Submitted 11 months ago by mypasswordis1234@lemmy.world to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://mstdn.social/@feditips/111585534320522781
Meta just announced that they are trying to integrate Threads with ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.). We need to defederate them if we want to avoid them pushing their crap into fediverse.
If you’re a server admin, please defederate Meta’s domain “threads.net”
If you don’t run your own server, please ask your server admin to defederate “threads.net”.
Aside from the “moral” argument, can someone ELI5 what harm can a federated threads.net do on other users (like me) and/or instances?
the general strategie is called “embrace, extend, extinguish”. This strat is the reason, why everyone uses MS Office today
As opposed to Threads stealing all brands companies and users anyway?
There’s still advantages to a fediverse and ways to defend against “embrace extend extinguish” if you plan ahead.
that reminds me of Apple with iMessage
It’s not necessarily about a threat to instances or users. It’s more an issue with how Meta could potentially hijack the protocol the whole thing is built on, and do damage in the long run. There’s a write up here on how similar things have happened in the past;
This is what it’s about, right here. I wish more people would understand this. This is not some loose anti-coporate sentiment or senseless alarm sounding. We have example after example of how corporations like Meta, Microsoft, and Google leverage their power to consume and destroy. To say “we just need to be proactive about stopping them” is naive. We’ve said that so many times, and so many times we’ve lost.
The only way to win is not to play their game. We can’t let them in in the first place.
You should look into Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I think the biggest fear is that they have so many users that they will just flood all instances with their stuff. This can, in time, lead to a situation where they can defederate from everything else and bring a lot of people with them, since most of the content will have come from Threads.
I feel though that if they were going to do that they should have done that from the beginning. A lot of the other instances now they kind of solidified themselves as big players. It would have been easy to just use Threads at the start but people have put the effort into creating accounts on other platforms now, I can’t see them going back what would be the point it would be more of it again.
They can absorb large numbers of users and communities and after a while close themselves to the outside. Meaning that once people “need” those communities they’ll have no chance other than go threads.
Competition and success. They are just paranoid that it’ll be successful and they can’t control where the project goes without including the majority of users and then developers.
I got a number of answers that sound very weak to me, and basically point to a “fail” of the fediverse in its own nature if threads joins. Kind of disappointing.
To me, the key idea of the fediverse is that it’s federated and should work as a whole, no matter who joins. Most of the answers below support the opposite. They are basically saying that the fediverse should stay within the “fediverse”, which is exactly what non-federated social media are doing. Meh.
threads has more users than fediverse on one instance
is cause centralization
Why? This sounds like FUD.
It is.
We shouldn’t let these losers bring us down with them.
we
is fud buzzword now
Well considering I’ve been using it for 25 years and it literally has had its own Wikipedia page since basically Wikipedia existed… no. It’s not a buzzword. It’s just a term used to describe an idea.
Oddly, this may well be what really spurs on decentralisation. I suspect more and more individuals, or small groups, will spin up their own instances rather than all gravitating to the bigger ones, due to issues like this.
Because, ultimately, the more tech-savvy users (the ones more likely to be into the Fediverse, anyway) will want to decide for themselves what content they do and don’t see.
And it’s nothing to do with whether or note someone likes/trusts Meta. It’s people being able to make their own decisions on what content they want to be able to follow and not have it decided by someone else based on their interests. If someone’s friends/family/fandom has a heavy Threads presence, they can spin up their own instance and be able to follow that content themselves without it really affecting anyone else. (and without having to sign up to Threads themselves…)
Nah. More content and a lower percentage of extremists is a good thing.
In fact, I agree with your second sentence.
The issue here is twofold:
if threads federates, people will have 10x the content they have now and a lot more „mainstream content“ than rn. If threads starts to push ads with their posts in a year or two, the way back is like losing an arm because everyone got used to the pumped up amount of content. A lot of popular people have a threads account.
the more problematic issue is the possibility of an EEE attempt (embrace, expand, extinguish) which google has done with xmpp years ago. If threads federates and meta starts changing parts of the activitypub protocoll, they might rip apart the fediverse
Dont get me wrong! I‘m not against a possible federation but we need ground rules first. No pushing ads, no changing of the protocol, no commercial usage of federated data, etc.
On your second point, it’s worth calling out that a lot of folks on Lemmy today came from the Reddit API changes. These folks left a very, very active site to a network with substantially fewer users and less content, and still pales in comparison.
I think this serves as sufficient evidence to show there’s a big enough group of people who don’t care for the size/activity of a social network and participate on the principle of less-VC-funded social media.
Do you have the money to enforce those rules? Because meta certainly has the money to get people to profit off them.
You will lose. EEE/enshittification will happen. To think otherwise is naive.
How you think threads is helping in that ?
Bro, have you actually seen most of the instances? There are regular posts encouraging small shit like theft and vandalism to full on memes about blowing up buildings. The commie instances are full on support the shit. “Government inherently uses violence to enforce it’s laws why can’t I” full on tankie bullshit. Lemmy is FILLED with extremists.
