Aral Balkan
It’s very interesting to see who in the fediverse is falling in line behind Silicon Valley and Big Tech and who is not.
And no, we can’t all just get along.
Big Tech is the antithesis of the cooperative and humanitarian values of federation and decentralisation. You can either be an apologist for surveillance capitalists or support the nascent ethical alternatives to their toxic business model that’s detrimental to human rights and democracy.
Pick a side. History will remember your choice.
Aral Balkan
@mpoletiek “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” – Karl Popper
mpoletiek
@aral lol... I think the point of federation is we don't have to align to a binary framework of we don't want to.
Aral Balkan
@mpoletiek Are the two entirely separate?
mpoletiek
@aral are we talking about violence or technology choices individuals have available to them? Because all I'm saying is there are more than 2 choices when it comes to social media architectures.
Aral Balkan
@peturdainn Resisting corporate takeover is not the same as killing itself. Quite the contrary.
petur 🔵😶
@aral it's funny how the fediverse is already killing itself... well done
Mastodon Migration VOTED
@aral It is easy to get drawn into divisive rhetoric. Assume these demons are intentionally sowing dissention, are you not doing their bidding by gunning down half of our side before the enemy even arrives at the gate? We win this by standing together against corporate predation, by building solid consensus based on real information, not by creating chaos with assumptions and purity tests. You are right, this is a terrible threat, but we have the power here if we are smart, prepared and united.
Aral Balkan
@mastodonmigration Well, if half “our side” was ready to fall in line behind Silicon Valley and Big Tech they were not on “our side”, were they?
Facebook is so anathema to everything that federation and decentalisation stands for in principle that none of this should have to be said.
Mastodon Migration VOTED
@aral That's the point, though. Half of our side is not behind Silicon Valley and Big Tech. By and large most people here despise corporate social media and have come here to escape its predation. We are not going back, and we are not going to let them take over our Fediverse. There are few enemies here. Some might need to understand better how these demon's fight, their history and what we need to do to prepare for them. But we can do that. We can build an effective response. We have the power.
Aral Balkan
@mastodonmigration Right, so speaking out against Facebook/Meta/etc., is not “gunning down half our side” because half our side is not on the Facebook/Meta/Big Tech/Surveillance Capitalism bandwagon.
No one who isn’t in bed with Silicon Valley/Big Tech has reason to get upset about anything I’ve said.
James Harris
@aral this feels like a pretty awkward stance. You have a platform that has grown significantly in the last year due to Twitter’s implosion. Billions of people use Meta products (Facebook/Instagram/Messenger/Whatsapp). I don’t feel like the Mastodon community is wholly comprised of big tech haters and FOSS advocates like it once was. I don’t want Meta to come here, but at the same time “free and open” swings both ways, you can’t stop them from adopting protocols, and that was by design of FOSS
Aral Balkan
@jbwharris You can’t stop them from adopting protocols, true.
That doesn’t mean you have to lay down a red carpet for them either.
Social pressure works.
The design of ActivityPub, Mastodon, etc., is compatible with how Big Tech scales. So there’s nothing technically stopping them from centralising/capturing it (in the same way the web, email, XMPP has been centralised and captured—so not entirely, of course—but for all intents and purposes insofar as the mainstream is concerned).
Twenty Stops
@aral ... And where will history find you? As the bully? Sniping users' comments with Marjorie Taylor Green styled rabid defenses is not having a discussion, it's a clubbing fest from the middle ages.
For or against who or what exactly? Nobody has a clue what the actual intent is yet. Are you raising an army for an insurrection? Don't you think the world has seen more than enough of this already?
Don't like Meta? I'm not liking what I've read either, but this is NOT helping anyone!
Aral Balkan
@TwentyStops Ah, yeah, I’m the bully. Not the trillion-dollar surveillance capitalist.
What planet are you living on?
Aral Balkan
@Catweazle Hmm, I hadn’t realised Vivaldi was owned by its employees. That’s definitely a huge plus. I just really wish they were also open source.
Catweazle
@aral, I'm using a Browser from an European cooperative since 7 Years, which also put this Mastodon instance for it's users.
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