I am pretty sure most of us can agree on how bad Meta is and for some reason people are defending Meta.
I think many people is not realising how Threads and Federation with Threads is going to harm the development of Fediverse.
I dont think many people realize how Threads itself is going to harm fediverse.
After twitters well known series dumb moves, many people saw this as an opportunity for fediverse to rise. But with Threads, essentially a 1 to 1 copy of twitter, just going to scoop all of that twitter refugees.
Not just that but Threads is using fediverse as ready to consume content farm and eventually cause some users to migrate out of fediverse to Threads because “Well i can stay in touch with near circle easly while still being in fediverse” and after getting enough profits they will defederate themselves because there is not enought to gain from at that point. They will suck the life juice out of Fediverse.
Also as you know threads is tightly integrated with Instagram which made many Instagram users dove head first into Threads and this caused Instagram and Threads culture to be identical. And i think you can guess how bad Instagram culture is.
Threads is just a breeding ground companies and influencers with high levels of toxicity and homophobia almost instantly.
And we dont want this culture to infintirate Fediverse (Right?)
More on the culture. Many threads users are going to destroy the thing we have.
Fediverse will never get popular as FAANG Platforms whatever we do. Why we
are trying to bring Hateful, Censorship oriented Instagram culture to fediverse.
Why?
Also no, Threads is not going to contribute to Fediverse in users because why would a user will leave meta’s ecosystem and getting into this confusing things about fediverse while they can experience fediverse from Threads?
Your average Threads user is not going to care about Fediverse.
We need to defederate from Threads to prevent them from profiting off fediverse. Defederating WILL DO SHIT unlike people says. This will make fediverse read-only to Threads which might emphasize some people to join fediverse to contrubite to it. Defederating essentially take the main point Meta wants with Fediverse. the engagement.
Edit 1: Sorry i was a bit aggresive in the post.
Also i reinstalles threads to see how shittie this app is after a bit more maturizing and i already sae a couple scams
Edit 2: DELETED
Edit 3: Nope, Threads community does not fit overall fediverse community and i think we defederate.
I talked to this one pro-Meta federation person yesterday who was really hung up on the fact that they’d be able to hang out with their Meta friends on a more privacy aware fediverse app. I tried to explain how EEE would work in the context of lemmy, and how their privacy dream is all a moot point because Meta will inevitably kill the fediverse and force them to Threads in the end, but the other person just kept going “yeah yeah, I get that… but if we federate, then I’ll be able to hang out with my Meta friends.”
I don’t know, they just had tunnel vision about being able to hang out with their friends, or were in the denial stage of grief about EEE or something.
Seriously lol. These are social networks, what is the point of using this stuff at all if you don’t care about anybody being able to view your posts or interact with you
My only use for Twitter was the mainstream stuff like service updates, official announcements, and sports reporting. Mastadon is never going to be mainstream. Mastadon will always have instances without meta for the whatever the fuck else you’d use it for now.
You can make the most user friendly website ever but nobody is going to use it if it doesn’t have the content they like, and “All the same content with no ads and an app with more privacy” is a pretty easy sell.
It should be the users choice to block Threads, not the federation. What does Meta loose in getting defederated, they’re already able to scrape like everyone else, you’re just going to inconvenience users wanting an alternative. Some people want to see thread posts while also avoiding the data hell Meta is. Mastodon is a great way to do that and because of this will gain tons of users. Defederating will only gain meta more users since it took away the alternative option. Not everyone cares about the ecosystem like Facebook and Instagram but love twitter and need that addiction fix. The very small amount of users on mastodon will not make a dent in the profits of Meta at all.
Exactly this, the only real reason that Meta would care about the rest of the Fediverse is free extra content for their users and extra data to exploit
Defederating doesn’t stop either one of these things, content is still viewable (defederating only stops other users on other instances being able to comment, vote etc) and the data is still their for the taking
It feels like half the posts/comments at the moment don’t understand the way that defederating works
For me I personally decided to block it because I made a poll and most of my users decided to block it. Also, after 24 hours we can see that moderation is not that good which is why I’d defederate from it as from any other instance that doesn’t match with the rules of my own server at all. But that is really the good thing about the Fediverse. Being that flexible.
The next best workaround for a user is to block all communities from that instance. And possibly all indivdual users. Including new ones, when they appear.
It can safe a lot of work and hassle to defederate as an instance, if the population wants that. There are also aspects of defederation which cannot be changed on a user level (such as vote federation).
Couldn’t meta theoretically scoop up all their user data including contacts and then actually link that to other users?
I’m not talking simple fediverse data- I’m talking all interaction elsewhere on the phone and other platforms then associate that to fediverse data too.
