Submitted 10 months ago by thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.world to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3dcb19c7-621f-47fd-bb9c-2bd423331abd.jpeg
As you’ve probably heard, Threads (a fairly new social network from Facebook’s parent company Meta) is testing integration with the fediverse. Depending on how you look at it, it’s a great opportunity, a huge threat, or both!
Back in May and June, when Threads’ first announced their plans, there were quite a few polls on Mastodon about people’s reactions, most showing opinions split roughly equally. How do people feel today?
I’m skeptical anything good will come out of it, but I’m glad if I’m wrong. Meta is about making money. The fediverse is a direct competitor to everything and anything they do. I don’t think Meta is interested in integrating with the fediverse. I think they want to dominate the fediverse. But that’s just me.
The fediverse is a direct competitor to everything and anything they do. I don’t think Meta is interested in integrating with the fediverse.
Right and this is really all that even needs to be said. There is nothing meta can do or say that will make this not true and there is no possibility that overtime meta won’t make decisions according to this power relation.
The future fediverse we all day dream about when we are in an optimistic mood is literally a catastrophic fail state for a corporate social media company like meta. We see the plot of a happy uplifting movie, meta sees a horrific slasher movie.
Capitalism believes selfishness is a virtue. And capitalists believe they are a benefit to society by being as selfish as possible. Anything good that comes from them is purely accidental.
That said, them connecting to the federverse is a much bigger risk for threads than it is for the federverse. We came here purposely to not be subject to them. They have no power over here. And next to none of us will ever be enticed away from here to there. However they cannot compete with the currently failing Twitter. And they need the dedicated long-term engagement. They have decent numbers. But only because they’re pulling from a pre-existing user base. That isn’t really interacting.
The main thing is to not get stuck in a self-destructive rhetoric cycle. Like people did with Google talk and XMPP. No one used Google talk for XMPP. It was just a nice side effect for a while that they interoperated. When Google closed it off they did not kill XMPP. XMPP still exists, and those of us that used it were weirdos in the first place who still used it afterwards. Threads may have a little something to offer. But we will lose nothing if they leave.
was no
still is no
Threat.
Whatever the stated reasons for joining the fediverse might be, the actual reason is to enhance data scrping capabilities.
It’s silly to think they can’t scrape data from where they are though.
What’s to stop them from starting a tiny instance, getting all the data, and just keeping quiet about it?
The threads people are already happy to have given up that data, and if meta becomes a problem, defederate from it, or find an instance that isn’t federated with meta threads.
Which of the above sentences is supposed to make me think that it is impossible for Meta to scrape more privacy destroying data, if they go all in on the fediverse?
I’m so disappointed that it isn’t an overwhelming majority of votes against federating with Meta. How do most people not realize this is just their chance to take advantage of the fediverse? And like haven’t we heard enough bad things about Meta to avoid them?
I am extremely against federating with Threads.
People in support of federating with threads keep saying we don’t need to worry about meta trying to extend, embrace and extinguish the fediverse because the software and architecture of the fediverse makes it impervious. In other words, technology will defend us from politics, money and power.
It is a categorical error in logic to think that a technology can solve problems of the type: politics, money or power.
WE have to solve those problems by understanding how history repeats itself and how large corporations fundamentally relate to publicly shared resources irrespective of what the CEOs say or even think themselves. We have to realize you can’t write a computer function that will stop a corporation from corrupting a collective human endeavor. Only humans can do that by effectively organizing against that happening and exerting a positive force in terms of politics and power.
Great write up. I really hope that we can pull this off and keep Meta out of the majority of the Fediverse
For me personally there are two main forces at play here:
I generally dislike and distrust Facebook/Meta as a company, I don't use their products, and I think my life is better off because of it. I acknowledge that they have also been an accessory to a lot of toxic shit, such as political/emotional manipulation, privacy and user data violations, etc.
Having said that, as someone who values and supports the idea of a free and decentralized internet built on top of open protocols, I also recognize that it's a very good thing when some of the larger players in internet technology adopt new free and open standards like ActivityPub.
