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Comment on 41% of fediverse instances have blocked threads so far!!!

Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Dumb. Federation is how we escape from every cloud-based service being a dictatorship of the person who owns the platform. That includes federating with privately own orgs to provide them an exit.

By all means make good tools to allow individual users to block Threads (or other private instances ruled by amoral coporations), but doing it at instance level is just dumb.

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otter@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
What I hate to see, even in this thread, is people turning on each other in this “us vs. them”, “you’re either a part of the pact or you’re against us” nonsense

Let’s all remember why WE ALL CHOSE to get on the fediverse and build it. The strength of the fediverse comes from the freedom to choose how to run things. My understanding is that no one in an instance is harmed if some other instance chooses to federate or defederate from Threads.

I hate Meta, and what I know is that Meta doesn’t need to do anything to take down the fediverse if we do it ourselves.

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- Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Part of it is just today’s polarized political climate, especially since the popularity of the Fediverse is partially a backlash to reactionaries taking over Twitter and the corporate enshittification of Facebook and Reddit.
  
  Everything is a war now, and solidarity and boycotts are basically the only tools that small, independent actors have. So people apply “don’t cross the picket line” thinking to everything, even where it doesn’t make sense.
  
  Want to act properly? Contribute money and labour towards your instances. Help them build better moderation tools so they can handle the flood of crap from Threads, and onboarding tools and better UX so they can steal away the Threads users.
  
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  - voidMainVoid@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    “The flood of crap” isn’t what people should be worried about. They should be worried about Meta embracing, extending, and extinguishing the Fediverse. There’s a good article about this here. People are worried about the wrong things and don’t realize what’s at stake.
    
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    Spuddlesv2@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The Ploum article again. Please explain how the circumstances with XMPP and ActivityPub are remotely similar.
    
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  - moormaan@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes, yes and yes (I contribute money).
    
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    Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Ditto. I also try to file good, clean bug reports with detailed repro steps where I hit them. Not just “it’s busted, fix it”. I’d love to contribute actual code, because I’d like to think I’m a really good programmer (been coding professionally for decades), but actually fully getting a hosted Masto instance up to the point where you can edit the code and see it live is a freaking nightmare.
    
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- bilb@lem.monster ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m not personally in favor of preemptively blocking threads on my instance and I don’t find the EEE argument at all convincing in this case. But other instances doing that is no problem at all, it’s fine!
  
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  - Serinus@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m also in favor of remaining defeated, but I certainly understand it’s a big risk. EEE is a real threat. On the other hand, something like Threads is the fast track to mainstreaming the Fediverse and really advancing us away from dependence on big tech
    
    Big risk, big reward. The deciding factor for me is when on the fence I’d rather be inclusive. Creating a big fight against something I’m a bit skeptical of just isn’t worth it.
    
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    Deceptichum@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You’re only a bit skeptical of Meta?
    
    After all the dodgy shit they’ve done for 20 years and you’re only a bit skeptical?
    
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    520@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    If it was literally any other company I'd be much more willing to embrace it.
    
    But Meta? Nah, they're too hellbent on a social media monopoly to consider a good thing.
    
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- sour@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  a house divided…
  
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- helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  My understanding is that no one in an instance is harmed if some other instance chooses to federate or defederate from Threads.
  
  It does kinda hurt the Fediverse as a whole when it becomes so segregated.
  
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- scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Embrace, extend, destroy is a thing though.
  
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  - otter@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It is
    
    I’m not sure if defederating is the correct counter to it
    
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    scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Defederating from known-bad-actor corporations during the “embrace” phase seems like a perfectly wise choice to me. Keeps them from getting to stage 2.
    
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- calvinbacon@r.nf ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The fediverse can’t be all star trek memes, maybe go lay on the fainting couch if your blood sugar isn’t high enough
  
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  - otter@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What?
    
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somePotato@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Meta has no interest in being part of the fediverse, it only wants to eliminate any posible competition.

The usual MO of buying the competitors isn’t posible on the fediverse, so the way to do it is embrace, extend and extinguish

Defederating is important because is Metastasis is allowed in the fediverse it will consume the fediverse, and then we’ll be right back at the corporate social media we’re trying to break away from, with the surveillance, ads and nazis being welcome as long as it’s profitable

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- Zak@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  is Metastasis is allowed in the fediverse it will consume the fediverse
  
  How?
  
