To Federate or not to Federate: is this the Fediverse’s Don’t be Evil-Moment or its own Liberation through transfiguration? And why is the current political Left in wide parts unable to answer this question without willingly letting a historical opportunity pass by?
On the one hand, you have those signing the FediPact: in fear of what they may become, they put limits on themselves to assure each other that they will stay the same even in the face of inevitable change. On the other hand, you have those that embrace Meta’s arrival blindly, that will follow whether it will take them as long as it gives them more gratification and they don’t have to decide for themselves.
But there is another option: that of acting morally based on shared principles created and agreed upon through reason.
Currently, there seem to exist two fractions on the Fediverse forming around this choice, both of which have somewhat simplistic views of it: while the first frames it as if the choice is between either blindly embracing Meta or not embracing it at all, the other side frames it as if Meta’s arrival will be good for the Fediverse in any case and the other side is just too dumb to see it. Both are wrong: there is the possibility that by cooperating with Meta to some degree, we choose the right path for the web, but there is also the possibility that the opposite will happen. In the sense of Kant, we always have to expect everything.
However, what needs to be kept in mind is the following: if we do chose to federate, we will have the opportunity to influence this outcome. We would then need to put actions in place to react to Meta, and stand our ground to work towards a better version of the web. But if we don’t federate, we don’t have this opportunity and we just let the outcome be decided for us; we hide and walk away from the responsibility.
The first decision ignores the cost that comes with ignoring Meta. On the other hand, the second one ignores the cost of federating with a much more powerful instance with a history of morally bad decisions. These arguments have to be weighted up against each other and carefully debated upon. There would be good reasons not to have anything to do with Meta at all, when there wouldn’t be network effects. But this way, it’s the only tool to bring over users from Meta’s ecosystem in ours. Actually, given this context, Meta’s moral shortcomings are even more reasons to federate with them and try to win over users and pressure Meta to implement better digital rights as well.
So, after weighting up the different arguments, I think working together with Meta to some degree is without alternative, because I think a big Fedi would be a good thing and I don’t see the Fediverse growing big on it’s own. After having decided that, the question becomes about how this can happen without losing ourselves in the process. And I think this is a question that is not often asked in the Fediverse, because in the current political landscape, most cannot really give you an answer to that, especially not in the part of the Left that is so predominatly on the web: that of post-colonialism and identity politics.
Because they have no sense for objective truths or universalism, they cannot answer this question apart from the strategy they are running now: by assuring each other to stay the same and by that basically avoiding the question altogether. Because they don’t want to answer it. Because without believing in the existence of a objective truth (which they don’t, because they attribute themselves to moral relativism), it’s impossible to make moral decicions when being in power and forming global alliances and that’s why power is avoided as far as possible.
Because the solution would be exactly to try to find those moral rules, to agree upon and establish them through the use of reason.
This would also be a good ground to put up against Meta, which also the general public would understand, in my opinion. Instead of saying that Meta is evil and we don’t want to federate with them, we could say that we try to hold our own principles and will only federate with Meta if it holds them too. This way, we can put pressure on Meta to act morally in the digital and also stay moral ourselves.
For this, the FediPact is not in any way fitted. It may sound strong, but is actually a teethless tiger here. It is morally empty, without any specific values attached to it and completely dependend on Meta (which is the primary reason why its so popular): they simply define themselves by being against Meta, the smallest common moral ground large part of the Fediverse community seem to have – but how should this assure any moral acting in the Fediverse in the future or now? It is of course not the case that people that are radical against Meta are necessarily good? Morally, there is nothing gained here except self-assurance, which is empty because it is without any moral substance.
This of course has not only something to do with Meta but is a general question that needs to be answered: what are the common values that we want to thrive for? At the end of the day, we don’t define ourselves through Meta but through our principles. And then, may not want to federate with Meta at times because they aren’t valuing our principles and not simply because they are Meta. But we cannot do that, because, sadly, we don’t have these shared principles, because many parts on the Left don’t believe in them and consider them a form of colonialism. For one, they fear that through this transgression they will either become insignificant or their earlier own “oppressors”, and secondly, they don’t want to be faced with the fact that we need shared moral principles.