I’m not too sure what you mean, for their own users yeah they can use whatever their users agree to. Phone numbers, IP address, name, email, device, whatever they like really. They can then easily have that all linked up with their relevant Instagram and Facebook profiles for advertisers. Adversisers then kind of build up profiles about users across different services which is why often if for example you look up cats on one app you might see a cat food advertisement in another
Target for example is great at building profiles up (automatically) of their shoppers, a while back there was a huge story about them predicting a pregnancy Forbes Article
Other users not on Meta I’d say no, this sounds like it would be illegal honestly at least in some countries though I don’t know enough about privacy law to say
That said, instance owners could definitely sell off your data to advertisers if they wanted to and it was in the TOS of that instance
In the US I highly doubt any of that would be illegal save in maybe California. But if I for instance had my email associated with my fediverse account and my friend had my contact name plus my email then meta could ostensibly build a profile out on me without my knowledge or consent. That would only be limited by my friend who might have way, way more interaction with me on the rest of the phone (sms, etc etc) to build an even fuller profile. That’s basically what I’m suggesting. My fediverse account might not say much about me by itself but by linking that and other data courtesy of my friend, I’m now a decently built profile to meta.
All defederating does is stop you within your instance being able to see posts from Threads
It also prevents interactions between Threads users and communities hosted on your instance. This extends to users from federated instances.
Threaddies can interact with their local copy of a community. No one else can see their comments and posts. Lemmings can interact with the federated version of that community, seeing each other.
It makes Threads less attractive for people using it because they „can follow people from Mastodon too“. So maybe through that a few people will decide to register in the Fediverse on any other platform rather than using Threads for it. If we only get a few people with that I’m fine with it tbh.
All defederating does is stop you within your instance being able to see posts from Threads
Maybe I’ve misunderstood this, or maybe you’re thinking of this only in terms of Lemmy, but my understanding is that since Threads is a Twitter-like, it’s more likely to try to federate with Mastodon/Calckey/Misskey/Pleroma instances, and at least in the case of Mastodon, defederation is a more firm separation than on Lemmy. If a Mastodon instance defederates from Threads, it’s not just that the folks there will stop seeing posts from Threads, but that folks on Threads will stop seeing their posts as well.
I may be wrong, but that’s been my understanding at least, hence why a number of Mastodon instances have agreed to defederate from Threads. This is wrong, I had misunderstood the process (thinking of it in terms of mutual defederation, which isn’t always the case!). See Ward2k’s post elaborating below.
Edit:
I was wrong, so today I learned how defederation works when it’s not mutual! Thanks Ward2k!
Nope not at all, this is where the misconception is.
Defederating works kind of like a one way block, you stop your instance (Server A) from being able to see content from the other (Server B)
Server A can no longer see any content from B
B can still all the content from A, however users of B can no longer comment, upvote, downvote etc the only thing they can do is read the content of A
This is the same for Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon
Defederating is for when you don’t want your users to see harmful content (bots, extreme ideologies, problematic posts etc), if you just don’t want to see the posts then fair enough that’s the way to do it
If you care about the privacy aspect of Meta seeing your comments/posts or about not wanting Meta users to see your content then no, defederating won’t achieve anything
Edit: I don’t like Meta, my point is that lots of users are calling for defederating without actually understanding anything about how it works
I don’t know why I hadn’t gotten around to checking this personally (other than it not really concerning me much, or maybe it used to be harder to search without signing in to different Mastodon instances), but I appreciate you taking the time to correct my misunderstanding & clarify this.
I checked one of my Mastodon accounts from an instance that had defederated from Mastodon.social to confirm this, and sure enough, you were right. My profile & posts are still visible to folks there, even if they can’t really interact with them beyond viewing them.
I think some of this misconception, at least from folks that have been on federated stuff for awhile, is that at least early on some defederation tended to be mutual, so both servers A & B were blocking each other’s posts because they didn’t want to see anything from one another. It’s good to be corrected & reminded of what it looks like when it’s not mutual though, as that is a…weirder sort of situation tbh. Thanks!
No worries at all, there’s a lot of misconception around defederating and the number of posts and comments I’ve seen really made me second guess myself to the point I had to start up some accounts across different instances to test
I think the Meta/Threads news really hasn’t helped with people spamming it like crazy
It’s a lot more legally dubious for them if you defederate. If your instance willingly connects and shares data out of their own volition, it’s like that instance giving permission. If an instance blocks communication via the ActivityPub protocol outright, what are the legal grounds for Meta/Facebook to be able to freely access that information? Even if it’s posted publicly to view.
As an example. I can have my own website and post some info there, write articles, have contact information. People can view it. Companies can index this information and make it available to search. But I’m guessing it’s not legal (or at least less so) to be collecting that information to process and sell. Companies can do that so easily because you agree to it in their terms of service.
In all honesty I don’t really believe that Meta will take data from other servers for advertising since that seems to sit in a very grey area legally (might honestly be straight up illegal in some countries)
I guess my point is more about OP wanting to Defederate to stop Meta profiting (which I don’t think it really would)
At least under the gdpr in europe it should be a privacy violation as you need to have the consent of the user to process it’s data. So they would have to go to every single one in a comment and ask for permission if they want to use it for recommendations algos or check out if contents fits advertisement.
