- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
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Good.
Every instance should block Threads.
[coming soon…]
EU: “Why can’t outside users interact with Threads?”
Meta: “We comply with the interoperability requirements of the DMA, it’s not our fault some instances gatekeep their users… go fine them”
For the Meta apologists, I have a reality check for you:
Threads was immediately subject to mass amounts of radicalizing, extremist content, and there have also been instances of users having personal information doxxed on Threads due to Meta’s information-harvesting practices. [1]
Threads was marketed to be open to ‘free speech’ (read: hate speech and misinformation) and encouraged the Far-Right movement to join, who have spread extremism, hate, and harassment on Threads already. [2] Threads has been a hotbed of Israel-Palestine misinformation/propaganda. [3] They also fired fact-checkers just prior to Threads’ launch. [1]
As already established, Meta also assisted in genocide! [4]
Meta/FB/Instagram also have a strong history of facilitating the spread of misinformation and extremism, which contributed to the January 6th insurrection attempt. [5], [6]
This really should be obvious by now… but Meta mines and sells their user’s information.[7] Just look at the permissions you have to grant them for Threads…
FB users have to agree to all sorts of unethical things in the TOS, including giving Meta permission to run unethical experiments on their users without informed consent. [8] Their first published research was where they manipulated users’ feeds with positive or negative information, in order to see if it affected their mood. It did, and they successfully induced depression in many of their users!
I will now turn to an article that surmises well the core practices of Meta as a company:
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Elevates disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories from the extremist fringes into the mainstream, fostering, among other effects, the resurgent anti-vaccination movement, broad-based questioning of basic public health measures in response to COVID-19, and the proliferation of the Big Lie of 2020—that the presidential election was stolen through voter fraud [16];
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Empowers bullies of every size, from cyber-bullying in schools, to dictators who use the platform to spread disinformation, censor their critics, perpetuate violence, and instigate genocide;
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Defrauds both advertisers and newsrooms, systematically and globally, with falsified video engagement and user activity statistics;
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Reflects an apparent political agenda espoused by a small core of corporate leaders, who actively impede or overrule the adoption of good governance;
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Brandishes its monopolistic power to preserve a social media landscape absent meaningful regulatory oversight, privacy protections, safety measures, or corporate citizenship; and
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Disrupts intellectual and civil discourse, at scale and by design. [9]
Let me help you summarize, like 80% of that comment:
2023 Word of the Year Is “Enshittification”
Overall, for as well researched and organized that it might be, it misses the main reason for Meta opening to the Fediverse:
To comply with a new EU law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which comes into force on March 7th
Posted on March 6, 2024: https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-messenger-messaging-interoperability-eu/
…and now:
25 March 2024, Brussels: Commission opens non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act
Enshittification had already been largely discussed here.
I saw users minimizing the aberrant business practices of Meta and doubting their role in assisting in genocide.
My point was to highlight how unethical and horrendous Meta itself is.
There’s a word for that too: “corporation” 🤷
On a wider scale, can’t spell “ethics” with “business practices” anyway.
Back on topic, Threads is only a problem for the “All” feed of federated instances with users senselessly following people from Threads, while defederating won’t stop Meta, or anyone, from syphoning and abusing any publicly available data from the Fediverse. Other than that, Meta’s algorithms have no power here, the Fediverse isn’t Meta’s playground even if all instances federated with Threads.
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@hedge I dislike Facebook, so that’s why I am here. But if the only way to stay in touch with people I know irl is on Threads, so be it. Either my server federates with Threads, or there’s one more Threads user in this world.
Well, at least that’s what many people would choose, imo. On the flip side, if Facebook itself would be federated and my server would federate with it, I would simply delete my Facebook account. Period.
I get that Meta is an outrageous organization, but people seem to forget the purpose of these platforms altogether - which is communication. And communications happen when other people use the same platform as well. And okay, let’s say I have a managed Fedi server (which is the most hassle-free option of self-hosting, leaving money and legal stuff aside). What am I gonna do if, e.g. I get a Tinder match and the girl is asking me for my Facebook or Insta? Should I say something like “hey, I don’t have either, but make an account on this random-ass website where only a few hundred people are there as well, and you don’t know anyone of them personally”?
If people want to get people to leave the Meta platforms for Fedi and whatnot, then federating with Threads and educating people this way would actually be a better option imo.