  I’ve seen the article about Google and XMPP, but I don’t agree with its analysis. It wasn’t easy to find service providers offering XMPP accounts to the public in 2004. I do not believe that Google embraced, extended, and extinguished a thriving ecosystem; there never was a thriving XMPP ecosystem.
  
  There is a thriving ecosystem for federated microblogging, and federated discussions. While I’m sure Meta would like us to join their service, I’m not sure how allowing their users to interact with us will have that effect, nor how blocking that communication protects against it.
  
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  - calvinbacon@r.nf ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You must have been pretty young back then or ignorant. It was trivial to find a public XMPP server in 2004 and there were dozens of bridges that connected ICQ/IRC/AIM/MSN/Yahoo without the need of multi-clients which were popular at the time. Sounds pretty thriving to me, but please tell me again how Meta and Google are gonna give you a pony this time
    
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    Zak@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I was nearly 20 years younger than I am now and was definitely ignorant of free, public XMPP service providers, which is kind of the point. If someone tech-savvy enough to be running Linux on a laptop in 2004 and liked the idea of XMPP tried and failed to get started with it, what hope was there of attracting a mainstream audience? You could argue I didn’t try hard enough, and you’d be right in a tautological sense. I did later use third-party XMPP clients for Google Chat.
    
    I don’t expect a Pony from Meta. Meta is a face-eating leopard and I expect it to try to eat my face. If blocking their users from seeing the pictures of birds I share on Mastodon prevents that, please tell me how it does. This isn’t a rhetorical question; I self-host and can block, or not block whatever I want.
    
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    Eldritch@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m almost 50 myself. I’m logged in to XMPP right now. I’ve used it consistently since the early 2000. 20ish years minimum. There was never a thriving ecosystem of XMPP servers. There was a lot of choice, but nothing with a big name that would appeal to the average consumer. No jabber.social or jabber.world. And no critical mass of users. The transports were ultimately a frustrating gimmick. That Microsoft and AOL constantly broke. Leaving them unreliable and undesirable to recommend others to use.
    
    When Google rolled out Google chat based on jabber/XMPP there was a lot of hopium going around that they’d be that big name to bring critical mass. Surprise! Hindsight says no. They “defederated” their servers. The jabber/XMPP development group themselves decided to persue standardization. Which largely meant an end to the active development of the service. Standards move much slower. Imperceptibly so. With Google out, the XMPP group pursuing standardization, no “official” servers, and the advent of services like Skype discord etc. The buzz and momentum behind XMPP imploded on it’s own. Stymied by no one. Suffocated by it all.
    
    No one killed XMPP. It simply stopped being relevant to most people.
    
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    FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Do you have any actual statistics, or is this just a "I remember how it was back in the Golden Age" anecdote?
    
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  - Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Exactly. Any analysis of “embrace extend extinguish” WRT Google/XMPP needs to answer a simple question: how many daily active users did XMPP/Jabber have in 2004?
    
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    sir_reginald@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    the same can be argued about the fediverse. the approximate number is 1.5 million of monthly active users, which is just an ant compared to Meta’s.
    
    So yeah, one could argue that it’s pretty much the same situation in terms of numbers if not worse (I don’t know the numbers but I’d bet that Meta has more users than Google talk ever had)
    
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    calvinbacon@r.nf ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Jabber/XMPP had more daily active users than GMail. They used it as a trojan horse. Get off their tip
    
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  - NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Basically every single invocation of “embrace, extend and extinguish” is a borderline fallacy that depends on an oversimplified world view.
    
    XMPP/Jabber is even “funnier” because instant messaging as a whole is basically dead in favor of SMS and phone apps. The closest we get on that front is imessage and even that is mostly a US obsession.
    
    Basically every “Oh mah gawdz, EEE is coming for us” article comes from a place of mass ignorance, at best.
    
    As for Threads? I suspect that will eat Mastodon’s lunch. Because it already is. People love giving Facebook even more information and already have their favorite usernames from instagram. Whereas they will never stop bitching about how hard it is to sign up for Mastodon.
    
    And… that is fine. Mastodon is not twitter. It is better. A lot better.
    
