How does that work? Is threads using a protocol compatible to lemmy?
(And I fully agree with the preemptive blocking of any facebook stuff).
Edit: thanks for all the detailled answers.
So Facebook tries the old EEE - Embrace Extend Extinguish.
1.A big company is Embracing an open source standard ("we’re friendly, see?) They get a lot of users that way - even the open source savvy types.
2.they start Extending that standard “to make it even better” - but not talking about these changes with the rest of the community first. They cannot react quickly enough and become incompatible with the new version of this standard.
3.Extinguish. When all the users are effectively using the big companies platform with something that isn’t the original standard anymore they change it so much that it isn’t compatible at all anymore or replace it completely.
Yes. Threads wants to use the ActivityPub Protokoll. We can interact with Kbin and Mastodon users thanks to this Protocol. The fear is that they use their huge user base to change the protocol to their liking (basically take control over the ActivityPub) and everyone who wants to stay federated with them and their users has to adapt those changes until the day they will simply cut everyone off.
If one instance gets too big they could just ignore the standard and start adding random tweaks to it. And all the others would eventually have to adapt to that or risk becoming irrelevant by being incompatible with the big instance.
Federation allows for choice. Indeed, many AP implementations already add to the base AP stuff. Peertube already does this itself.
For this to really be a problem, the server software would need to be maintained by the same person running the instance, and they have to have the manpower already to either a) Build an implementation or b) Run a fork of existing software. Both take effort and quite frankly is juice that isn’t worth the squeeze to risk cutting yourself off from the network like that.
the standard is made by the World Wide Web Consortium, which I trust to not let facebook take control of their standard. They also manage standards like HTML, CSS and SVG
No, they re-publish the work of WHATWG in standards form, the vendors literally made a pact not to deal with them. Then sometime in the last decade they standardized EME, even after the technology activists told them fucking not to. Defective By Design said this shit for years, decades, and W3C ignored everyone. I have more reason not to trust Berners-Lee at this point than put any stock in his leadership skills.
That’s the same problem as with Chrome. If internet for most people goes through Google Chrome (which it currently does: Android, smart devices, Electron Apps, Android apps, Edge, Brave, etc.) then the controlling entity can redefine the meaning of that protocol. In the above example it would be Google redefining the meaning of the web, see DRM, manifest v3, and similar efforts. Small players wouldn’t be able to play catch-up or disagree (it wouldn’t matter) and risk bring irrelevant.
The admins of defederating instances fear the same could happen to ActivityPub and fediverse.
Yes, sounds like there should be Meta’s fake, desecrated version of “ActivityPub”, and the actual Fediverse version of ActivityPub that does not budge to any of Meta’s interests.
I agree in theory, but in practice, when Google dropped RSS and XMPP support it took most of my friends with it, which is what started this mess in the first place. I’m actually not a fan of mastodon; feels too ambitious to start a new protocol without a killer app. RSS and XMPP are extensible protocols and I really just want modern support for those.
ActivityPub wasn’t built with the purpose of having a “killer app” in mind. That’s centralization logic. The point is for all apps to be able to talk to each other regardless of where on the network and maintaining the ability to do so seamelessly without the user having to think too much about it.
Mastodon should be able to talk to Lemmy. Lemmy should be able to talk to Pixelfed. Et cetera. I don’t believe XMPP had the same purpose, matter of fact I remember it just being a subpar IM protocol iirc, and I don’t see social media going by the wayside the way IM clients of the past did.
Threads is using the protocol that the entire fediverse is using, called ActivityPub. The protocol allows for lemmy instances to communicate with each other and with other sites like kbin and mastodon. What lemmy.ml did is called defederation, so threads can’t communicate with lemmy.ml. This is to prevent meta/Instagram/Facebook from killing ActivityPub in the same manner Microsoft, IBM, and Google has killed open source protocols in the past.
The most notable one imo is Google semi killing XMPP. They started Goolge Talk based on XMPP and after many people started relying on it, they replaced XMPP with their proprietary protocols.
Very good news. Between Pi Hole and uBlock Origin, any links to threads is already blocked on my computer. Nice to see you folks preventing the linking to this privacy invading boil of the internet
(Apparently) Unpopular Opinion: I think defederating Threads is the wrong move, because it just locks people into Threads. If people on Twitter had the ability to move to Mastodon AND still interact with all the people they did before, I think we would have seen even more people move. The only reason I still check twitter at all is because I have a few close friends who didn’t move. Meta is likely going to have big adoption of people who aren’t ready to go to Mastodon, but are interested in getting out of the dumpster-on-fire that twitter seems to continue to be. But blocking those people from being able to join the more popular Lemmy instances, given no actual policy violations, just will keep people in Meta that otherwise could leave. With the “however” being: It’s not quite clear to me that Threads users will be interacting with Lemmy as much Mastodon, if Threads were a Reddit replacement, it’s more directly connected.
i mean, could lemmy even work with threads? completely different layout and functionality. im having a hard time understanding the Fediverse past lemmy instances interacting haha.
Fully agree. It would be like saying people with @gmail addresses can’t email people on @someFederated.com email addresses. Also I think (and correct me if I’m wrong here) the idea of “defederating” gives power to some in a way we hated reddit admins having power. Suddenly it’s “totally the fediverse except when…”.
Imo fuck that. If I don’t like threads I won’t use threads the same way if I don’t like lemmy.someinstance I won’t interact with lemmy.someinstance. leave it open and let the users choose. But also let’s educate. Some will listen and some will roll their eyes. But it’s a choice.
The problem isn’t with the user base. It’s with Meta and their business practices. People very simply do not trust Meta or Facebook and with good reason.
That’s exactly it. Deleted my Instagram account when I learned they signed me up for a Threads account automatically. Haven’t used Insta in years, but Mark says I have to have a Threads account. So Fuck Zuck.
more ideally would be as many levels of granular control as possable for users and their clients.
However Servers ghould get
whitelist/blacklist of users
blacklist/whitelist of communities (prevents blocking servers for just their groups)
blacklist/whitelist of servers
server federation
The point is to blacklist as specific as needed, EX: dont block lemmy dot Marxist Lennonists just its extremist communities (ml admins have a communism chinaphile problem)
perspective: if i can still reach everyone on the fediverse with threads… why should i switch to lemmy and co? there is no incentive for it. so 99% will not do it if they don’t have to or get a incentive from it.we don’t get something from it, but facebook does (userdata and money).
so its a one sided deal where only facebook wins and we lose in the end.
Since writing my comment above, I’ve come across Cory Doctrow’s “Let the Platforms Burn” article where he argues that interoperability and the ability for users to move to other platforms is the best way out of the Meta situation. https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980
I understand your viewpoint but you have to realize meta/Facebook has done this before. The best solution to protect Lemmy/mastodon in the long run is to cut the cancer out before it has a chance dm to spread.
When you cut off a cancer, it dies. When you defederate a social network orders of magnitude larger and more powerful than you… it doesn’t even notice and continues to thrive.
This isn’t going to harm Threads or protect Lemmy.ml.
Completely agree. I’m quite shocked at how many people are short sighted in supporting this. Not to mention the fact that Lemmy.ml is based in Malaysia which has notoriously awful rights for Internet privacy.
Threads got 80 million users in 48h. Those people are not gonna use Mastodon anyway. They don’t care about their privacy, they don’t care that some proprietary algorithm is gonna decide what they will see, they don’t care that it’s Facebook. Those people have no standards. The only way we can help them is by educating them and if that doesn’t change their mind, then there is nothing we can do, because freedom and privacy is not something they value. People who value them are capable of making a small sacrifice of not using some website when an alternative exists.
Facebook either just wants to use the Fediverse for their own benefit or they want to destroy it before it becomes a bigger competitor. We shouldn’t risk all that we have built just because we live in an ignorant society that doesn’t understand technology.
Just because they won’t use Mastodon now, doesn’t mean they never will in the future. Especially when (not if) Mastodon sorts out some of their usability issues around signup and interacting with posts from other instances.
It’s not just about having the biggest reach, though.
I’ve noticed that some of the folks who are generally against defederating, whether it be between independent fediverse instances or from large companies, seem to have this impression that fediverse needs to take a huge chunk of some market share in order to compete. But the whole point of the Fediverse is that it doesn’t need to compete.
It’s not a company looking to increase their size, following a bottom line, and trying to increase profitability. It’s a network of people who communicate and share content. There’s no need to compete with anyone in order to accomplish that. We’re doing it right now regardless of whatever else exists out there.
We’ve gotten so used to this model where there are only a few really culturally relevant social media sites, but that’s literally because we’ve just bought into the business model of these companies as societies. Slashdot has been going strong since 1997. Is it the biggest forum or news site on the internet? No. It gets a tiny portion of the internet’s traffic. But that’s plenty to be what it is!
The fediverse is not facebook or twitter or reddit, and it shouldn’t be. We don’t want or need it to be.
I heard someone make the point recently that nobody walks into a nice, small restaurant and says they wish they were at McDonalds. Facebook is the McDonaldsification of the internet. Let’s be a bunch of small mom and pop restaurants instead.
We need to build a strong society that isn’t dependent on big corporations for being able to do the most basic things like talking to each other. The usability issues seem like a tiny price to pay for that and for privacy and freedom of speech. Those people can join Mastodon any time if they wish. But if Facebook manages to destroy the Fediverse, there will be no freedom for anyone.
Being the “Ban Happy” socal media is a bad thing and an even worse reputation.
I debate if its a good thing to let FB just have free content with asterisks as I have no idea whitch way the cup of users will spill
EDIT: FB is a parisite that has a small enugh heart to use agressive tactics like Embrace Extend Extinguish, be careful if we do let them in and always be ready to shut that door)
Another thing, lemmy.ml, reddit, twitter, (tiktok for good mesure) as well as Facebook and sons (and likely more) have sensorius admins, moderating above what most users want and warping conversations to pretend like “this is what people are saying online and nothing more nor less”.
To be overly flippant: “lol problem child blocked other problem child”
They’ll be devastated when they find out my closed instance with 2 users, 1 of which is inactive, also pre-emptively de-federated them. I shudder to think they’ll ever recover.
I already owned the domain and have access to a server with more than enough resources, so it didn’t have a downside to me.
Upside, I don’t really have to worry about anyone else’s federation choices. Undesirable content like loli/shouta stuff doesn’t appear at all, because I’m basically the only user and don’t subscribe to anywhere that exists so it doesn’t federate to me anyway. My instance never lags because nobody but me uses it. Sometimes it misses comments through federation from overloaded instances, but it seems like the newer version of Lemmy has helped that greatly.
