I really want to nip threads in the bud. Besides blocking threads.net itself, defederate from any instances that do not. This is blatantly an EEE strategy and a united front is the only way to save what have been accomplished. Here is how Indivudals can do it on mastodont as an example to follow. https://hachyderm.io/@crowgirl/110663465238573628 Edit found this , https://fedipact.online/ please sign.
I’m for blocking Threads. I’m not for blocking instances that support Threads. That’s ridiculous, you’d just split the community and make the Fediverse irrelevant.
I see only OP calling for defedding instances that don’t defed Meta. Fedipact https://fedipact.online/ makes no mention, never seen it on Mastodon. I think the flamewar should be toned down a little.
Funny thing - the last time I saw a promising forum destroyed, the beginning of the end was when people got all in a panic about some purported external threat and started demanding a “united front” to combat it. Then they started calling for retribution against anyone who didn’t join them. Then they just kept fanning the flames of hostility against anyone on the forum that they decided wasn’t sufficiently devoted to their cause, and the forum ended up tearing itself apart from within.
Allowing meta to be federated with anything is like inviting the world’s best arsonist your house warming party.
Also, allowing meta or any other of the BP is like pissing your pants, feel nice warm in the beginning…
EEE is a known and well deployed tactic. And a lot larger threat than your perceived division of the user base.
Join threads if you wish but don’t bring the fediverse down with you.
please step away from the computer and touch grass
I have no intention of joining Threads, or of being a part of any instance that’s federated with them.
And that’s entirely beside the point. I’m not arguing the merits (or lack thereof) of Threads or of federation with them.
I’m simply relaying the fact that I’ve already seen a forum destroyed by the sort of internal strife you’re fomenting.
And it should be noted that with your response, you’re still following the script exactly, by jumping to the conclusion that because I criticized your call for a “united front,” I must be on the side of the enemy.
Well here we are , we have 2 different points diverging. Everyone that wants to keep BD away as much as possible and your point that allowing them to fester and not only effecting your data but all of ours.
I believe the majority will decide that they are tired of BD and want an alternative that is free from corporate overlords.
Perhaps your fake unity not to splinter that is the problem and not my call for united Front?
It’s quite obvious that we who do not want it will not participate in helping meta.
What option do you leave us with?
Not walling them off will be the problem in the long run.
This is getting ridiculous. Every thread about this is just people parroting “embrace, extend, extinguish” and “enshittification” ad nauseam. No one is actually saying how they could accomplish that. Even if they’re technically federated (which I doubt will happen, Meta will probably just want to federate with a couple of the biggest Mastodon servers) we will barely interact with them at all, think of how rarely Mastodon posts show up here. This is a grounded article on what’s going on: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/
Wasn’t he paid by meta and put under an NDA? Would not trust any meta related info from him right now
Yeah - I read that article yesterday.
While I agree that the panic is tiresome, I wouldn’t call that a “grounded” article. It struck me as entirely predictable PR fluff from the “CEO” of Mastodon, which is to say, the specific person who stands to profit the most from any sort of deal with Meta.
The strength of the fediverse is its freedom, and specifically each individual’s freedom to create an instance or join any instance they prefer. So my plan is to simply exercise my freedom as I see fit, and without submitting to the rhetoric either of people who are trying to convince me to panic or trying to convince me to welcome Meta with open arms.
And this is how you gut the Fediverse… Don’t even give people the option to run their own single-user instance to avoid the drama. Defederate them, too. Splinter everything into oblivion.
EDIT: Seriously. As someone who isn’t a hardcore militant FOSS federation activist, this is the kind of stuff that makes me want to throw up my hands and say, “Screw it. I guess I’ll go sign up at Threads.”
EDIT: Seriously. As someone who isn’t a hardcore militant FOSS federation activist, this is the kind of stuff that makes me want to throw up my hands and say, “Screw it. I guess I’ll go sign up at Threads.”
Nobody is stopping you
I would agree with you if threads didn’t choose to avoid market with decent consumer protection laws, EU.
They aren’t launching at EU for a reason, and that’s good enough for me to take a stance against them.
Just because they haven’t launched in the EU yet doesn’t mean they won’t. They were clearly rushing to get this out the door. I’d be absolutely shocked if they don’t go to the EU since Facebook and Instagram are there already.
Facebook is in a lot of shit with EU right now because of GDPR non compliance. They are at a risk of just getting flat out booted from here if they don’t fix their shit.
