Lemmy.world Should Defederate with Threads

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

I think it’s pretty safe to say that the majority of us are here to avoid another corporate takeover of our preferred platforms. It would seem to me to be a tad irresponsible to allow Facebook into our space with open arms, allowing them to hoover up our data. I would love to keep using Lemmy.world, but will happily change instances if need be, and I feel many share that sentiment.

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taiyang@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I can see it playing out fine either way, although it’s certainly more turbulent federating if we are to see their content and it washes out the other communities (which to my understanding is unlikely since it’s user based content like Mastedon). As others said, they already have our data, too.

Instead, I just wish the more… extreme communities didn’t defederate already. I’d love to see Meta users react to Hexbear or Exploding Heads in an unfiltered, unadulterated way (or those much much worse instances that everyone defederates from). Instead they get us relatively tame, generally nerdy Lemmy users. I didn’t even know what a Tankie was back in the before times!

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- Lucia@eviltoast.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Exploding Heads gave up on Lemmy a few months ago.
  
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  - taiyang@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Huh. Well, wouldn’t know. Kind of the point of defederating, I guess, you just stop thinking about them.
    
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  - Tja@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I must have joined after they left, what was it? I’m just familiar with hexbear.
    
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  - Dio@lemy.lol ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    We went to Nostr. Probably else where too, now. I haven’t been on Nostr in a long while so, yeah.
    
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helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
What data is Facebook “hoovering up” through federation that they don’t already have access to?

I have asked this question a dozen times and no one can ever give me a legitimate answer.

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- steeznson@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Meta don’t need to federate to get all of the ActivityPub information. By it’s nature everything that is posted to it is public and unencrypted - including private messages. This is a PR move instead of a data gathering activity. Maybe also they are trying to bootstrap content into their new platform which would otherwise be a barren wastelend.
  
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  - h3mlocke@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah that was my understanding, fb will collect the data whether your server is federated with threads or not, fb could even make alternate servers not named “anything meta” and still get the data, but at this point I think they can just get it anyways. I guess the data would be likes, posts, comments, subs your in etc.
    
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- PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It really comes down to whether you believe that Facebook is scraping the entire internet right now or not.
  
  I’d prefer to not directly feed my information into their servers.
  
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  - helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It doesn’t. They don’t need to scrape the entire internet, just ActivityPub.
    
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- kingaloo@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Nothing. This is a PR move by meta, nothing more. They are trying to seem “hip” and push their ads.
  
  Meta, Google, MS, OpwnAI, etc gave akeasy scrubbed fediverse. Probably associated accounts to folks real names.
  
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  - helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    How are they going to push ads?
    
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ieightpi@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
People who keep touting the point that defederating from Meta means we are cutting people off from fediverse are picturing this situation wrong. Based on what I’ve read, people see this little island of people compared to the mainland where there will be physical barrier because shouldnt tear down the bridge.

But the net isnt like that. People have just as much freedom creating a Threads account as they do a Lemmy or Mastodon account.

And don’t say that the fediverse is too difficult to understand for the average person. That kind of rhetoric is what will push people away.

Everyone needs to be patient with growth. It’s not going to happen in a year just like it took years for reddit to grow. I do believe that more and more people will be interested in the fediverse once they realize that corporate oversight is non existent here. And that can only happen if we keep the major instances disconnected from Meta or any for profit company.

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- CosmicCleric@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  But the net isnt like that. People have just as much freedom creating a Threads account as they do a Lemmy or Mastodon account.
  
  It’s not about creating an account or not, it’s about the conversations, who views them, how inclusive are they to all.
  
  The people who would be making comments are not the same people that are running Meta.
  
  And don’t say that the fediverse is too difficult to understand for the average person. That kind of rhetoric is what will push people away.
  
  It is a barrier entry though for many (for whatever reasons). I don’t think you can just hand wave it away like that; that’s not constructive.
  
  Everyone needs to be patient with growth. It’s not going to happen in a year just like it took years for reddit to grow.
  
  The situation is different now, than back then with the starting of Reddit. This time you have a 800 pound gorilla dancing in your living room.
  