For me, yes. My instance is considerably faster and has better uptime than any of the instances I have created accounts on. Mostly because I’m the only one using it.
Not really, it’s like hosting your own email server. Sounds great in theory and is a fun project but at the end of the day all you get is a vanity URL and a headache.
Well I don’t know what happened exactly with that particular user but I can give some basic info on the instance. Beehaw was initially one of the major, most popular Lemmy instances (not sure if it still is or not), but in their attempt to create an ultra safe space, they decided to suddenly and without warning defederate from some of the most major instances (lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works). They seem to want to cultivate an environment akin to Tildes…they want a small userbase that is locked down to their own beliefs.
There is nothing inherently wrong with their philosophy on how their instance should be run…but for me what left a bad taste in my mouth was the suddenness of their actions. If they were a walled garden and semi-closed off from the very beginning (a la Tildes), it would have been totally fine in my eyes imo. But to suddenly ban large swaths of users from participating without warning when they were one of the largest instances just left a very bad taste in my mouth and I don’t agree with the way they did things. Communiites like [email protected] were among the most popular communities on Lemmy, for example, and I enjoyed participating there. But then to suddenly be banned without warning because I am on a growing instance really just made me a bit frustrated with the way they were handling things.
But as I said in my earlier comments…to use that particular slur with them is completely unwarranted imo. But I do understand people’s frustration with them. I’m frustrated too. But life will move on and different communities pop up and fill the void.
In the end, it’s ok. Their closing off from others will only mean that other popular communities will grow and take their place. Lemmy.world has already grown immensely to take the top place in the past month. It’s been crazy watching it explode. If Beehaw wants to do things that way then I’d rather not be associated with them to begin with and not worry about things like voting with them.
Instead of down voting you, I want to know what happened to you to call them nazis. Their only rule is essentially be nice, it kind of reflects badly on you that you’re so enraged by them to just call them nazis out of nowhere. What happened, man?
It’s the same guy that’s being a trollish asshole up and down this post. Only their posts have been removed, and only their posts are catching a 6:1 or higher downvote-to-upvote ratio. Seems like they’re on somebody’s payroll honestly.
There we go. Not the wishy washy mastodon non-announcement. Although I understand their “neutrality” too, it’s still like they wanna seem like the big boys. Sometimes it’s advantageous to be small. This “fuck you” may be just adorable to Zuck, but it’s also genuine.
The problem with Meta is that they will harm the Fediverse.
I found this article interesting, written by a dev who worked with google during the XMPP EEE and was originally a XMPP dev, thinking that a big company could only mean more success for the FOSS alternative. He was wrong.
It’s almost like some people crave enshitification.
“Hey this decentralized stuff is really cool, let’s connect with the most gigantic corporate assholes who would absolutely centralize all of it if they could…you know, so we can grow! What could go wrong?”
I wish even one person could give the actual steps on how Facebook is going to ruin the fediverse instead of just spamming this same one article and throwing around the same buzzwords like XMPP, EEE etc. of which nobody had heard about a week ago.
There’s so many people here right now reading this thinking that defederating is going to prevent Facebook from seeing the content you post here and collecting the little data that’s available to them. It doesn’t. That’s not what defederating does.
It’s not about the data they can collect. As long as we don’t use the Meta app or register in their instance we’re on the clear. The problem is giving them power.
I’m not an evil genius shithead like Zuck, but it could go this way:
They enter the Fediverse as the biggest instance.
They artificially slow down connections with other instances. That way, lots of users from smaller intances will migrate to the Meta one. Only the ones concerned about our privacy will remain in independent instances.
Once most of the userbase of the Fediverse is on their instance, they keep slowing it, or adding “features” only available in their app, effectively building a wall between them and the rest of instances.
Finally they defederate, leaving the rest of the fediverse weaker than it was.
Yeah I really hope they come out with the user’s ability to block instances soon. Would be a great feature addition. There are a couple of instances that I take no issue with and don’t want others to be blocked access too, but I really just don’t want to see them in my feed.
Wait, an app can do this? I thought the devs of Lemmy itself needed to add the feature. I didn’t think that was possible app-side without adding the feature to Lemmy.
How do you block an entire instance in their app?
Edit: Found it! This is interesting. I didn’t know it was possible. Finally I can get the porn off my front page without getting rid of NSFW memes. Thanks!
Edit 2: Weirdly, Connect does not seem to show my newly subscribed communities in my subscriptions even though the other apps do. What a strange bug. Hmm…I think I’ll hold off on using it until things like that work better for me.
I think I saw someone else mentioned that bug as well. I think your subscription list in the main menu doesn’t automatically refresh after you subscribe to a new community so currently you would have to close and reopen the app. Updates and bug fixes have been daily lately so hopefully that gets fixed soon.
Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to get newly subscribed communities to show up. Closing and reopening the app as you said doesn’t seem to work for me. I have tried that and deleting and re-adding my account, but it doesn’t seem to work. Once that is ironed out, it might be a nice switch. But it’s a pretty big bug.
What exact behaviors are they looking for that would cause them to push the block button?
Threads can do very well for themselves without the fediverse as they are already demonstrating. What real motive do they have to join the fediverse except to shut it down?
Currently you can with with Lemmy Connect. Maybe with others as well, given the amount of apps coming out by the day. And I’m guessing they’ll fold the feature into Lemmy/Kbin proper sometime in the future.
My (limited) understanding is that if you (we) block other instances locally, that won’t stop meta (or whoever) from accessing your (our) information and posts.
Right, there are limitations to app based user blocking of instances. Lemmy/Kbin proper would need to implement a robust user account privacy framework to provide the granular control you’re interested in. Personally, I’d like to see this as well.
Currently, Connect has that option, but it doesn’t actually block the instance, it just doesn’t show feeds from that instance. So, technically, the two instances are still federated.
Same, I was only donating $2 a month but I’m not alone in finding this completely unacceptable. I applied at lemmy.ml. It’s the scorpion and the frog with these people suggesting we should just wait and see.
“~Let’s see if Zuck doesn’t act like an anti-competitive asshole this time” <–where the hell is the logic in that?!
Currently, there is no way, though a migration of a user profile from one instance to another is planned as a feature, but not currently being worked on.
This behavior is why the fediverse alienate users and makes it hostile for new people to join.
They didn’t do anything, yet. Give them the chance but start with 2 strikes on their account already. They fuck up, THEN you defederate. Innocent until proven otherwise.
Edit: go on, downvote me. Show me your face. Show me how you’re all against growth on Lemmy and niceness to each other.
There are many years of proof already about facebook/meta acting very maliciously, actively breaking laws and being fined for it, is that not proof enough? How many more do you need before you can say they’re not innocent at all?
Corporations like Meta have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted to play nice with anyone else. Have we already forgotten about Cambridge Analytica or the plethora of other scandals they’ve been at the center of? The proof has been in plain view for a while now.
They don’t get more data because they’re federated. They literally the exact same amount of data as they do know just by scraping mastodon or Lemmy. They’re an even player in this market. Somehow you all keep forgetting that. If you don’t want meta do have data from activity pub, you being here already violates that ideal.
Okay, but that doesn’t address any of the points I brought up.
You said to give Meta a chance. The rest of us are broadly gesturing at all the shit they’ve done in the past, and how we want as little to do with that as possible.
There is nothing they can do to fuck up your experience, ESPECIALLY on Lemmy though. Threads is a completely different concept from Lemmy and activity pub is well defined.
The only thing they could do is just not moderate threads and therefore putting spam in everyone’s feeds. That’s about it. I don’t think they’re leaving that unmoderated.
I suppose Metas history of actively being a bad actor working against societies best interests and enabling hate groups doesn’t qualify as ‘something’…
User pointed to a history of bad behaviour to counter the idea of “lets wait”. User suggested to learn from history and use that as a metric for decisions.
You just trolled your way into this and think consequentially you are ‘clever’. You are not.
Thank you and the other admins for the thoughtful and transparent answer.
We would like to express our disappointment with the negative and threatening tone of some of these discussions
Considering that a great percentage of the Fediverse userbase are ex-users of Reddit and Twitter that left due to CEO actions, I get that they (including me) don’t trust Meta or want anything to do with them. I agree that discussion should be civil nonetheless.
This is a tool with a GUI that does profile migration. You can use it in Windows and Linux. It migrates almost everything, including subscribed communities.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Thanks for this! Just gave this a try, downloaded from .world just fine, but uploading to .ml gives this error: ERROR: Failed Login - HTTP status client error (403 Forbidden) for url (https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/user/login)
I’m not very tech savvy when it comes to this, but would it have anything to do with the anti-bot stuff that lemmy.ml has implemented in the sign-up process? You now have to answer a few questions and basically write your reason for making an account before it lets you even submit the request for review.
Thanks for the feedback. The username and password are indeed correct. I copied and pasted from Bitwarden and used the exact same ones to login to the lemmy.ml site. I do wonder if there is some sort of anti-bot measures that Colonel Sanders mentioned below.
Also: I tried just my username vs email but neither worked and I also don’t have MFA enabled yet. Super weird.
Honestly it isn’t. Nothing about the Fediverse is private or inherently secure in that way. Everything is public. And you should assume that everything you publish through activity pub could eventually be looked at by anyone. If you want private or secure messaging there are non-activity pub open source secure alternate. In fact signing up for Lemmy there’s even a field to enter for one. Whether or not a server federates with meta. Meta is still going to data mine the ever-loving shit out of all of them. The point is. None of us are at Meta’s wim about being flooded with their toxic content.
Honestly I want to see meta flooded with our content. So much anti-threads anti Meta sentiment. Actual leftists. And not just make believe right-wing liberals who’ve been conditioned to think that they are left. It would be hilarious to watch Meta try to play wack-a-mole sanitizing everything. To please their reptilian corporate overlords. And if you don’t care and just don’t want to see it. You can always block them personally. Why let them data mine in peace. I say we make them work for it.
I’m not real sure how much the Threads Algorithm is going to pass through Mastodon content (and even less sure if it will even be able to pass through Lemmy content). I think the much more valuable aspect is you can pitch your Threads friends that they can move to the Fediverse and actually get to choose what content they see rather than which influencers paid Meta to fill up your feed.
