this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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I love the fact that fediverse was built from the ground up to be free, federated and interoperable. I have two questions that may come from my lack of expertise / knowledge, so I apologise in advance if they are dumb.

  1. Bots can disrupt smaller instances:

What is stopping corpos from scraping everyone's posts and stuff from the fediverse and train their AI? What's stopping them then, to create loads of not accounts and spam / disrupt smaller communities? When an instances quality drops, the users may be more incentivised to migrate to bigger instances and go there. It's safe to say most Lemmy users are not going to spin their own instance and start communities from scratch. Meanwhile, the onslaught of bots can overwhelm these budding communities and instances.

  1. Corpos can flood the fediverse with ads and crap:

Threads comes to mind on this point and how many instances have chosen not to defederate with them. Besides, they can create bridges, and have repost bots in all instances to flood major them with ads. With generative content, it is so much easier to make a seemingly casual post about a product and mask it as an advertisement.

I've seen previous posts about people wanting to come because of their opinion about how certain countries behave. I feel the true evil are the corporates.

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[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 16 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

They already tried it. It's called Threads. It exists. People use it. And other instances have the choice to simply not federate with them.

To me (as unpopular as this sounds) that's the beautiful thing about FOSS and about Federation in particular. No one is stopping anyone from creating their own instance. Even Corporations.

It's the ultimate expression of "Anyone can do what they want, say what they want, believe what they want...but no one else is in any way obligated to listen to them/federate with them"

I know of companies that host small mastodon instances for their staff to communicate back and forth. I know of similar setups with lemmy instances. Anyone can use the technology for anything they wish to.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 3 points 6 hours ago

Well said. I personally don't get the opposition to Threads using ActivityPub. I like being able to follow Threads profiles without exposing myself to Meta.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 10 points 11 hours ago

Like others pointed out defederation, but to add the important bit for normies (don't mean derogatory at all) is that it is not meant to be a less complicated or more efficient experience, it is meant to have more (or actual) freedom and democracy.

Much like with gov politics, you have to be active to some degree or a few people can control everything.

So yes, when defederation needs to happen or communities moved (for much of that additional tools will streamline the processes in the future I'm sure), it's a bit messy, but it doesn't rob you or feed the megacorps pushing the society into more inequality.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There's nothing stopping them from hosting a massive instance. But people aren't forced to move there to interact with them.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 2 points 7 hours ago

If it is corporate, I ain't shit postin'

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 324 points 1 day ago (15 children)

Thankfully, there aren't any ads here. Just the thought of it stresses me out, and when I get stressed out, I reach for a Morley cigarette to keep my cool. The toasted tobacco and asbestos filter make for a smoother smoke, which soothes the throat. 9 out of 10 anti-ad, Fediverse, activists choose Morleys to keep up their pep and vigor in the fight against advertisement.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 9 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Who are you going to listen to? This guy?

Or Fred Flintstone?

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Winstons?! That's a baby's cigarette! And I should know because ~~our~~ the parent company of Morleys, Philly Mortis, used to own the Croft Food company, which has a line of baby foods. Also most pediatricians prefer Morley Juniors for the little ones anyway.

On a side note, I've got to appreciate the level of detail in that ad. His lighter works by rubbing two sticks together. I will never not be delighted by the Flintstones' anachronisms.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It's a really catchy commercial, too. "Winston tastes good like a...cigarette should."

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

It really is. I guess the silver lining is that hundreds of years of smoking might at least influence our natural selection such that the average person is slightly more resistant to wildfire smoke and acetylcholine agonists/ acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. Perhaps we've been training for the environmental disasters and chemical warfare that climate change may bring.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

When you're done, look inside for coupons for other quality products from Croft Foods and Jenny-Ralph Mills among others. You could be enjoying the satisfying crunch of Let's potato chips and washing it down with a nice, refreshing can of Cuke, all while impressing your significant other by being such a smart shopper and protecting the family budget.

[–] artificialfish@programming.dev 45 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 day ago (3 children)

more like comedy silver, amirite?

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[–] Skelectus@suppo.fi 66 points 1 day ago

If another instance started knowingly federating us ads, or fake content, I'd hit that defederate button very quick.

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 65 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nothing. Instances will have to take it upon themselves to defederate, just like how a lot of instances all decided to defederate from Threads.

[–] AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Wait is Meta's threads part of the Fediverse?

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 2 points 7 hours ago

Kiiiinda, Threads users can opt-in to have their content syndicated out via ActivityPub (and be followed be mastodon users). I'm not positive but I believe it's still only one-way, meaning Mastodon replies won't show up on Threads. It's basically an RSS feed.

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 93 points 1 day ago (1 children)
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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 36 points 1 day ago

Nothing, but instances can defed from them if they wish and they can't stop that either.

[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 75 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (9 children)

Facebook tried and we scoffed.

It's called the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy of dealing with threats. Microsoft have been endorsing Linux recently for this reason.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Microsoft have been endorsing Linux recently for this reason.

I doubt that's still the reason, I think they endorse it because they're making a shit ton of money using it on Azure.

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[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 61 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (15 children)

What is stopping corpos from scraping everyone's posts and stuff from the fediverse and train their AI? What's stopping them then, to create loads of not accounts and spam / disrupt smaller communities

Nothing stops them right now. Currently they're causing effective DDOS by scraping manually and there's no good way to block them except by going to extremes.

In fact, I would prefer if they just used their own instance to scrape content instead of causing downtimes like they do now.

Corpos can flood the fediverse with ads and crap:

For that, the solution is simple, we can defederate.

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[–] glimse@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (4 children)

What is stopping corpos from scraping everyone's posts and stuff from the fediverse and train their AI?

That very real and enforceable "this comment cannot be used to train AI" crap some people add to every comment that definitely makes bots not scrape the comment, of course!

[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'll sue them in small claims court as a pro se litigant demanding a jury trial. I will also try to file motions every other week, which will probably fail and ask the judge to give me time to correct them. I will make them waste thousands on attourneys fees and be a royal pain in the ass.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Good luck getting a court to hear it when you won't have a shred of evidence to show

[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 3 points 22 hours ago

The fun part is that they have to and they give pro se litigants more leeway. It's a huge pita.

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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 14 points 1 day ago

What is stopping corpos from scraping everyone's posts and stuff from the fediverse and train their AI?

Nothing. And they already have.

What's stopping them then, to create loads of not accounts and spam / disrupt smaller communities?

Moderation.

When an instances quality drops, the users may be more incentivised to migrate to bigger instances and go there.

Why would they do that when every instance has the same content?

Corpos can flood the fediverse with ads

I mean they can but no one would subscribe to them or share them, so no one would see them, so why would they bother making them?

about how certain countries behave. I feel the true evil are the corporates.

Sometimes the two are actually one in the same.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 day ago (5 children)

They are already training on the fediverse. If something is on the public web, you can assume it's in some training data somewhere

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[–] ShadowRam@fedia.io 25 points 1 day ago

1 - You can block/ignore entire instances. (spamming ones)

2 - If it gets big enough, you'll see legit instances band together and federate only among themselves (white-list, invite only to allow federation)

people will gravitate to these groups of instances if they are well moderated and keep that crap out.

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 15 points 1 day ago

We would find out. We would defederate them

[–] uienia@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

The fact that corporations sees the fediverse as inconsequential. The minute people flood it in larger numbers as they are fleeing the corporate entshittified internet, that is exactly what they are going to do though.

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