I see your point of trying to help everyone communicate with each other. However, as has been pointed out repeatedly in the last few months, the threat of a 3e strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish) applied by Meta is imo very real and dangerous to the whole fediverse. That’s why people want to defederate threads. And when large corporations use their huge userbase to make everyone else’s life harder and peer pressure you into joining them then that’s on them. I mean, there is a reason we few people are here on the fediverse. For most it’s probably making the effort to stay away from those privacy-invading, controlling corporations and create something by the people for the people. I get that it is tempting to be able to reach the masses stuck in platforms like Facebook or Instagram. But this comes with the real threat of destroying what we’ve build here. Restraining from federation doesn’t cost us anything though, as we’ve already made the decision to get together here in this small community.
Agreed.
100% block Meta everywhere it’s trying to extend its poisonous tentacles.
It’s not “very real”. Because people already on Mastodon right now aren’t going to suddenly switch to threads. We have nothing to lose.
@flora_explora that’s why you have to get as many people here before the last e phase ;)
that’s why you have to get as many people here before the last e phase ;)
You are arguing for drinking gasoline before the spark comes rather than setting out a sign banning flammable liquids.
You cannot out Meta Meta or use their desire to hurt you against them. You can only oppose them with hard walls and hard lines.
@FfaerieOxide huh? How is that supposed to be an analogy? You are infinitely safer interacting with a Threads user here than by actually using Threads itself. Like, I don’t get it. Do you guys want to get more people on the Fediverse? Do you want to convince your friends or just turn the Fediverse into the default way of communicating with people so that if you meet a new person at a cafe or a bar to simply ask “hey, what’s your fedi address?” without them giving you a weird stare and ask you what’s that thing? Or are you just implying that we should just have, like, our own castle, where only we can socialize online and the other people would simply be some foreigners of some sort?
Yes, that change can happen even in time. But with a social network like Threads joining in with hundreds of millions of people you have the opportunity to show, at least to people you know, but not only, live, what it is like to get on a platform that respects your privacy, doesn’t bother you with ads of any sort, have a more sane feed that you as a user can control, and still keep up with the latest stuff they care about. Threads was never and never will be about all this stuff.
Sure, they will try all their best to, e.g. rank you lower in the feed or do a Pixelfed thing on whatever. Or some people will look at you like a Linux promoter or something. But if more people in the mainstream see the Fediverse as a valid platform and not some sort of a niche thing that geeks and hackers like to use, then they’ll be more likely to join.
What many of you fail to understand is that Meta joining in is an opportunity to freely advertise the Fediverse to the masses. Sure, not the whole 100 mln. or so Threads users will join, but imo, in terms of user numbers, this part of the Fediverse not owned by Meta will have a lot to gain. And when that happens, we’ll have a lot more leverage if/when they do nasty stuff. Or just shut their federation for good.
And one more thing: I get those that are defederating from Meta by principle, because of how Meta behaves as a company. But defederating with Meta strictly because of the bad users there simply implies that all of those 100 mln. users are bad faith. Are you really believing that 100 mln. people in this world among of which some of your friends and family members are all transphobes, homophobes, nazis etc.? If so, then you have a pretty gloomy view of the world.
I mean, sure, many users will be problematic (as there are on many Fedi instances that one might or might not have blocked) which would need the ban hammer a lot. Probably even temporary defederation untill the situation gets resolved.
But I like to think that these people are a minority in this whole world. 🙂
@hedge @flora_exploraI’m happy for you, or sorry that happened.
You are infinitely safer interacting with a Threads user here than by actually using Threads itself.
You should not be interacting with Threads. No one should be, and you should not legitimize it’s use.
You will not convince people to leave threads by letting them stay on threads and still talk to you.
@FfaerieOxide people hate Facebook. Or Meta. They hate their policy, they hate how their services (don’t) work, yet they stay there because everyone is there. If they see people that are not there, I think they are more likely to make the switch (not that will do, but more likely).
not legitimize it’s use
I never said that people should use Threads to join the Fediverse. I said that people who already use Threads can be more easily convinced to join this place.
But if you think a good chunk of people will just randomly browse the web, stumble upon these weird sites called kbin.social or libranet.de and understand how they work from the get-go, then I have bad news for you.
That is, unless you just feel better staying in a cloister castle anyway.
In which case, you should understand that not anyone wants this. 🙂
people hate Facebook. Or Meta.
I agree; people rightly hate facebook and meta
I never said that people should use Threads to join the Fediverse. I said that people who already use Threads can be more easily convinced to join this place.
