hopefully the next time someone make accusations, they provide evidence. Also, if you are making a legitimate accusation, make sure to crosspost to different instances to make takedowns more difficult. So to conclude this, I want to state these facts:
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The Original OP did not seem to have provided any evidence.
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The Original Post was removed and the Original OP was banned from the community which the post was in.
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None of the admins of lemmy.world made a statement in response to the accusations.
You can draw whatever conclusion you want from this. But without any further information, this discussion cannot continue any longer, since a mod has already locked this post.
Archive Link of where the page was, now showing an error message: https://archive.is/5BWIw
Don't belive me? Ask them.
Fosstodon admins were at least transparent and shared with their community when they were approached by meta for an off the record meeting, which was awesome. They also declined that meeting and shared screenshots of them doing so.
But lemmy.world admins won't tell you that at least one of them accepted that same meeting request. Why won't they say that?
Tell your community that you accepted a meeting with meta. Thats not wrong in and of itself, but I feel it is shady/not right when you're communicating about a wait-and-see approach, while having meetings with the company in question yet not being transparent about it.
@ruud@lemmy.world care to comment?
Also, I'm spinning up my own instance because I don't trust this platform to folks who aren't transparent. Don't ask me to join, it's going to be just for me for now. I don't even know that I have time to admin an instance, but my trust is wearing thin based on the facts at hand. So, it's what I'm doing.
The fediverse is particularly bad in this respect. In my time here (since Nov 2022) I've come to treat any unsubstantiated negative ad hominem opinion as essentially "fake news" ... and honestly, everyone should. Twice I've paid attention to "an issue" as it was gaining traction and both times I've seen, in real time, the "chinese whispers" effect result in the "story" mutate right in people's "mouths" as they post about it. Honestly, it's worth chasing down such a thing at least once just to see it in action ... it's quite revelatory.
It's "sea lioning" to ask for receipts ... but if you're polite and well-meaning about it I think it's totally justifiable about these sorts of things, not least because you'll be surprised how many people just don't have any (sometimes even when they loudly claim they do)! But also, because the rumour mill effect is real, sea lioning, at some point becomes a valuable antidote.
There are probably a few factors that make this bad here (not that it's good on any social media platform):
Combine that with how easy and satisfying it is to simply post a false/unsubstantiated statement without any consequences, and you get a rumour mill.
Getting back to point 3 above ... a valuable an important perspective on that is that actually achieving those goals is not a simple or trivial task. Instead, it is likely a boring, collaborative and deliberative task. So, the moment there's any amount of excitement and engagement around a "bad person or act" on here ... the moment you feel the need to click, read and respond ... you're probably just being driven by engagement habits and reflexes and not at all contributing to the goals and values that the "bad actor" has allegedly compromised.
That being said, on this point, I think it's justifiable to ask for a clear statement from your admin about what relations they have with meta and what the federation or defederation policy is regarding threads. That was so ages ago, and IMO, fediverse admins have a thing or two to learn about being healthily communicative and transparent.
It's a growing pain as the fediverse transitions from "hacker side project" to "mainstream" ... on which ... be sure to donate and be part of the dialogue with admins as it's probably the best way to organically evolve the culture around this.
Ruud seems to me pretty transparent about things but I don't know what has or hasn't been said about meta/threads as I'm not on any of their instances. Given the size of their mastodon instance (top 5 IIRC), however, it's very likely he was at least contacted and, I'd wager probably did have some meeting of some sort.
Given the *.world instances are essentially mainstream, I'm going to bet that lemmy.world won't defederate from Threads ... which is honestly a reasonable position. But it's also very reasonable to not want to be on such an instance and move.
IMO, there doesn't need to be "drama" around this. The fediverse isn't one thing with one culture and one set of values. *diverse is literally in the name. Having options and freedom of association is the whole damn point. Talk, work out where you stand and where others stand and then act appropriately. There's no giant conspiracy to destroy the fediverse here ... we're more likely to do that to ourselves with out propensity for "drama".
Ha! You’ve done a very good job of explaining why I was reluctant to reply at all, even to comment on how silly the whole thing seems. I didn’t want to throw fuel on the fire. I did it anyway, though, and just did again. Oh well.