I don’t think we do, at the end of the day this is kind of the point of being a decentralised service. You pick a server you like and one that defederates the way you want.
If you try to do it like a two way block situation you could very easily end up with larger servers deciding to just Defederate smaller ones to completey kill them off since the majority of content would be hosted on larger servers
If your issue is with the privacy aspect or Meta taking your content potentially to be used with advertisers then unfortunately this is going to happen regardless, any publicly viewable content you have to expect is going to live on the internet in some form forever and will be used by advertiser’s to the best of their ability
The solution is to join an instance that has defederated Threads (if you don’t want to see content from them) and be cautious about the information you post. This isn’t exclusive to the Fediverse either, any public forum your comments and posts should try to keep you as anonymous as possible (if privacy is your concern)
I have set up a Mastodon account and love the concept but feel like its mostly anonymous twitter. Reddit and Lemmy do a much better job of providing a platform for mostly anonymous interaction than twitter, which has always been successful for its ability to allow regular people to follow/interact with more public people, which Mastodon is mostly lacking. If those more public people move to threads and if the activitypub integration works well, I would be able to use Mastodon to follow the people I follow on Twitter and get rid of twitter while using a privacy honoring instance and that would make the use case for Mastodon much stronger. I understand the concerns with EEE and don’t intend to set up a threads account, but it seems like if Mastodon is going to get extinguished by Meta defederating is not really going to impact it much… They can still extend the capability to pull people away.
Because some of them don’t see the danger of Threads. And I’m not only talking about the EEE tactic: I’m also talking about the festering sludge that will grow on Threads and that you have also seen. For the Fediverse, it will be a moderation nightmare. And be sure that Zucc won’t even moderate his platform; he doesn’t want to and, as far as he’s concerned, it’s even out of his range.
Think about it this way: if a user starts spewing death threats within the Threads platform, he MAY get sanctioned. Not banned, “sanctioned”. But if he does that to the Fediverse and especially on servers with already overwhelmed moderators, do you think that there would be consequences coming from Zucc for doing this kind of stuff outside the official Threads servers? No, nothing! Our moderators would surely ban him if they would find out about this in time, but imagine thousands of these kinds of accounts invading from Threads doing this constantly. This is not just Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, but it gets to Embrace, Raid, Harass, Extinguish
I won’t defend Meta but I don’t see the advantage of defederating when Threads activates ActivityPub.
By federating, we have access to all the people and content on Threads, removing a major barrier to entry for Mastodon/the fediverse for casual users. And because our accounts aren’t on Meta servers and we don’t need to install the Threads app, we aren’t subjected to the same level of privacy issues, at least not any more than what Meta would get by scraping our posts on the web in general.
This conversation you’re having right now is the result of a smaller community of people building something outside the main stream. We have everything to lose from federating with them. All nuanced discourse will fly out the window. All manor critical points of view outside of the mainstream will be shouted down. They don’t need us, and we don’t need them.
Threads does not need to steal people from the Fediverse. We are minuscule compared to Threads in just one day. Threads already has more content and engagement then us. They do not care about the Fediverse, they do not care about stealing people from the Fediverse. At most, the only reason they want to “support” it is because it makes them look good compared to the apocalyptic hellfire that is currently Twitter.
Good boy points are way more valuable to Meta than actual Fediverse users. They’re after Twitter users, not a small group of hardcore tech anarchists.
EU regulations, the FTC consent decrees, and don’t forget the fact that decentralized web3 stuff was all the hot shit for a split second between NFTs and the metaverse, it may be as simple as the project manager chasing the hot new thing.
I’m 90% convinced that the ActivityPub integration is all about “chasing the hot new thing” and 10% to fuck with Dorsey and prevent BlueSky to get any traction.
Meta doesn’t care about Fedi users, and it doesn’t care about our data (that it can already collect anyway). Why is it so hard for some people to understand… Oh yes, because they like drama and they like to be scared of big bad wolves that are to get them, it makes me feel that the good little guys or something.
A huge component of the fear that I’ve seen is how one large player can usurp standards. It keeps happening. Why do you think Meta reached out to some of the largest people in the Fediverse and tried (pretty successfully) to get them to sign NDAs? Only one stood their ground and went transparent about it, and that was Kev at Fossotodn.
I don’t think valid opposition needs to assume some grand evil plan to destroy the Fediverse from Meta. Meta’s mere presence is enough to threaten the standard and our communities, good intentions or otherwise.
Threads already has more content and engagement then us
Do they really thought?, I’m not a Twitter/mastodon user, but I read from comments that all their content right now is cringe influencer and shilling stuff.
A lot of “Reporters” are just influencers at this point. They mostly stuck with Twitter so they could maintain their reach essentially.
