Comment on Please defederate from threads.net

• unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ve had a bit more of a think about it and read that article about XMPP again, and I’ve had a change of mind.

  Earlier I was thinking about the possibility of becoming mainstream, however, not being mainstream is probably what makes Lemmy so great. And would threads users even discover us or would they just try to suck the life out of Mastodon by talking over everyone? How would threads rank posts from Mastodon vs posts on threads?

  Furthermore, if we became mainstream we might attract the attention of government which might try to regulate us. This could make admins and mods legally responsible for the discourse in their communities which could be discouraging for instances like ours. Remember, while email isn’t regulated politicians don’t understand computers beyond basic usage, so this is probably the same thing as Facebook to them. Even if we didn’t become mainstream, mods and admins would just be slaves to Meta focussed on dealing with their large variety of users rather than trying to grow our own communities.

  Another question I’ve considered is do we even need their users? My answer to that is no. Another thing that makes Lemmy Lemmy and even more so Aussie Zone is the quality of the users. Not just anyone will join, we get people who are more passionate about the bigger picture, people who demand something better, people who aren’t afraid to try something new. Lemmy users are visionaries which is why we have such passionate arguments and why there is such a large bias towards progressive politics.

  So yeah, I think we should tell Meta they’re dreamin’ and send em back to the pavilion. Or in other words: Fuck off Meta!

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  • WaterWaiver@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s interesting how attractive the thought of becoming mainstream is. Bigger = better.

    mods and admins would just be slaves to Meta focussed on dealing with their large variety of users rather than trying to grow our own communities.

    I wonder if mods & admins would just be overwhelmed, or if Meta would find a way of using their effort and hours to their advantage? ie use them as a free modding force for their product (indirectly). Labour for your Lemmy instance would become labour for Meta.

    I’m surprised by your full turnaround in opinion. Some of your earlier thoughts are valid: they probably won’t be able to track you any more than they currently can (through read-only Lemmy interaction) and more interaction does have its benefits.

    I guess perhaps defederating them now vs later might come down to whether or not you see Meta as a person or a company. If a new person joins/federates then you generally don’t want to pre-judge them, even if they’ve had a bad history you hope they can stick to the rules and participate well. Alas Meta isn’t a person, they’re a bit more like a government (they’re bigger than some nations) and very single minded in their pursuits. They don’t have the ability to turn around and go “apologies that I’m hurting people, I’ll actually change my ways and start following the values of your community now”.

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    • unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Turns out I was wrong about the tracking and advertising they absolutely could do it and they absolutely will:

      • mastodon.online/…/111585528118111249

      They could send ads masquerading as posts/comments and track you using images (since they are served from Meta’s servers similarly to how tracking works with images in emails

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      • WaterWaiver@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I didn’t think of that, if you federate then you essentially become a publisher of their ads and tracking. Ty for the link.

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