What do you mean by “extremists”? Not all issues, maybe even close to none, can actually have a reasonable moderate position. An example: If there are people who are in favour of abortion and people who want to outlaw abortion, a moderate position must necessarily not support full abortion rights and therefore is immoral. I think that we actually need more (good) extremism, because in many cases, a compromise is simply unacceptable.
With you on abortion, but I think usually the truth is somewhere in the middle and the most extreme views on the left and right are wrong. I don’t like encountering them, either. Makes the world seem hostile.
For default, they are unfederated in threads.
Also, are you sure you want the mass don’t know what the federated web is? We are a low number of users. If we want to me the new standard of internet, we need the people to know what de Fediverse is. And threads can be that first door, and then they can start to spread to other more suitable stances.
I just want to extend the conversation.
People are overreacting.
No we’re not. Read up on what happened to xmpp. Google joined it, made the service much slower for people not on their servers, everybody joined their servers, they shut their service down for their own proprietary stuff.
Embrace Extend Extinguish
made the service much slower for people not on their server
I call bullshit. People not using Google servers were unaffected. The problem is people using walled gardens instead of making XMPP compatibility a requirement.
That doesn’t make sense. If Google was making xmpp worse then the servers could just defederate. At this moment threads has not done anything to warrant defederation.
Just because you have no experience, you think it’s overreacting.
Compared to you who has so much experience with threads joining the fediverse.
I really don't think that's the case.
This is a nice little place, meta barging in Will fuck it all up
They aren’t barging in. You need to follow the threads user. Only on mastodon are they “barging in”.
I’m not too worried about Threads joining the metaverse. What Mark Zuckerberg has failed to realise is just how barebones his Twitter clone is.
Mastodon has support for trending topics and hashtags. Threads doesn’t. Lacking such an absolutely basic feature that any microblogging platform would otherwise support is why Threads dropped from 500M active users to just a fraction of it.
I joined it near launch, made a few posts and then stopped. There is nothing worthwhile on Threads and I don’t think leeching on to the fediverse.
Also, I can kinda understand why you all rushed to defederate from Gab when they tried to jump on the federation bandwagon, but not Meta.
This take is riddled with naivety.
Not only will Meta read, train AI on, aggregate and datamine, and correlate this data with your real identity, but when Meta announces that “the easiest way to be on the fediverse is to just use Threads” then all the people who avoided Mastodon because it was “too complicated” to sign up, all the people who are basically already signed up because they scroll Insta all day, will go with Threads instead of spreading the load out.
As smaller instances start to drop off under the load, under the lack of interest as threads grows and they shrink, merely mirroring the traffic of a centralized corporate entity, users start to flock to threads for its reliability and speed.
Then Meta pulls the plug, since “no one really used this ActivityPub thing anyway, it was too technical”.
Threads isn’t about beating “X” (lol X is in a death spiral, it’s only a matter of time), it’s about ensuring the Fediverse never rises up.
See what happened with Google Talk and XMPP.
Not only will Meta read, train AI on, aggregate and datamine, and correlate this data with your real identity
They undoubtedly do this already. There’s nothing stopping them from setting up an instance that looks like a personal one and pulling all the data the Fediverse has to offer.
I’m worried because it’s only gonna be a matter of time before fakebook is able to play around enough to get threads to be functional enough for the average user. They may be evil, but they aren’t dumb.
And another attempt at blanket hating on a platform for no reason. Be more original, people.
Pretty nice looking assumption you’ve made, there.
There, and especially the people/company behind it, are categorically in opposition to the values of the Fediverse.
Seeing them join us would be like watching a Christian join a Passover Seder by wearing a yarmulke: everyone would be inviting and accepting in spirit but you just know the guy would bring up some inappropriate topics, excuse his own faux pas, and be silently wishing he could convert everyone.
Again, if YOU don’t like it, block it. Let me and the silent majority just enjoy this platform, WITH threads people, whether you feel attacked by that or not. Just to make sure everyone can follow: YOU block threads FOR YOURSELF, you do not force that shitty decision on everyone else.
Is threads.net going to hit the top of “most defederated” list? People hate it even more than gab and truthsocial.
Best part of it is - it’s all paranoia. Fediverse will never get a sensible percentage of people if everything new gets blocked for no reason, or “because they’ll destroy Fediverse”.
Fediverse will never get a sensible percentage of people
If Fediverse will reach a “sensible amounts of people” by sacrificing all of its goals (no ads, no data harvesting), what’s the point of it? You can already register an acc on threads and enjoy full Meta experience.
everything new gets blocked
Meta isn’t ‘everything new’. It’s ‘just’ an awful company with unethical business model.
for no reason
Seems more like you dismiss any reasoning against federation as ‘it’s all paranoia’.
@mypasswordis1234 I mean, what is the point in defederating while being in a Lemmy instance? You cannot interact with microblog while using #Lemmy. The only thing that comes to my mind is that threads users will not be able to comment on a lemmy post or comment, but let's be honest, the way communities will probably federate to #threads (the same way it is today with mastodon*) is not good, thus reducing the amount of attraction a lemmy post can get over there.