Now Threads is out, and all these writers are flocking there and won’t shut the fuck up about it. Just yesterday TheVerge had like 7 out of 10 stories dedicated to Threads. It was all over my news feed elsewhere, too. Journalists I follow on Mastodon also won’t shut the fuck up about it in an attempt to port some users over to Threads.
Same with TikTok creators. Even FOSS (supposedly) enthusiasts are hiding behind this aura of “evangelizing” the Fediverse to Threads users as their reason for being there. But they are trying very hard to get their followers to also follow them on threads.
Meta: We’re launching it now with no ads or plans, then we’ll figure out what to do once we hit a billion users
People: Ooh but Meta may not be all bad, let’s just wait and see!
I mean, Meta is totally freely admitting they’re just playing the good guy now and will hit hard once they gain monopoly and can do whatever the fuck they want. How much more clear does it have to get?
People defend it because they actually like the instagram culture and they don’t dislike the data collection. So they see our staunch opposition as a condemnation of the things they like and they get defensive. Some are bootlickers too, who just love defending corporate actions for some reason.
Full disclosure, I’ve been labeled as an astroturfer because of my optimism for Threads federating. So, take that as you will.
But I think that there’s a lot more nuance to it than what you’ve said. I personally don’t defend Threads, but I do defend Threads federating. I’m on Lemmy specifically because I don’t want to be on Threads. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to connect with Threads content and users.
Especially since a federated Mastodon server (since that’s the clearer peer service) means you can actually decide which Threads users you see rather than Trusting the AlgorithmTM. That’s a pretty strong pitch to get people to migrate once they’re sick of their feed just being 85% brands and influencers paying for reach.
I’m more concerned with the expected lack of Threads moderation making a lot of work for admins who need to continually ban individual Threads users with no hope of the originating instance policing itself.
The average person just doesn’t care. If the app works and they can see memes and connect with their friends they’re happy with it. They don’t care about data collection or the fediverse or any of that stuff. And I’m not saying this to imply that they’re stupid or anything like that. Just different priorities. All this stuff just literally doesn’t matter to them.
Threads is another instance that brings people to the Fediverse, and people like the idea that they can stay on their instances while still interacting with the world at large. For many people, having everyone on the Fediverse is the goal, and in fact, is a long-term goal of most of the platforms - the “Fediverse” is not meant to be a sort of closed community only for marginalised people to get away from the corporate web, it’s for everyone to use in whatever way they see fit.
There is literally nothing more to discuss if you’re wondering why people “defend” Threads.
Part of federation is the ability to choose whom you interact with. Email is federated and everyone accepts that you can block certain bad faith actors. The notion that federation implies that everyone can use it in whatever way they see fit doesn’t mean that everyone needs to interact with each other. Facebook is a bad faith actor, and it can go play by itself.
Let’s consider your email example – I don’t like a lot of stuff Google has done. By your proposed rules, should, say, ProtonMail block all emails from Gmail to prove a point?
Your comment doesn’t really contradict anything I said, and I agree with you.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that the Fediverse means everyone should have to interact with everyone, to be clear, but people absolutely have the choice to federate with those we may consider bad actors, and then we can respond in kind.
I am all for defederation of bad actors, I’m mostly just explaining why others are not against the defederation of Threads.
I dont want a platform that owned by a Genocide helper corporation. Also threads will bring a moderation nightmare just like @[email protected] said. they explained it well
And that’s fine, the Fediverse gives you tools to not have to deal with that through silencing or defederation.
But for many people on the Fediverse, they’re here specifically for other things, and being able to interact with the corporate social web from outside of it is ideal for them.
Note that I’m not arguing for or against here, it’s just very easy to see why many aren’t interested in defederating.
And that’s fine, the Fediverse gives you tools to not have to deal with that through silencing or defederation.
But for many people on the Fediverse, they’re here specifically for other things, and being able to interact with the corporate social web from outside of it is ideal for them.
But that’s seems to go directly against what the Fediverse was built for. They say that “The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.” Threads seems to be the antithesis of that. If people do want that, they can find a different platform or create their own. Not coop the Fediverse.
The Fediverse is just a term for “social networks that use ActivityPub”
Imagine if Facebook offered RSS feeds. That’d be nice right? It wouldn’t ruin anyone’s experience if they started supporting an open standard like that.
Supporting ActivityPub is no different. It will let people on third party clients connect to Facebook properties. Don’t want to do that? You don’t have to!
Imagine if Facebook offered RSS feeds. That’d be nice right? It wouldn’t ruin anyone’s experience if they started supporting an open standard like that.
Remember XMPP? How Google embraced that open protocol? Remember they extended it and practically turned it into their own standard? Remember how it was extinguished after they decided they could just make their own standard?
That’s what people are afraid will happen with the metaverse. Facebook isn’t interested in making ActivityPub better. Their only goal is to turn it into a money stream without regard to whether it survives or not. The only way to slow that down is to not play woth them.
