Everyone advocating for federating with Threads keeps making technical arguments for why meta supposedly can’t extend, embrace, extinguish the fediverse as if this was a phenomena of technology. I am sorry, I know you love technology, programming and computers but this has nothing to do with those things.
This process is a phenomena of power and politics, and nothing about the fediverse makes it uniquely impervious to it, if anything a loosely organized federation is UNIQUELY vulnerable to a powerful, organized political actor. Meta can easily distort the entire landscape we are operating in with the amount of money it has at its disposal. The only defense we really have is learning from history and a lot of yall seem pretty incapable of that when you stick your fingers in your ears and repeatedly say “lets just wait and see what the face eating leopards do!”.
GONADS125@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m pasting an old comment of mine from the official lemmy.world post discussing potential future federation with threads/meta:
I would like to start by expressing my sincere gratitude and appreciation for the hard work you’ve done with lemmy.world. But I am strongly opposed to federating with Threads. Please read this comment in full, as I believe it outlines the sentiment and reservations held by many within our community.
I think it might be helpful to use an analogy that I think will help express the feelings of many of those within our community regarding the problem with the “wait and see” approach.
What’s to say Threads won’t follow in their very well-established footprints under Meta as a company?
If I go to a friend’s house and their child spits in my face every time, I don’t want to go to my friend’s house. I tell them this. The friend again says, “Well this time just might be different, let’s just wait and see!” Meanwhile, this kid spits in my face without fail, every chance they get. There is a very consistent and pervasive pattern of this.
Why should I believe this kid won’t spit in my face all of a sudden, when they’ve taken every single chance they could repeatedly, knowing that it was wrong and not caring what repercussions would befall them? Do you really think this kid is going to refrain from spitting in my face this time?
Meta/FB have continually demonstrated their core business practices are unethical and that they will continue carrying them out without regard for laws or their users’ well-being. There’s no reason to wait and see. It’s not logical to believe this time will be different.
Threads would bring such a large influx of hateful, racist, violent, bigoted political extremists to the fediverse. They will also do whatever they can to exploit users on this site for their own gain. Their modus operandi has been to exploit their users.
Instead of just conjecture and analogies, I will now provide factual information regarding Meta’s practices as a company.
This really should be obvious by now… but Meta mines and sells their user’s information. Just look at the permissions you have to grant them for Threads… That alone should tell you there’s no reason to “wait and see.” Just look right now. They haven’t changed…
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. 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!
Meta has played a very key role in spreading misinformation, perpetuating dangerous conspiracy theories, and radicalizing the alt right. This is present across nations, but it certainly contributed heavily to the climate of political extremism that led to a mass of insurrectionists to attempt to overthrow my duly elected government…
I will now turn to an article that surmises well the core practices of Meta as a company:
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];
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;
Defrauds both advertisers and newsrooms, systematically and globally, with falsified video engagement and user activity statistics;
Reflects an apparent political agenda espoused by a small core of corporate leaders, who actively impede or overrule the adoption of good governance;
Brandishes its monopolistic power to preserve a social media landscape absent meaningful regulatory oversight, privacy protections, safety measures, or corporate citizenship; and
Disrupts intellectual and civil discourse, at scale and by design.
I ask you now if you truly believe this is the sort of player you want on the Fediverse? Do you really want to federate lemmy.world with such a blatantly immoral and detrimental corporation?
I have really enjoyed my time here on Lemmy.world and have so greatly appreciated the hard work of you and your team. I have been donating to you to help with the costs of running this instance.
However, federating with Threads contradicts my philosophy and ethical principles, and I will be sadly canceling my donations and finding a new home should we federate with Threads in the future. I firmly believe that most users on lemmy.world share this sentiment. I hope this comment helped express the resistance and fears of our community.
Once again, I appreciate all the work you guys have done. But I respectfully and severely dissent on this issue.
SpaceTurtle224@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I made this profile picture to those who want to show their support to this cause:
Image
snowe@programming.dev 10 months ago
You can also read my post I made for the programming.dev instance here. programming.dev/post/497263
ItchySunItchyKnee@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The 2 articles in the linked post were very informative. Thanks for sharing!
lapes@kbin.social 10 months ago
Einstein never said that:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/?amp=1
GONADS125@lemmy.world 10 months ago
TIL. Edited my comment to be more accurate.
samus12345@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And it’s a completely false statement, to boot.
PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Well now you can block instances yourself. So no point in bannkng it for all…
helenslunch@feddit.nl 10 months ago
Because Fedi puts up a glass window.
They simply can’t do anything to hurt the Fedi. The Fedi was built specifically to resist that kind of intrusion. They can only hurt themselves, and help their users by showing them how easy it is to transition to a platform that isn’t riddled with ads and data-mining while still remaining connected to their family and friends/news/etc.
There is no data for Meta to mine by federating that isn’t already publicly available. Federating does not suddenly give them unfettered access to every connected server.
GONADS125@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The examples I listed were to demonstrate the fact that meta/FB is a bad actor, not that all are applicable to lemmy.
Also, the lemmy.world team admitted that lemmy lacks the moderation tools required for federation with threads.
This doesn’t pair well with the extremist content popular and promoted on threads. And I’m tired of hearing about the false solution people keep pretending exists in the form of personally blocking instances.
That may solve me not seeing the content, but what about my fellow users? What about people browsing without a profile/not signed in?
I care about more than myself. I care about the health of fellow human beings on this site, and I don’t want Threads to increase the amount of radicalization and extremism on this site. I don’t want more people to fall victim to radicalization. I have lost family to qanon/maga cults and I think we need to protect the integrity of the fediverse.
When players like threads/meta try to join in, I believe it is the responsibility of admins of the large instances to protect their users and refuse to federate with them. Period.