Agreed about influencers. Meta wouldn’t be doing this at all if they didn’t have a plan (or multiple plans) to monetize it. The whole reason I left Reddit and plan to leave Twitter was that I very much dislike having any part of my online enjoyment at the mercy of the whims of gigantic corporate assholes that think they are far more important than they are. Meta has been an awful and abusive actor in the tech world, why would any freedom-loving person want anything to do with them in a freedom-loving space?! Why would anyone just wait and see what they do this time to decide they’re an awful company with only their profits in mind and no qualms about making those profits at a cost to its users?!
Oh they are going to fight it either way no doubt. But why make it easy on them I say. And you’re right. If we have access to their content and can provide actual linear feeds like people want with no toxic algorithms. It’s win-win for us and still mostly a loss for them. Even if we defiederate with them they’re still going to data mine we just cut ourself off from reaching those people preemptively.
I would add to this that its not just the fediverse, anything you put on the internet should be assumed to be public and non-deletable. Even with GDPR and everything, if the host deletes everything there could dtill be backups, archives, or some random person, corporation, or government could backup everything. Use secure services like signal for things you want to be private and just assume everything else could be public forever.
It’s not really about privacy, though. It’s about the risk of Meta going “Embrace, extend, extinguish” on the fediverse, and the only way to protect against that is by not letting them interact with the majority of it from the get-go. https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
People keep saying that. Like it’s something that actually happens. And let’s be clear, it has happened with a number of commercial products. But Microsoft and others have never managed to EEE email, HTTP/HTTPS, Usenet, Linux, Java even. And they’ve tried haaaaaaaaaard. Google didn’t EEE XMPP either. It still exists. I use it daily. The author is misrepresenting what happened.
What happened is that too many people felt obligated to work with corporation that had little interest in working with them. Rather than to focus on their own system and continue to update or develop it. Neglecting their core user base, chasing after people who didn’t seek it out and didn’t care what they were using so long as it worked. They wasted time and effort. But Google didn’t actually kill anything. And all the people using Google talk typically weren’t interested about XMPP in the first place and never would be.
It goes beyond that even. Lemmy is developed by socialists. And not just the more reasonable bunch of socialists like myself. But straight up militant leninists. They’re part of the core development team if not the whole thing. And they have no interest in catering to or coddling misbehaving corporations. They are going to do what they want and what they feel they need to do when they need to do it. And if meta or anyone else tries to screw it up. They’re not going to pay one single bit of attention to them and just keep on doing what they’ve been doing
Oh damn guess I will migrate to lemmy.ml and use that until I find out if lemmy.world defederates or not.
(Edit turns out it is run by tankies and they are federated with lemmygrad.) While I may or may not stay on lemmy.world depending on if we federate with meta or not. I will no longer suggest Lemmy.ml.
Facebook doesn’t give a shit about its users and treats them and their data as a crop to harvest. On Meta platforms, you’re the product. On the fediverse, you’re just another user, free to do what you want. Disgust is indeed an emotion, and I’m 100% fine with being disgusted with Meta.
Oh look, this place is just like Reddit with the rational talk buried in the comments. Thank you for being here despite the apparently unpopular opinion we share.
Don’t see why people are doing this. You’ll just damage the fediverse and discourage meta from federating, granting them their own walled garden that you cannot use without selling your soul to them, which is going to dissuade people from using Mastodon as what’s the point if people on threads cannot see what they have
I get that. But instead on Lemmy were freely giving away our data to literally anyone that ask for it. That’s the downside of the federated platforms. I guess with the fediverse you’re at least not tying things to your actual identity. Not sure if threads allows for anonymous accounts like Twitter.
This thread is full of children who think that because they don’t like something then neither should anyone else.
This is exactly you. You don’t like the idea of blocking Facebook and are being combative and douchey to anyone who disagrees. Your dislikes are in the toilet and you are as free to leave .world as anyone else.
Things might go bad with federation with Meta and Meta is indeed loathsome and has an awful history and present of being a bad actor — but responding to “You all are operating on emotion” with the bad faith emotional ad hominem response “Why are you so hard for Zucc?” is kind of proving the point.
I think there’s lots of good arguments around being wary of Meta and defederating (and some good ones in favour of wait and see) but the level of discourse around this issue on here is really not great and too much attacking others (and it’s not just you — the post you’re responding to as well was rude too with “you clearly don’t have a clue what you’re talking about”). The absolutist way people are talking and treating people who have other perspectives has made me feel much less positive about the potential for good discourse and community on this platform.
You’re being bit of a jerk in this thread but you’re still right. People are spamming one article and using the same buzzwords from that article to sound smart but the content of their messages demonstrates that almost no one understands how any of this works. People over-estimate the amount of data Facebook can collect from outside instances and they’re confused about what defederating actually does.
I don’t want anything to do with facebook either but I’m interested in actual solutions for this and not just something that feels good but doesn’t do anything.
You’re confusing something. Defederation by lemmy.ml means that lemmy.ml users cannot see any threads.net content if they wanted or not. Threads.net can still connect to lemmy.ml. That’s exactly the situation lemmy.world and beehaw.org are in: beehaw.org blocked lemmy.world and lemmy.world users can see and interact with everything from beehaw.org, just beehaw users don’t see any of those interactions. Have a look at https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected] as proof.
So many folks on here are jumping on and claiming that decentralization is a one way or that people don’t know anything, but have failed to read the specifications themselves.
ActivityPub defines the Block activity for client-to-server (C2S) use-cases, but not for server-to-server (S2S) – it recommends that servers SHOULD NOT deliver Block activities to their object.
So as I mentioned before, Lemmy.world should be blocking those servers at the instance level, preventing it from sharing any data to any identified Facebook instances.
Sure this doesn’t stop Facebook from spinning up other instances, but that will improve a lot more effort on their side and will quickly be identified and blocked by the communities, just like all their urls for ads, api, etc. have been for years.
It would not be that simple, considering they’d be running multiple instances and require more effort to aggregate, deduplicate, and stage that data - vs just having a single clean database for it
but have failed to read the specifications themselves.
What the specs say doesn’t matter if reality behaves a different way. Fact is that Beehaw blocked Lemmy.world but not the other way around and therefore Lemmy.world users can read everything from Beehaw. Lemmy.world blocking Threads would thereby be at best just a symbolic gesture and at worst actively driving people away towards Threads because that’s where they can access all the content. If an e-mail provider blocked all mails from @gmail.com, most of its users would jump ship towards a provider that doesn’t do that and perhaps even drive them towards GMail.
It does actually matter, because that is what is happening.
Head over to the [email protected] link that you shared as an example and notice that the posts are 3+ days old and all the recent posts are from instances other than beehaw; this clearly shows that Lemmy.world has not been receiving any data from beehaw for some time already.
As for hurting Lemmy and driving people to threads, is a baseless argument; anyone wanting an experience that Threads offers is not coming to Lemmy; they would either already be there or would be coming from Twitter/Mastadon.
Lemmy at its core is very far from what Threads/Twitter/Mastadon try to be.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Facebook is known for analyzing your contact list and trying to get as much data as they can on those people as well. You don’t have to make life easier for face-eating leopards.
You’re posting on public forum. If you don’t want Facebook to see it then stop posting. Defederating isn’t going to change that. It just stops the content flow from their instance into yours. Not the other way around. For them to get data other than your content and upvotes you need to install Threads app because that’s only available to the admins of your instance and Facebook can’t get it wether you federate with them or not.
People are demanding for defederation but almost everyone is confused about what it does.
The thing is, if you wanted to interact with someone on Threads and it wasn’t federated, you’d have to install the app and hand over your data to Meta to interact with them. If it was federated, you could set up your own Mastodon instance and keep all of the data that you don’t want to share.
Yeah but it will still give them less of an incentive to join the fediverse in the first place. This kneejerk reaction of blocking them is madness. Instead we should be getting big figures to join the fediverse so that if meta ever chooses to leave the fediverse, they’d be removing their userbase from the content.
Yeah I agree that there’s possible downsides to it aswell. Ideally every user could individually block instances as they wish instead of it being forced upon us. I’d imagine this feature is eventually coming. Some apps allow it I believe
Embrace: You’re selling lemonade at your stand. One day, another kid in the street (“Kid B”) starts his own lemonade stand as well. Noticing his operation, you decide to become friends with him and share your lemonade recipes with him, so you both can make tasty lemonade together.
Extend: As you continue to share more insights and tips about your business, Kid B starts implementing your strategies. His lemonade stand begins to seem a lot like yours. You suggest adding exciting new features to the lemonade stands, like special umbrellas, or a particular secret ingredient that only you know. Since Kid B doesn’t know any better, he relies on your inputs and makes these changes.
Extinguish: Now, both lemonade stands are almost identical. You’ve influenced Kid B’s business heavily, and it’s become deeply dependent on your ideas. At this stage, you make a move that Kid B can’t match. Maybe you start selling a unique lemonade flavor that only you can make, or setup a cool sign that Kid B can’t afford. Suddenly, customers start to ignore Kid B’s stand and flock to yours, because yours has something extra or special. Eventually, Kid B’s stand can’t compete, and he has to close up his lemonade stand.
This is a simplified example of how “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” can work.
(Verse 1)
Is this just a concept, or is this strategy keen?
Caught in a big tech, no escape from the scheme,
Open your eyes, look up to the screens and see,
“E-E-E,” that’s the name, it’s no mystery.
(Chorus)
Embrace, extend, extinguish,
A technique they call distinguished,
But it’s really quite extinguished,
To the losers, it’s a nightmare, to the winners, it’s a dream.
(Verse 2)
Give a little glance, to a world full of code,
In the corporate stance, see how their actions flowed,
Embrace, extend, and extinguish,
From small tech innovations to those giant-sized wishes.
(Chorus)
Embrace, extend, extinguishing the light,
Innovation in the shadow, yet claiming it’s right,
The strategy’s plain, as day or night,
It’s the landscape of tech, evoking quite a fight.
(Bridge)
Embrace, welcoming tech with a smile,
Beneath that guise, there’s something quite vile.
Extend, broadening the reach oh so wide,
Programming, developing, can’t escape the tide.
(Chorus)
Extinguish, the crown of this plan,
Corporate giants ruling the tech span.
From the mom and pop tech, to the coder’s free hand,
It’s all part of the game, in the corporate techland.
(Outro)
So you see, E-E-E, it’s more than it seems,
A deadly trio, disrupting the dreams,
Control over technology downstream,
Wake up from the lullaby, it’s time to intervene.
