- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
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I keep on forgetting that “threads” (in lowercase) is frequently being used to refer to “Threads” the Facebook thing, and not separate sub-communities within the Fediverse.
Was getting all confused as to why Fediverse instances were internally blocking each other.
Y’all all need to learn capitalization, yo. Helps reduce confusion by turning certain things into the proper nouns that they actually are.
This is part of the EEE strategy. Why else would it be called Threads?
german capitalization is hard enough, leave me alone >:(
Thank you! I was so confused.
I keep thinking of the nuclear war movie every time I see that name. That shit’s scarring
me fail english unpossible
The capitalists in society run the gauntlet of conformity. Before we make ends to the system, there needs to be a forerunning opportunity of parliament.
Dumb. Federation is how we escape from every cloud-based service being a dictatorship of the person who owns the platform. That includes federating with privately own orgs to provide them an exit.
By all means make good tools to allow individual users to block Threads (or other private instances ruled by amoral coporations), but doing it at instance level is just dumb.
edit: also, number of instances doesn’t matter. Number of daily active users matters. Most users are on mastodon.social, mastodon.cloud, lemmy.world, hachyderm.io, lemmy.world, etc. And all of those are federating. The only large instance that is not federating with threads is mas.to
What I hate to see, even in this thread, is people turning on each other in this “us vs. them”, “you’re either a part of the pact or you’re against us” nonsense
Let’s all remember why WE ALL CHOSE to get on the fediverse and build it. The strength of the fediverse comes from the freedom for each instance to choose how to run things. My understanding is that no one in an instance is harmed if some other instance chooses to federate or defederate from Threads.
I hate Meta. I also know that Meta doesn’t need to do anything to take down the fediverse if we do it ourselves.
Part of it is just today’s polarized political climate, especially since the popularity of the Fediverse is partially a backlash to reactionaries taking over Twitter and the corporate enshittification of Facebook and Reddit.
Everything is a war now, and solidarity and boycotts are basically the only weapons that small, independent actors have. So people apply “don’t cross the picket line” thinking to everything, even where it doesn’t make sense.
Want to act properly? Contribute money and labour towards your instances. Help them build better moderation tools so they can handle the flood of crap from Threads, and onboarding tools and better UX so they can steal away the Threads users.
“The flood of crap” isn’t what people should be worried about. They should be worried about Meta embracing, extending, and extinguishing the Fediverse. There’s a good article about this here. People are worried about the wrong things and don’t realize what’s at stake.
The Ploum article again. Please explain how the circumstances with XMPP and ActivityPub are remotely similar.
Well that and the story while not “wrong”, is definitely hyperbolic. The author even stated after stating that Google killed XMPP that they didn’t. So which is it? I’m not a dev, but an avid open source fan. i first tried Linux in 1995. Started using jabber itself in 1999 through Gaim. Later pidgin and psi clients in 2001-2. There were a ton of problems beyond Google. As far as clients were concerned there was no reference version. And there really were no large professionally run servers like mastodon.social or lemmy.world. People, myself included put too much hope in the Google basket. It was a massive unearned win in user count. That was just as easily lost. And kept people from focusing on the core service. Yes Google was never a good steward. Corporations never are. But the lack of official clients and servers, plus their decision to persue IETF standardization had as big or bigger impact on the services development and adoption.
The moral of the story isn’t that Google or anyone else can kill an open source project. Microsoft Google and many more have tried and failed. The moral is that we shouldn’t cater to them or give them special treatment. They aren’t the key to success.
Both are open protocols for communication over the Internet. Both have been adopted by a large corporate interest.
Now, how are they different?
I asked how the circumstances are similar, not vague descriptions that suit your existing views. But sure.
XMPP was dogshit back in 2004. A good idea, but nowhere NEAR what it needed to be to actually get mainstream acceptance. ActivityPub is light years ahead.
There were very very few XMPP users in 2004. There are millions of ActivityPub users. If meta was to pull the plug on federation it wouldn’t kill ActivityPub, there would still be millions of us here. We joined Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon because we don’t want to live in a centrally controlled/owned social platform. That won’t change just because we can suddenly interact with Threads users. In fact, if anything, once Threads users hear that we get the same shit they do without the ads, they might decide to join us instead.