How will you convince them if they can get everything the fediverse offers without leaving Threads?
As nice as it would be to see people ditch Threads for the Fediverse, I suspect the number of people who will actually do that would be infinitesimally small. The power of inertia is very, very strong.
What an apt analogy.
I dislike Facebook, so that’s why I am here. But if the only way to stay in touch with people I know irl is on Threads, so be it.
Do you see how they are already using their size to control and negatively impact the fediverse? The very fact you are arguing that.
If you know them IRL, you can tell them IRL to get off of facebook.
If they won’t well, either keep talking to them IRL or reexamine who your friends are.
Facebook is not (yet?) negatively impacting the fediverse. Fediverse users are.
Facebook is not (yet?) negatively impacting the fediverse. Fediverse users are.
Meta negatively impacts everything by being Meta. You should not cover for nor defend them.
Influence is about perception, and though it may be other people who are acting on that perception, it is still very carefully and intentionally managed by Meta. Lots of people think Facebook is too important not to be a member of, or that you can’t get hired without a LinkedIn, or that you can’t use the internet without giving up your info to Apple, Google, or Microsoft, so why even bother trying not to… and they’re all false narratives that those companies use their size and money to create and maintain the perception of, even if it’s of course the individuals that go along with those narratives. Facebook doesn’t have to hold a gun to your head to make you act a certain way.
So yes, Meta absolutely is directly impacting the Fediverse by announcing their intent to offer federation with Threads.
@FfaerieOxide I think we all have our needs and wants, out of which all need to be addressed in one way or another.
The very fact we’re having this discussion is a healthy sign that it’s okay to have different opinions on such topics - no matter how wrong it sounds.
There is no one-size-fits-all, despite some people like FediTips/FediFollows/FediWhatever is thinking about people.
And bad people and entities exist all the time. They existed before Facebook, they existed with Facebook (and Meta), and they will exist after Meta as well. Just check any blocklist of any okay server and you will spot them.
If you know them IRL, you can tell them IRL to get off of facebook.
This didn’t work, sadly. And it doesn’t work because such platforms make you think that they are the default. That nothing exists beside them or that if it does, it’s either dangerous or empty. Don’t you even see that the first question someone joining Mastodon is “who is also there?”. This is a good opportunity to show them that someone is there…
This didn’t work, sadly.
How much are those relationships worth then?
And it doesn’t work because such platforms make you think that they are the default
You make Meta seem more like the default by allowing contact with you through it. Be something they can’t access while associating with evil.
@FfaerieOxide that’s not how the perception of the masses works, though.
that’s not how the perception of the masses works, though.
How can allowing access to everything on something people start out viewing as the defualt make it seem like less of the default?
Only by things existing outside of threads can people realize it it not.
@FfaerieOxide So you realize something is not on Threads by the fact that it is not on Threads? On this logic, I also heard about a bearded man bringing presents on 25th of December each year.
Well, I can agree with many points you made. I also think that FG is overreacting.
The only thing I want to say is that Fediverse by design lets administrators choose which instances they connect to. It’s rather unfair because there’s virtually no free alternative choice to fediverse, but as we choose fediverse, disconnection is a thing. The only question is whether FG is going too far this time. And if it is, we either convince FG to retreat or build an alternative to FG.
“I don’t think it’s nice to federate with a company that has been cited in multiple independent reports of massacres/genocides,”
And I don’t think it’s nice to take the choice away from users. I can block threads all on my own – I don’t need a nanny who doesn’t even cite their sources.
Considering that their literal stated purpose is to create a curated list of ‘nice, well-run servers’, I don’t see how delisting someone is remotely outside of their wheelhouse. If a server is federated with meta, it’s not well-run. Easy peasy.
Nobody needs to be listed on Fedi Garden or has a right to be listed on Fedi Garden. They can still federate or defederate as they wish, just as Fedi Garden can choose to list them or not as they wish. Everybody gets to do what they want, as is the point.
I love when people conflate rights and ethics. I agree with you that no one has a right to be listed on Fedi Garden. And I still think it’s not nice to pressure admins into taking choice away from users.
It’s literally a list of well-run servers. Do you not see how you’re attempting to ‘take away choice’ from the proprietors of the list by telling them who they must list and what criteria they must use for their website?
You’re perfectly capable of doing what they’ve done. Go spend the time to curate a list, put up a simple little site, and make your own decisions. Nobody’s stopping you. That’s the point of federation and independence. You get to do what you want if you have the follow-through.