This is both amazing and frightening at the same time. I can’t sing this to the tune but that might just be my own lack of musical talent. But less than a minute for it to come up with a propaganda song. I like the message, but probably just need to add a couple words to the prompt to get it to spit out the opposite.
Oh thanks, I was wondering why it wasn’t responding, thought I might have broken it. Normally I just pick the first one in the auto complete but I guess I need to pay more attention.
Interesting question! Given the context, we could consider “Monopolization” as the 4th horseman. It represents the final stage in which a company dominates a market, making it difficult for other businesses to compete. This stage is often associated with stifling innovation, controlling prices, and negatively impacting consumers’ choices.
Accounts can be on instances which are federated with Threads, and on instances which are defederated from Threads. A single person can have both types of accounts.
Defederation has effects which many users find desirable. The same suite of effects is not available on a user level, and would require each user to manually take action individually.
So from a feature perspective, it is necessary that some instances defederate. This provides better service for users who find it desirable.
There will also be instances who federate. People can use accounts there if they prefer that.
TL;DR: We don’t need a consensus. Instances can choose their federation policy. People can choose which instance(s) they use.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t understand the point in defederating. Aren’t you just cutting down on the amount of content you can see? As a user I’d personally prefer to pick and choose what I can see.
What’s the actual upside in doing it? Obviously I can see why you’d want defederating from say a far right instance, but in general it seems like only downsides.
I’m new to all this so maybe I’m missing a crucial bit of information.
Aren’t you just cutting down on the amount of content you can see?
Plus, you reduce the amount of content they can see (while logged in). Quoting myself from a similar context (It is about a community on another instance, which is federated with Threads, while your home instance defederated from Threads):
You wont see posts or comments from Threads users in that remote community. You also won’t see reactions to those activities from anyone, anywhere. It’s as if comment chains started by Threads users don’t exist.
Threads will not see posts and comments from you, even if done in communities from instances which are federated with Threads.
There are also more subtle implications. For example, some might find the situation in remote communities which have both federated and defederated qualities confusing (Imagine “see this comment section” when different users see different versions). This might be a reason to avoid these communities, to only visit communities on other instances, which follow your personal policy of de/federating Threads.
The same is probably true for votes. If your instance defederates Threads, you don’t see their votes, and they don’t see yours.
Defederation in this context sends a political signal, which some people find important.
This was not meant as a comprehensive answer, but as counter-examples to your core question (“Aren’t you just …”).
As a user I’d personally prefer to pick and choose what I can see.
You can do that either way, as explained in my previous comment. No matter on which side of the argument you are, use an account on an instance which has a similar policy. You can have many, you can use many. Of course, most people want to use not more than one, which is why they try to make sure their instance’s policy reflects their personal preference, instead of making sure their instance choice reflects their personal preference. In reality, we see both (people influencing their instance, and people choosing their instance), and both is fine.
Further, we need instances which defederate from Threads, so people can choose this option.
I’m new to all this so maybe I’m missing a crucial bit of information.
I get you. I’m also missing a comprehensive, compact list of consequences.
Isn’t it creating a situation of Reddit power mods on steroids? It’s easy to say “well go and make accounts on multiple instances”, but it’s creating additional barriers to entry that a lot of people won’t understand and frankly is kind of irritating as a user.
I feel like people aren’t taking the consequences seriously and that defederating needs to be viewed as like a nuclear option that’s avoided unless absolutely necessary. That’s what I get from the additional information you provided.
This place will become completely unusable in the future if the good will dies out and large instances decide to defederate from each other to try and become the “top” instance, especially as more and more casual users move over.
Isn’t it creating a situation of Reddit power mods on steroids?
Not sure, how do you see that? Isn’t the ability to “vote with your feet” putting a limit on how powerful they can become?
a lot of people won’t understand and frankly is kind of irritating as a user
That’s true. We need to become better at communicating and explaining these situations. I plan to use the wiki more. To have one comprehensive source of truth, which can be linked to, instead of partial explanations scattered across comment sections.
But even then, a distributed model is probably inherently more complex and hader to understand than a centralized solution. The benefit is more resilience against power-hungry tendencies.
Realistically most people aren’t going to make their own instance, so you kind of have to rely on the good will of others.
Purely as an example, let’s say that Lemmy world decides they no longer want to be federated with ML because of the Meta situation. If you’re on either world or ML now you’ve lost access to huge sections of Lemmy. This could basically go on forever, so any instance that wants to remain neutral can be locked out of either both or one of them as they keep defederating from instances until the whole thing becomes a walled garden, basically the same as if you upset a power mod on Reddit and lose access to huge sections of the site, except it’s worse on here because you wouldn’t even be able to lurk.
I guess you could just have multiple accounts, but we could easily see a situation where you need like 10 accounts just to see the most popular instances, which is obviously ridiculous and not practical unless you’re terminally online.
It seems like a pretty huge flaw in the system, to be honest. Theoretically it’s a good idea, but as more and more people flock to the large instances it seems like it’s only a matter of time before the power plays start to happen.
Is there anything at all to stop that happening? It’s seems inevitable to me that eventually the whole thing will fall apart if people abuse the system.
If what you describe is severe enough, that’s a significant disadvantage of being registered on a big instance, and using communities which are hosted on a big instance. Which in turn makes smaller instances and smaller communities more appealing.
I think it’s self-regulating. The transitional period (like the current reddit exodus) is always a bit rough. Long term, things will survive which are fine for all participants.
Worst case, it’s always much easier to move within the fediverse than it is to move between entirely different platforms and ecosystems. Yes, power plays and nasty circumstances are possible, but moving inside the fediverse is so much easier compared to the outside world. And being able to move is a safeguard against bad conditions.
Damn, I think everyone missed that detail! We’re talking about two completely different companies here – my mind is blown!
Just look at the Hemming distance between “Google” and “Meta”!
I’m convinced! Meta will never follow Google’s footsteps.
Now how about you take a nice, cold shower and re-think your comment.
you actually think corporations will always keep their word, don’t you
and that somehow Google acting like it does is like some fluke or one bad apple or something, rather than Google acting in ways very normal and common to corporations
Would you mind explaining how they’re going to do this with fediverse? Like explain using your own words and not just linking that same article everyone is spreading around. It seems like no one is cabable of giving ELI5 or even ELI15 answer to this.
You’re a woodworker. You’ve developed skills that only few have. Carpentry Inc. approaches you regarding a partnership: you share your skills, they offer you their platform. Win-win, right? Now Carpentry Inc. decides to adapt the knowledge you provided, cutting you out of everything. You’re powerless against a multi-billion corporation. All your years of work are gone. You’re nothing more than an afterthought.
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]!
Rules
Posts must be on topic.
Be respectful of others.
Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
How does that work? Is threads using a protocol compatible to lemmy? (And I fully agree with the preemptive blocking of any facebook stuff).
Edit: thanks for all the detailled answers.
So Facebook tries the old EEE - Embrace Extend Extinguish. 1.A big company is Embracing an open source standard ("we’re friendly, see?) They get a lot of users that way - even the open source savvy types. 2.they start Extending that standard “to make it even better” - but not talking about these changes with the rest of the community first. They cannot react quickly enough and become incompatible with the new version of this standard. 3.Extinguish. When all the users are effectively using the big companies platform with something that isn’t the original standard anymore they change it so much that it isn’t compatible at all anymore or replace it completely.
Yes. Threads wants to use the ActivityPub Protokoll. We can interact with Kbin and Mastodon users thanks to this Protocol. The fear is that they use their huge user base to change the protocol to their liking (basically take control over the ActivityPub) and everyone who wants to stay federated with them and their users has to adapt those changes until the day they will simply cut everyone off.
When they do go that route, I propose the community fork the standard and continue work that way. We already do this with code.
If one instance gets too big they could just ignore the standard and start adding random tweaks to it. And all the others would eventually have to adapt to that or risk becoming irrelevant by being incompatible with the big instance.
Federation allows for choice. Indeed, many AP implementations already add to the base AP stuff. Peertube already does this itself.
For this to really be a problem, the server software would need to be maintained by the same person running the instance, and they have to have the manpower already to either a) Build an implementation or b) Run a fork of existing software. Both take effort and quite frankly is juice that isn’t worth the squeeze to risk cutting yourself off from the network like that.
the standard is made by the World Wide Web Consortium, which I trust to not let facebook take control of their standard. They also manage standards like HTML, CSS and SVG
No, they re-publish the work of WHATWG in standards form, the vendors literally made a pact not to deal with them. Then sometime in the last decade they standardized EME, even after the technology activists told them fucking not to. Defective By Design said this shit for years, decades, and W3C ignored everyone. I have more reason not to trust Berners-Lee at this point than put any stock in his leadership skills.
That’s the same problem as with Chrome. If internet for most people goes through Google Chrome (which it currently does: Android, smart devices, Electron Apps, Android apps, Edge, Brave, etc.) then the controlling entity can redefine the meaning of that protocol. In the above example it would be Google redefining the meaning of the web, see DRM, manifest v3, and similar efforts. Small players wouldn’t be able to play catch-up or disagree (it wouldn’t matter) and risk bring irrelevant.
The admins of defederating instances fear the same could happen to ActivityPub and fediverse.
Yes, sounds like there should be Meta’s fake, desecrated version of “ActivityPub”, and the actual Fediverse version of ActivityPub that does not budge to any of Meta’s interests.
I agree in theory, but in practice, when Google dropped RSS and XMPP support it took most of my friends with it, which is what started this mess in the first place. I’m actually not a fan of mastodon; feels too ambitious to start a new protocol without a killer app. RSS and XMPP are extensible protocols and I really just want modern support for those.
ActivityPub wasn’t built with the purpose of having a “killer app” in mind. That’s centralization logic. The point is for all apps to be able to talk to each other regardless of where on the network and maintaining the ability to do so seamelessly without the user having to think too much about it.
Mastodon should be able to talk to Lemmy. Lemmy should be able to talk to Pixelfed. Et cetera. I don’t believe XMPP had the same purpose, matter of fact I remember it just being a subpar IM protocol iirc, and I don’t see social media going by the wayside the way IM clients of the past did.
Threads is using the protocol that the entire fediverse is using, called ActivityPub. The protocol allows for lemmy instances to communicate with each other and with other sites like kbin and mastodon. What lemmy.ml did is called defederation, so threads can’t communicate with lemmy.ml. This is to prevent meta/Instagram/Facebook from killing ActivityPub in the same manner Microsoft, IBM, and Google has killed open source protocols in the past.