Google killing off XMPP integration didn’t kill XMPP. It did that all on its own.
If meta was to pull the plug on federation it wouldn’t kill ActivityPub, there would still be millions of us here.
It’s not about pulling the plug. It’s about introducing proprietary features that break communication, forcing people off of an independent server and onto Threads.
If most of your IRL friends are on Threads and your experience with them has gotten janky due to Meta fucking with the protocol, it’s going to be very difficult to not switch over to Threads.
Oh, and good luck trying to get your friends to switch over to some indie server they’ve never heard of. If you can do that, then you should run for president.
Yes, yes and yes (I contribute money).
Ditto. I also try to file good, clean bug reports with detailed repro steps where I hit them. Not just “it’s busted, fix it”. I’d love to contribute actual code, because I’d like to think I’m a really good programmer (been coding professionally for decades), but actually fully getting a hosted Masto instance up to the point where you can edit the code and see it live is a freaking nightmare.
I’m not personally in favor of preemptively blocking threads on my instance and I don’t find the EEE argument at all convincing in this case. But other instances doing that is no problem at all, it’s fine!
Embrace, extend, destroy is a thing though.
It is
I’m not sure if defederating is the correct counter to it
Defederating from known-bad-actor corporations during the “embrace” phase seems like a perfectly wise choice to me. Keeps them from getting to stage 2.
It’s not about us embracing them, it’s about them embracing the protocol, which they can do whether we stay federated or not.
The argument against defederation is that it tells newcomers that the defederated instance is an island and they’re better off joining the place where they can talk to their friends. Meta can more easily extend if we’re not around to explain why extending is a bad thing, and if we’re not around to advocate for people to ditch Meta’s platform and join an open one
Here is what it actually means
Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard. Extend: Addition and promotion of features not supported by the competing product or part of the standard, creating interoperability problems for customers who try to use the "simple" standard. Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions.I think it’s naive to imagine that anything we say or do will influence Meta’s behavior or strategy in any way. But I do see your point that when an instance defederates from Threads, it makes an island of itself, not of Threads.
a house divided…
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What?
Utterly idiotic.
Facebook has for 20 years proven time and time again that it cannot be trusted and it is not beneficial for Internet users.
Yet still dumbarse cry over how mean we are to not want them here.
Get this through your fucking head people, Facebook does not have your best intentions at heart. You exist in this space purely for them to exploit. And they will find a way to do so here because that is their whole existence as a company.
I don’t know why. They “trust me” Dumb fucks.
- Mark Zuckerberg
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No one is crying because people are “being mean” to meta. They’re adults.
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What trust is required to federate? If they’re not moderating their own or some other issue crops up, we can block them at that point.
They’re adults.
Are you new?
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Mark Zuck is literally saying that right now to Lemmy.world and other instances admins.
Meta has no interest in being part of the fediverse, it only wants to eliminate any posible competition.
The usual MO of buying the competitors isn’t posible on the fediverse, so the way to do it is embrace, extend and extinguish
Defederating is important because is Metastasis is allowed in the fediverse it will consume the fediverse, and then we’ll be right back at the corporate social media we’re trying to break away from, with the surveillance, ads and nazis being welcome as long as it’s profitable
The super cool thing is that you’re more than welcome to start your own instance where they don’t block it. Or move to an existing one. Because you know, the entire point is that instance admins are allowed to run their instance how they see fit.
Because you know, the entire point is that instance admins are allowed to run their instance how they see fit.
And the users are allowed to have opinions about it.
Correct, but that doesn’t change who has final say over it. You’re more than free to change instances if you no longer agree with how your current instance is being run.
Yes but being able to technically do something despite it negatively affecting the wider community doesn’t magically mean people shouldn’t express their opinions, and of you’re not saying people shouldn’t then your post is entirely pointless
I can easily imagine the future where “good” instances will then stop federating with the ones that don’t have threads blocked, all thanks to these lists.