Admins likewise can do whatever they like. They can choose to federate with threads or to not.
Personally, I think it’s a little shady to run around shaming people who put their time and effort into projects and insist that they must lick Meta’s boots. Little bit suspect.
- “Run around” = Respond to a thread that appeared in my subscriptions.
- “Must lick Meta’s boots” = Let users decide for themselves to block Meta.
Your hyperbole makes it obvious you have no place in a reasonable debate about this topic.
No, you see, when the server demands something I dislike that is removing choice. And when I demand something the server dislikes that is defending freedom.
I agree 100%. I don’t need someone else overriding my existing right to decide whether I want to block or not (where is that going to stop). Anyway, I connect and follow individuals, not their whole instance. I’m not going to see anything from Threads unless I choose to follow someone. And if any friend reboosts stuff I don’t like (from Threads or anywhere else) I block that “friend”.
I agree 100%. I don’t need someone else overriding my existing right to decide whether I want to block or not (where is that going to stop).
To some extent, most instances already do that on some instances, whether they do it for Threads or not.
So, you’re @danie10@lemmy.ml.
Your home instance is lemmy.ml. Its federation list is at:
It includes in its Blocked Instances list, has defederated with, 181 instances.
Now, you might well agree with some of those being blocked. Like, maybe they’re spammers or harassing people or God knows what. They might host speech that might be illegal in some jurisdictions, be classified as hate speech there. They might contain content that’s socially-unacceptable in some countries – one of my first experiences on the Threadiverse was being sent by a random kbin.social sidebar comment recommendation into a conversation that Ada, the lemmy.blahaj.zone instance admin, was having with some guy in the Middle East, whose country had apparently blocked that instance at the national firewall level due to it having LGBT content or something like that. There’s pornography on lemmynsfw.com. Consentual-nonconsentual and synthetic child pornography on burggit.moe. Piracy material on lemmy.dbzer0.com. Some instances won’t approve of that being accessible from their instances, and in those cases, the instance admin is already blocking things.
I chose my home instance – lemmy.today – specifically because it was an instance policy to try to avoid defederating with instances, and it presently has an empty blocklist. But as best I can tell, most instances have some level of content or user behavior or whatever on other instances that they consider unacceptable and will defederate over. Maybe not it’s not Threads, but they’re aiming to block something.
Good points. Yes, I do prefer to give an instance at least the benefit of the doubt. Difference tho really with Fediverse is you have to search and follow stuff to see it. It does not get inserted into your feed through ads or people playing the algorithms. So generally I’m only seeing what I follow. I suppose we do need to choose our instances wisely. Certainly, if an instance (not just a user on it) is really spamming or impacting on other instances, I suppose there can be grounds to block it. But we have not all been spammed yet by Threads. I don’t like Threads (cancelled all my accounts years ago) but I left a few good friends and family there that I would like to reconnect with, and follow them. I also like that my metadata stays on the Fediverse side, so I don’t need a Threads account or their app tracking me.
I just would not like to be denied the option to even reconnect with my family and friends. Same goes for WhatsApp interoperating on Signal protocol - I have many friends and colleagues I left behind on WhatsApp, and would like to reconnect again with them.
The rules for being listed on fedi.garden will require blocking instances cited in human rights reports on genocide.
And this is their announcement on this oddly specific rule.
I mean, the wording “cited in multiple reports of massacres or genocides” is strange enough. An organization can be “cited” for doing anything. Can I write up two BS reports so that we ban any instance I don’t like? Sounds like a teenager mimicking a TV politician speak, tbh.
Fediverse should be based on a mature protocol imo.
That’s just mad. Instances should have the free choice to choose. I am pro-threadseration
Especially when any individual can decide themselves to block Threads or Lemmy.
Strongly disagree.
Facebook is a major component of the return of fascism in the United States. Arguing for allowing them to federate is like arguing for ISIS to be part of the fediverse.
No. This isn’t the matter of making a choice. This is a matter of ensuring that outright poison isn’t allowed into one’s system.
They DO have free choice to choose. Just as the site is free to choose who they list and what criteria they use for such. They’re not entitled to get listed if they don’t align with the site’s policies.
Choices doesn’t mean free from consequences or entitled to anything you want.
They do have the choice. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to agree with or respect that choice.
Well, it’s a list of "well maintained/moderated servers
Any server that federates with threads, a product of Meta a company known for their low quality moderation and lack of ethics, is clearly not a well maintained/moderated one.