The most notable one imo is Google semi killing XMPP. They started Goolge Talk based on XMPP and after many people started relying on it, they replaced XMPP with their proprietary protocols.
Every time I see his face it looks like it’s a photo shop to make him look bad but it’s his actual face
He reminds me of the Vermicious Knids from Charlie and the chocolate factory
It’s just so creepy. The aliens really need to work on their skin pigments and the eyes are still not quite right.
we need photoshopbattles on lemmy!
Good
Very good news. Between Pi Hole and uBlock Origin, any links to threads is already blocked on my computer. Nice to see you folks preventing the linking to this privacy invading boil of the internet
(Apparently) Unpopular Opinion: I think defederating Threads is the wrong move, because it just locks people into Threads. If people on Twitter had the ability to move to Mastodon AND still interact with all the people they did before, I think we would have seen even more people move. The only reason I still check twitter at all is because I have a few close friends who didn’t move. Meta is likely going to have big adoption of people who aren’t ready to go to Mastodon, but are interested in getting out of the dumpster-on-fire that twitter seems to continue to be. But blocking those people from being able to join the more popular Lemmy instances, given no actual policy violations, just will keep people in Meta that otherwise could leave. With the “however” being: It’s not quite clear to me that Threads users will be interacting with Lemmy as much Mastodon, if Threads were a Reddit replacement, it’s more directly connected.
i mean, could lemmy even work with threads? completely different layout and functionality. im having a hard time understanding the Fediverse past lemmy instances interacting haha.
Fully agree. It would be like saying people with @gmail addresses can’t email people on @someFederated.com email addresses. Also I think (and correct me if I’m wrong here) the idea of “defederating” gives power to some in a way we hated reddit admins having power. Suddenly it’s “totally the fediverse except when…”.
Imo fuck that. If I don’t like threads I won’t use threads the same way if I don’t like lemmy.someinstance I won’t interact with lemmy.someinstance. leave it open and let the users choose. But also let’s educate. Some will listen and some will roll their eyes. But it’s a choice.
The problem isn’t with the user base. It’s with Meta and their business practices. People very simply do not trust Meta or Facebook and with good reason.
Sure, I have no love of Meta either, which is why I would love for people to have an easy escape hatch via the Fediverse…
That’s exactly it. Deleted my Instagram account when I learned they signed me up for a Threads account automatically. Haven’t used Insta in years, but Mark says I have to have a Threads account. So Fuck Zuck.
If they add user-level defed, I’d be pretty on board with defederation being used for stuff like bot farms.
As it stands, with the current lack of user-level defed-- defederating is a server/user-whitelist, server-blacklist function.
Ideally I think it should be a server/user-whitelist, user-blacklist function, where a server-blacklist is reserved for botfarms/illegal content.
more ideally would be as many levels of granular control as possable for users and their clients.
However Servers ghould get
The point is to blacklist as specific as needed, EX: dont block lemmy dot Marxist Lennonists just its extremist communities (ml admins have a
communismchinaphile problem)perspective: if i can still reach everyone on the fediverse with threads… why should i switch to lemmy and co? there is no incentive for it. so 99% will not do it if they don’t have to or get a incentive from it.we don’t get something from it, but facebook does (userdata and money).
so its a one sided deal where only facebook wins and we lose in the end.
Since writing my comment above, I’ve come across Cory Doctrow’s “Let the Platforms Burn” article where he argues that interoperability and the ability for users to move to other platforms is the best way out of the Meta situation. https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980
I understand your viewpoint but you have to realize meta/Facebook has done this before. The best solution to protect Lemmy/mastodon in the long run is to cut the cancer out before it has a chance dm to spread.
When you cut off a cancer, it dies. When you defederate a social network orders of magnitude larger and more powerful than you… it doesn’t even notice and continues to thrive.
This isn’t going to harm Threads or protect Lemmy.ml.
No, there are conciquences, we are at a point where its hard to see them
We take a risk no matter what we do, when we pull that plug both FB and us loose control of eachother,
FB will likely try to Embrace Extend Extinguish
We really shoud try to get along until they go evil. but…
at the same time we do somthing with our end of the link (3E method but without coersion like they will) or we die.
OR we cut them off
we sever the link and both sides lose power, Huge company with propaganda factories vs Good will and word of mouth alone,
FB could also force federate by webscraping (likely read only)
Completely agree. I’m quite shocked at how many people are short sighted in supporting this. Not to mention the fact that Lemmy.ml is based in Malaysia which has notoriously awful rights for Internet privacy.
Threads got 80 million users in 48h. Those people are not gonna use Mastodon anyway. They don’t care about their privacy, they don’t care that some proprietary algorithm is gonna decide what they will see, they don’t care that it’s Facebook. Those people have no standards. The only way we can help them is by educating them and if that doesn’t change their mind, then there is nothing we can do, because freedom and privacy is not something they value. People who value them are capable of making a small sacrifice of not using some website when an alternative exists.
Facebook either just wants to use the Fediverse for their own benefit or they want to destroy it before it becomes a bigger competitor. We shouldn’t risk all that we have built just because we live in an ignorant society that doesn’t understand technology.
Just because they won’t use Mastodon now, doesn’t mean they never will in the future. Especially when (not if) Mastodon sorts out some of their usability issues around signup and interacting with posts from other instances.
It would be nice to give them the option.
It’s not just about having the biggest reach, though.
I’ve noticed that some of the folks who are generally against defederating, whether it be between independent fediverse instances or from large companies, seem to have this impression that fediverse needs to take a huge chunk of some market share in order to compete. But the whole point of the Fediverse is that it doesn’t need to compete.
It’s not a company looking to increase their size, following a bottom line, and trying to increase profitability. It’s a network of people who communicate and share content. There’s no need to compete with anyone in order to accomplish that. We’re doing it right now regardless of whatever else exists out there.
We’ve gotten so used to this model where there are only a few really culturally relevant social media sites, but that’s literally because we’ve just bought into the business model of these companies as societies. Slashdot has been going strong since 1997. Is it the biggest forum or news site on the internet? No. It gets a tiny portion of the internet’s traffic. But that’s plenty to be what it is!
The fediverse is not facebook or twitter or reddit, and it shouldn’t be. We don’t want or need it to be.
I heard someone make the point recently that nobody walks into a nice, small restaurant and says they wish they were at McDonalds. Facebook is the McDonaldsification of the internet. Let’s be a bunch of small mom and pop restaurants instead.
We need to build a strong society that isn’t dependent on big corporations for being able to do the most basic things like talking to each other. The usability issues seem like a tiny price to pay for that and for privacy and freedom of speech. Those people can join Mastodon any time if they wish. But if Facebook manages to destroy the Fediverse, there will be no freedom for anyone.
I agree with you on all of that, though I have a feeling that it’s overly idealistic and optimistic
You probably aren’t wrong about it being overly idealistic and optimistic. :-(
Being the “Ban Happy” socal media is a bad thing and an even worse reputation.
I debate if its a good thing to let FB just have free content with asterisks as I have no idea whitch way the cup of users will spill
EDIT: FB is a parisite that has a small enugh heart to use agressive tactics like Embrace Extend Extinguish, be careful if we do let them in and always be ready to shut that door)
Another thing, lemmy.ml, reddit, twitter, (tiktok for good mesure) as well as Facebook and sons (and likely more) have sensorius admins, moderating above what most users want and warping conversations to pretend like “this is what people are saying online and nothing more nor less”. To be overly flippant: “lol problem child blocked other problem child”
either way, do what you think is right,
That’s an interesting point, one of the reasons I chose lemmy.world was that it wasn’t ban-happy.
Is that thumbnail of Zuck real? Guy is so bizarre
Ikr, guy just looks AI generated.
Happy with this.
Yes.
Thanks to the admins!
Waiting for others to follow.
fedipact.online
They’ll be devastated when they find out my closed instance with 2 users, 1 of which is inactive, also pre-emptively de-federated them. I shudder to think they’ll ever recover.
Hey bud, be the change you want to see in the world!
I do try to be
Is there an advantage to hosting your own instance?
I already owned the domain and have access to a server with more than enough resources, so it didn’t have a downside to me.
Upside, I don’t really have to worry about anyone else’s federation choices. Undesirable content like loli/shouta stuff doesn’t appear at all, because I’m basically the only user and don’t subscribe to anywhere that exists so it doesn’t federate to me anyway. My instance never lags because nobody but me uses it. Sometimes it misses comments through federation from overloaded instances, but it seems like the newer version of Lemmy has helped that greatly.
Honestly, not really… But, it does put you in control over your destiny.
For me, yes. My instance is considerably faster and has better uptime than any of the instances I have created accounts on. Mostly because I’m the only one using it.
Yep, while other were complaining about issues it was smooth sailing for me.
On the flip side, discovering new communities is a pain, and whenever i subscribe to a new community it can take hours to start populating comments.
Not really, it’s like hosting your own email server. Sounds great in theory and is a fun project but at the end of the day all you get is a vanity URL and a headache.
Oh, but not the first largest Lemmy instance?
Hmmm… I wonder who that could be…
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The beehaw admins are a bit wackadoo, but calling them Nazis is so far out in left field lmao. Not the proper type of insult I don’t think.
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Why what happened there?
Well I don’t know what happened exactly with that particular user but I can give some basic info on the instance. Beehaw was initially one of the major, most popular Lemmy instances (not sure if it still is or not), but in their attempt to create an ultra safe space, they decided to suddenly and without warning defederate from some of the most major instances (lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works). They seem to want to cultivate an environment akin to Tildes…they want a small userbase that is locked down to their own beliefs.
There is nothing inherently wrong with their philosophy on how their instance should be run…but for me what left a bad taste in my mouth was the suddenness of their actions. If they were a walled garden and semi-closed off from the very beginning (a la Tildes), it would have been totally fine in my eyes imo. But to suddenly ban large swaths of users from participating without warning when they were one of the largest instances just left a very bad taste in my mouth and I don’t agree with the way they did things. Communiites like [email protected] were among the most popular communities on Lemmy, for example, and I enjoyed participating there. But then to suddenly be banned without warning because I am on a growing instance really just made me a bit frustrated with the way they were handling things.
But as I said in my earlier comments…to use that particular slur with them is completely unwarranted imo. But I do understand people’s frustration with them. I’m frustrated too. But life will move on and different communities pop up and fill the void.