    That said? I wouldn’t mind having access to Threads content. And I think there is a lot of room to use Matsodon/federation as a way for advertisers to take their power back, as it were, by controlling their own instances and being able to immediately cut off The Emerald Apartheid when he starts talking about The Jews again. But, if I ever do see a significant benefit to this, I can migrate to an instance that federates or even start my own. Rather than insisting that the ones I have accounts on do what I want.
    
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    Zak@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’d argue the phone apps are instant messaging and I’m a little surprised none of the previously-dominant PC-based IM apps made the transition successfully. Most of the ones currently popular do have web or native PC options though.
    
    I think we’re more likely to see users move from Threads to Mastodon than the other direction. Ideally, we’ll be able to offer a more compelling pitch than just “not corporate”.
    
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Deceptichum@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Utterly idiotic.

Facebook has for 20 years proven time and time again that it cannot be trusted and it is not beneficial for Internet users.

Yet still dumbarse cry over how mean we are to not want them here.

Get this through your fucking head people, Facebook does not have your best intentions at heart. You exist in this space purely for them to exploit.

I don't know why. They “trust me” Dumb fucks.

Mark Zuckerberg
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- capital@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  No one is crying because people are “being mean” to meta. They’re adults.
  
  What trust is required to federate? If they’re not moderating their own or some other issue crops up, we can block them at that point.
  
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  - prole@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    They’re adults.
    
    Are you new?
    
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- yoz@aussie.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Mark Zuck is literally saying that right now to Lemmy.world and other instances admins.
  
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takeda@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It is not dumb. Thinking that this time it will be different is dumb:

ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-ne…

When this was happening I was a huge proponent of Google, and Google Talk, recommending everyone I knew to switch to it, because Jabber with the help of Google will remove monopoly from AIM, MSN, YIM etc.

Google fucking killed the network and I contributed to it (maybe not in a significant way, but I still feel very bitter about it)

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- Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  How many users did Jabber/XMPP have in 2004?
  
  recommending everyone I knew to switch to it
  
  I think we’ve isolated the problem. Everyone is aware of the risk this time. nobody is going to abandon their Fediverse accounts for Threads.
  
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  - takeda@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    GTalk was easy to install, no need to create an account (most already had Gmail), had incompatible features (like making a voice call), later was integrated into the Gmail web interface, so you could use it anywhere. So many Jabber users did switch to it.
    
    Then somehow “broke” in a way that messages from GTalk were coming through, but anything coming from Jabber wasn’t arriving. Since most Jabber users had Gmail account many switches to continue talking to their peers. Stubborn people, like me, were left with rooster full of people online that none responded to you.
    
    At that time Google was seemed like a white knight, fixing things and making them better.
    
    Facebook today is known for being extremely shitty and destroying any competition, and there are still so many naive people.
    
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    Zak@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Then somehow “broke” in a way that messages from GTalk were coming through, but anything coming from Jabber wasn’t arriving.
    
    Google intentionally turned off XMPP federation in its chat product.
    
    I’d attribute it to malice, but looking at how badly Google has repeatedly mismanaged its chat offerings I’m going with Hanlon’s razor here. They did claim spam was an issue as well.
    
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    calvinbacon@r.nf ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    False. Google mail was invite only at this time.
    
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  - Alto@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Can you share the secrets to somehow even being a 1/4 as optimistic as you are?
    
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  - calvinbacon@r.nf ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    More than invite only Google mail had in 2004
    
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- swayevenly@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s a straw man argument. Nevermind the dumb comment, the “wait and see” argument is ingenious and insulting.
  
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  - takeda@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
    
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    FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    A pithy quote proves nothing. You can come up with duelling aphorisms for almost any issue. For example:
    
    Remembering everything is not the only solution. Perhaps, forgetfulness can make us live in peace too.
    
    – Mwanandeke Kindembo
    
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  - treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s not a strawman. It’s an actual man that existed and did the thing. It’s history.
    
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    swayevenly@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What?
    
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pelespirit@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Forgive me for repeating this, but I think it’s a great analogy and explains all of our thoughts about it:

I’ve used this analogy before, but threads is like a huge, 5k passenger cruise ship docking in a small town in Alaska. You don’t have to know ahead of time that the 2 public bathrooms, one at the general store and the other at McDonalds, aren’t going to be enough. You can also forecast the complaining about how everything isn’t really tourist ready. It will suck for everyone. The small museum will be overrun and damaged, the people will be treated like dirt. It’s an easy forecast.