  I do believe that more and more people will be interested in the fediverse once they realize that corporate oversight is non existent here.
  
  Unfortunately the Fediverse account creation difficulty barrier of entry may be higher than avoiding corporate oversight. People take the path of least resistance usually.
  
  And that can only happen if we keep the major instances disconnected from Meta or any for profit company.
  
  That’s not the only way though. Good moderation will also prevent that from happening.
  
  –
  
  So, I don’t have a dog in this hunt. Personally I would lean more towards not defederating, to be inclusive, as I’m just an 70s/80s liberal who believes free speech for all, and that it would do more harm than good by excluding a whole bunch of people from conversing with a whole other bunch of people.
  
  Having said that, I do see good points being made on both sides, it’s not a clean decision to make, it’s not binary, it’s analog.
  
  But it does seem to me like a lot of the comments being made on the subject are knee-jerk advocacy based, gatekeepingy.
  
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  - pelespirit@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Nope, I’m fine with small companies trying to make the fediverse better. Meta is full on enshitification, why wouldn’t they bring a new form that we can’t predict over here?
    
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- Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thing is, for someone to interact with a Lemmy Instance from threads or mastodon, they’d have to tag a community first in a post. So it would need to be very intentional, which if someone on threads is intentionally interacting with Lemmy, what’s the problem?
  
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PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Is threads federating with Lemmy??? I thought it was federating with mastodon (and mastodon-like).

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- Carighan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah although since you can also see Mastodon content here (from what I understand), I guess you can also see Threads, well, threads here.
  
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- Microw@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Once you implement ActivityPub, you federate with everything that uses ActivityPub. Your server might simply not see every other server yet, but you’re on the same network. With the current implementation, Lemmy will never display a Threads post and Threads will never display a Lemmy thread/comment. But they might send data to each other.
  
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  - PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
    
    Doesn’t this mean defederation is kinda pointless though, since meta could just stealth-add an activitypub server that did nothing but record all data?
    
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- yuki2501@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s the same network.
  
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KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Federate, let them get a taste of sweet Lemmy content, then cut them off. Will make the Threads experience feel broken for native Threads users.

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- ARk@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You overestimate the number of people using Lemmy compared to the corporate bandwagon
  
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  - KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You overestimate how seriously I’m taking this.
    
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- taiyang@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Ah yes, those sweet bean memes will really show em! ;o
  
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  - KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    And our national meming treasure, The Picard Maneuver.
    
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- nutsack@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  that makes no fucking sense
  
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Donjuanme@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If meta wants to data farm lemmy, what’s to stop them from hosting a 1 user instance, being federated with lemmy, and…? Profit?

I’m not worried about information going that way, it’s an open source deal, information is already going that way.

As for getting more content from another instance? I’m not against it, as long as it’s regulated, and at risk of defederation if it gets out of hand

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- PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  So my understanding is that the way Federation works in the activity pub standard is that information is not cached on a server unless it interacts with another piece of content. It’s basically a web of users, and one user cannot reach fat on that web.
  
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  - Corgana@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No, they don’t even need an instance, all of the data is public and freely accessible.
    
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Rognaut@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I will absolutely change instances to one which has defederated from FB.

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- MajorHavoc@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m planning the same.
  
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- AustralianSimon@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s encouraged to not stay on lemmy.world anyway
  
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- PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I wish lenny made it as easy to migrate as Mastodon did.
  
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  - Levsgetso@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Since 1.19 launched it is. Now you can export your subscriptions and settings to another Lemmy account
    
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yoz@aussie.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Any admins of Lemmy.world reading this? Can we tag them?

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- Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It doesn’t seem like tagging on Lemmy is working at the moment, but you could reply to the thread on Mastodon tagging them there, and that would work (only if you tag their Mastodon accounts, lemmy accounts don’t support tagging on Mastodon, as far as I’m aware).
  
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- echodot@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Not that it will make any difference to either of us.
  
  You get how federation works right?
  
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  - yoz@aussie.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Alright genius! Enlighten me
    
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Clbull@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m not worried about Threads joining the fediverse. They can’t even properly implement hashtags and trending topics, which already puts them far behind Mastodon and X.