It’s not a new rule. The admin is just applying the sites rules as they are, instead of making exception for threads as many of the techbro admins that are getting their servers excluded have been doing.
Cliff and his co-admin Kyle Reddoch are now working on their own alternative index, that doesn’t include this requirement. It’s a massive undertaking, and requires vetting communities asking permission for inclusion, and regularly checking in on community developments. Still, they’re optimistic.
“[We] are making a list on our Wiki of instance that both federate and defederate from Threads,” Kyle writes, “we feel people [should] have the choice themselves and not have someone else choose for them.”
I kind of think that it’d be nice if there were support for various instances claiming that they support various collections of policies, as it’d be an easier way to identify how instances work and choosing one.
Like, right now it involves manually reading through each instance’s sidebar, but if it were published in a standard way, it could be used to filter instances on lemmyverse.net, to help a user find an instance that they like.
And one instance could commit to multiple sets of (compatible) policies, doesn’t need to be just one.
From a user standpoint, when the first step in entering the Threadiverse is a huge number of instances and manually reading through lots of individual instance policies, that can be a bit overwhelming.
entering the Threadiverse
That’s not a fucking thing. Threads doesn’t own the Fediverse and they clearly are not welcome on it either.
“Threadiverse” isn’t a reference to Meta’s “Threads”.
It’s referring to the lemmy/kbin/similar portion of the Fediverse, the threaded-forum “Reddit-alikes”, as opposed to, say, Mastodon or Funkwhale.
If that’s true, I hate it.
So, the problem is that:
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Saying “Fediverse” is too broad, like talking about “the Internet” when one is talking about Reddit.
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Saying “lemmy” – currently the most-widely-used software package to do a Threadiverse instance – is too narrow, and excludes kbin and some other software packages.
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“Reddit-alike” doesn’t seem ideal, as I’d imagine that the Threadiverse will evolve past whatever Reddit has been and already differs in some ways. I’m also not really enthralled in terms of branding the thing in terms of Reddit.
I don’t intrinsically feel that “Threadiverse” has to be the term for that, but I do think that there’s a need for a term for that. It’s the only term I’ve seen used so far for it.
It does rely on punning on “Fediverse” and sounds similar, which I regret a bit – I think that it might be nicer if it sounded more different, so that one couldn’t perhaps mistake one term for the other. But I’m generally okay with it, myself.
I’m against it sounding like “Threads” i.e. as though it’s something Meta owns and controls. For all I know your use came first and the thing I hate is Meta appropriating it, though.
I kinda dislike the word as well. Makes it seem like it’s sort of a separate and special side of the Fediverse, when it isn’t. It’s just as interconnected and interoperable with other Fediverse software like Mastodon (microblogging) or Friendica (macroblogging) the same way as others are. In fact, here I am, replying to you from Friendica.
Imo people could just call them as they are: bulletin boards. Or just something involving groups, idk (because that’s what they are, mostly).
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Rightfully so. They protect their Users from Facebook.
Federating with Threads only hurts Meta. It does not help them in any way. You are not doing them any favors. If you are concerned about reports of genocide attributed to Meta, then you should federate.
Users who create accounts on Threads because they actually want to communicate with people they’ve heard of helps Meta. Defederating helps Meta.
I would argue that federating with either of the biggest companies on the fediverse is a monumentally bad idea.
Not just because of “Reports of genocide” or anything specious like that; which can be debated for days and days on end by people in both good and bad faith; but because both Threads and Meta are simply too large to be moderated correctly and be capable of managing basic issues such as harrassment and extended bouts of hate-speech which should never be considered acceptable; even if you do not necessarily agree with all of the goals and policies of the Fedi Garden; as strict as they are.
With that being said; I do fully support an Instance’s choice to federate, not federate or even limit their federation with them.
In most cases this should not affect instances; but unfortunately there are people who will ignore all warnings and use the Fedi Garden as a whitelist instead of a list of instances that you know will handle policy violations quickly.
On the other hand I absolutely also respect the needs of communities who ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY WILL NOT TOLERATE instances who choose to federate with either X, Threads, or any other instance they deem to be too toxic to play nicely. As instance operators you absolutely have the right to block problems BEFORE they happen, and if you happen to KNOW an instance will absolutely be a HEADACHE, you have every right to say NO. If the users do not like your decision; they are free to find a better instance for themselves; or spin up an alt account on a better instance.
