this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Meta (lemm.ee)

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Context

There have been a lot of posts and comments recently about Facebook entering the fediverse, and how different instances will handle it. Many people have asked me to commit to pre-emptively defederating from Threads before they even implement ActivityPub.

The lemm.ee federation policy states that it's not a goal for lemm.ee to curate content for our users, but we will certainly defederate any server which aims to systematically break our rules. I want to point out here that Facebook makes essentially all of its money from advertising, and lemm.ee has a no advertising rule - basically, Facebook has a built-in financial incentive to break our rules. ActivityPub has no protections against advertising, so it's likely we will end up having to eventually defederate from Threads just for this reason alone.

However, I would still like to get a feel for how many people in our instance are actually excited for potential federation with Threads. While personally I feel that any theoretical pros are by far outweighed by cons, I do want to use this opportunity to see how much of the community disagrees with me. I am not intending to run this instance as a democracy (sorry if anybody is disappointed by that), but I would still like to have a clear picture of user feedback for potentially major decisions such as this one. This is why I am asking every user who wants lemm.ee to federate with Facebook to please downvote this post.


Here are some reasons why I personally believe that Threads will have a negative effect on the fediverse

  • As mentioned above, Facebook is completely driven by ad revenue. There is nothing stopping them from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores, which would ensure that their ads end up on the "all" page of federated servers.
  • Threads already has more users than all Lemmy instances combined. Even if their algorithms don't apply to the rest of the fediverse directly, they can still completely dictate what the "all" page will look like for all instances by simply controlling what their own users see and vote on.
  • Moderation does not seem to be a priority for Threads so far, meaning that they would create massive moderation workloads for smaller instances.
  • In general, Facebook has shown countless times that they don't have their users best interests in mind. They view users as something to exploit for revenue. There are probably ways they are already thinking about hurting the fediverse that we can't even imagine yet.

By the way, we're not really in any rush today with our decision regarding federation

  • Threads does not have ActivityPub support yet today
  • Even if they add ActivityPub support, their UX is geared towards Mastodon-like usage - it seems unlikely that there would ever be proper interoperability between Threads and Lemmy
  • We don't really know what to defederate from - it's completely possible that "threads.net" will not be their ActivityPub domain at all.

So go ahead and downvote if you feel defederation would be a mistake, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! It would be super helpful to me if folks who are in favor of federating with Threads could leave a comment explaining their reasoning.


Update:

By now, it's clear that there is a group of users who are in favor of federating with Threads. The breakdown is like this (based on downvotes):

  • lemm.ee users: 136 in favor of federating with Threads
  • Others: 288 in favor of federating with Threads

While it seems to be a minority, it's still quite a few users. There is no way to please all users in this situation - any decision I make will certainly inconvenience some of you, and I apologize for that.

A big thanks to everybody who has shared opinions and arguments in comments so far. I think there are several well written comments that have been unfairly downvoted, but I have personally read all comments and tried to respond to several as well. I will keep reading them as they come in.

The main facts I am working with right now are as follows:

  • The majority of lemm.ee users are strongly opposed to immediately federating with Threads
  • Facebook has a proven track record of exploiting users (and a built-in financial incentive to do so)
  • We currently lack proper federation/moderation tools to allow us to properly handle rule breaking content from Facebook

Considering all of the above, I believe the initial approach for lemm.ee should be to defederate Threads, and then monitor the situation for a period of time to determine if federating with them in the future is a realistic option

In order to federate with them, the following conditions would need to be fulfilled:

  • There needs to be actual interoperability between Threads and Lemmy
  • Threads needs to prove that they are not flooding instances with rule-breaking content (mainly ads and bigotry for lemm.ee)
  • There needs to be a mechanism to prevent feed manipulation by Threads algorithms (potentially this means discarding all incoming votes from Threads)

Note: this is an initial list, subject to change as we learn more about Threads.

Again, I realize this approach won't please everybody, but I really believe it's the best approach on a whole for now. Please feel free to keep adding comments and keep the discussion going if you think there is something I have not considered.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

As someone who deleted Facebook in 2012 and has zero intention of going back to any of Meta’s products… I don’t see a need to defederate and would prefer not to.

Hear me out… maybe i just am still figuring this whole fediverse thing out but I don’t see how it can be bad.