Thanks for your clarification. I didn’t know that and I’ll feel the same way too. I wish we have more say on things like that. Like voting perhaps
In the end, it’s ok. Their closing off from others will only mean that other popular communities will grow and take their place. Lemmy.world has already grown immensely to take the top place in the past month. It’s been crazy watching it explode. If Beehaw wants to do things that way then I’d rather not be associated with them to begin with and not worry about things like voting with them.
No, it isn’t.
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Instead of down voting you, I want to know what happened to you to call them nazis. Their only rule is essentially be nice, it kind of reflects badly on you that you’re so enraged by them to just call them nazis out of nowhere. What happened, man?
It’s the same guy that’s being a trollish asshole up and down this post. Only their posts have been removed, and only their posts are catching a 6:1 or higher downvote-to-upvote ratio. Seems like they’re on somebody’s payroll honestly.
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There we go. Not the wishy washy mastodon non-announcement. Although I understand their “neutrality” too, it’s still like they wanna seem like the big boys. Sometimes it’s advantageous to be small. This “fuck you” may be just adorable to Zuck, but it’s also genuine.
At least on Mastodon each user can decide for themselves if they want to block a domain or not.
The connect app for lemmy has this too.
Can you share how to do this?
In the web UI (lowest option in the menu):
How about Lemmy.World?
You can read the lemmy.world admin response here
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If you as user block an instance that doesn’t really solve the problem, Threads is still federated and getting your stuff, it’s just hidden from you
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The problem with Meta is that they will harm the Fediverse.
I found this article interesting, written by a dev who worked with google during the XMPP EEE and was originally a XMPP dev, thinking that a big company could only mean more success for the FOSS alternative. He was wrong.
It’s almost like some people crave enshitification.
“Hey this decentralized stuff is really cool, let’s connect with the most gigantic corporate assholes who would absolutely centralize all of it if they could…you know, so we can grow! What could go wrong?”
LIke…what?
I wish even one person could give the actual steps on how Facebook is going to ruin the fediverse instead of just spamming this same one article and throwing around the same buzzwords like XMPP, EEE etc. of which nobody had heard about a week ago.
There’s so many people here right now reading this thinking that defederating is going to prevent Facebook from seeing the content you post here and collecting the little data that’s available to them. It doesn’t. That’s not what defederating does.
It’s not about the data they can collect. As long as we don’t use the Meta app or register in their instance we’re on the clear. The problem is giving them power.
I’m not an evil
geniusshithead like Zuck, but it could go this way:.
There are some key thoughts in this article.
“ I’m not an evil genius like Zuck”
You give this ass bag too much credit. He’s a rich boy from rich parents. He stole Facebook from real thinkers and passed it off as his own.
He may be evil but he’s far from a genius. He’s as much of a genius as Elon is. Only thing Elon and Zuck are good at is fooling people they are smart.
I can totally see that.
Yeah I really hope they come out with the user’s ability to block instances soon. Would be a great feature addition. There are a couple of instances that I take no issue with and don’t want others to be blocked access too, but I really just don’t want to see them in my feed.
I would prefer the functionality to migrate instances first…
If you use Lemmy Connect, they added the option to block instances like yesterday.
Wait, an app can do this? I thought the devs of Lemmy itself needed to add the feature. I didn’t think that was possible app-side without adding the feature to Lemmy.
How do you block an entire instance in their app?
Edit: Found it! This is interesting. I didn’t know it was possible. Finally I can get the porn off my front page without getting rid of NSFW memes. Thanks!
Edit 2: Weirdly, Connect does not seem to show my newly subscribed communities in my subscriptions even though the other apps do. What a strange bug. Hmm…I think I’ll hold off on using it until things like that work better for me.
I think I saw someone else mentioned that bug as well. I think your subscription list in the main menu doesn’t automatically refresh after you subscribe to a new community so currently you would have to close and reopen the app. Updates and bug fixes have been daily lately so hopefully that gets fixed soon.
Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to get newly subscribed communities to show up. Closing and reopening the app as you said doesn’t seem to work for me. I have tried that and deleting and re-adding my account, but it doesn’t seem to work. Once that is ironed out, it might be a nice switch. But it’s a pretty big bug.
You can read the lemmy.world admin response here
Be a lot cooler if they did.
Alright
Alright
Alright
I want to be on an instance that defederates, I will move if world does not do it.
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Lemmygrad is where the real comrades are at
The admins stated on Mastodon that they’re not going to defederate until something happens. Knowing Meta they shouldn’t give them the chance.
Here’s the link: https://mastodon.world/@mwadmin/110654590632768079
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People think I’m exaggerating when I say Meta is evil, but this is one of the stories that jumps to mind. Awful company.
Is mastodon.world the same as lemmy.world?
The admin is the same person, so is expected that they apply the same policy for both instances.
Is there a list of who’s blocking or not?
Yes, at https://fedipact.online/
Tolerance paradox applies here too
What exact behaviors are they looking for that would cause them to push the block button?
Threads can do very well for themselves without the fediverse as they are already demonstrating. What real motive do they have to join the fediverse except to shut it down?
What a shame guess I’ll stick to my alt over at lemm.ee for the time being
Thats unfortunate. I’ll be moving instances then. Giving Meta a chance is a lot like giving a mosquito a chance to not suck your blood.
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Currently you can with with Lemmy Connect. Maybe with others as well, given the amount of apps coming out by the day. And I’m guessing they’ll fold the feature into Lemmy/Kbin proper sometime in the future.
My (limited) understanding is that if you (we) block other instances locally, that won’t stop meta (or whoever) from accessing your (our) information and posts.
Right, there are limitations to app based user blocking of instances. Lemmy/Kbin proper would need to implement a robust user account privacy framework to provide the granular control you’re interested in. Personally, I’d like to see this as well.
Currently, Connect has that option, but it doesn’t actually block the instance, it just doesn’t show feeds from that instance. So, technically, the two instances are still federated.
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How do you move? I signed up through .world but don’t want a chance of touching the poo (meta).
You just make a new account with another instance. You get about the same content as before.
If you consume only - yes. if create something - not that easy.
Its like that story of the frog helping the scorpion cross the river.
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Same, I was only donating $2 a month but I’m not alone in finding this completely unacceptable. I applied at lemmy.ml. It’s the scorpion and the frog with these people suggesting we should just wait and see.
“~Let’s see if Zuck doesn’t act like an anti-competitive asshole this time” <–where the hell is the logic in that?!
Ikr? When being a competitive asshole is the core of your being, the windows should be closed before something even has a chance to happen.
How does one change instances?
Currently, there is no way, though a migration of a user profile from one instance to another is planned as a feature, but not currently being worked on.
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You don’t. Go to a different instance and sign up. Then stopping using this account.
Thank you!
This behavior is why the fediverse alienate users and makes it hostile for new people to join.
They didn’t do anything, yet. Give them the chance but start with 2 strikes on their account already. They fuck up, THEN you defederate. Innocent until proven otherwise.
Edit: go on, downvote me. Show me your face. Show me how you’re all against growth on Lemmy and niceness to each other.
There are many years of proof already about facebook/meta acting very maliciously, actively breaking laws and being fined for it, is that not proof enough? How many more do you need before you can say they’re not innocent at all?
Corporations like Meta have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted to play nice with anyone else. Have we already forgotten about Cambridge Analytica or the plethora of other scandals they’ve been at the center of? The proof has been in plain view for a while now.
They don’t get more data because they’re federated. They literally the exact same amount of data as they do know just by scraping mastodon or Lemmy. They’re an even player in this market. Somehow you all keep forgetting that. If you don’t want meta do have data from activity pub, you being here already violates that ideal.
Okay, but that doesn’t address any of the points I brought up.
You said to give Meta a chance. The rest of us are broadly gesturing at all the shit they’ve done in the past, and how we want as little to do with that as possible.
There is nothing they can do to fuck up your experience, ESPECIALLY on Lemmy though. Threads is a completely different concept from Lemmy and activity pub is well defined.
The only thing they could do is just not moderate threads and therefore putting spam in everyone’s feeds. That’s about it. I don’t think they’re leaving that unmoderated.
“until something happens”
I suppose Metas history of actively being a bad actor working against societies best interests and enabling hate groups doesn’t qualify as ‘something’…
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User pointed to a history of bad behaviour to counter the idea of “lets wait”. User suggested to learn from history and use that as a metric for decisions.
You just trolled your way into this and think consequentially you are ‘clever’. You are not.
yeah that this point meta just existing is bad
You can read the lemmy.world admin response here
Thank you and the other admins for the thoughtful and transparent answer.
Considering that a great percentage of the Fediverse userbase are ex-users of Reddit and Twitter that left due to CEO actions, I get that they (including me) don’t trust Meta or want anything to do with them. I agree that discussion should be civil nonetheless.
Oh, looks like I’m switching instances.
How do you do that? I’m subscribed to like 50 conmunities. Would I have to start all over? That doesn’t sound like it’s worth it.
I got like 150, that wouldn’t stop me. Plus you can use curl to export the list of the instances you’re subscribed to on your account.
I don’t understand.
I don’t do coding or dark web stuff so I don’t know all the lingo.
There are some tools in the plugins section on sh.itjust.works: [email protected].
https://lemmy.world/post/1171660
This is a tool with a GUI that does profile migration. You can use it in Windows and Linux. It migrates almost everything, including subscribed communities.
There is a python script floating around that will sync your communities, etc. I’d link but don’t have it handy.
I don’t code.
Here is the script. It’s already written, you just need to run it:
https://lemm.ee/post/608605
Alternatively, there is a browser bookmark that kinda does the same thing: https://feddit.de/post/808717
you can find all sorts of things to customize lemmy over at [email protected] or https://sh.itjust.works/c/plugins (shameless plug)
How do I run it? Do I go to Command or Run, or do I paste the URL?
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Just gonna name-drop the tool I made to do this :) https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim
It’s only been out a few days, let me know if you have any issues!
Legend
Thanks for this!
Thanks. I liked .world but no way will I let meta in.
Awesome! I was hoping this would be possible. I plan to host my own instance hobbit.world and would need to migrate everything.
Also, I’ll defederate any corporate instances. No need to encourage bad actors.
If you’re creating an instance that will not federate with corporate instances, then I would love to join.
Thanks for this! Just gave this a try, downloaded from .world just fine, but uploading to .ml gives this error: ERROR: Failed Login - HTTP status client error (403 Forbidden) for url (https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/user/login)
That usually means wrong username/password! But if you’re sure, I can make an account on lemmy.ml and give it a shot.