If the users do not like your decision; they are free to find a better instance for themselves
Or just personally block Threads…
I would argue that federating with either of the biggest companies
What other company are you referring to?
because both Threads and Meta are simply too large to be moderated correctly
They’re not. Meta is simply not motivated to implement proper moderation.
That being said, I acknowledge and agree that moderation is poor, which is, once again, why you should federate. To let people know they don’t need Meta. To show them how to escape the exploitation and harassment.
The Fediverse will likely not be much different in terms of moderation, should it ever become even a fraction of the size.
Removed by mod
Hi @FfaerieOxide. Beehaw has one rule: Be(e) Nice. This kind of personal attack isn’t really in the spirit of Beehaw, and I’d like to ask you to please reconsider how you interact with users on this instance. You can disagree with someone without being insulting or demeaning.
Removed by mod
That being said, I acknowledge and agree that moderation is poor, which is, once again, why you should federate. To let people know they don’t need Meta. To show them how to escape the exploitation and harassment.
You’re gonna have to break this down for me, because I’m not seeing the logic.
So I’m a Threads user. I now start seeing Beehaw posts in my feed. Let’s say that I’m seeing them alongside Threads-originating posts containing “exploitation and harassment”. How does my seeing those Beehaw posts in Threads automatically translate to thinking, “I should leave Threads and join- not Beehaw, which is federated, but another, non-federated instance”?
Or are you advocating for individuals in non-Threads Fediverse instances to do some kind of manual outreach campaign?
That’s not how it works. What you see is conversations on other ad-free spy-free platforms that give you actual control over what appears in your feed, while simultaneously giving you access to all the people and orgs you know and love on Meta.
I doubt Threads is supporting communities so you probably won’t stumble across Lemmy convos, much like you don’t stumble across them on Mastodon.
ad-free spy-free platforms that give you actual control over what appears in your feed
You won’t know any of those are ad-free or spy-free (which is not true anyways, fediverse instances are absolutely being scraped), or know you could control those if you left Threads.
All you’ll know is, "I like this (Beehaw) thing I’m seeing in Threads, so to see more of it, I should use Threads more.
You won’t know any of those are ad-free or spy-free
Because Google is so expensive?
which is not true anyways, fediverse instances are absolutely being scraped
Scraping public data is entirely different from collecting your contact history, location history, web browsing traffic, decrypting SnapChat traffic, etc. etc. and on and on.
Scraping public data is entirely different from collecting your contact history, location history, web browsing traffic, decrypting WhatsApp traffic, etc. etc. and on and on.
Fediverse instances can also do most of this. They know your IP and email, and the stuff you reveal about yourself. You could de-anonymize many users with those 2 plus the info they share about themselves on here, with a bit of OSINT work. Any fediverse apps could also get access to contacts or other locally-stored info on your phone.
“But I wouldn’t use that app.” Well then you wouldn’t be someone using Facebook either. People using Facebook would also be the people granting shady fediverse apps undue permissions.
May I direct you to Embrace Extend Extinguish. It’s happened before, and you’re a fool if you think Meta isn’t federating specifically to go this route.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Can you explain how defederating prevents Meta from extending open standards (ActivityPub) with proprietary capabilities, and using the differences to strongly disadvantage Threads competitors?
The reason embracing works is because it creates connections between people using the system and allows them to piggyback off of other services.
At the moment, the wider fediverse may not have a ton of people, but the quality of content blows mainstream social media out of the water. By making it available through Threads, new users are going to be encouraged to follow their normal pattern of gravitating toward the big thing while still having access to this content. If we post on servers federated with Threads, every piece of content we add is a boon for Meta for absolutely free. The fact that they have deep pockets means they already have independent federation beat on the server end in terms of stability and long-term reliability. It makes a lot of sense for the average user to just grab a Threads account and not worry too much about which other instances have the odd hiccup or potentially stop existing.
On the other hand, if people exposed to the fediverse keep hearing about all this stuff that isn’t on Threads, there’s a better chance that they’ll get into the decentralized account model that’s natural to federation. The logical conclusion quickly becomes making accounts in places that are federated with the places you want to read and post, and if Threads isn’t connected to all those places it means it doesn’t serve to unify fediverse accounts under a corporate banner.
Threads has a resource advantage, but we have a content advantage. If we let Threads in, the content advantage dissolves, because not only do they gain access to fediverse content, they pollute it.
