I strongly encourage instance admins to defederate from Facebook/Threads/Meta.
They aren’t some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They’re a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:
- Helping enhance genocides in countries
- Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
- Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make “facebook” most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
- Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
- Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren’t able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
- Even now, they’re on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.
Yes, I know one of the Mastodon folks have said they’re not worried. Frankly, I think they’re being laughably naive >.<. Facebook/Meta - and Instagram’s CEO - might say pretty words - but words are cheap and from a known-hostile entity like Meta/Facebook they are almost certainly just a manipulation strategy.
In my view, they should be discarded as entirely irrelevant, or viewed as deliberate lies, given their continued atrocious behaviour and open manipulation of vast swathes of the population.
Facebook have large amounts of experience on how to attack and astroturf social media communities - hell I would be very unsurprised if they are already doing it, but it’s difficult to say without solid evidence ^.^
Why should we believe anything they say, ever? Why should we believe they aren’t just trying to destroy a competitor before it gets going properly, or worse, turn it into yet another arm of their sprawling network of services, via Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - or perhaps Embrace, Extend, Consume would be a better term in this case?
When will we ever learn that openly-manipulative, openly-assimilationist corporations need to be shoved out before they can gain any foothold and subsume our network and relegate it to the annals of history?
I’ve seen plenty of arguments claiming that it’s “anti-open-source” to defederate, or that it means we aren’t “resilient”, which is wrong ^.^:
- Open source isn’t about blindly trusting every organisation that participates in a network, especially not one which is known-hostile. Threads can start their own ActivityPub network if they really want or implement the protocol for themselves. It doesn’t mean we lose the right to kick them out of most - or all - of our instances ^.^.
- Defederation is part of how the fediverse is resilient. It is the immune system of the network against hostile actors (it can be used in other ways, too, of course). Facebook, I think, is a textbook example of a hostile actor, and has such an unimaginably bad record that anything they say should be treated as a form of manipulation.
Edit 1 - Some More Arguments
In this thread, I’ve seen some more arguments about Meta/FB federation:
- Defederation doesn’t stop them from receiving our public content:
- This is true, but very incomplete. The content you post is public, but what Meta/Facebook is really after is having their users interact with content. Defederation prevents this.
- Federation will attract more users:
- Only if Threads makes it trivial to move/make accounts on other instances, and makes the fact it’s a federation clear to the users, and doesn’t end up hosting most communities by sheer mass or outright manipulation.
- Given that Threads as a platform is not open source - you can’t host your own “Threads Server” instance - and presumably their app only works with the Threads Server that they run - this is very unlikely. Unless they also make Threads a Mastodon/Calckey/KBin/etc. client.
- Therefore, their app is probably intending to make itself their user’s primary interaction method for the Fediverse, while also making sure that any attempt to migrate off is met with unfamiliar interfaces because no-one else can host a server that can interface with it.
- Ergo, they want to strongly incentivize people to stay within their walled garden version of the Fediverse by ensuring the rest remains unfamiliar - breaking the momentum of the current movement towards it. ^.^
- We just need to create “better” front ends:
- This is a good long-term strategy, because of the cycle of enshittification.
- Facebook/Meta has far more resources than us to improve the “slickness” of their clients at this time. Until the fediverse grows more, and while they aren’t yet under immediate pressure to make their app profitable via enshittification and advertising, we won’t manage >.<
- This also assumes that Facebook/Meta won’t engage in efforts to make this harder e.g. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish/Consume, or social manipulation attempts.
- Therefore we should defederate and still keep working on making improvements. This strategy of “better clients” is only viable in combination with defederation.
PART 2 (post got too long!)
I do games research for a living and have access to pretty much every relevant VR headset made since the first Oculus.
VR is very much a gimmick. There is no killer app or feature, and the closest thing we get to one are exergames like Beat Saber. Games like HL: Alyx don’t really offer enough novelty to make people invest several thousand dollars. Similarly, virtual desktops are neat but really don’t offer any tangible benefits compared to a large monitor to make up for the added discomfort of having to wear a VR headset. The Snow Crash-style metaverse is and always has been absolute bullshit. It’s just a less convenient version of the metaverse we already have.