I don't really know for sure, but I'd have to guess that the venn diagram overlap of people who care about the fediverse and people who genuinely like Meta/Facebook/Instagram/etc, is pretty fucking narrow. We'd be fools to ignore the real harm that this company and the people who run it have done (or at least catalyzed). And still, it'd also be pretty unfair and ignorant to brush off the things that Meta has done that range from being harmless to even being positive, such as maintaining and committing to some very popular and important open source projects. There is some nuance here, should we choose to see it...
So when I look at it objectively I land on feeling something between skepticism and cautious optimism.
I'm perfectly willing to call Meta out for doing bad things while acknowledging when they do things that are good. And as someone who believes that centralized social media is toxic and bad, and who also believes that a federated, community-driven internet is in all of our mutual best interest, I'm willing to give Meta a chance to participate as long as they are a good faith participant (which kind of remains to be seen, of course).
I acknowledge that they have also been an accessory to a lot of toxic shit, such as political/emotional manipulation, privacy and user data violations, etc.
Let’s not forget war crimes and genocide.
I can see from your other post that you're talking about Facebook's role in the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar, right? I think this part of the wikipedia article is relevant to the conversation:
The internet.org initiative was brought to Myanmar in 2015. Myanmar's relatively recent democratic transition did not provide the country with substantial time to form professional and reliable media outlets free from government intervention. Furthermore, approximately 1% of Myanmar's residents had internet access before internet.org. As a result, Facebook was the primary source of information and without verifiable professional media options, Facebook became a breeding ground for hate speech and disinformation. "Rumors circulating among family or friends’ networks on Facebook were perceived as indistinguishable from verified news by its users."[227] Frequent anti-Rohingya sentiments included high Muslim birthrates, increasing economic influence, and plans to takeover the country. Myanmar's Facebook community was also nearly completely unmonitored by Facebook, who at the time only had two Burmese-speaking employees. [Emphasis added by me, btw.]
Like I said above, I got off Facebook more than a decade ago and I don't use their products. As a platform it has been very well documented that Facebook has been a hive for disinformation and social unrest in [probably] every country and language on Earth. You and I might avoid Facebook and Meta like a plague, but the sad truth is that Facebook has become ubiquitous all over the world for all kinds of communication and business. Weirdos like us are here on the fediverse, but the average person has never even heard of this shit, don't you agree?
So what's my point? Why is any of that relevant?
As true as it is that Facebook was complicit in the atrocities in Myanmar (as well as social unrest and chaos on a global scale), a key component there is centralization, imo.
There are an estimated ~7,000 languages on Earth today across ~200 countries. To put it bluntly, what I'm saying is that content moderation across every language and culture on Earth is infeasible, if not straight-up impossible. Facebook will never be able to do it, nor will Google, X, Bluesky, Tiktok, Microsoft, Amazon, or any other company. In light of that it's actually shocking that Facebook had 2 Burmese speakers among their staff in the first place, considering many companies have 0. In other words, there is no single centralized social network on Earth who can combat against global disinformation, hate speech, etc. I think we can all agree to that. Hell, even Meta's staff would probably agree to that.
So what's the solution to disinformation, hate speech and civil unrest?
Frankly I'm not sure that there is one, simple solution, as the openness and freedom of the internet will always allow for someone, somewhere, to say and do bad things. But at the same time I strongly believe that federation and decentralization can be at least a part of the solution, as it give communities of every nation and language on Earth the power and agency to manage and moderate their own social networks.
I think you and I probably feel similarly about Facebook (and, for me at least, Tiktok, Instagram, X, and other toxic centralized corporate social networks that put profit about all else). After all, that's why we're talking here instead of there, right? I would much rather have everyone just leave Facebook for somewhere that is owned and controlled by individual communities. But that's simply not in our power. And so, at least as I see it, ActivityPub becoming a widely-adopted standard for inter-network communication at least creates more opportunity for decentralization and community-moderation.
I don’t like meta as a company.
But I don’t want to exclude a bunch of people just because they decided to use a server owned by them. It’s not like the server is a community dedicated to hurting people or promoting hate speech or something. Let them federate and just don’t follow any of them if you’re not interested in any of them.
Defederating isn’t going to benefit us or hurt meta, it’s just gonna hurt the people who use threads.
But I don’t want to exclude a bunch of people just because they decided to use a server owned by meta.
I do.
You make the fediverse a worse place, if your default is to arbitrarily exclude and gatekeep against people unlike you, as it seems to be.
