Why the Fediverse is not (yet) Billionaire-Proof, or: The 51% Attack for the Fediverse

Definition: A single, abusive entity or a group of abusive entities in the Fediverse has gained so much influence, that they can pull EEE (embrace, extend and extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish).

The attack will look like the following:

• A single, abusive entity or a group of abusive entities in the Fediverse has gained more than 51 percent of influence
• They start EEE
• Other instances either react by defederating, but because they only have 49 percent, due to network effects, they get extinct; or they chose to still federate, which will extinct them also because of EEE
• Enshittification follows eventually (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)

Now, measuring influence in the Fediverse is inherently challenging, given its abstract nature. The extent of influence is tied to societal capital invested in the Fediverse, including legal and economic factors. The potential influence is also constrained by the number of users, although this is limited and may increase predictably over time. Societal factors, such as the impact of institutions like the European Union, contribute to the overall influence landscape. Despite these variables, it’s crucial to acknowledge that influence in the Fediverse remains something fundamentally limited at a certain point in time and that this limit and its hypothetical value, are strictly correlating to the size of human population.

Back to the actual threat scenario: some may recognize this, because it is basically the social equivalent to the 51% attack of crypto currencies as pointed out by @carrotcypher@reddit.com. And, as already said, of course, social influence is a different thing than actually owing parts of a crypto currency, it is hard to measure, but as the same with crypto currencies, it is fixed at a certain amount of time. I want to add to this, that, while I’m not against technical ideas per se, I want to point out that I’m opposed the societal utopias and promises of crypto kids. I believe in public institutions, our societies should be built on trust; for me, a trust-less society is a dystopia. Actually, I hope that the Fediverse will help us to rebuild institutions, which enable people to trust each other again.

However, we are nowhere near this, because currently, the Fediverse is not resilient enough for the described 51% attack. In fact, Mastodon itself would have enough influence to pull a 51% attack, but it is very unlikely to do so given the creator’s behaviour in the past. But while that’s a very lucky thing to have, the issue is that we depend on the owner of Mastodon to not sell the company to a billionaire. And while currently, the influence is heavily owned by Mastodon, if Threads gains the 1 billion users that they are going for, they may already have the amount of power to pull a 51% attack and perform EEE on the Fediverse.

Some will now ask: why can’t this attack be easily prevented with the Fedipact (fedi-instances that plan to permanently block Threads and exclude it from the Fediverse)? Well, because, at least according to some, the Fediverse will soon enter a new stage, that of full-on commercialization (https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub). This will be at the latest when Threads starts federating with Mastodon and there is just no possibility that no instance will federate with Threads and companies jumping on that train as well. So it is hardly anything stopping this development and “keeping Threads little”. It will not stay little. It will become bigger and bigger and increase its influence. Either the “free” Fediverse can try to influence this or stay out of it but also cast away responsibility and watch while the Fediverse enshittificaits.

Overall, the good news here is: as long as the “free” Fediverse gains influence at the same rate Meta is gaining influence so that it never gets over the 51 percent of influence, we will be fine. On the other hand, it could become hard to manage to do just that. So, to counter-act this attack scenario, I drafted a first strategy called “Embrace, Extend, Enforce (ƎƎƎ)” in this post: https://fungiverse.wordpress.com/2023/12/28/embrace-extend-enforce-a-practical-strategy-against-potentially-abusive-instances-like-metas-threads/ Hopefully, it will be extended and applied in the future to make the Fediverse truly proof to abusive entities.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely”
– Lord Acton

What would you do with this?