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by smoldesu 1085 days ago
Many of the people on Mastodon today are perfectly happy without Meta users on it, myself included. If they try to hard-fork, I'm fairly certain the self-hosters would just walk away and let the links/outgoing support break on Meta's app. They need peering networks more than peering networks need them.
2 comments
yborg 1084 days ago
>They need peering networks more than peering networks need them.

Explain how a peer that is >100x the size of the Fediverse needs it at all.

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luckystarr 1084 days ago
They don't have a diverse content-base yet. The Fediverse "shall provide it" to them if it goes according to their plans. Once this deed is done, the Fediverse is no longer valuable to them.
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astrange 1084 days ago
The EU believes social networks and messaging apps should all connect to each other. This is a bad idea (it makes spam filtering impossible) but nevertheless it's in the DMA.

Mastodon admins might find that law applies to them too.

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smoldesu 1084 days ago
I'd wager Mastodon is ready for this. Abhorrent/illegal/spamming/offensive/offending instances can be defederated from to remove liability at a server-level, and users can self-moderate with "block instance" functionality from their client. Both sides are sufficiently equipped to filter their respective feeds.

It's the realm of pure fantasy to envision a world where the EU bans an original community project to force everyone into a Meta-designed fork. Mastodon users should be safe as long as they're free to run their own server and client software.

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astrange 1084 days ago
My point is that Mastodon admins may not be allowed to defederate or block Meta, any more than Meta is allowed to not connect to them.
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smoldesu 1084 days ago
That's fine. Blocking their entire website from ever hitting your feed takes 2 clicks.

My point is that this really doesn't matter. If they use ActivityPub as-written, both clients and servers can stop Meta content from reaching their feed. If you just find Threads content annoying, you long-press the post and tap "Block Instance". If you're a site admin and have been given a legitimate reason to block Meta for API abuse (eg. poorly-moderated content, spam, advertisement) then you can exercise your defederation power and be within your right.

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dahwolf 1084 days ago
DMA applies only to gatekeeper companies, of which there's less than 20. It doesn't apply to Mastodon instances.

Further, interoperability concerns messaging apps, not social media apps.

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