I’m not very tech savvy when it comes to this, but would it have anything to do with the anti-bot stuff that lemmy.ml has implemented in the sign-up process? You now have to answer a few questions and basically write your reason for making an account before it lets you even submit the request for review.
Thanks for the feedback. The username and password are indeed correct. I copied and pasted from Bitwarden and used the exact same ones to login to the lemmy.ml site. I do wonder if there is some sort of anti-bot measures that Colonel Sanders mentioned below.
Also: I tried just my username vs email but neither worked and I also don’t have MFA enabled yet. Super weird.
EDIT: opened an issue on Github: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim/issues/4
Thanks for making this!
Thank you!!
I just created an .ml account and intend to close the .world due to the meta threat.
I will try your code tomorrow and let you know how it goes.
Honestly it isn’t. Nothing about the Fediverse is private or inherently secure in that way. Everything is public. And you should assume that everything you publish through activity pub could eventually be looked at by anyone. If you want private or secure messaging there are non-activity pub open source secure alternate. In fact signing up for Lemmy there’s even a field to enter for one. Whether or not a server federates with meta. Meta is still going to data mine the ever-loving shit out of all of them. The point is. None of us are at Meta’s wim about being flooded with their toxic content.
Honestly I want to see meta flooded with our content. So much anti-threads anti Meta sentiment. Actual leftists. And not just make believe right-wing liberals who’ve been conditioned to think that they are left. It would be hilarious to watch Meta try to play wack-a-mole sanitizing everything. To please their reptilian corporate overlords. And if you don’t care and just don’t want to see it. You can always block them personally. Why let them data mine in peace. I say we make them work for it.
I’m not real sure how much the Threads Algorithm is going to pass through Mastodon content (and even less sure if it will even be able to pass through Lemmy content). I think the much more valuable aspect is you can pitch your Threads friends that they can move to the Fediverse and actually get to choose what content they see rather than which influencers paid Meta to fill up your feed.
Agreed about influencers. Meta wouldn’t be doing this at all if they didn’t have a plan (or multiple plans) to monetize it. The whole reason I left Reddit and plan to leave Twitter was that I very much dislike having any part of my online enjoyment at the mercy of the whims of gigantic corporate assholes that think they are far more important than they are. Meta has been an awful and abusive actor in the tech world, why would any freedom-loving person want anything to do with them in a freedom-loving space?! Why would anyone just wait and see what they do this time to decide they’re an awful company with only their profits in mind and no qualms about making those profits at a cost to its users?!
I’ve seen a rationale that makes sense for why they’re making Threads implement ActivityPub. https://lemmy.world/post/1105955
Oh they are going to fight it either way no doubt. But why make it easy on them I say. And you’re right. If we have access to their content and can provide actual linear feeds like people want with no toxic algorithms. It’s win-win for us and still mostly a loss for them. Even if we defiederate with them they’re still going to data mine we just cut ourself off from reaching those people preemptively.
I would add to this that its not just the fediverse, anything you put on the internet should be assumed to be public and non-deletable. Even with GDPR and everything, if the host deletes everything there could dtill be backups, archives, or some random person, corporation, or government could backup everything. Use secure services like signal for things you want to be private and just assume everything else could be public forever.
100%
It’s not really about privacy, though. It’s about the risk of Meta going “Embrace, extend, extinguish” on the fediverse, and the only way to protect against that is by not letting them interact with the majority of it from the get-go. https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
People keep saying that. Like it’s something that actually happens. And let’s be clear, it has happened with a number of commercial products. But Microsoft and others have never managed to EEE email, HTTP/HTTPS, Usenet, Linux, Java even. And they’ve tried haaaaaaaaaard. Google didn’t EEE XMPP either. It still exists. I use it daily. The author is misrepresenting what happened.
What happened is that too many people felt obligated to work with corporation that had little interest in working with them. Rather than to focus on their own system and continue to update or develop it. Neglecting their core user base, chasing after people who didn’t seek it out and didn’t care what they were using so long as it worked. They wasted time and effort. But Google didn’t actually kill anything. And all the people using Google talk typically weren’t interested about XMPP in the first place and never would be.
It goes beyond that even. Lemmy is developed by socialists. And not just the more reasonable bunch of socialists like myself. But straight up militant leninists. They’re part of the core development team if not the whole thing. And they have no interest in catering to or coddling misbehaving corporations. They are going to do what they want and what they feel they need to do when they need to do it. And if meta or anyone else tries to screw it up. They’re not going to pay one single bit of attention to them and just keep on doing what they’ve been doing
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And done. I love federation.
Same here, partner. Moved yesterday.
Same. How does on switch instances? Do you have to create a new account?
Yep.
Oh damn guess I will migrate to lemmy.ml and use that until I find out if lemmy.world defederates or not. (Edit turns out it is run by tankies and they are federated with lemmygrad.) While I may or may not stay on lemmy.world depending on if we federate with meta or not. I will no longer suggest Lemmy.ml.
I’m not in a hurry to migrate, as Threads doesn’t support federation yet, but is not a bad idea to keep an eye on other instances.
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So far on Lemmy I had never looked for the option to block a single user. You have changed that.
Facebook doesn’t give a shit about its users and treats them and their data as a crop to harvest. On Meta platforms, you’re the product. On the fediverse, you’re just another user, free to do what you want. Disgust is indeed an emotion, and I’m 100% fine with being disgusted with Meta.
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Is it more rational than only federating once they’ve proven that it’ll be fine? (instead of waiting for them to prove they’re not)
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Oh look, this place is just like Reddit with the rational talk buried in the comments. Thank you for being here despite the apparently unpopular opinion we share.
I agree with you!
Is there any reason that they wouldn’t?
The discussion is still on-going.
What is there to discuss?
Fair enough!
Its a .net? Is that going to be a more expensive top level domain now?
the new/old .io
Don’t see why people are doing this. You’ll just damage the fediverse and discourage meta from federating, granting them their own walled garden that you cannot use without selling your soul to them, which is going to dissuade people from using Mastodon as what’s the point if people on threads cannot see what they have
Because we, the users of Lemmy.world, do not want our data handed over to Facebook
They can get that data by setting up a federated instance that isn’t threads.net
They can also get that data without doing anything because any data they’d get from federating is already public.
I get that. But instead on Lemmy were freely giving away our data to literally anyone that ask for it. That’s the downside of the federated platforms. I guess with the fediverse you’re at least not tying things to your actual identity. Not sure if threads allows for anonymous accounts like Twitter.
Reddit did the same until a few weeks ago tbf. Anything you put on the internet is public, unless it is in a discord server or something.
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Why are you so hard for Zucc?
You’ve got a bunch of comments defending an app that literally has more data collection than my doctor…
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This is exactly you. You don’t like the idea of blocking Facebook and are being combative and douchey to anyone who disagrees. Your dislikes are in the toilet and you are as free to leave .world as anyone else.
I’m not defending the app. I have friends on Threads and I want to be able to interact with them without handing my life story over to zuck.
Things might go bad with federation with Meta and Meta is indeed loathsome and has an awful history and present of being a bad actor — but responding to “You all are operating on emotion” with the bad faith emotional ad hominem response “Why are you so hard for Zucc?” is kind of proving the point.
I think there’s lots of good arguments around being wary of Meta and defederating (and some good ones in favour of wait and see) but the level of discourse around this issue on here is really not great and too much attacking others (and it’s not just you — the post you’re responding to as well was rude too with “you clearly don’t have a clue what you’re talking about”). The absolutist way people are talking and treating people who have other perspectives has made me feel much less positive about the potential for good discourse and community on this platform.
You’re being bit of a jerk in this thread but you’re still right. People are spamming one article and using the same buzzwords from that article to sound smart but the content of their messages demonstrates that almost no one understands how any of this works. People over-estimate the amount of data Facebook can collect from outside instances and they’re confused about what defederating actually does.
I don’t want anything to do with facebook either but I’m interested in actual solutions for this and not just something that feels good but doesn’t do anything.
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Your data is publicly available. Facebook can get it right now, they don’t even need to fire up an instance.
This data is public and anyone can just write a crawler.
Anyone can do anything; the point is handing it over automatically and neatly into a database and ready for use.
You’re confusing something. Defederation by lemmy.ml means that lemmy.ml users cannot see any threads.net content if they wanted or not. Threads.net can still connect to lemmy.ml. That’s exactly the situation lemmy.world and beehaw.org are in: beehaw.org blocked lemmy.world and lemmy.world users can see and interact with everything from beehaw.org, just beehaw users don’t see any of those interactions. Have a look at https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected] as proof.
So many folks on here are jumping on and claiming that decentralization is a one way or that people don’t know anything, but have failed to read the specifications themselves.
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#block-activity-outbox
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/activitypub/
So as I mentioned before, Lemmy.world should be blocking those servers at the instance level, preventing it from sharing any data to any identified Facebook instances.
Sure this doesn’t stop Facebook from spinning up other instances, but that will improve a lot more effort on their side and will quickly be identified and blocked by the communities, just like all their urls for ads, api, etc. have been for years.
It won’t be a lot more effort. They’d just have to buy another domain and then suddenly bob is their uncle.
It would not be that simple, considering they’d be running multiple instances and require more effort to aggregate, deduplicate, and stage that data - vs just having a single clean database for it
What the specs say doesn’t matter if reality behaves a different way. Fact is that Beehaw blocked Lemmy.world but not the other way around and therefore Lemmy.world users can read everything from Beehaw. Lemmy.world blocking Threads would thereby be at best just a symbolic gesture and at worst actively driving people away towards Threads because that’s where they can access all the content. If an e-mail provider blocked all mails from @gmail.com, most of its users would jump ship towards a provider that doesn’t do that and perhaps even drive them towards GMail.
It does actually matter, because that is what is happening.
Head over to the [email protected] link that you shared as an example and notice that the posts are 3+ days old and all the recent posts are from instances other than beehaw; this clearly shows that Lemmy.world has not been receiving any data from beehaw for some time already.
As for hurting Lemmy and driving people to threads, is a baseless argument; anyone wanting an experience that Threads offers is not coming to Lemmy; they would either already be there or would be coming from Twitter/Mastadon. Lemmy at its core is very far from what Threads/Twitter/Mastadon try to be.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Facebook is known for analyzing your contact list and trying to get as much data as they can on those people as well. You don’t have to make life easier for face-eating leopards.