I’m pretty sure this has already happened in the past, I swear there was a “Bad instances” list that someone was passing around, which someone else then disputed that the list was bad due to there not being valid reasons for why an instance was marked “bad” - but people had taken the list as 100% fact and blocked said instances.
That is the double-edged sword of the Fediverse, the freedom to choose who you allow and don’t allow in regards to federation. There’s always going to be the “cliques” so to speak where if you upset (for lack of a better word) the wrong people, the size of that instance can claim that you’re bad, and if other instances take their word at face value without verifying this then all of a sudden you can’t communicate with other instances/people (ie, if you get defederated by lemmy.world or mastodon.social - then good luck). Obviously, the good part about how the Fediverse works is the power for each instance admin to make their own determinations of who they want to federate with, but this is the “bad” side of it which is further amplified by the fact that there are always going to be instances that hold a very larger position of power. In a way, fracturing of the Fediverse is a bit inevitable because of this. I suspect what you say will happen (as I’ve already seen this mentioned).
It is what it is, I’m not saying whether that double-edged nature is good or bad, because at the end of the day that determination comes down to every person who chooses to participate, and is a decision they have to make on their own volition.
Forgive me for repeating this, but I think it’s a great analogy and explains all of our thoughts about it:
I’ve used this analogy before, but threads is like a huge, 5k passenger cruise ship docking in a small town in Alaska. You don’t have to know ahead of time that the 2 public bathrooms, one at the general store and the other at McDonalds, aren’t going to be enough. You can also forecast the complaining about how everything isn’t really tourist ready. It will suck for everyone. The small museum will be overrun and damaged, the people will be treated like dirt. It’s an easy forecast.
Here’s the important bit, just because they’ve never been in the cruise line business, doesn’t mean you have to give them a chance to ruin your town.
Thank you, someone finally looking big picture. I see a lot of folks talking about things like “it won’t harm Threads” or “the federation is all about inclusiveness and joining together” and those people, while correct on paper, are missing the point.
Put simply, many instances would prefer not to deal with that unnatural influx, and that is their choice. In fact, the best part of the fediverse is not only that they CAN make that choice it’s that they can UNDO it later if need be. I can’t fault some of these smaller instances for being proactive in protecting themselves when few here really know what goes into running and moderating.
Threads wants to join the fediverse to either steal the content and/or kill it, there would be no other reasons.
Yes. My personal guess is that they want to start Threads as just another Federation instance where people build communities and relationships across instances as they do already, and act like a good Fediverse instance, all friendly and open and free . . . and then once there’s enough popularity and/or cross-traffic they will wall off the Threads portion and monetize access, so you’re forced to either pay up to continue in the parts you like and are invested in, or walk away leaving everything you put into it to Meta and paying users.
Oh, and they’ll suck up as much Fediverse data as they can too, while they’re at it: anything they have access to will be hoovered up for their commercial use, just as it is now. Federating means that all federated traffic will be propagated to Meta servers in due course, and we all know Meta has zero intention of being bound by any agreements in regard to the data of others, regardless of what platitudes they mouth.
On a personal level, I don’t give a shit whether lemmy.world federates with Threads, but only because I have already made the decision personally not to participate in ANYTHING Meta, and that includes here on the Fediverse.
I’m already here because Reddit pulled that same shit, and I walked away then too. I learned my lesson. No way will I knowingly cross that line into personally investing time and attention into what Meta could wall off at any time and monetize without recourse for anyone who does make that mistake.
And I’d rather they not have my data, but it’s not like I’m in any position to stop or prevent it. Best I can do is stay away from all Meta products, apps, trackers, and cookies.
TL;DR: People can do what they want with Threads, federate or don’t, participate or don’t, just know that Meta can and will wall it off at any time and expect participants to pay in some way to continue.
Sure does seem that way.
I get that you, like me, don’t like capitalist companies but what you’re saying is based on nothing.
They can’t steal content from here that’s literally not possible, this comment here I’m writing now can not be stolen by anyone ever - and not just in the piracy isn’t stealing way but in the it’s public domain so you already all own it too.