Here’s the important bit, just because they’ve never been in the cruise line business, doesn’t mean you have to give them a chance to ruin your town.

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- SeedyOne@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thank you, someone finally looking big picture. I see a lot of folks talking about things like “it won’t harm Threads” or “the federation is all about inclusiveness and joining together” and those people, while correct on paper, are missing the point.
  
  Put simply, many instances would prefer not to deal with that unnatural influx, and that is their choice. In fact, the best part of the fediverse is not only that they CAN make that choice it’s that they can UNDO it later if need be. I can’t fault some of these smaller instances for being proactive in protecting themselves when few here really know what goes into running and moderating.
  
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  - pelespirit@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Threads wants to join the fediverse to either steal the content and/or kill it, there would be no other reasons.
    
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    ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes. My personal guess is that they want to start Threads as just another Federation instance where people build communities and relationships across instances as they do already, and act like a good Fediverse instance, all friendly and open and free . . . and then once there’s enough popularity and/or cross-traffic they will wall off the Threads portion and monetize access, so you’re forced to either pay up to continue in the groups you like and are invested in, or walk away leaving everything you put into it to Meta and paying users.
    
    I personally don’t give a shit whether lemmy.world federates with Threads, but only because I have already made the decision on a personal level not to participate in ANYTHING Meta, and that includes here on the Fediverse.
    
    I’m already here because Reddit pulled that same shit, and I walked away then too. I learned my lesson. No way will I knowingly cross that line into personally investing time and attention into what Meta could wall off at any time and monetize without recourse for anyone who does make that mistake.
    
    TL;DR: People can do what they want with Threads, federate or don’t, participate or don’t, just know that Meta can and will wall it off at any time and expect participants to pay in some way to continue.
    
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    SeedyOne@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure does seem that way.
    
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    Meowoem@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I get that you, like me, don’t like capitalist companies but what you’re saying is based on nothing.
    
    They can’t steal content from here that’s literally not possible, this comment here I’m writing now can not be stolen by anyone ever - and not just in the piracy isn’t stealing way but in the it’s public domain so you already all own it too.
    
    I use stuff from meta all the time and I didn’t steal it, all the vital open source code they’ve created and which is a fundermental part of stable diffusion and other open source tools is benefiting the community - are they only doing this to kill something?
    
    I understand the logic that successful capitalist company must be evil because that’s how capitalism works but it’s also a lot more complex, open source isn’t just a wishywashy dream for cheapskate nerds like meit’s a powerful and positive force that can benefit everyone even companies like meta without them needing to kill anyone or anything. Participation isn’t just it’s own moral reward it’s actually got a lot of other benefits too.
    
    Meta might just want to federate because open source is good.
    
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- Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  See, this is the more reasonable concern. Moderating a fediverse instance is hard, and the flood of posts coming from Threads might be a bad problem. That’s a case where I understand the need to defederate. But on the other hand, that doesn’t feel like a solution that needs to be done proactively - defederating from Threads if/when Threads users become a problem seems perfectly reasonable.
  
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  - pelespirit@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Here’s the important bit, just because they’ve never been in the cruise line business, doesn’t mean you have to give them a chance to ruin your town.
    
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- capital@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What does that even mean in this context though?
  
  The federated timeline is ready FULL of shit I don’t care about, have no idea what it is, or can’t read it because it’s another language due to people not being able to set their language correctly.
  
  The only time I’m going to see threads content is if it is boosted by someone I follow, contains a hashtag I follow (which I want anyway), or in the federated timeline I already don’t use.
  
  I don’t see the issue.
  
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Isoprenoid@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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- Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Have you looked into the process of actually spinning up your own Mastodon instance? It’s not exactly the good old days of throwing together a LAMP box and installing PHPBB on it.
  
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  - Isoprenoid@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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    IHeartBadCode@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I appreciate your commitment to this meme. I don't exactly agree with you, but hilarious nonetheless.
    
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  - Zak@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve done it and it’s not a whole lot harder than that. The additional steps are:
    
    Install dependencies - exact commands are provided in the instructions for Debian-based systems
    
    Create a more complex web server configuration file - for which a template is provided
    
    Set up systemd services to start it at boot - templates are provided
    
    It is harder than managed hosting where you might only need to create a database user in a web control panel and upload files for PHPBB, but there’s managed hosting available for Mastodon.
    