That combined with the upcoming Digital Markets Act means they might not get a chance to launch here at all
Won’t they have to comply with at least some EU laws in order to become federated? If EU residents can interact with Threads via another instance, they’ll still be on the hook for all of that mirrored data.
Then go ahead to threads tbh, too many times now has some amazing things on the internet been absolutely fucking ruined by a company or by it becoming a business.
Enough with companies being involved with everything.
I guess everyone else replying to you doesn’t get what you are saying.
They aren’t threatening to leave like it matters. They are expressing concern that preemptively defederating with anyone that hasn’t blocked Meta/Facebook/Threads/Insert_Bad_Actor_Here is a horrible idea.
No one is saying that we shouldn’t defederate with Meta. We are saying not to make the mistake of fracturing a community that, in internet terms, is in its infancy.
I’m willing to bet most people here don’t like being told that they can’t do something for arbitrary reasons. So why would you care what another instance is doing? If you don’t like your instance, move. If you don’t like another instance personally, block them.
Defederation is a powerful tool when necessary. It can block toxic communities, stop raids, and remove spam centers. But defederating by association is a drastic step.
Edit: And the comment of
this is the kind of stuff that makes me … say “Screw it. … I guess I’ll sign up at Threads” Has no one responding seen all the posts by people confused about Lemmy as is?
You know how you kill Lemmy, fracture it and make it so difficult to find/understand that the general populace, not early adopters, not techies, normal people give up.
So if you want this content you have to go here, but they won’t talk to this other place, so if you want that stuff you should get another account and go over here… oh and these guys won’t talk to anyone so you will need another account for them.
And where will they go? Maybe a place run by a company that they already use. With a shiny new app… AND 30 MILLION PEOPLE that already have it.
Congratulations, in your attempt to kill Meta you have just alienated the vast majority of potential users and sent them straight to that which you were trying to destroy.
“Insert_Bad_Actor” is so widely vague that it can apply anywhere to anyone (slippery slope, I know, but this entire discussion hinges on some application of the principle).
Two months ago the rallying cry for federation/fediverse was “YOU CAN CONTROL IT” which very quickly has morphed into “YOU CAN CONTROL IT AS LONG AS YOU FIT IN THIS PARTICULAR BOX.” A lot of this feels like it’s coming from a place of fear, which is not a great place to make informed and logical decisions from.
A lot of the discussion I’ve seen here and on Mastodon around Meta/Threads/federating with a corporate entity seems to be circling around three issues.
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Privacy. There is an assumption that as soon as Meta gets it’s fingers into the metaverse pie they’ll hoover up everything they can. My question to anyone that thinks this is, “How do you know they don’t do it already?” Meta can very easily have a server setup somewhere to pull in ActivityPub information. IT’S THE ENTIRE POINT OF FEDERATION. You can’t stop them, other than to block the instance. So unless someone figures out that Meta is running a particular instance and then announces it so that admins can block it, it’s reasonable to assume it’s already happening. This just means what you post already isn’t private, and never should be assumed to be.
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Ads. Somehow people think that Meta will abuse federation to sells ads to send out as posts. Which, if they do that, they will be quickly blocked and they’ve just ruined their new crop of eyeballs. On top of that, sending ads out into the void to end up next to god knows what content, on god knows what server, in front of god knows who, is not something that most ad buyers are going to spend money on. Any ad buyers want to know that they are getting value for their spend.
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EEE, or Embrace Extend Extinguish. This is to me the most valid argument for keeping them at arm’s length. The basic premise is that these huge corps can spend the money up front to build on top of an open standard, add improvements that will be limited to only their version, then once they have the market share/cornered pull the rug out by either defederating and hurting the whole thing, or by locking users in to their “better” service. This has happened a number of times in the past, and Facebook has been guilty of it themselves.
Whatever happens with this in the future will be interesting to watch unfold, that’s for sure. But doing anything before the service even has the hooks to connect in and federate seem so premature to me.
100% agreed on just about everything. I don’t think EEE is even a good argument (I’d love to entertain strong arguments otherwise!) - kerberos seems like the best related example, but that’s not even very applicable, and I don’t think XMPP even was subject to EEE (here’s a longer response on that: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/708874 )
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Yes, I know… But there’s no need for Meta to extinguish Mastodon if we do it ourselves?
taking a stance is not a bad thing.