I use stuff from meta all the time and I didn’t steal it, all the vital open source code they’ve created and which is a fundermental part of stable diffusion and other open source tools is benefiting the community - are they only doing this to kill something?
I understand the logic that successful capitalist company must be evil because that’s how capitalism works but it’s also a lot more complex, open source isn’t just a wishywashy dream for cheapskate nerds like meit’s a powerful and positive force that can benefit everyone even companies like meta without them needing to kill anyone or anything. Participation isn’t just it’s own moral reward it’s actually got a lot of other benefits too.
Meta might just want to federate because open source is good.
See, this is the more reasonable concern. Moderating a fediverse instance is hard, and the flood of posts coming from Threads might be a bad problem. That’s a case where I understand the need to defederate. But on the other hand, that doesn’t feel like a solution that needs to be done proactively - defederating from Threads if/when Threads users become a problem seems perfectly reasonable.
Here’s the important bit, just because they’ve never been in the cruise line business, doesn’t mean you have to give them a chance to ruin your town.
What does that even mean in this context though?
The federated timeline is ready FULL of shit I don’t care about, have no idea what it is, or can’t read it because it’s another language due to people not being able to set their language correctly.
The only time I’m going to see threads content is if it is boosted by someone I follow (which I want), contains a hashtag I follow (which I want), or in the federated timeline I already don’t use.
I don’t see the issue.
If we let corperate avithilea gain a foothold they’ll EEE us. Learn from history, Meta’s not doing this for our sake
How do we stop EEE or the other option being irrelevant to most of the world? I don’t think defederation does either.
It’s not a choice between those two, and allowing Mark Zuckerberg in the door doesn’t gain us relevance. We’ve already been slowly growing on our own accord and we’ve finally started to cross the threshold to where there’s enough people here posting enough stuff that it’s not a ghost town anymore. Sure I do still run out of content on any given day when I’m looking at my phone on the bus and on my work breaks but it’s usable enough that I don’t need the corporations. The only thing that threads has to offer us is a large pre-existing user base and there’s nothing else. Once we get enough people even that doesn’t matter
I’m mean, I’m loving it too. My interest are well catered here, but most of my friends see it as a ghost town when they try it, because they are open source tech enthusiasts with a penchant for left wing politics. Like this is my niche and I love it, but also I have to get on other platforms if I want to actually talk to anyone outside the choir.
the total content per day’s fine but some of the more niche interests outside of what us fucking nerds like aren’t here yet. we can change that but we’d have
Yeah, I see what you’re saying. “Be the change you wanna see” and what not. I’m doing my part by liking and
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Fully agree. I feel like helping facebook keep their users stuck on their platform or worse Twitter feels counterproductive in making the world more free.
If you think Meta will allow the Threads algorithm to show anything from the fediverse you are unbelievably naive. And that’s if content from the fediverse even makes a blip on a platform with 100x the size.
Meta doesn’t federate with the goal of giving Threads users an out. They federate because it’s the most efficient way to scrape fediverse instances and build profiles on fediverse users.
Meta has reached saturation with their existing services so they are now branching into any possible extra source of data they can. They’ll take anything, from fediverse federation to Whatsapp emails. All your data is welcome to them.
They federate because it’s the most efficient way to scrape fediverse instances and build profiles on fediverse users.
That’s not true. Quiet scraping is much easier to implement than integrating AP into your platform.
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In an ideal world people realize they can escape the ads and data collection without losing touch
Meta will not allow this to happen, and if/when it does, they will take action. This shit is a zero sum game to these people.
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Honestly I could see this being a way of trapping people by giving them less incentive to leave. If people like us leave and you have to leave the corporate hellscapes to see our posts that gives people a reason to leave too but if they can enjoy it from the “comfort” of Mark Zuckerberg’s domain they have no reason to leave. That also makes them captive to met us since they can pull the plug in Federation anytime they like or mess with it in a thousand different ways. Convincing people to sign up for another account may be non-trivial but it’s ultimately the best way forward
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No, I don’t think the conversation should be about the impact of federating with an instance.