But in the end, I’d argue Google dropping XMPP simply restored the status quo: XMPP went back to being the same niche thing it was before Google started supporting it.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it’s related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!
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I talked to this one pro-Meta federation person yesterday who was really hung up on the fact that they’d be able to hang out with their Meta friends on a more privacy aware fediverse app. I tried to explain how EEE would work in the context of lemmy, and how their privacy dream is all a moot point because Meta will inevitably kill the fediverse and force them to Threads in the end, but the other person just kept going “yeah yeah, I get that… but if we federate, then I’ll be able to hang out with my Meta friends.”
I don’t know, they just had tunnel vision about being able to hang out with their friends, or were in the denial stage of grief about EEE or something.
Test
That person just wants to lick the bottom of meta’s boot but also wants to be different somehow
This mentality is why mastodon is where it is and threads has 8 trillion users already.
Seriously lol. These are social networks, what is the point of using this stuff at all if you don’t care about anybody being able to view your posts or interact with you
i had this same conversation here yesterday.
person in question “has no interest in a Meta account”. oh boo-hoo!
My only use for Twitter was the mainstream stuff like service updates, official announcements, and sports reporting. Mastadon is never going to be mainstream. Mastadon will always have instances without meta for the whatever the fuck else you’d use it for now.
You can make the most user friendly website ever but nobody is going to use it if it doesn’t have the content they like, and “All the same content with no ads and an app with more privacy” is a pretty easy sell.
It should be the users choice to block Threads, not the federation. What does Meta loose in getting defederated, they’re already able to scrape like everyone else, you’re just going to inconvenience users wanting an alternative. Some people want to see thread posts while also avoiding the data hell Meta is. Mastodon is a great way to do that and because of this will gain tons of users. Defederating will only gain meta more users since it took away the alternative option. Not everyone cares about the ecosystem like Facebook and Instagram but love twitter and need that addiction fix. The very small amount of users on mastodon will not make a dent in the profits of Meta at all.
Exactly this, the only real reason that Meta would care about the rest of the Fediverse is free extra content for their users and extra data to exploit
Defederating doesn’t stop either one of these things, content is still viewable (defederating only stops other users on other instances being able to comment, vote etc) and the data is still their for the taking
It feels like half the posts/comments at the moment don’t understand the way that defederating works
For me I personally decided to block it because I made a poll and most of my users decided to block it. Also, after 24 hours we can see that moderation is not that good which is why I’d defederate from it as from any other instance that doesn’t match with the rules of my own server at all. But that is really the good thing about the Fediverse. Being that flexible.
Wait, you already have defederated you instance from threads?
As best I can tell threads does not yet support activitypub and cannot be federated to a lemmy/mastodon/etc server.
Is there really anything to do at this point or is it more of a pledge to so in the future?
Yes I did. Doesn’t change something now besides that they’re instantly defederated as soon as they enable Activity Pub support
I agree
Yes, but that’s not implemented yet: Allow a user to block an instance #2397
The next best workaround for a user is to block all communities from that instance. And possibly all indivdual users. Including new ones, when they appear.
It can safe a lot of work and hassle to defederate as an instance, if the population wants that. There are also aspects of defederation which cannot be changed on a user level (such as vote federation).
Good idea
Defederating won’t do jack shit to meta, they can still view your content and view data to their hearts content
All defederating does is stop you within your instance being able to see posts from Threads
The two things Meta likely cares about is content and data, both of which they can still get
Couldn’t meta theoretically scoop up all their user data including contacts and then actually link that to other users?
I’m not talking simple fediverse data- I’m talking all interaction elsewhere on the phone and other platforms then associate that to fediverse data too.
I’m not too sure what you mean, for their own users yeah they can use whatever their users agree to. Phone numbers, IP address, name, email, device, whatever they like really. They can then easily have that all linked up with their relevant Instagram and Facebook profiles for advertisers. Adversisers then kind of build up profiles about users across different services which is why often if for example you look up cats on one app you might see a cat food advertisement in another
Target for example is great at building profiles up (automatically) of their shoppers, a while back there was a huge story about them predicting a pregnancy Forbes Article
Other users not on Meta I’d say no, this sounds like it would be illegal honestly at least in some countries though I don’t know enough about privacy law to say
That said, instance owners could definitely sell off your data to advertisers if they wanted to and it was in the TOS of that instance
This is nitpicky, but the story of target predicting a pregnancy was very overhyped; see: https://medium.com/@colin.fraser/target-didnt-figure-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did-a6be13b973a5
In the US I highly doubt any of that would be illegal save in maybe California. But if I for instance had my email associated with my fediverse account and my friend had my contact name plus my email then meta could ostensibly build a profile out on me without my knowledge or consent. That would only be limited by my friend who might have way, way more interaction with me on the rest of the phone (sms, etc etc) to build an even fuller profile. That’s basically what I’m suggesting. My fediverse account might not say much about me by itself but by linking that and other data courtesy of my friend, I’m now a decently built profile to meta.