This doesn’t seem applicable - how is meta being intolerant (or the people federating with meta)? Banning instances because they didn’t ban a third party instance isn’t following the paradox of tolerance.
Sorry if I’m missing something, are you saying meta should be banned because they have bad moderation, tons of bigots, or something like that?
are you saying meta should be banned because they have bad moderation, tons of bigots, or something like that?
i am saying they should be banned because their ultimate goal is to Embrace, extend and exterminate and if you are going to tolerate it, you’ll lose
That’s just arguing that companies shouldn’t be allowed on decentralized networks like the internet, which IMO isn’t realistic, but that’s of course okay if that’s your opinion.
Here are my full thoughts if you want to provide counterpoints: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/726305
That’s just arguing that companies shouldn’t be allowed on decentralized networks like the internet,
no, that’s not, you should read better
which IMO isn’t realistic
oh wait, you didn’t read wrong, you tried to misinterpret what i said on purpose, right?
You seem to be stretching the definition of the “paradox of tolerance” in new and amazing ways. How exactly does the “paradox of tolerance” relate to defederating from instances that haven’t explicitly blocked Threads?
How exactly does the “paradox of tolerance” relate to defederating from instances that haven’t explicitly blocked Threads?
it applies to federation of single units in same way as it applies to single unit. if we decide this is a direction we want to take, then everyone has to think about which side of the imaginary barricade they want to stand on.
This isn’t FOSS behavior, this is just liberal virtue signaling behavior. I was hoping this behavior stayed on Mastodon where I purged a lot of it. Was really hoping that plague wouldn’t hit Lemmy.
liberal virtue signaling
you might like parler more, go check it out…
Wait until you realize that liberal does not mean left wing. Liberalism is a right wing ideology.
edit: to the guy who replied and blocked, complex political ideologies aren’t reduced to just a simple 4 way political compass lol. Don’t get your political knowledge from r/politicalcompassmemes
wait until you realize (if ever) that liberalism has nothing to do with left/right scale…
you can start here: https://www.politicalcompass.org/
I’ve had multiple conversations about liberalism and come to realize there’s a multitude of definitions none of which make complete sense. A left-wing definition might be “liberal democratic capitalism” like most of Europe is, with neoliberal being a more right-wing version of that like the US. A right-winger might use liberal to mean someone culturally progressive. Sometimes liberal is used to mean someone who wants a smaller government, sometimes it is confused with libertarianism (which was originally left-wing but co-opted by free market capitalists).
I don’t think the term “liberal” is useful anymore, it’s mostly thrown around towards people you perceive to be the status quo.
not understanding or trying to intentionaly appropriate words (similar mechanism to discussed eee) and change their meaning is indeed a thing, but these are still a facts:
- liberal is not a term on left/right scale.
- person using phrase “liberal virtue signaling” is still sending pretty clear message about himself
This has to be a joke, you can’t be this serious over nothing.
Defederating from Threads makes sense. Defederating transitively from anything federated with Threads ends in one of two ways: your instance shrivels up and dies, or you successfully kill Threads. Not particularly good odds. You can’t compete with Meta, you can only try to maintain your independence and value as an independent platform.
I support blocking Facebook but not other instances.
I’m all for blocking threads on instances, BUT
defederating with OTHER instances just because they haven’t blocked threads is gonna create a massive split in this community, possibly could kill it. big no 👎
This is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Most of the activity on any given instance or community comes from outside of the instance. If you start cutting off instances because they are sharing their own stuff with Meta, then you will also be negatively impacting your own communities since the amount of active users will go down.
Most users won’t react to something like this by joining your instance or an instance that you approve of (or, at least, currently approve of). They’ll either find another community on an instance they’re federated with or they’ll switch to another social media platform. The latter becomes more likely depending on how many instances end up on either “side” of the issue. Although most user accounts are relatively new, it’s still a pain to switch over to something else once you’ve gotten used to something.
The scale of defederation you propose, especially this early in the fediverse, would be enough to turn off a lot of folks from federation. If admins are just going to defederate from each other at the first sign of disagreement, that weakens my faith in the fediverse.
I absolutely believe that instances should not federate with meta’s stuff. The largest servers had enough issues when we were getting new users in the thousands. Meta will likely bring in users in the millions. However, it makes no difference to me if another instance federates with Meta.
I’m all for individual users blocking Threads if they’d like to, but I think it’s a terrible idea for instance admins to make that decision for all of their users.