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    Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Doesn’t it require a whole mess of Docker instances and some kind of orchestrator to host? Or is it easier to stand up on a single server now? I haven’t looked into it in a year or so.
    
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    tal@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    but there’s managed hosting available for Mastodon.
    
    FWIW, I recall when elestio announced that they were offering managed hosting for kbin, and that they already did managed hosting of lemmy instances, and and I’m sure that there is managed hosting for at least lemmy available elsewhere.
    
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- samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If you just want a hassle-free way to view as much content as possible, there are instances that are federated with pretty much everyone - just have to do a little research. If you want to guarantee keeping post history AND have absolute control over what you can see, you’re gonna have to put in the work to make your own instance.
  
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- TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Also - them: it’s ridiculous they aren’t listening to the user the instance: held a vote and the majority voted to defederate
  
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Alto@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The super cool thing is that you're more than welcome to start your own instance where they don't block it. Or move to an existing one. Because you know, the entire point is that instance admins are allowed to run their instance how they see fit.

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- treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Because you know, the entire point is that instance admins are allowed to run their instance how they see fit.
  
  And the users are allowed to have opinions about it.
  
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  - Alto@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Correct, but that doesn't change who has final say over it. You're more than free to change instances if you no longer agree with how your current instance is being run.
    
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    Meowoem@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes but being able to technically do something despite it negatively affecting the wider community doesn’t magically mean people shouldn’t express their opinions, and of you’re not saying people shouldn’t then your post is entirely pointless
    
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- farcaller@fstab.sh ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I can easily imagine the future where “good” instances will then stop federating with the ones that don’t have threads blocked, all thanks to these lists.
  
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  - russjr08@bitforged.space ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m pretty sure this has already happened in the past, I swear there was a “Bad instances” list that someone was passing around, which someone else then disputed that the list was bad due to there not being valid reasons for why an instance was marked “bad” - but people had taken the list as 100% fact and blocked said instances.
    
    That is the double-edged sword of the Fediverse, the freedom to choose who you allow and don’t allow in regards to federation. There’s always going to be the “cliques” so to speak where if you upset (for lack of a better word) the wrong people, the size of that instance can claim that you’re bad, and if other instances take their word at face value without verifying this then all of a sudden you can’t communicate with other instances/people (ie, if you get defederated by lemmy.world or mastodon.social - then good luck). Obviously, the good part about how the Fediverse works is the power for each instance admin to make their own determinations of who they want to federate with, but this is the “bad” side of it which is further amplified by the fact that there are always going to be instances that hold a very larger position of power. In a way, fracturing of the Fediverse is a bit inevitable because of this. I suspect what you say will happen (as I’ve already seen this mentioned).
    
    It is what it is, I’m not saying whether that double-edged nature is good or bad, because at the end of the day that determination comes down to every person who chooses to participate, and is a decision they have to make on their own volition.
    
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TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think the fear is that this turns into an “embrace, extend, extinguish”. …wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

I don’t know if the fear is well rooted, but I can definitely understand how Facebook is perceived as not having established a history of trust.

They are a private company, which have placed profits above the best interests of its users.

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- Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Jabber was much smaller than the Fediverse when Google launched Talk.
  
  Users are more aware of the risk now. “Oh you should go use Google Talk, it’s an open standard” is stupid in retrospect. Likewise, “you should use Threads, it’s an open standard” would be absurd. The value here is “you should use Mastodon/Lemmy/whatever, it’s a good open platform and still lets you interact with Threads users”.
  
  It’s important to remember that the most famous example of embrace-extend-extinguish ultimately failed: Microsoft’s tweaks to Java and Javascript are long dead, Microsoft having embraced Google’s javascript interpreter and abandoned Java in favour of their home-grown .NET platform.
  
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  - calvinbacon@r.nf ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Google mail was even smaller than Jabber because it was invite only and closed source
    
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  - LWD@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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    Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    This implies Google is organized-enough to have any coherent concept of strategy. They made a browser because everything they make is web-based and wanted to control that. They add non-standard features to the browser because they want to do stuff that isn’t doable as part of the standard, because the web is a document engine that has been perverted into a general-purpose application platform.
    
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FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you federate with something too massive though it has undue weight on the entire system. It is likely to be Embrace, Extend, Extinguish again, and it’s reasonable to want to avoid that.