Also, how would users on a microblogging platform be able to interact with a Lemmy instance? I’m a bit confused about how ActivityPub works in that respect.

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- CyprianSceptre@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Agreed about the data farming, but I would recommend reading this if you haven’t already. Not properly implementing the conventions is basically step 1 in that article.
  
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Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Threads content won’t show up in your feed unless you go out of your way to follow a threads user. All defederating does is deny your users the benefits of activity pub. If twitter is anything to go by then Threads content will be on this platform through screenshots anyway.

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- PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  By that logic, and I’m not disagreeing, then any time we defederate, like from explodingheads.com or hexbear.net, then we are just limiting options.
  
  The flip side to Federation is defederation. It’s not Federation if there isn’t the option to defederate. It’s one of the core features of the protocol.
  
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  - Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No that’s different because hexbear and exploding heads posts and users will show up in our feeds and users have to block. Now that lemmy has instance blocking on an individual level there is much more room for federation.
    
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Icaria@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I thought Threads was supposed to be a competitor to twitter? I don’t understand how they’d even integrate with Lemmy instances. I’m here to see posts from boards/forums/subs, not from specific people. Would posts from random Threads user profiles start showing up on the main page?

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- Microw@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  No. Lemmy integration of ActivityPub doesnt enable that. Either Threads or Lemmy would need to change their implementation of ActivityPub in order for us to see Threads posts. Currently that’s impossible. All federation happens beneath the hood and isnt shown.
  
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  - Icaria@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    So what would federating involve, then? How would it change how lemmy.world users see lemmy.world?
    
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- echodot@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well like Mastodon does. It’s not exactly a smooth integration. I have no idea how Lemmy posts would show up I’m assuming almost as a separate tweet equivalent.
  
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QaspR@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I am in agreement on this one.

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NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fuck anything and everything about Meta. Don’t let them near this.

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vamp07@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah, let’s defederate from a major player that wants to participate in the decentralized nature of this protocol. That way we further fragment Mastodon and guarantee its failure in the long run! Good call!!!

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- RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If you want corporate control go back to Facebook and Reddit. Seriously. There are places that do what you want already, no need to corrupt this one too.
  
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- Skaxen@lemmynsfw.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  …wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
  
  This kind of shit happened before, lets not let it happen again.
  
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elscallr@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No it shouldn’t.

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freebee@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I agree. Defederate.

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cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
mastodon and Lemmy users jumping to conclusion with weird gatekeeping nonsense and conspiracy theories? shocker. and they wonder why mastodon didn’t take off post twitter.

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- yuki2501@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The difference between a conspiracy theory and an actual conspiracy is evidence.
  
  Remind me again why Zuck was called to testify before Congress?
  
  Actually that was a rhetorical question. But here is a video you all need to watch.
  
  youtu.be/G272R50v6ww
  
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  - InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The way I see it, Meta and Zuck are a far far stretch from deserving either trust or benefit of the doubt.
    Wait and see, sure, but I can be defederated while doing the waiting.
    
    If for some magical reason, it turns out great, then we can just refederate once they’ve proven themselves.
    
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- sour@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  is exist in head
  
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Shotgun_Alice@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yes.

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cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think every lemmy instance that is concerned about its users should defederate. If their users start mingling with our communities, the comment sections and the posts would be completely different from what we see today. Today we have a small but passionate user base and should remain that way. New users should know about lemmy and join any instance on their own, and not by their threads client.

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assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m of two minds about this. I have no love for Facebook and Zuk can go fuck himself. I want Lemmy to be free of the same fucks that ruined Reddit and formally corporatized it.

At the same time, I want Lemmy to grow. I don’t want this to be our little corner of the Internet that’s tucked away. I don’t want an information bubble. I want to see user-managed spaces like this grow and overtake the corporate ones.

So I choose to stay neutral. The two philosophies I described are at odds with each other here. I’ll go with what the majority decides – that’s the whole point of it being user-managed after all. I’ll just say that I think we should give ourselves options to reverse and monitor any changes as time goes on. We need to see how things progress, regardless of what decision we make, so we can course correct if necessary.