Thankfully the reality is that the choice will always lie with server owners, not via consensus. As long as the owners of servers with higher-quality content and better moderation don’t open the floodgates to Threads, that pocket of high quality content that a Threads account can’t have will always exist.
Personally, I suspect the above will be self-perpetuating, as connecting with a larger social media entity will degrade the quality of content. The best bits will always largely be inaccessible to the big sites.
How would blocking yourself from the ability to follow Threads accounts stop them from… anything? It’s not two-way if one of the two parties doesn’t want it to be, and Meta can’t be trusted.
It’s two-way. It prevents interactivity between the instances, meaning that Mastodon doesn’t get flooded with Threads users and Threads doesn’t get access to Mastodon content.
Preventing both of those things is a win for the fediverse, because it preserves its identity and purpose rather than just being 10% of a network controlled mostly by Meta.
Allowing both of these things to happen is a win for Meta, because their users overwhelm the fediverse and they get free content until it no longer exists.
We don’t lose anything by staying away from Meta, unless you like really love Facebook and want that to be what the fediverse is reduced to. Unchecked growth isn’t a win, it’s cancer.
I am thinking along the same lines as you. The fediverse needs to remain free of commercial interests and influences.
We all came here because we were looking for community driven social media, while metavitself has largely killed the modern world’s sense of community.
Federating doesn’t prevent that either, but at least you won’t be rewarding them for it by engaging with them. If Meta wants to sink ActivityPub (or rather, subsume it), it will, and no actions we can take will prevent that, bar forking the standard in some way.
In fact, not federating with Threads is the only potential way to ensure that our instances don’t become reliant on functionality that Threads adds, even if we can’t save the ActivityPub standard itself.
This is a topic that’s been covered a hundred times, with intelligent people realizing the “extinguish” doesn’t exist.
If Meta decides to stop federating then we are no worse off than we were before they started.
The fact that I haven’t had anything equivalent to Pidgin or Trillian installed in over a decade says otherwise. When Facebook became big it literally wiped out the active userbase of 4 concurrently relevant instant messaging platforms.
As far as I can tell they seem to have at this point largely been supplanted by Discord.
The fact that I haven’t had anything equivalent to Pidgin or Trillian installed in over a decade says otherwise
And what does it mean that I’ve never even heard of either of these?
When Facebook became big it literally wiped out the active userbase of 4 concurrently relevant instant messaging platforms.
Facebook never interoperated with any of those, or any other platforms, so I’m not sure what your point is.
And what does it mean that I’ve never even heard of either of these?
Exactly.
Facebook never interoperated with any of those, or any other platforms, so I’m not sure what your point is.
Facebook messenger literally integrated with XMPP to do exactly what Meta is clearly planning with Threads. They added compatibility in 2010, then scrubbed it in 2015. It’s right out of their own playbook. Your assertion is factually incorrect.
XMPP commited suicide when for several years it refused to standardize on file/image transfer, and audio/video calls.
Guess what end-users kept demanding, and kept failing with XMPP.
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Like Lemmy EEE-ing Mastodon?
Meta is federating because of EU’s DMA laws, and they’re going to do the bare minimum to comply with the law… then people will start crying foul because Meta is EEE-ing by not federating 🙄
Federating with Threads only hurts Meta. It does not help them in any way.
This is completely false. The entire reason they’re federating is to instantly get access to a much larger pool of UGC for their users to interact with. And of course they get to also choose who to federate with and who to block, so they can choose instances that have the kind of content they want, all for free, while suppressing instances they don’t like. If your instance starts to try to “convert” people off of Threads, they can (and will) just block you.
Users who create accounts on Threads because they actually want to communicate with people they’ve heard of helps Meta. Defederating helps Meta.
Threads has more users than ALL fedi.db-tracked fediverse instances combined (Threads: 160m, Fediverse: 10m). They don’t need us for users, they need us for content. Just like Reddit, there are usually a few dedicated ‘content generator’ users on any given instance, who post the bulk of the UGC. Gaining access to those is Threads’ goal. Federating is how they achieve that.
This is completely false.
It’s absolutely not.
The entire reason they’re federating is to instantly get access to a much larger pool of UGC for their users to interact with
Are you going to explain what UGC means?
The reason they’re federating is because of the Digital Markets Act. Same reason WhatsApp is going to interoperate.
And of course they get to also choose who to federate with and who to block, so they can choose instances that have the kind of content they want, all for free, while suppressing instances they don’t like.
Okay, and? What instances do you think they’re going to choose and why?