For some weird reason in the implementation of the AP protocol, lemmy posts are seems as just a link on mastodon, the replies are complete though.
ActivityPub allows two post formats, Notes and Articles. Articles support titles and therefore posts on Lemmy and Threads on /kbin use them, while notes do not and are therefore used for microblogging and commenting. Currently Mastodon's article federation only goes so far as linking the post for content, and to be honest I'm doubtful whether Threads will federate Articles at all given their carefulness with federation.
I guess those nonstop arguments about Palestine and Israel will creep over if we don’t defederate Threads. That is literally all I ever see in there nowadays.
What’s next? Discord federates with Matrix? Give me a break.
That’s a large portion of what’s here as well though…
Oh right.
And you don’t see that on lemmy? It’s everywhere. Well maybe less so actual arguments and more just 100% anti Israel.
What you described is what I see on Lemmy, not actual arguments.
Discord federates with Matrix?
Yes please. I’d love to be able to communicate with Discord users without having to use Discord.
I’d love it if Discord federated with Matrix. Then I wouldn’t have to try to convince my friends to use matrix. Which I don’t, which is why I seldomly use matrix.
If Kbin defederates from Threads, I'll just leave Kbin, and stay with Threads. Defederating over vibes is not how the fediverse is supposed to operate.
I’m pretty clear that meta has more problems that “vibes”.
How would they get the data? Federation doesn’t mean that they will get full access to your account.
No, the entire point is that you're free to go to whatever instance you want and/or host your own with your own rules. You're more than welcome to go to one that doesn't defederate, just as every instance owner/admins are free to defederate. It's not how "the fediverse is supposed to operate" because a standard for hoe the fediverse is supposed to operate doesn't exist.
fediverse isn;'t supposed to have most users concentrated in one instance
Big tech is a cancer on the internet. It makes sense to avoid it.
I think we should let meta federated to the fediverse until they try to influence it or integrate ads in posts or something else that can hurt the fediverse
No I don’t think I will
I want a server where users can make these decisions for themselves.
Fuck this mob-mentality spurred upon by losers.
Honest discourse for the purpose of highlighting any possible issues and fortifying against the EEE process. (Prepare for war; hope for peace):
Let’s say they were able to join… (We should at the very least go over this possibility, as it can also help our admins decide.) How would we be able to protect our network?
Would making sure any features of one instance/app be open and able to be modified and/or gracefully integrated into another be an option? (similar to the GPL license) An example would be keeping a party from restricting access to a private network only through their app. (looking at you, gTalk and iMessage)
Any other suggestions?
I will leave my instance lemy.lol if it defederates threads.net. Defederating is stupid
There is no point to defederate threads.
If folks find the content on the instance I maintain interesting, I want them to join from whichever platform they feel most comfortable with. As long as they don’t cause problems, that is.
lemmy.world and by extension mastodon.world is probably still waiting to see what happens. The other instance I have my account on has a rather hands-off approach to moderation soooo I hope there’s some way for a user to block an instance on their own.
I highly recommend using Boost for Lemmy for mobile use. One simple reason at the moment (there are many): it has a tagging feature that allows you to display text next to a user’s handle. ITT there are 4-5 users I’ve tagged as centrist or right wing trolls and they are all the fuck over the thread, arguing in favor of Facebook being a part of the fediverse. This does not surprise me in the least, but at least the tagging helps me immediately identify the shitbirds making bad faith arguments so I can easily ignore their garbage opinions.
I can see that threads.net may harm the Fediverse. But, there might be some people that don’t like the threads client and want to use the fediverse to interact with them. This will divide us. Also, trying to have a standard were threads.net is blocked is very hard to spread. Maybe has to be default on the server side, or even better, a subscription.
I haven't defederated anyone yet, I don't intend to defederated from Instagrams new failed Twitter clone.
If I don’t like it I won’t look at it, simple as.
Nah
“Everyone everywhere should federate.”
“Not like that!”
Better yet, let them enjoy the full connectivity for a month. Once they’ve enjoyed all the awesome content and got used to it - defederate.
@tedvdb@feddit.nl Hey :)
mojo@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Why do you hate user choice so much?
blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Are we not discussing the choice to defederate? As in most choices, some options are better than others. Sometimes it isn’t obvious what the best option is. People discuss and share ideas to make their decision.
We as a community are faced with the choice of whether or not to support threads[.]net. We can think about it individually, or on an instance-by-instance basis - but we can also discuss it collectively. That’s whats happening here.
xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
Defederation is not user choice, it’s decided by the admin of an entire instance.
Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 11 months ago
What a lame take.
Go to their server if you want to or one that don’t defederate, or spin one up yourself, the choice is still yours.
I don’t want meta to benefit from my server, hosting their biased crap, how about that for a user choice.
kpw@kbin.social 11 months ago
It's your freedom as an admin to block them, but indeed the cost is the freedom of your users to communicate with people on Threads. As a user I would prefer an instance that doesn't restrict my communications in that way.
Pratai@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The difference here, is that the person you responded to isn’t telling you what to do.