A lot of people are on the Fediverse to escape these corporate data-hoarder apps. It’s so weird to still see people embracing the abusers. It’s like we’ve learned nothing.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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No we've learned, but some people just don't care.
fr
Reddit Exodus: "reddit is being corporate and shitty and greedy, time to bounce"
Facebook shows up: "oh, let's let them; in fact, we should be happy that they're coming to the fediverse! only good things can come from this"
like it's as if y'all forgot the thing that just happened; why are you all so quick to give the corporation that only cares for money a chance
Thanks for sharing the info as I’m sure there will be a few folks to jump on this. Personally, I don’t want anywhere near this.
So it begins
Embrace
Extend
EXTERMINATE!
What’s the problem like? Before I do something stupid…
Ask yourself this: why have you come to the Fediverse in the first place?
Some people just went to Fediverse to migrate out of reddit. Might not be aware or still new in the realm of privacy protection.
I am one of those people who migrated, and I don't want to be part of any other social media plattform that is run by megacorps. (haven't found a good content rich alternative to youtube though)
I don’t know how futile this battle is, as it’s undeniable that content are still made on platforms hosted my those megacorps. For now I start with privacy friendly frontends. Libreddit for the reddit stuff and piped for youtube.
It kinda sucks that those megacorps lured the people/youth in with a prospect of fame and money to produce content for them. Turning what was once a creative pasttime into a tedious job.
Invidious exists. While it is still youtube it at the very least respects your privacy.
To own my own data and feed and have some control over what's pushed at me?
I mean, I get it. Some people hate X and Meta. I hate them too. But if my aim was to get away from those two, I'd be on Tumblr, not Mastodon. If I was concerned that my postings to "social media" can be abused, I wouldn't use Mastodon either, it's completely open and there's very little concept of privacy.
To put it bluntly, Meta doesn't even need to join the Mastoverse with an ActivityPub instance to vacuum up your Mastoverse data. It just needs single accounts to join the big instances and follow the "Federated feed" on them, doing a little algorithmic work to link accounts to Facebook accounts. It's actually easier for Meta to suck your data from the Mastoverse than it was Twitter or Tumblr. (I deadnamed X, because I assume X's position is so dire that if Meta offered to pay for everyone's feeds, Musk would sell it all. But Twitter, for all of its faults, wouldn't have done that.)
What I'm hoping is that Meta will follow through and join properly, offering ActivityPub feeds and the ability to subscribe to ActivityPub feeds. Doing so will give Meta's own users an off ramp, making it easier for Meta's users to feel able to leave without losing their circle. And it'll give the morons who insist that "OMG MASTODON IS TOO HARD YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE A SERVER!" (I can't be polite about these people any more, the number who brag about their own idiocy is astonishing) a "simple" social network they can join with that off-ramp available for the future.
But no, in my case, I didn't join Mastodon to get away from Meta. I joined so I have the network I want.
this sums up my viewpoint entirely
This is the first and second step in the EEE cycle. They are embracing Mastodon by allowing instances to connect to theirs, and they are extending it by providing a verification service for all Mastodon users - a service which is conveniently dependent on Meta as a centralized authority. Eventually every celebrity will rely on Meta to get verified and Meta will use this to extinguish independent Mastodon instances.
This isn't entirely true. Verification on Mastodon isn't verifying your account for a shiny badge, it's verifying ownership of sites that you link on your profile. If you add a link to a website, and that website links back to your profile, Mastodon will show that one link as verified. But that link needs a special rel="me" attribute to count for verification, which is what Threads now supports.
I am absolutely sure Threads is an attempt at EEE, but this specific feature is a good thing imo. I'd love to see more sites support rel=me links for simple cross-platform account (ownership) verification
But....why?
To invade a network, they do not control and to steal, abuse and sell more non-user data.
Embrace Extend Extinguish
Ok? But why?
Oh God.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But it also represents something bigger: an actual Threads feature from Meta that connects with decentralized social media.
I got this to work in just a few minutes on my Mastodon profile, meaning that a URL to my Threads account now has a green checkmark.
“We’ve also rolled out Threads support for rel=me links to help you verify your identity on platforms like Mastodon,” Mosseri said.
I’ll admit that I didn’t know what rel=me links were when I read Mosseri’s post, so I found a Mastodon support page that explained how they work.
If your eyes are glazing over reading all that, never fear: I found it was ultimately pretty straightforward to make my Mastodon account show a verified checkmark for my Threads profile.
But now that the company rolled out this verification feature that works on non-Threads platforms, I’m starting to believe that we’ll actually see ActivityPub support in Threads proper someday.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Tldr this isn't really anything new for Mastodon. If you link to a website in your profile, you could verify you own that website (or are a representative of it, ie writer for news or a blog) by having that site link back to your profile with a special rel="me" attribute. The new thing is that Threads now also supports these links, so linking your Threads account on your Mastodon account can show you have verified that you own that Threads account. This also works with any other site that supports rel=me links for verification.
I agree with all y'all that Threads is EEE, but I think this particular feature is a really good thing and I'd love to see more sites implement this as a really simple way to cross-verify (ownership of) accounts
Ew. Where in facebook do you work?
Ugh. I hope that instances aggressively push back against this.
All they're doing is adding rel="me" to featured links on Threads account pages, I don't see what issue this creates tbh.
While I'm sure Threads as a whole is an attempt at EEE, I don't think this is that big a deal. In fact, I'd like to see every other site support it, too
As the article mentions, verification on Mastodon is just verifying ownership of some links in your profile (not the entire account), which just checks the target site for a special link back to your profile (specifically adding the rel="me" attribute to it). Now when you add a link to your Threads profile, if it sees a rel=me link pointing back your Threads profile, it will add the rel=me on its end as well. Following the steps in the article, Mastodon will then see the rel=me attribute on the link to your profile there, and show the link as verified, just the same as if it saw any other rel=me link on any other site. And any other site that supports link verification the same way will also now be able to verify ownership of your Threads profile.
Using rel=me links like this is a great simple way to cross-verify all your other accounts and websites without needing to sign in or authorize any access. Just point the two sites at each other and violà!
This is kinds proof they want a pipeline of people moving from Mastodon to threads.
SHIT SHIT