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1. Embed this notice
   Polychrome :blabcat: (polychrome@poly.cybre.city)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jun-2023 14:14:38 JST Polychrome :blabcat:
   [Disclaimer: This post isn't trying to advocate for any decision, I'm trying to make sense of the situation while talking out loud.]
   
   I've always known that the fediverse was going to end up like IRC and split off into closed networks that require vetting to whitelist servers into their federation.
   
   This loss of innocence is an unfortunate milestone that every open federated platform goes through as more people join and public interest grows along with abuse. It was never a question of if but when and what would trigger this eventuality.
   
   Turns out the 'what' is going to be Facebook.
   
   Regardless of where you stand on this the results will be clear: Instances now have to choose between doing nothing and federating with Facebook either directly or accidentally, or taking action and cutting off Facebook by defederating every instance that might even indirectly federate with it.
   
   Since the latter is a management nightmare for admins on a growing system that was intentionality designed to be promiscuous this will eventually turn into a closed off whitelist based no-facebook island.
   
   Any other approach of an open network will eventually federate its posts and social graph with Facebook even if only for a moment, no matter how hard the admins are working to keep them away.
   
   This has been made into an especially hard decision thanks to several admins of large instances deciding to federate with Facebook, making a hard choice even harder - anyone choosing to split away will have to cut a great many people and connections and start over with a smaller network. This is practically a fork.
   
   I wish I had easy solution for this but I don't. No matter which action we take is going to suck just as badly as it was inevitable.
   • Embed this notice
     Polychrome :blabcat: (polychrome@poly.cybre.city)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jun-2023 18:51:21 JST Polychrome :blabcat:

     in reply to

     • Paradox
     @Paradox trusting Facebook to get bored and move away is a legit approach I suppose. Tho you can usually trust Google to do that faster.
   • Embed this notice
     Paradox (paradox@raru.re)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jun-2023 18:51:24 JST Paradox

     in reply to

     @Polychrome I don't know much about how federation works, so I can't give a good answer, but my first thought is that there'll just be a pact/list maintained of instances that don't or do federate with FB, and connections will be based on that. You are correct, this will split the fediverse in twain, and I'm sure that concept has more headaches than I imagine.

     But I have some amount of faith in the tech savvy of the people that develop this place. Some will have an easier time than others. And with any luck, FB will ditch within a year.

   • Embed this notice
     Polychrome :blabcat: (polychrome@poly.cybre.city)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jun-2023 18:52:38 JST Polychrome :blabcat:

     in reply to

     • Niclas Hedhman
     @niclas depends on who and what you federate with. You're not on a big instance so you don't get exposed to much of the network, so that works for you on that regard.
     
     I do check the federated timeline now and then when things on my follows are quiet.
   • Embed this notice
     Niclas Hedhman (niclas@angrytoday.com)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jun-2023 18:52:40 JST Niclas Hedhman

     in reply to

     @Polychrome

     Question, because I am curious; Does people actually read the "Federated Timeline"??
     I mean, how else does the "abuse" show up on one's timeline.

     I only read my own timeline which is filled with "Following" posts and toots, and if I am unhappy with someone, I just remove my "Follow".

     So, is "laziness" the root cause of this "abuse"?

   • Embed this notice
     Polychrome :blabcat: (polychrome@poly.cybre.city)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jun-2023 18:53:51 JST Polychrome :blabcat:

     in reply to

     • Evelyn fra denne andre øya
     @evelyn it did start that way until The Great Split of 1996.
     
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFnet?useskin=vector#History
   • Embed this notice
     Evelyn fra denne andre øya (evelyn@misskey.bubbletea.dev)'s status on Thursday, 29-Jun-2023 18:53:52 JST Evelyn fra denne andre øya

     in reply to

     @Polychrome@poly.cybre.city IRC is formed into closed networks more for technical than social reasons, it's not a federated protocol as you'd think of one.