But now what, if another big company joins, which doesn’t acts according to our moral principles? Until now, the common solution for this was always defederation, however, when the instance is too powerful, it doesn’t work anymore. Meta is only the beginning of this; many other players will come, too, even non-corporate ones. Will all of them be added to the FediPact one after the other? This is not a long-term solution, not sustainable and feels overall arbitrary and regressive. The teachings of the postcolonial Left come to an end here. They thrive for including as many perspectives as possible (which is not a bad thing per se), but put that before agreeing on an objective truth. But only through the declarations of shared principles can we grow and remain morally intact.
Theoretically, there would be nothing wrong with a Meta that acted constantly morally. Then we wouldn’t need to do the thing we do here. The problem is that they don’t. But if we want to replace Meta with something better in the long run, we need to think about how to achieve exactly that. And this will only be possible by embracing universalism and humanism as guiding principles.
Although I still agree with the general message of my last post, I would now modify it: I see no reason why, after the Fediverse has found a solid moral ground, it shouldn’t put this up to the test against Meta and try to win over some terretory with it. Actually, it seems like the most sensible thing to do. Because we want to bring these digital rights to as many people as possible, and for that, we need to partially federate with Meta. The postcolonial left doesn’t really has an alternative plan other than leaving everything exactly as it is; which doesn’t help those suffering under the current digital landscape either (also speaking globally here) and makes the Fediverse something, that a few lucky people profit from and that is not shared with everyone else, just because we have no plan how to scale it. A possibly good solution for this is to find a new strategy for this kind of situation based on history: through declaring and then with reasonable means implementing these shared rights and principles.
This brings us again to the root of the problem, which the Fediverse doesn’t seem to want to discuss: the actual problem is that the Fediverse is internally shattered and cannot agree on anything, including basic moral rules and principles. That’s the actual problem here. And if we are being honest, if you look for example at apps like Lemmy, it’s not so bad this isn’t the current global web. It would be a complete mess. We have still enough problems of implementing principles of human rights ourselves. Only if we have found those can we really stand against Meta and make a case that people will root for. After all, people will only join us, if we have a better web to offer them. And only federation and data security isn’t everything here. It should also come with more digital rights.
This is why, in the following, I call for the creation of a Universal Declaration on Fediverse Rights, which instances can sign, who don’t want to sign the FediPact but at the same time don’t want to fall under the rule of Meta. As a first draft for this, we could use the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/european-declaration-digital-rights-and-principles
When we take this document as an example, it would already change the situation completely. First of all, we could federate with Meta and then have substancial arguments against them when we chose at times not to federate with them anymore (e.g. because they don’t encourage democratic exchange, they don’t value human rights, etc.), but at the same time, we would also have to apply these principles to ourselves. We are allowing users more choice for their provider, obviously, but are we also allowing businesses to enter the Fediverse freely and let innovation develop?
These are only examples, but you see how instead of trying to shut ourselves off from Meta as best as possible, the question becomes about realizing the ideal of a better web better than Meta.
So, in conclusion, additionally to the two parties on the Fediverse already described, there could be a third party, which tries to implement these universal Fediverse rights. To my knowledge, Mastodon seems to be a candidate that tries to achieve something like this already (although it never openly said so). BlueSky would be more of a candidate for the open web and FediPact servers are of course part of the non-corporate web.
I think most will find it reasonable that both the FediPact and the go-Meta-go-team are way too simplistic; and while many people instantly root for either of these camps, I think both teams almost never exist in these extremes in reality – in fact, many parts of the Fediverse already argue based on some understanding of digital rights and paint a much more nuanced picture. These rights just need to be put down somewhere, agreed upon and lived by as best as possible. Then, we will be much better equiped for the power struggle with Meta than with what the FediPact promises but cannot hold, because there is nothing that can give you that: a 100% assurance that Meta will not change the Fediverse, that everything will stay exactly as it is and we keep our moral compass. And if we cannot achieve the former anyways, it’s better to try to achieve the latter, even if it means changing a bit in the process.
That’s also the promise that comes with the arrival of Meta: it will not make us grow up automatically, but it gives us the chance to.
Fungiverse Tales 