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- thawed_caveman@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I feel strongly that we should defederate, but i really like your reasoning for being neutral. The fediverse is currently a small community of advanced internet users who see themselves as separate from mainstream users, and the temptation is to gatekeep.
  
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- pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I can understand this perspective: wanting to spread the gospel of federation, etc.
  
  But I’m starting to come around to the realization that the growth mindset is rotten. It’s what leads to these big centralized/unified platforms that concede on their core in order to reach a wider audience.
  
  I can’t blame corpos for not maintaining an identity, because engagement is how they make money, but what’s our excuse?
  
  These aren’t refugees. They’re free to make a lemmy or masto or whatever account any time they want. It’s not the cool people we have issue with, it’s their platform and its unwillingness to clean house.
  
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  - assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s interesting, because wanting to grow to supersede the corporations can become just like the corporations wanting to grow for profit. The ends don’t justify the means here.
    
    The idea would be that as people here and see about it more, more people would join, but there’s a lot of assumptions baked into that, including that these people are actually people you want on the platform. Like you mention at the end, racists are going to find a “corporate, government free” space to be their own paradise. And we can’t let that happen.
    
    I wonder if this would be possible: content from Facebook is not shown on Lemmy, but content from Lemmy can be shown on Facebook. Facebook users can join Lemmy, but there’s an application process for them so we can vet them.
    
    I’m fine with however things end up, but I do want us to keep in mind that we risk becoming too insular and developing a groupthink. I don’t think it would be a danger to society like conservative ones tend to become, but I don’t want to think Jill Stein has huge support because Lemmy castigates anyone else, for instance.
    
    I don’t think we’re in that position right now, but it’s one to be wary of.
    
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viking@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No.

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cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
What public info could they gather? My IP?

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- throws_lemy@lemmy.nz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m copying pasta from my previous reply on other post
  
  Once they can interact with your account, they can pull your data into their server and analyzing it to deliver ads campaign.
  
  Image
  
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  - ethan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding how data is handled in federated systems. When an account from Threads interacts with your post or you interact with a Threads post, information is exchanged exclusively through Actions sent between the servers- never to or from your or their client to another server.
    
    They don’t get any information that isn’t already available to your instance- IP address or otherwise. There are no new points to connect.
    
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  - infinitepcg@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What a wild conspiracy theory.
    
    Legally, they can’t collect and process any of the data unless you accepted a contract with them. Just by sending an upvote or a comment to their instance, you don’t agree to any of this.
    
    And if they choose to ignore the law and just do it anyway, they still can’t, because all they have is the data that your instance sends them. They don’t have your geo-location, device Id, etc.
    
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  - cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I am not getting it. If i am not using their threads client and signed in to a de federating instance, they would not get my IP address right?
    
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Boiglenoight@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Let’s wait and see.

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topinambour_rex@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
And with Discourse. No federation with companies !

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dog_@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They should, but they’re not going to. If mastodon.world isn’t doing it, lemmy.world isn’t either.

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onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Federate with

Defederate from

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pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It should, but it won’t because it’s run by corporate shills who likely were bribed by Meta and possibly even Reddit goons to keep social discourse in the hands of the ruling class.

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fosforus@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?

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MonsiuerPatEBrown@reddthat.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yea.

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muzzle@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think that interoperation with big walled gardens is part of the reason why #activitypub exists. Furthermore, there are no technical measures to completely shut off #Threads, and the social measures are unlikely to work.

I know the risks, I’m old enough to remember #Microsoft embracing and extinguishing browsers and open documents, #Goggle defederating from #XMPP and #Facebook predatory tactics.

On the other hand, I think that federation with the big players is unstoppable. The protocol is open and there is no way to get every last instance to defederate. If people want to see the big players’ content they’ll move to an instance that federates with them. And defederating from those that connect to threads sounds like a Zealot’s suicide pact.

I think that the best way to ensure that #Meta plays fair is to create a fediverse that is as diverse, open and vibrant as possible, with plenty of open services (Lemmy, mastodon, misskey…) and commercial ones (Flipboard, tumblr…) so that threads users will feel compelled to interact and miss us if Meta stops federating or shadowbans external content.

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