Personally, I don’t see why this is so controversial. I view it as a way to follow the celebs and organizations that would rather use threads, but from the comfort of Mastodon that is outside of Meta’s ecosystem.
ActivityPub and the Fediverse is designed to for natural selection to take place. So let it. The users that want to be part of the Fediverse are already here and won’t don’t leave based on what Meta does with Threads. Threads utilizing ActivityPub in the future justifies the means of the Fediverse more than anything else IMO. I despise Meta as much as the next person, but this is not the end of the Fediverse as we know it.
“natural selection” in this context is unregulated capitalism and ends in Meta owning you. No, don’t “let it.” Maintain boundaries between the free and open internet and that governed by corporate interests.
But that’s the risk taken when you create a protocol (ActivityPub) that anyone can tap into. You can’t create something that is open to everyone and then pitch a fit when entity you don’t like or agree decides to take advantage of it. Regardless of how big Threads get, it can’t supecede the ActivityPub protocol. If they decided to defederate down the road in attempts to extinguish the Fediverse, it won’t work, those users will still remain and Threads will go on it’s merry way. Meta can’t kill a W3C protocol.
It is completely inevitable that Meta will add Threads-exclusive functionality that is not compatible with ActivityPub, funnelling users into their own walled garden.
You can actually pitch a fit when the entity poses a genuine existential crisis. What do you think Meta will do once they’re here? Give direct access to Facebook users. This will drown out the user base AND pull users away when certain features are introduced by them that just happen to not work well outside Threads. It is an EEE strategy in your face and you want to wait and see? Come on.
I don’t think defederating from any Instance which plays ball with Threads for that reason only is a good idea. I do think Instance owners should see the danger Threads poses and act accordingly.
Jesus christ this is turning into virtue signalling brain rot
I agree, any fediverse servers that remain federated with Meta servers, they are helping Meta to collect your data.
Remember, the Threads app itself is a privacy nightmare.
You realize all the stuff you post is public, right?
Yeah, and I suppose how long you read a post is public too? I mean, meta can see that information, and you’re not hiding it offline or anything, so they should just be able to sell it too why not. And your search history. That’s… public too. Your personal contacts for your friends and family on your phone, thats wide open public information right. Also any health information you log in your phone. Public info.
Is everything human beings do public info? Should we make our houses out of glass while we’re at it, and record every human beings entire life on audio and video so that mega corporations can sell any information gathered?
Is this just fear mongering roleplay at this point? They literally can’t get any of that from your fedi clients. That’s just straight up false. If you’re in their client then no shit lol, but we’re obviously not talking about that.
Thats what the person you were responding to was talking about yes.
Privacy is not a feature of the fediverse, so rid yourself of that notion right now. Every time you post something hundreds of various ActivityPub instances hoover up every bit of data they can, and you have no control over it anymore. Big corporations don’t have to be transparent about it, they’re already sitting on copies of that data, I promise you.
If you think your fediverse data fits into the same category as your search history, contact lists, and medical info, you fundamentally don’t understand how to manage your privacy online.
So, you’re going off for no reason about nothing, the commenter i was responding to was responding to a comment about meta’s new app and all the information it outright tells you it is harvesting and selling from you.
I must genuinely ask? What does this accomplish, a lot of instances being split apart because one federates with meta and the other doesnt, its not like the meta posts are gonna make it to your instance if you defederate meta, so you are really just splitting the community over nothing. Privacy wise, activity pub is public, by design, so they can just already pull all the information it exposes, and likely do. And finally? How does this stop EEE?
How does this stop EEE?
I suppose if we burn our own community to the ground the moment we’re Embraced, there won’t be anything left for Meta to Extend or Extinguish.
Exactly.
Its not being Chicken Licking and freaking out that the sky is falling but we certainly dont need to play our hand this early in the game.
We know Meta is not a good faith actor. We know they will try to subsume or extinguish the fediverse if they cant control it but we dont need to go pissing our knickers and do the work for them.
I hate defederation for things like this. This should be a user’s choice, not imposed by the instance itself. I hate how the fediverse forces the moderation choices on you.
I dont care that instagram uses activityPub. As long as I can use activityPub myself, thats enough for me. Most people will always stick with big social media, and I would rather be able to interact with them vs. not
Why shouldn’t the instance owner make that choice? It’s their hardware, time, money, and desire that made that instance. As soon as I start one, first thing I’m doing is making sure it never gets federated with fashy instances or meta.
threads will never federate.