You’re posting on public forum. If you don’t want Facebook to see it then stop posting. Defederating isn’t going to change that. It just stops the content flow from their instance into yours. Not the other way around. For them to get data other than your content and upvotes you need to install Threads app because that’s only available to the admins of your instance and Facebook can’t get it wether you federate with them or not.
People are demanding for defederation but almost everyone is confused about what it does.
The thing is, if you wanted to interact with someone on Threads and it wasn’t federated, you’d have to install the app and hand over your data to Meta to interact with them. If it was federated, you could set up your own Mastodon instance and keep all of the data that you don’t want to share.
Installing their app is not the only option. You can also just switch to an instance that federates with them.
Yeah but it will still give them less of an incentive to join the fediverse in the first place. This kneejerk reaction of blocking them is madness. Instead we should be getting big figures to join the fediverse so that if meta ever chooses to leave the fediverse, they’d be removing their userbase from the content.
Yeah I agree that there’s possible downsides to it aswell. Ideally every user could individually block instances as they wish instead of it being forced upon us. I’d imagine this feature is eventually coming. Some apps allow it I believe
@[email protected] Explain briefly like I’m 5 the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy with a kid selling lemonade and another kid joining in
Sure, think of it like this:
Embrace: You’re selling lemonade at your stand. One day, another kid in the street (“Kid B”) starts his own lemonade stand as well. Noticing his operation, you decide to become friends with him and share your lemonade recipes with him, so you both can make tasty lemonade together.
Extend: As you continue to share more insights and tips about your business, Kid B starts implementing your strategies. His lemonade stand begins to seem a lot like yours. You suggest adding exciting new features to the lemonade stands, like special umbrellas, or a particular secret ingredient that only you know. Since Kid B doesn’t know any better, he relies on your inputs and makes these changes.
Extinguish: Now, both lemonade stands are almost identical. You’ve influenced Kid B’s business heavily, and it’s become deeply dependent on your ideas. At this stage, you make a move that Kid B can’t match. Maybe you start selling a unique lemonade flavor that only you can make, or setup a cool sign that Kid B can’t afford. Suddenly, customers start to ignore Kid B’s stand and flock to yours, because yours has something extra or special. Eventually, Kid B’s stand can’t compete, and he has to close up his lemonade stand.
This is a simplified example of how “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” can work.
@[email protected] Please explain embrace, extend, extinguish in the format of a song set to the tune of bohemian rapsody.
(Verse 1) Is this just a concept, or is this strategy keen? Caught in a big tech, no escape from the scheme, Open your eyes, look up to the screens and see, “E-E-E,” that’s the name, it’s no mystery.
(Chorus) Embrace, extend, extinguish, A technique they call distinguished, But it’s really quite extinguished, To the losers, it’s a nightmare, to the winners, it’s a dream.
(Verse 2) Give a little glance, to a world full of code, In the corporate stance, see how their actions flowed, Embrace, extend, and extinguish, From small tech innovations to those giant-sized wishes.
(Chorus) Embrace, extend, extinguishing the light, Innovation in the shadow, yet claiming it’s right, The strategy’s plain, as day or night, It’s the landscape of tech, evoking quite a fight.
(Bridge) Embrace, welcoming tech with a smile, Beneath that guise, there’s something quite vile. Extend, broadening the reach oh so wide, Programming, developing, can’t escape the tide.
(Chorus) Extinguish, the crown of this plan, Corporate giants ruling the tech span. From the mom and pop tech, to the coder’s free hand, It’s all part of the game, in the corporate techland.
(Outro) So you see, E-E-E, it’s more than it seems, A deadly trio, disrupting the dreams, Control over technology downstream, Wake up from the lullaby, it’s time to intervene.
Holy fuck what have we done.
Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?
This is both amazing and frightening at the same time. I can’t sing this to the tune but that might just be my own lack of musical talent. But less than a minute for it to come up with a propaganda song. I like the message, but probably just need to add a couple words to the prompt to get it to spit out the opposite.
@[email protected] if embrace, extend, and extinguish were 3 of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, who would you say would be the 4th?
It’s @lemmings.world buddy
Oh thanks, I was wondering why it wasn’t responding, thought I might have broken it. Normally I just pick the first one in the auto complete but I guess I need to pay more attention.
@[email protected] if embrace, extend, and extinguish were 3 of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, who would you say would be the 4th?
Interesting question! Given the context, we could consider “Monopolization” as the 4th horseman. It represents the final stage in which a company dominates a market, making it difficult for other businesses to compete. This stage is often associated with stifling innovation, controlling prices, and negatively impacting consumers’ choices.
Aside the fact that ActivityPub is an open standard so there are no secrets
Aw, why did you have to make me the bad guy.
Everybody knows AI is evil.
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Accounts can be on instances which are federated with Threads, and on instances which are defederated from Threads. A single person can have both types of accounts.
Defederation has effects which many users find desirable. The same suite of effects is not available on a user level, and would require each user to manually take action individually.
So from a feature perspective, it is necessary that some instances defederate. This provides better service for users who find it desirable.
There will also be instances who federate. People can use accounts there if they prefer that.
TL;DR: We don’t need a consensus. Instances can choose their federation policy. People can choose which instance(s) they use.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t understand the point in defederating. Aren’t you just cutting down on the amount of content you can see? As a user I’d personally prefer to pick and choose what I can see.
What’s the actual upside in doing it? Obviously I can see why you’d want defederating from say a far right instance, but in general it seems like only downsides.
I’m new to all this so maybe I’m missing a crucial bit of information.
Plus, you reduce the amount of content they can see (while logged in). Quoting myself from a similar context (It is about a community on another instance, which is federated with Threads, while your home instance defederated from Threads):
There are also more subtle implications. For example, some might find the situation in remote communities which have both federated and defederated qualities confusing (Imagine “see this comment section” when different users see different versions). This might be a reason to avoid these communities, to only visit communities on other instances, which follow your personal policy of de/federating Threads.
The same is probably true for votes. If your instance defederates Threads, you don’t see their votes, and they don’t see yours.
Defederation in this context sends a political signal, which some people find important.
This was not meant as a comprehensive answer, but as counter-examples to your core question (“Aren’t you just …”).
You can do that either way, as explained in my previous comment. No matter on which side of the argument you are, use an account on an instance which has a similar policy. You can have many, you can use many. Of course, most people want to use not more than one, which is why they try to make sure their instance’s policy reflects their personal preference, instead of making sure their instance choice reflects their personal preference. In reality, we see both (people influencing their instance, and people choosing their instance), and both is fine.
Further, we need instances which defederate from Threads, so people can choose this option.
I get you. I’m also missing a comprehensive, compact list of consequences.
Isn’t it creating a situation of Reddit power mods on steroids? It’s easy to say “well go and make accounts on multiple instances”, but it’s creating additional barriers to entry that a lot of people won’t understand and frankly is kind of irritating as a user.
I feel like people aren’t taking the consequences seriously and that defederating needs to be viewed as like a nuclear option that’s avoided unless absolutely necessary. That’s what I get from the additional information you provided.
This place will become completely unusable in the future if the good will dies out and large instances decide to defederate from each other to try and become the “top” instance, especially as more and more casual users move over.
Not sure, how do you see that? Isn’t the ability to “vote with your feet” putting a limit on how powerful they can become?
That’s true. We need to become better at communicating and explaining these situations. I plan to use the wiki more. To have one comprehensive source of truth, which can be linked to, instead of partial explanations scattered across comment sections.
But even then, a distributed model is probably inherently more complex and hader to understand than a centralized solution. The benefit is more resilience against power-hungry tendencies.
Realistically most people aren’t going to make their own instance, so you kind of have to rely on the good will of others.
Purely as an example, let’s say that Lemmy world decides they no longer want to be federated with ML because of the Meta situation. If you’re on either world or ML now you’ve lost access to huge sections of Lemmy. This could basically go on forever, so any instance that wants to remain neutral can be locked out of either both or one of them as they keep defederating from instances until the whole thing becomes a walled garden, basically the same as if you upset a power mod on Reddit and lose access to huge sections of the site, except it’s worse on here because you wouldn’t even be able to lurk.
I guess you could just have multiple accounts, but we could easily see a situation where you need like 10 accounts just to see the most popular instances, which is obviously ridiculous and not practical unless you’re terminally online.
It seems like a pretty huge flaw in the system, to be honest. Theoretically it’s a good idea, but as more and more people flock to the large instances it seems like it’s only a matter of time before the power plays start to happen.
Is there anything at all to stop that happening? It’s seems inevitable to me that eventually the whole thing will fall apart if people abuse the system.
If what you describe is severe enough, that’s a significant disadvantage of being registered on a big instance, and using communities which are hosted on a big instance. Which in turn makes smaller instances and smaller communities more appealing.
I think it’s self-regulating. The transitional period (like the current reddit exodus) is always a bit rough. Long term, things will survive which are fine for all participants.
Worst case, it’s always much easier to move within the fediverse than it is to move between entirely different platforms and ecosystems. Yes, power plays and nasty circumstances are possible, but moving inside the fediverse is so much easier compared to the outside world. And being able to move is a safeguard against bad conditions.
You need to read up on how Google destroyed XMPP and come back and edit your comment.
That’s Google, not Meta
Damn, I think everyone missed that detail! We’re talking about two completely different companies here – my mind is blown! Just look at the Hemming distance between “Google” and “Meta”! I’m convinced! Meta will never follow Google’s footsteps.
Now how about you take a nice, cold shower and re-think your comment.
Meta have shown interest in supporting decentralised networks, such as wanting to create a decentralised metaverse
you actually think corporations will always keep their word, don’t you
and that somehow Google acting like it does is like some fluke or one bad apple or something, rather than Google acting in ways very normal and common to corporations
Just like Google showed interest in XMPP?
Would you mind explaining how they’re going to do this with fediverse? Like explain using your own words and not just linking that same article everyone is spreading around. It seems like no one is cabable of giving ELI5 or even ELI15 answer to this.
You’re a woodworker. You’ve developed skills that only few have. Carpentry Inc. approaches you regarding a partnership: you share your skills, they offer you their platform. Win-win, right? Now Carpentry Inc. decides to adapt the knowledge you provided, cutting you out of everything. You’re powerless against a multi-billion corporation. All your years of work are gone. You’re nothing more than an afterthought.
That’s more or less the playbook.
I am so in love with Lemmy right now.
Woah there, keep it in your pants Fapper!