It also prevents interactions between Threads users and communities hosted on your instance. This extends to users from federated instances.
Threaddies can interact with their local copy of a community. No one else can see their comments and posts. Lemmings can interact with the federated version of that community, seeing each other.
It makes Threads less attractive for people using it because they „can follow people from Mastodon too“. So maybe through that a few people will decide to register in the Fediverse on any other platform rather than using Threads for it. If we only get a few people with that I’m fine with it tbh.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood this, or maybe you’re thinking of this only in terms of Lemmy, but my understanding is that since Threads is a Twitter-like, it’s more likely to try to federate with Mastodon/Calckey/Misskey/Pleroma instances, and at least in the case of Mastodon, defederation is a more firm separation than on Lemmy. If a Mastodon instance defederates from Threads, it’s not just that the folks there will stop seeing posts from Threads, but that folks on Threads will stop seeing their posts as well.I may be wrong, but that’s been my understanding at least, hence why a number of Mastodon instances have agreed to defederate from Threads.This is wrong, I had misunderstood the process (thinking of it in terms of mutual defederation, which isn’t always the case!). See Ward2k’s post elaborating below.Edit:
I was wrong, so today I learned how defederation works when it’s not mutual! Thanks Ward2k!
Nope not at all, this is where the misconception is.
Defederating works kind of like a one way block, you stop your instance (Server A) from being able to see content from the other (Server B)
Server A can no longer see any content from B
B can still all the content from A, however users of B can no longer comment, upvote, downvote etc the only thing they can do is read the content of A
This is the same for Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon
Defederating is for when you don’t want your users to see harmful content (bots, extreme ideologies, problematic posts etc), if you just don’t want to see the posts then fair enough that’s the way to do it
If you care about the privacy aspect of Meta seeing your comments/posts or about not wanting Meta users to see your content then no, defederating won’t achieve anything
Edit: I don’t like Meta, my point is that lots of users are calling for defederating without actually understanding anything about how it works
I don’t know why I hadn’t gotten around to checking this personally (other than it not really concerning me much, or maybe it used to be harder to search without signing in to different Mastodon instances), but I appreciate you taking the time to correct my misunderstanding & clarify this.
I checked one of my Mastodon accounts from an instance that had defederated from Mastodon.social to confirm this, and sure enough, you were right. My profile & posts are still visible to folks there, even if they can’t really interact with them beyond viewing them.
I think some of this misconception, at least from folks that have been on federated stuff for awhile, is that at least early on some defederation tended to be mutual, so both servers A & B were blocking each other’s posts because they didn’t want to see anything from one another. It’s good to be corrected & reminded of what it looks like when it’s not mutual though, as that is a…weirder sort of situation tbh. Thanks!
No worries at all, there’s a lot of misconception around defederating and the number of posts and comments I’ve seen really made me second guess myself to the point I had to start up some accounts across different instances to test
I think the Meta/Threads news really hasn’t helped with people spamming it like crazy
It’s a lot more legally dubious for them if you defederate. If your instance willingly connects and shares data out of their own volition, it’s like that instance giving permission. If an instance blocks communication via the ActivityPub protocol outright, what are the legal grounds for Meta/Facebook to be able to freely access that information? Even if it’s posted publicly to view.
As an example. I can have my own website and post some info there, write articles, have contact information. People can view it. Companies can index this information and make it available to search. But I’m guessing it’s not legal (or at least less so) to be collecting that information to process and sell. Companies can do that so easily because you agree to it in their terms of service.
(But hey, IANAL.)
In all honesty I don’t really believe that Meta will take data from other servers for advertising since that seems to sit in a very grey area legally (might honestly be straight up illegal in some countries)
I guess my point is more about OP wanting to Defederate to stop Meta profiting (which I don’t think it really would)
At least under the gdpr in europe it should be a privacy violation as you need to have the consent of the user to process it’s data. So they would have to go to every single one in a comment and ask for permission if they want to use it for recommendations algos or check out if contents fits advertisement.
We need a more effective solution i agree
I don’t think we do, at the end of the day this is kind of the point of being a decentralised service. You pick a server you like and one that defederates the way you want.