  1. If there are ads or otherwise bad content on threads, I’m not going to see it unless I actively go follow treads accounts. Like I still have trouble finding/following content across federated instances, basically going there, getting the name of a community, coming back here, and plugging it in.

  2. Any data they could mine about me they could get anyway since it’s either publicly available or not. They could just stave the fediverse under some other domain/IP that doesn’t even need to federate.

  3. In the event they try to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, they would just change the activity pub protocol in some way, at which point we would have two competing standards. Open source ActivityPub, as used by Mastadon, Lemmy, and the like… and Meta’s ActivityPub… if we don’t use theirs their extended (bad) version of the protocol, they essentially fork and we don’t get to see their content. So we’re just going to defederate now so they don’t have that carrot to dangle over us? Why not just know if they starts fundamentally changing the protocol we just let them break themselves back off from us? We don’t lose anything we aren’t giving up already by defederating.

The ONLY thing that fundamentally changes for me is I don’t get to follow any Threads accounts from the relative safety of the fediverse. At which point I probably have to bite the bullet and spin up my own dedicated instance so I can chose to not defederate. All that said I’m more concerned about this on the Mastadon side of things, as like you said it probably wouldn’t even integrate well with the Reddit style fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (9 children)

You're simplifying things.
You can't disregard privacy discussions as "they know everything anyway". There is a vast difference between what they know when you install Instagram/Threads and use it everyday and when you use nothing relevant to Meta. At the same time, I'm not sure how federating means your privacy is threatened either. (Let me know if I'm wrong here)
"We could just fork away" is also a wrong idea. Everyone on tech groups are crying about Manifest v3, why are they not just forking Chromium? Think of RSS. Open source coders can never compete with a billionaire dollar company with a massive user base. It's pretty easy for Meta to dominate the platform.
I'm not completely against federating with Meta, think there could also benefits to this, but it's also a pretty risky for the future of fediverse in my opinion

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Personally if I wanted to interact with Threads, I would make a Threads account. It's free, I already have 100 accounts across various websites, so what is 1 more.

I think defederation is a wise choice here.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I feel strongly against corporate involvement with the Fediverse so I'm going to have a pronounced reaction to it.

Hell no to federating with Threads. Yeah they're a different platform and they have not joined the Fediverse yet, but they're using ActivityPub and they could do all kinds of nasty things with it (as evil profit mongering corporations always do).

For future reference, say no to any kind of corporate influence.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I knew it was right decision on my part to start using lemm.ee and stop using .world

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Not a lemm.ee user but I think we should all defederate from threads. The fediverse is supposed to provide a safe space from these corporations, not welcome them with open arms, especially Facebook.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Defederate! For many people migrating from reddit was, in part, to get away from big tech, this would ruin lemmy imo

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

You know, I was going to be a wait and see vote. After seeing the justification and a better understanding of the consequences, I agree with defederation. As much as I think Lemmy has room to grow, it should not be via Facebook and obviously fuck ads. I stand with King @sunaurus

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

[sidenote] you can see who already defederated here

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you are curious, here are all the instances that have blocked threads so far

https://fba.ryona.agency/?domain=threads.net

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Facebook, aka Meta, is cancer. The best way of dealing with cancer is eliminating them at their roots.

Failing that, excising cancerous tissue before it metatasizes is common sense. Even if it's ultimately benign (which I doubt, given their track record), given the dangers that inaction would cause, it's best to preemptively exorcise it out of the Fediverse.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Apps and website that are basically performing mass surveillance (incl. voice) should be blocked in my opinion. It's already insane they are legally allowed. I am all for an open Internet, but I choose not to use Facebook, Threads and all kind of apps which do the same. They should not be able to use or index my responses on other platforms. Besides ignoring my personal space making money of it as well whilst I get nothing. I know that's already difficult to prevent, but we can make it harder for them to do so.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I wonder how many shill accounts are actively trying to sway the tide of opinion around here, especially during all of this uncertainty, excitement, and vulnerability.

Honestly curious, like if we could see a number for, "traffic increase in troll farm activity" or some shit.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

If we downvote, then what's the point of migrating here from Reddit? Facebook and other mainstream social medias can pour funds to create their own “universe.”

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Defederation. BIG NO to corporations in the federation 🙂

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

I’m in the minority here but I don’t want to defederate yet.

One of the biggest benefits of federation is that it allows me to interact with brand accounts on my own terms. With Twitter, I often found that the best way to get support was to contact the brand's account directly. I can't do that on Lemmy if we defederate.