For people who don’t remember, the pattern would be something like:

Federate and use the existing ecosystem to help you grow and to grow mutually (Embrace)

Add new features that only work locally, drawing users away from other instances to your own (Extend)

Defederate - the remainder is left with a fraction of the users since many moved away, so the users on the local instance don’t care. (Extinguish)

It depends whether 2 actually succeeds at pulling users in. Arguably most people already on the Fediverse are unlikely to jump ship to Facebook, but you have to consider what happens in a few years if it’s grown, but Facebook is a huge name which makes people less likely to join other instances.
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- bilb@lem.monster ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Personally, it’s the implausibility of 2 that makes all of this seem like no big deal to me. In fact, I think federating openly with Threads might signal to Threads users that they can use alternatives and not lose access to whomever they follow on Threads, thus growing the user-base of other federated instances.
  
  I think people who are going to use Threads for Meta-specific features are likely going to use Threads anyway, and if any of those features are genuinely good (i.e. not simply Instagram and Facebook tie-ins) they will be replicated by the various open Fediverse projects which already differ from one another in terms of features.
  
  The moderation issue is entirely different and there are some instances that have an understanding with their users about protecting them from seeing any objectionable content or behavior as defined by whatever culture they have. Defederating from such a large group of people makes sense, perhaps even preemptively, no different from when they defederate existing large instances now.
  
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Uranium3006@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If we let corperate avithilea gain a foothold they'll EEE us. Learn from history, Meta's not doing this for our sake

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- fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  How do we stop EEE or the other option being irrelevant to most of the world? I don’t think defederation does either.
  
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  - Uranium3006@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It's not a choice between those two, and allowing Mark Zuckerberg in the door doesn't gain us relevance. We've already been slowly growing on our own accord and we've finally started to cross the threshold to where there's enough people here posting enough stuff that it's not a ghost town anymore. Sure I do still run out of content on any given day when I'm looking at my phone on the bus and on my work breaks but it's usable enough that I don't need the corporations. The only thing that threads has to offer us is a large pre-existing user base and there's nothing else. Once we get enough people even that doesn't matter
    
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    fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m mean, I’m loving it too. My interest are well catered here, but most of my friends see it as a ghost town when they try it, because they are open source tech enthusiasts with a penchant for left wing politics. Like this is my niche and I love it, but also I have to get on other platforms if I want to actually talk to anyone outside the choir.
    
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LWD@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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- Pxtl@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  I, for one, support the right of every instance to federate with whoever they choose to federate with.
  
  So do I.
  
  I just think their decisions might be dumb.
  
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  - calvinbacon@r.nf ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I hope you get a free t-shirt from your stalwart white knighting
    
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helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think the conversation should be about the impact of federating with an “instance” with a long history of poor or apathetic moderation vs. creating an off-boarding system for Meta users to escape the corporatocracy.

Personally I vote for the latter, and I’m glad most of the larger instances are in the same boat.

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- lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If you think Meta will allow the Threads algorithm to show anything from the fediverse you are unbelievably naive. And that’s if content from the fediverse even makes a blip on a platform with 100x the size.
  
  Meta doesn’t federate with the goal of giving Threads users an out. They federate because it’s the most efficient way to scrape fediverse instances and build profiles on fediverse users.
  
  Meta has reached saturation with their existing services so they are now branching into any possible extra source of data they can. They’ll take anything, from fediverse federation to Whatsapp emails. All your data is welcome to them.
  
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  - donio@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    They federate because it’s the most efficient way to scrape fediverse instances and build profiles on fediverse users.
    
    That’s not true. Quietly scraping is much easier to implement than integrating AP into your platform.
    
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  - helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They don’t need to show you anything in the algorithm.
    
    As for data, that’s complete non-sense. What data do you think they’re getting access to that they can’t already get? If the goal was to trove data they would have done it quietly and not announced it so that everyone could block them before they even had a chance.
    
    They’re federating because of the Digital Markets Act.
    
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- prole@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  In an ideal world people realize they can escape the ads and data collection without losing touch
  
  Meta will not allow this to happen, and if/when it does, they will take action. This shit is a zero sum game to these people.
  
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  - helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They may not have a choice
    
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- chitak166@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  No, I don’t think the conversation should be about the impact of federating with an instance.
  