If your instance starts to try to “convert” people off of Threads, they can (and will) just block you.
…why would they do that? Why would they introduce something new just to turn around and try to prevent you from using it?
They don’t need us for users, they need us for content.
LOL they only need us to comply with regulations. You said it yourself, they have hundreds of millions of users, they don’t need more content. And they sure as shit don’t need content from users that overwhelmingly hate Meta.
Are you going to explain what UGC means?
“User-generated content”. Posts, comments, uploaded files, etc.
…why would they do that? Why would they introduce something new just to turn around and try to prevent you from using it?
Why would they try to prevent users from migrating away from their service? Are you seriously asking this?
The reason they’re federating is because of the Digital Markets Act. Same reason WhatsApp is going to interoperate.
LOL they only need us to comply with regulations.
You have asserted this in multiple comments, but the only site I can find asserting this link is a blog post by someone who admits to having only a “surface-level understanding” of DMA, and thinks that this is gaining them data portability.
As someone who works at a very large company that is also affected by DMA, this is not how any company whose legal teams we’ve spoken with are interpreting this requirement. Data portability is being solved with export standards, so that users can (more) easily migrate to other services. Streaming someone’s data over to another platform where they may or may not have an account, or ever intend to go, wouldn’t fulfill that requirement, because if the user wishes to move to a non-federated instance, that would not be possible. Portability also cannot be ‘favored’ under DMA.
That is a separate issue from interoperability, which only works if Threads is allowing federated instances to fully interact with their users’ posts, with no loss of functionality, which was at least originally not the plan.
Why would they try to prevent users from migrating away from their service? Are you seriously asking this?
No, that’s not what I asked. And you know it’s not. That’s why you tried to rephrase my question.
this is not how any company whose legal teams we’ve spoken with are interpreting this requirement.
Do you work with Meta?
Data portability is being solved with export standards, so that users can (more) easily migrate to other services.
Are you not aware that WhatsApp is also interoperating to comply with DMA? Another Meta company?
No, that’s not what I asked.
Yes, it literally is. You quoted where I said:
If your instance starts to try to “convert” people off of Threads, they can (and will) just block you.
And then responded to it by saying:
…why would they do that?
That is literally asking why they would block instances trying to convert users into fediverse users instead of Threads users.
Do you work with Meta?
Do you?
me: Data portability is being solved with export standards, so that users can (more) easily migrate to other services.
you: Are you not aware that WhatsApp is also interoperating to comply with DMA? Another Meta company?
I think you are conflating portability with interoperability. Those are 2 separate requirements.
Portability is about preventing platform lock-in, making it so that users can leave a platform (i.e. Threads), and take their data with them to another platform (any platform, not just ones of the originator’s choosing). This is not solved with federation.
Interoperability is the ability for users of one platform to interact with users of another platform, without platform-imposed loss of functionality. Whether ActivityPub can serve as a replacement for an API is something that courts in the EU would have to decide. It is certainly not 1:1.
Yes, it literally is
I mean, you can lie about it, but everyone can see it, so I don’t know who you think you’re fooling.
I think you are conflating portability with interoperability.
You’re wrong. I’m talking about interoperability. You’re the only one talking about portability.
everyone can see it
Yes. Your comment here: https://beehaw.org/comment/3046503
Here’s a screenshot of you literally saying what I quoted:
Hope this helps.
Are you going to explain what UGC means?
I would guess he’s talking about “user-generated content”, given context (“they need us for content”).
Even defederated instances can get UGC
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You don’t think allowing people to interact with Meta users while NOT ingesting ads (their virtually sole income stream) or having corporations spy on the entirety of their online presence hurts Meta? You can’t imagine how people might realize that they no longer need to use Meta services to follow and interact with the people they actually want to, and that they might leave without losing anything?
I don’t think letting people interact with you without leaving Meta hurts Meta, no.
Building something bad actors aren’t allowed to access and telling people about it without letting Meta play middleman is how you get people off meta,not throwing open the doors to Evil.
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Then why is Meta facilitating it?
I actually expect it matters fairly little to Meta either way, it’s basically just a fun add-on to their service, but it’s good for federation as a concept.
Most likely to comply with the Digital Markets Act. Same reason they’re adding interoperability to WhatsApp.
Wow, nobody had brought that up to me before. It looks like it has been around long enough that could actually be the consideration, the DMA having begun the process of becoming law in 2020.
Fedi Garden to users: “You may need to find an alternative to us”