If you try to do it like a two way block situation you could very easily end up with larger servers deciding to just Defederate smaller ones to completey kill them off since the majority of content would be hosted on larger servers
If your issue is with the privacy aspect or Meta taking your content potentially to be used with advertisers then unfortunately this is going to happen regardless, any publicly viewable content you have to expect is going to live on the internet in some form forever and will be used by advertiser’s to the best of their ability
The solution is to join an instance that has defederated Threads (if you don’t want to see content from them) and be cautious about the information you post. This isn’t exclusive to the Fediverse either, any public forum your comments and posts should try to keep you as anonymous as possible (if privacy is your concern)
I have set up a Mastodon account and love the concept but feel like its mostly anonymous twitter. Reddit and Lemmy do a much better job of providing a platform for mostly anonymous interaction than twitter, which has always been successful for its ability to allow regular people to follow/interact with more public people, which Mastodon is mostly lacking. If those more public people move to threads and if the activitypub integration works well, I would be able to use Mastodon to follow the people I follow on Twitter and get rid of twitter while using a privacy honoring instance and that would make the use case for Mastodon much stronger. I understand the concerns with EEE and don’t intend to set up a threads account, but it seems like if Mastodon is going to get extinguished by Meta defederating is not really going to impact it much… They can still extend the capability to pull people away.
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No shit sherlock
Because some of them don’t see the danger of Threads. And I’m not only talking about the EEE tactic: I’m also talking about the festering sludge that will grow on Threads and that you have also seen. For the Fediverse, it will be a moderation nightmare. And be sure that Zucc won’t even moderate his platform; he doesn’t want to and, as far as he’s concerned, it’s even out of his range.
Think about it this way: if a user starts spewing death threats within the Threads platform, he MAY get sanctioned. Not banned, “sanctioned”. But if he does that to the Fediverse and especially on servers with already overwhelmed moderators, do you think that there would be consequences coming from Zucc for doing this kind of stuff outside the official Threads servers? No, nothing! Our moderators would surely ban him if they would find out about this in time, but imagine thousands of these kinds of accounts invading from Threads doing this constantly. This is not just Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, but it gets to Embrace, Raid, Harass, Extinguish
I won’t defend Meta but I don’t see the advantage of defederating when Threads activates ActivityPub.
By federating, we have access to all the people and content on Threads, removing a major barrier to entry for Mastodon/the fediverse for casual users. And because our accounts aren’t on Meta servers and we don’t need to install the Threads app, we aren’t subjected to the same level of privacy issues, at least not any more than what Meta would get by scraping our posts on the web in general.
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This conversation you’re having right now is the result of a smaller community of people building something outside the main stream. We have everything to lose from federating with them. All nuanced discourse will fly out the window. All manor critical points of view outside of the mainstream will be shouted down. They don’t need us, and we don’t need them.
What nuanced discourse? That already isn’t happening on many topics lol.
Saw a guy earlier call all Twitter users idiots, cause they are on Twitter. What nuance is that?
Are there any more effective solution?
Threads does not need to steal people from the Fediverse. We are minuscule compared to Threads in just one day. Threads already has more content and engagement then us. They do not care about the Fediverse, they do not care about stealing people from the Fediverse. At most, the only reason they want to “support” it is because it makes them look good compared to the apocalyptic hellfire that is currently Twitter.
Good boy points are way more valuable to Meta than actual Fediverse users. They’re after Twitter users, not a small group of hardcore tech anarchists.
To be honest, the only reason they’re doing this is because of EU regulations. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even be be a thought to them.
EU regulations, the FTC consent decrees, and don’t forget the fact that decentralized web3 stuff was all the hot shit for a split second between NFTs and the metaverse, it may be as simple as the project manager chasing the hot new thing.
I’m 90% convinced that the ActivityPub integration is all about “chasing the hot new thing” and 10% to fuck with Dorsey and prevent BlueSky to get any traction.
Meta doesn’t care about Fedi users, and it doesn’t care about our data (that it can already collect anyway). Why is it so hard for some people to understand… Oh yes, because they like drama and they like to be scared of big bad wolves that are to get them, it makes me feel that the good little guys or something.
A huge component of the fear that I’ve seen is how one large player can usurp standards. It keeps happening. Why do you think Meta reached out to some of the largest people in the Fediverse and tried (pretty successfully) to get them to sign NDAs? Only one stood their ground and went transparent about it, and that was Kev at Fossotodn.
I don’t think valid opposition needs to assume some grand evil plan to destroy the Fediverse from Meta. Meta’s mere presence is enough to threaten the standard and our communities, good intentions or otherwise.
Let’s see who outlast who in this game.
I’m on the Mastodon side of it all. More features, better content overall, nicer community and the app doesn’t feel like it was made in a week.
They are the Empire, but since the wars of the reddit clones (3rd party apps), there is A New Hope!
Do they really thought?, I’m not a Twitter/mastodon user, but I read from comments that all their content right now is cringe influencer and shilling stuff.
Absolutely. The quality of discussion is not even remotely comparable. Threads is trash.
Idk why I didn’t see it coming, but ofc Threads is going to be all over the news and facebook/instagram until it’s either profitable or it fails
A lot of “Reporters” are just influencers at this point. They mostly stuck with Twitter so they could maintain their reach essentially.
Now Threads is out, and all these writers are flocking there and won’t shut the fuck up about it. Just yesterday TheVerge had like 7 out of 10 stories dedicated to Threads. It was all over my news feed elsewhere, too. Journalists I follow on Mastodon also won’t shut the fuck up about it in an attempt to port some users over to Threads.