Defederating isn’t going to benefit us or hurt meta, it’s just gonna hurt the people who use threads.
…Good. they should move their happy asses to a mastodon server, if it pains them so.
It is a mastodon server. A mastodon server run by meta. So how exactly is defederation going to benefit you?
Your word choice is just bizarre. Nobody would be excluded, they’d only have to make a profile on a different, normal server. And nobody would be “hurt” by not having access to Lemmy’s memes about Linux and similar stuff.
just don’t follow any of them if you’re not interested in any of them
Except that theoretically my “All” feed would still be full of garbage-tier content that people typically expect and post on Meta’s services, and that userbase with its same mindset would eventually spill over into the communities that I do follow too.
Your response isn’t self consistent.
they’d only have to make a profile on a different, normal server my “All” feed would still be full of garbage-tier content that people typically expect and post on Meta’s services
If they make a profile on a normal server then your feed will be full of that same content you don’t want. You’re trying to exclude users, not meta itself.
Besides, you keep taking as though they’re federating with Lemmy. They’re not, they’re federating with mastodon. Having mastodon posts show up automatically in your Lemmy feeds is unusual. Kbin, maybe.
I still feel strongly against it.
I’ll possibly end up leaving the Fediverse and finding a nice forum where I know corpos will never ruin.
No need to leave the fediverse, just join instances which plan to block threads
Nah won’t work.
Threads will kill content from non-Threads users.
I hope they federate
why do you hope that?
I hate Reddit and Twitter both so I want the Fediverse to take off
Meta are war criminals. Period.
If you support Meta attaching to the fediverse, you are welcoming war criminals and their quislings to becoming part of the fediverse.
I sincerely hope most of us in the fediverse are better than that or I’m going to have to search for a new social media home.
Meta has been a willing tool for enabling war crimes, genocide, political manipulation/propaganda, and brutal authoritarianism all across the globe.
Meta has a very bad track record, but on the other hand I would be happy to be able to follow famous people that are only on Threads from my privacy-respecting services.
I see Threads federation something like an RSS feed. It’s not inherently bad per se.
Does anyone know a decently sized mastodon instance that’s defederated from Threads? I need to move from mastodon.world which wants to wait and see what Threads does.
You can simply not follow people on Threads and you will have no Threads content in your feed
Doesn’t posts that people I follow boost that’s on Threads also show up?
Lots of them actually
I don’t see how it’s a threat. They can’t take over the whole federation.
Sure they can. Like Google took over XMPP.
So how would they take PixelFed, Mastodon, Lemmy & Kbin / Mbin? They can only try add a feature and if the rest of the Fediverse doesn't like it, they won't add it to there own platforms,
More awareness is always good to take. That’s said my own personal instance will defederate because damn meta
The fediverse isnt a competition and nor we we should try to replace gaint companies(even tho that it would be great) rather stay as a free alternative to those platforms.
I don’t care either way, but I hope they’d be welcome as long as they kept their instance cleaned of the kind of things other instances have been defederated for.
If meta wants all the data there are plenty of other ways to get it, pretending the fediverse is an impenetrable shield is silly. And maybe more people will learn about the fediverse in this way.
the whole point of federation is networks being able to connect to each other. it will hopefully be a matter of course in the future.
is also decentralization
threads have 141 million users ._.
I’m pretty sure they don’t have that many, Threads too, a steep hit:
Meta’s Twitter rival Threads sees steep drop in daily users by 80 per cent, report says
Do you have independent numbers to back up your statement?
People are scared because they don’t know what will happen. It’s basically conservatism at play and “the others” getting into a platform. Reality is - nothing of substance will happen, other than more users being able to communicate.
Was no and still no.1000000977
It can be both a “good” opportunity and bad but given the way Meta had to change its name to Meta after getting into trouble with running its platform to encourage fascism in national election outcomes … I think it’s safe to say the good that could possibly come of the federation does not outweigh the probable bad. I don’t agree with anything Zuckerfuck touches being anything close to reasonable to work with. Meta/Facebook’s track record isn’t something to ignore.
Contramuffin@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Definitely not. The same reason back then as it is now. Namely: I don’t trust Meta to not try to destroy the fediverse