What's Beehaw's opinion on Facebook doing NDAed meetings with fedi admins/devs? (fedipact.online)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by d4r1us_drk@beehaw.org to c/support@beehaw.org

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So, recently some fediverse admins (mostly Mastodon) and the founder of Mastodon, Eugen Rochko (Gargron), where contacted by Meta/Facebook for an NDA meeting. We know nothing about it, but we're pretty sure that it was about this project92 thing that Meta/Facebook is creating to "compete" with Twitter.

So a lot of Mastodon admins already singed a pact to immediately block any Meta/Facebook activity in the fediverse as soon as it comes up. My Mastodon instance, fosstodon.org hasn't singed that pact and I'm pretty worried.

The following image is an screenshot of Gargron and dansup (creator of Pixelfed) talking about this. These posts were deleted, even from the wayback machine.

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[-] Kernel@beehaw.org 17 points 2 years ago

Sounds troubling. But not all of their actions turn out to be completely nefarious, and this could represent a genuine effort to contribute to the next generation of infrastructure. The emerging network protocol appears to offer an opportunity for both non-profit and commercial ventures.

[-] d4r1us_drk@beehaw.org 24 points 2 years ago

I'm not particularly interested in anything that Meta/Facebook has ever created. Everything that this company has made or touched has been horrible/dangerous/terrible for everyone and I don't think that this isn't the case. Also that article that you linked is behind a paywall ._.

[-] Kernel@beehaw.org 8 points 2 years ago

And that's probably the wiser assessment, given their other activities. Here's the relevant part of that NYT article.

But Meta said it saw no reason to keep its code to itself. The growing secrecy at Google and OpenAI is a “huge mistake,” Dr. LeCun said, and a “really bad take on what is happening.” […]

“Do you want every A.I. system to be under the control of a couple of powerful American companies?” he asked. […] Meta’s open-source approach to A.I. is not novel. The history of technology is littered with battles between open source and proprietary, or closed, systems.

[-] d4r1us_drk@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

Meta open sourcing their AI is great and hypocritical at the same time. Like yes we agree that AI shouldn't be controlled by a couple of powerful American companies, but we still need to have full control over the algorithm that literally manipulates users internationally on a daily basis.