And during major news events I want the up-to-the-minute coverage you find on major news outlets’ accounts.

But being over here on Mastodon and Lemmy, ideally, I can get that interaction on my own terms instead of being subjected to The Algorithm.

If this is not possible due to protocol limitations, or it becomes onerous to block spam - and the tools to do so haven’t caught up - then I’d be in favor of defederation. Not preemptively.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

noooo....this is my happy place...thats a hard pass on anything meta

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I certainly have no love for Meta, so I don't really mind just defederating from them on principle. Plus it won't matter much since, as you said, Threads is more of a Mastodon adjacent thing. There wouldn't make much difference even if you did federate with them, at least at first.

That being said though, if you do want to consider federating with them in the future a thing that would be important to me is that they would have to not be the only big corporate instance. I do not like the power imbalance between Meta and the current fediverse. If ActivityPub becomes a standard protocol that lots of companies start using and Meta keeps their spy garbage on their own instance then maybe it would turn out alright to federate with them. If it's just Meta then I have absolutely zero trust that they won't abuse their power to make our lives worse no matter how innocent they seem at the time.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Please defederate

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I already left Lemmy.world because those assholes refused to defederate, don't make me have to set up my own instance 🤦

All I want is a free internet, of the people, by the people, that bans corporate dystopian bullshit. I am not asking much.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Thanks for posting this and sharing your thoughts on this big topic. I voted up as I think it’s best to stay away from anything Meta related. It would ruin Lemmy. I like that you’re taking a logical view of the whole situation.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (15 children)

I'm for federating with any instance that doesn't exist explicitly to break this community rules. I turned blind eye to not defederating Exploding Heads because Lemm.ee is a small server that doesn't host any big communities they could interfere with. I thought it was an indication that it's an instance that would allow me to curate my experience.

This is a European server, it's fair to assume most of the users here are protected by GDPR. The talk of scraping data seems like a nonsense, Meta can do it without federating. And as Elon learned, closing your APIs means other entities will do web scraping which puts more stress on your infrastructure.

I don't understand how most people here are for open standards, interoperability and the moment their protocol of choice gets traction they drop everything and opt to create their walled garden, except with 5 dozens of people. This is it, you've literally won. I guess some people will keep fighting big corporations for any reason on principle. That's ok but not something most people are interested in.

There's a lot of talk about how XMPP was killed by Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I'm convinced 99% people posting that same blog post that sells opinions as facts, haven't actually lived through it. XMPP was embraced, then Google and Facebook got bored, dropped it and moved on. They did not poison the protocol in any way.

If Meta tries to extend Activity Pub in a malicious way then that's the point you defederate. If they get bored of Activity Pub and move on you have lost nothing, you probably gained more users than you would if you didn't federate. I don't believe it will come to this, EU Digital Markets Act means more platforms will have to open up, other commercial platforms will join in to capitalize on that and we'll end up with consortiums coming up with reasonable changes to standards. If not they'll get bonked by EU regulators with even more laws.

Finally, it's a shame that we've done this vote via Lemmy post. It has hit "All" view for a lot of people who are not part of this instance and probably irreversibly poisoned this discussion.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I’m convinced 99% people posting that same blog post that sells opinions as facts, haven’t actually lived through it.

I'm a person who lost contact with people on Facebook while using Pidgin. This unfortunate development in ancient history actually forced me to briefly register on Facebook to maintain contact - because they couldn't be convinced to adopt Pidgin and Pidgin users were a minority (as were users of other XMPP messenger apps, at least separately counted).

Prognosis: Facebook will play along to gain mass, then go incompatible. They will do this at a moment when they think users will gravitate towards their side of the fence.

Advise: never open that door, there be dragons on the other side.

We should remember what they have already done, and expect more of the same, because they haven't changed. Justified grudges are perfectly fine to hold. A corporation that has harmed society by supporting polarization in many countries (formation of echo chambers, targeted advertising) should be boycotted by default in perfectly rational retribution.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I mean the beauty of the fediverse is that if you INSIST on being able to access Threads via a Lemmy account, you can, even if all the big instances defederate. IMO the risks/downsides outweigh any possible benefit in light of the fact that defederation doesn’t remove access for anyone, just restricts it

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Also threads.net should be the ActivityPub domain, when they show you how you will be able to view user profiles on other instances it's using threads.net domain name.

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