  If we want to see it, great. If we don’t, also great. But we should have the power to decide for ourselves instead of some biased admins.
  
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  - helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    we should have the power to decide for ourselves instead of some biased admins.
    
    So admins shouldn’t defederate from any instances at all? Even right wing Nazi instances with Nazi flags in every profile?
    
    The only people who disagree with this are those who want to control what other people get to see.
    
    Yes, they want to protect their users from harmful instances. This is something the people who join those instances want.
    
    They also want to “deplatform” those types from society as a whole.
    
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    chitak166@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    So admins shouldn’t defederate from any instances at all? Even right wing Nazi instances with Nazi flags in every profile?
    
    Users should have the power to defederate in addition to admins.
    
    This is something the people who join those instances want.
    
    Not everyone wants the same thing or has the same idea of what constitutes ‘harmful’ instances.
    
    They also want to “deplatform” those types from society as a whole.
    
    Yes, this is why it’s important to take individual control away from the user; to push an agenda.
    
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BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah, I wonder how many of those instances are primarily enthusiasts self-hosting.

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alilbee@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Especially given that there was just an update allowing for individuals to block instances they don’t like. Forcing this on the instance level is just nonsense, and exactly the sort of behavior most of us wanted to escape from. If I wanted my instance owner to just decide all of this random nonsense for me, I’d just go back to reddit. I’m glad my instance is leaving it up to me.

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- gregorum@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You can block the instance, but the individual users can still be seen from that instance. You would still have to block each individual user, and that’s ridiculous.
  
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  - alilbee@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    If that’s true, that’s definitely something that needs to be addressed. I am all in favor of users having the choice to block instances and their users, and will likely even block Threads myself. This whole shaming campaign against instances though is childish, ineffective, and against the underlying principles of federation. What’s even the point if people are just going to start name and shaming every instance owner making a decision they don’t like?
    
    And for fuck’s sake, I understand the core idea of embrace, extend, extinguish, don’t link me the article (not you, gregorum, just random readers of this comment). I’m just not going to use that as a kneejerk way to shut down any action taken by a company I don’t like.
    
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  - wagoner@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That doesn’t sound correct. If it were, what would be the point of the block instance feature?
    
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    stephen01king@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s to block all posts from that instance, which I think is not enough.
    
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    gregorum@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    exactly. it’s pointless.
    
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- ShittyKopper@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  if you were to focus this on just Lemmy itself as opposed to the wider fedi (“Especially given that there was just an update allowing for individuals to block instances they don’t like” implies that’s the case) you already have nothing to worry about as you encountering a threads user here will be even slimmer than encountering a mastodon user.
  
  threads is primarily targeting the microblog/personal side of fedi. the incentives and privacy expectations are quite different compared to this side of fedi
  
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roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Then change instances to one that doesn’t block threads. It’s that easy.

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reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If this wasnt needed we wouldnt even think about doing it.

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chitak166@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

By all means make good tools to allow individual users to block Threads (or other private instances ruled by amoral coporations), but doing it at instance level is just dumb.

Say it louder for the children in the back.

This is the solution.

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- Gullible@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  My friend… your instance has defederated from several other large instances already. If you were on a lemm.ee account then I could take your argument seriously. It’s like the US admonishing Venezuela for going oil hunting, China suggesting religious persecution is unacceptable, or Russia shouting about gay rights.
  
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  - chitak166@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    My friend, I’m still getting used to the fediverse as well.
    
    Try not to assume the average user knows their way around this place, lol.
    
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    Gullible@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    But you decided to weigh in on the situation… I suppose I’ve already told you which instance you’re best suited for. Basically the only criterion anyone looks at for a home instance is who they federate with. Past that, your experience is largely identical. Just federation and admins. Click “instances” to see federation.
    
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doctorcrimson@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you want threads, join threads or a threads friendly instance, but if you don’t like the majority of the fediverse blocking threads then get fucked because this is what the people want.

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- tal@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  but if you don’t like the majority of the fediverse blocking threads then get fucked because this is what the people want.
  
  That seems like an odd position to take, given the information available. The only number here – the instance count involved – has a majority not blocking Threads.
  
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jcrabapple@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
People seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about why Threads is adding ActivityPub support. It’s not to destroy the fediverse. The fediverse is not in competition with Threads.

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FlordaMan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
0.19 allows for instance blocking, so the good tools will be available.

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