I don’t know how I feel about defederating but I would like this instance to have a Terms of Use or Policy that prevents anyone who federates with us to use content on this instance for profit. Or something similar to spirit of Open Source licenses.

The link to mastadon’s blog you posted is very informative. I encourage everyone who peeks in this post to read it.

I don’t necessarily agree with Mastadon’s official stance because say the largest Lemmy instance (Lemmy.world) was owned by Meta. Once enough users relied on content from Lemmy.world, Meta could then start charging other instances to federate with it if they want content. Which won’t kill “the platform” but will make information inaccessible.

Mastadon’s stance :

We have been advocating for interoperability between platforms for years. The biggest hurdle to users switching platforms when those platforms become exploitative is the lock-in of the social graph, the fact that switching platforms means abandoning everyone you know and who knows you. The fact that large platforms are adopting ActivityPub is not only validation of the movement towards decentralized social media, but a path forward for people locked into these platforms to switch to better providers. Which in turn, puts pressure on such platforms to provide better, less exploitative services. This is a clear victory for our cause, hopefully one of many to come.

However I’m confused how Mastadon’s official stance reflects their devs and admins because one of Mastodon admin, kev, from fosstodon.org, has been contacted to take part in an off-the-record meeting with Meta. He refused politely and, most importantly, published the email to be transparent with its users. Thanks kev!

Mail from Meta to Kev, from fosstodon, and reply.