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.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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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.
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/
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.
Wasn't he paid by meta and put under an NDA? Would not trust any meta related info from him right now
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.
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.
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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."
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.
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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.
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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.
You hit the nail on the head.
I purposefully went vague because this won’t be the last. There will always be decisions that need to be made. There will always be a new company looking for a payday.
And if we are going to say, don’t just ‘Defederate from Meta’, but also ‘Defederate with anyone who hasn’t defederated from Meta too!’ then we have one very steep and slippery slope indeed.
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 )
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
Lots of upvotes here but also lots of unhappy replies... I agree with you and want to expand on some things I've come across (I've written much of this in chats with other people):
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It's not easy to "embrace extend extinguish" an open protocol (look at the Internet/ipv4/whatever example) - kerberos is the most compelling example imo, but that still barely applies imo. I have a response to the XMPP example here: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/708874
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Who chooses social media based on principles? Not very many people, plus even fewer people understand the technology enough to understand those principles (did you know tons of info is already public on activitypub networks?)
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I guarantee 99% of people replying to you negatively will hop on Twitter/Instagram/Whatsapp/Gmail/whatever and continue handing their info over to super-centralized social media. I have friends IRL and most of them use traditional social media, so hell yeah I want to be able to interact with them from my own fediverse instance (where some info at least is private)! It's the best of all worlds, and maybe I can get some of the nerdier ones to join me
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"We don't want to grow the fediverse Like This" - that's fine, but why defederate from instances that federate with threads.net (call this second tier/party defederation?)? That's punishing/activism (which is fine, but should the entire fediverse be activist like this? Most people just want to balance chatting with friends against data privacy/FOSS) instead of just having an opinion - if you're not federated with threads, then you won't have threads users interacting with your community
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I just don't like there being a cabal of fediverse instances that enact any sort of "purity test." I'm so far from a free speech absolutist, but if I want to federate with lemmygrad and exploding-heads (idk maybe I just get curious someday), what purpose does it serve for lemmy.world or whoever to defederates from me?
P.s. re the kerberos example - it's pretty egregious (look it up), but I would love meta/blusky to expand the activityub protocol, it's missing so much (and the lack of activitypub advancement is another argument against this being another instance of the XMPP embrace extend extinguish)
(I'm interested in expanding my opinion on this stuff, so I welcome constructive comments. I would especially like arguments for and against first tier defederation. Maybe even try to support the EEE argument, but I'll be skeptical on that one)
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.
On the other end, there's also the Executive Monkey aspect.
At some point, fighting every battle has a toll. See the decline in the population's mental health as activism increases.
As an apathetic Gen-X'er, I just acknowledge that I'll never make it so everything is exactly the way I want it to be. Some stuff just sucks. And so do I.
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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 👎
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.
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If the Fediverse can't survive Threads is can't survive period, and we should all just move on now.
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 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.
Yeah this is a weird spot with who really wants to control things. I would argue anyone with a strong opinion one way or the other should probably self host. Those that can't will need to find an instance where their views line up with the instance admin.
Ultimately I think you're right though, instance admin has final say since uh, they're the admin. Anyone who wants to admin a huge instance probably would leave it open for users to decide though.
Nothing is forced on anyone. The user can choose a different instance that does federate with Threads, and still participate in the first instance.
What this post is asking for is exactly not that, that if you are in any instance that federates threads, then you shouldnt be able to interact with any that follows this posts petition
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I'm all for blocking Threads as an instance or user, but blocking instances that choose to federate with threads is going to leave a lot users who when Threads breaks its compatibility with Activity Pub with no social graph to keep them tethered to ActivityPub.
Threads can't get the data we're worried about it collecting from federation, they can only get it from you installing/using their site or their app. So don't do that.
I think the difference between this EEE and say XMPPs EEE is Meta/facebook is widely seen as a cancerous entity that people who are already here aren't going to want to use, and when they break compatibility few people are going to want to switch to their service as long as there's still enough people here to talk to.
Not to downplay the threat of EEE, we need to remain vigilant. Our best defenses are preemptive defederation or shitposting how we never see ads.
At this rate we'll extinguish ourselves before Meta even gets to the third E.
Does it use activitypub?
@noodles @ModdedPhones Currently #threads does not make use of ActivityPub. Apparently there was not enough time to implement it in time for its scheduled release. That much said, I have put a preemptive block on threads.net so when it does go live, I won't forget.
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.
What if you are on Meta's payroll and want to start this so the Fediverse destroys itself from within? Gotya, sucky Zucc! Nice try. /s
For real, can't this Meta train derail next to the Titanic already? Joining an open communication standard platform and then complain the open standard communicates with outside. I really think you have been in the wrong place from the very beginning.
I expected the anti-Meta division to eventually demand recursive bans. The end result will be a hermit kingdom, and that's fine and dandy, but expect the Fedipact users to keep talking solely among themselves. (And the users that disagree to move elsewhere, making the hermit kingdom to become even more of an echo chamber)
Wtf, it doesn't make any absolute sense to defederate from instances that accepted to federate with threads!
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