VR has some potential to create cool embodied experiences, but the benefits so far are so slight that the technology is looking a lot like 3D TV and HD-DVD: technically impressive, no meaningful improvement in the holistic user experience. Hence, it remains a gimmick.
There are multiple games that wouldn’t be the same without VR. A Township Tale, Gorilla Tag, Echo VR. None of these would be nearly as fun without VR. The biggest issue with VR is probably the lack of some more linear story driven AAA games that many people are used to. And you don’t need to invest several thousand dollars for VR. Stand-alone VR with the quest has been a thing for years
You’re kind of making my point for me here. The games that exist for VR don’t really add anything that didn’t already exist but with less convenient controls. A Township Tale is fundamentally just an MMO in VR, and we have already have dozens of MMOs that are easier to play. Similarly, we have a ton of story-based games on other platforms that work perfectly well. VR as a medium doesn’t really do anything for the gaming experience in those cases.
Games that make use of the inherently different interaction modalities of VR, like Beat Saber and Gorilla Tag, show some promise in terms of new ways of playing games. That kind of interaction is really interesting and brings something new to the table. Unfortunately, they’re also effortful to play and as such are generally difficult to play for extended periods of time. To some extent they all become exergames. Since they also need a fair amount of space to play there’s a certain barrier to entry for playing them.
I think the the standalone headsets are the future of VR, mostly due to the lower instep to get started. I even own a Quest 2 that I play sometimes (admittedly mostly Beat Saber and Ragnarock). However, the standalone VR headsets are also kind of limited in terms of computational power, so there’s some competition from the casual and mobile market. The mobile (and console, and PC) platforms also don’t have the added baggage of physical excersion that comes with VR, which makes them more accessible than VR.
Again, there really isn’t much of a case for VR beyond exergames. Games being VR can be a selling point for the true believers in VR, but for most people it’s kind of a fun experience that isn’t very meaningful.
Yeah I really wish PCVR was still alive and well instead of the stagnant industry that it currently is. I bought both a Rift S and a Quest 2 thinking that full-length story driven games were going to become a thing, but then the hardware limitations of standalone kinda killed that. Now I don’t really have any interest in buying a Quest 3 or a Vision Pro because I don’t have any faith that there’s going to be developers making those kinds of experiences anymore.
Games like HL: Alyx don’t really offer enough novelty to make people invest several thousand dollars.
I have to disagree with this statement. Having played through that game multiple times, it just provides a level of immersion that no other VR game has touched yet. Heck, from an immersion perspective, it pretty much beats every game I’ve ever played in my life.
The problem with the VR industry is that so few games approach HL: Alyx’s level of immersion. Of course, it’d be hard to justify the $300-$400 asking price. VR devs are all content on making these simple arcade style games with simple graphics that can run on the Quest 2.
The problem is the size of the potential player base. A VR headset for $300-500 (and that’s on the low end) is already a big ask for one game, but then you also need a gaming PC. To get the full fat immersive experience you’ll need a fairly beefy PC (3070 or better, 11th gen Intel or 3000 series AMD CPU etc) and a Valve Index ($1000 iirc). The costs add up very quickly, and that’s a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people. That’s also why the Quest 2 is such a common target for development: it’s relatively more affordable and as a result has a much bigger install base.
There’s also a whole slew of physical space issues with being tied to a computer that the standalone headsets solves, but that’s a broader argument beyond the cost of the headset itself.
Not for owners, for sure - but for prospective ones? The catalogue of possible games/uses is a bit thin for a 1k+ piece of kit… I think it would be incredible to own a HOTAS warthog but I’m not playing flying games very often right now, you know?
If I did, I probably would because at that point I want to enjoy the kit I have. Imo, that means right now, a flight sim controller set up due my use case is a bit of a gimmick - but if I already owned it I’d seek out things to utilise it, reducing its gimmicky position in ‘the roster’.
Gimmicky is kind of a subjective term in that way, it’s all about the individual utility offered.
But yeah - that comment was a bit snarky, I get that too.