Same with TikTok creators. Even FOSS (supposedly) enthusiasts are hiding behind this aura of “evangelizing” the Fediverse to Threads users as their reason for being there. But they are trying very hard to get their followers to also follow them on threads.
Bad content is still content
Meta: We’re launching it now with no ads or plans, then we’ll figure out what to do once we hit a billion users
People: Ooh but Meta may not be all bad, let’s just wait and see!
I mean, Meta is totally freely admitting they’re just playing the good guy now and will hit hard once they gain monopoly and can do whatever the fuck they want. How much more clear does it have to get?
Enshittification is fueled by normies NEVER LEARNING.
Please read Eugen Rotchko’s thoughts and approach to threads.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/
People defend it because they actually like the instagram culture and they don’t dislike the data collection. So they see our staunch opposition as a condemnation of the things they like and they get defensive. Some are bootlickers too, who just love defending corporate actions for some reason.
Instagram culture is probaly the one of the most toxic, brain rotting cultures i ever seen. Get that thing away from me
Full disclosure, I’ve been labeled as an astroturfer because of my optimism for Threads federating. So, take that as you will.
But I think that there’s a lot more nuance to it than what you’ve said. I personally don’t defend Threads, but I do defend Threads federating. I’m on Lemmy specifically because I don’t want to be on Threads. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to connect with Threads content and users.
Especially since a federated Mastodon server (since that’s the clearer peer service) means you can actually decide which Threads users you see rather than Trusting the AlgorithmTM. That’s a pretty strong pitch to get people to migrate once they’re sick of their feed just being 85% brands and influencers paying for reach.
I’m more concerned with the expected lack of Threads moderation making a lot of work for admins who need to continually ban individual Threads users with no hope of the originating instance policing itself.
Oppress me harder, daddy!
The average person just doesn’t care. If the app works and they can see memes and connect with their friends they’re happy with it. They don’t care about data collection or the fediverse or any of that stuff. And I’m not saying this to imply that they’re stupid or anything like that. Just different priorities. All this stuff just literally doesn’t matter to them.
It’s not that complicated.
Threads is another instance that brings people to the Fediverse, and people like the idea that they can stay on their instances while still interacting with the world at large. For many people, having everyone on the Fediverse is the goal, and in fact, is a long-term goal of most of the platforms - the “Fediverse” is not meant to be a sort of closed community only for marginalised people to get away from the corporate web, it’s for everyone to use in whatever way they see fit.
There is literally nothing more to discuss if you’re wondering why people “defend” Threads.
Part of federation is the ability to choose whom you interact with. Email is federated and everyone accepts that you can block certain bad faith actors. The notion that federation implies that everyone can use it in whatever way they see fit doesn’t mean that everyone needs to interact with each other. Facebook is a bad faith actor, and it can go play by itself.
Let’s consider your email example – I don’t like a lot of stuff Google has done. By your proposed rules, should, say, ProtonMail block all emails from Gmail to prove a point?
Your comment doesn’t really contradict anything I said, and I agree with you.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that the Fediverse means everyone should have to interact with everyone, to be clear, but people absolutely have the choice to federate with those we may consider bad actors, and then we can respond in kind.
I am all for defederation of bad actors, I’m mostly just explaining why others are not against the defederation of Threads.
I dont want a platform that owned by a Genocide helper corporation. Also threads will bring a moderation nightmare just like @[email protected] said. they explained it well
And that’s fine, the Fediverse gives you tools to not have to deal with that through silencing or defederation.
But for many people on the Fediverse, they’re here specifically for other things, and being able to interact with the corporate social web from outside of it is ideal for them.
Note that I’m not arguing for or against here, it’s just very easy to see why many aren’t interested in defederating.
But that’s seems to go directly against what the Fediverse was built for. They say that “The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.” Threads seems to be the antithesis of that. If people do want that, they can find a different platform or create their own. Not coop the Fediverse.
The Fediverse is just a term for “social networks that use ActivityPub”
Imagine if Facebook offered RSS feeds. That’d be nice right? It wouldn’t ruin anyone’s experience if they started supporting an open standard like that.
Supporting ActivityPub is no different. It will let people on third party clients connect to Facebook properties. Don’t want to do that? You don’t have to!
Remember XMPP? How Google embraced that open protocol? Remember they extended it and practically turned it into their own standard? Remember how it was extinguished after they decided they could just make their own standard?
That’s what people are afraid will happen with the metaverse. Facebook isn’t interested in making ActivityPub better. Their only goal is to turn it into a money stream without regard to whether it survives or not. The only way to slow that down is to not play woth them.
I remember it well, and I was annoyed by it!
But in the end, I’d argue Google dropping XMPP simply restored the status quo: XMPP went back to being the same niche thing it was before Google started supporting it.