If we want to see it, great. If we don’t, also great. But we should have the power to decide for ourselves instead of some biased admins.
The only people who disagree with this are those who want to control what other people get to see.
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So admins shouldn’t defederate from any instances at all? Even right wing Nazi instances with Nazi flags in every profile?
Users should have the power to defederate in addition to admins.
This is something the people who join those instances want.
Not everyone wants the same thing or has the same idea of what constitutes ‘harmful’ instances.
They also want to “deplatform” those types from society as a whole.
Yes, this is why it’s important to take individual control away from the user; to push an agenda.
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They do.
How can I defederate from an instance? Last time this discussion was brought up, I didn’t think it was possible and everyone else agreed.
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Also -
them: it’s ridiculous they aren’t listening to the user
the instance: held a vote and the majority voted to defederate
Have you looked into the process of actually spinning up your own Mastodon instance? It’s not exactly the good old days of throwing together a LAMP box and installing PHPBB on it.
I appreciate your commitment to this meme. I don’t exactly agree with you, but hilarious nonetheless.
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I think the fear is that this turns into an “embrace, extend, extinguish”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
I don’t know if the fear is well rooted, but I can definitely understand how Facebook is perceived as not having established a history of trust.
They are a private company, which have placed profits above the best interests of its users.
Edit: I think you can draw a parallel with another scenario: an open and free market requires regulation. There should be rules and boundaries, such that a true free and open market exists. Similarly, there’s an argument to be made than we should restrict the fediverse for it to keep existing in the way we want it to.
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Jabber was much smaller than the Fediverse when Google launched Talk.
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Users are more aware of the risk now. “Oh you should go use Google Talk, it’s an open standard” is stupid in retrospect. Likewise, “you should use Threads, it’s an open standard” would be absurd. The value here is “you should use Mastodon/Lemmy/whatever, it’s a good open platform and still lets you interact with Threads users”.
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It’s important to remember that the most famous example of embrace-extend-extinguish ultimately failed: Microsoft’s tweaks to Java and Javascript are long dead, Microsoft having embraced Google’s javascript interpreter and abandoned Java in favour of their home-grown .NET platform.
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This implies Google is organized-enough to have any coherent concept of strategy. They made a browser because everything they make is web-based and wanted to control that. They add non-standard features to the browser because they want to do stuff that isn’t doable as part of the standard, because the web is a document engine that has been perverted into a general-purpose application platform.
This implies Google is organized-enough to have any coherent concept of strategy.
I am confident that Google does have a high-level strategy regarding areas that they move into. That doesn’t mean that everything that they do that creates compatibility issues is an embrace, extend, and extinguish attempt, though.
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Then change instances to one that doesn’t block threads. It’s that easy.
Feel free to removed when we block Flipboard or Automattic. We’re only blocking Meta, because Meta’s interests are not the Fediverse’s best interest.
Feel free to removed? Is that client side or server side?
Good question
Server side. Lemmy.ml has a slur filter.
Moderators will basically be doing free work for meta. If a Lemmy.ml post blows up on threads then the ml mods will have to deal with the influx from threads users and basically moderate threads for free.
There’s another reason to defederate. Most mods are volunteers. Lemmy currently really doesn’t have the manpower to handle something with a userbase as large as Threads, and Facebook doesn’t have a great track record with moderation, so it’s unlikely they’d do anything about any issues in a timely manner.
Edit: kids -> mods, busy -> really; autocorrect was being stupid again.
I experience this a lot on Reddit where /r/Infiniti gets cross posted to a massive sub and now two mods are dealing with 500,000+ users. I can’t imagine how much more annoying it would be if I was also paying to host the community.
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I, for one, support the right of every instance to federate with whoever they choose to federate with.
So do I.
I just think their decisions might be dumb.
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Yeah, I wonder how many of those instances are primarily enthusiasts self-hosting.
0.19 allows for instance blocking, so the good tools will be available.
If you federate with something too massive though it has undue weight on the entire system. It is likely to be Embrace, Extend, Extinguish again, and it’s reasonable to want to avoid that.
For people who don’t remember, the pattern would be something like:
- Federate and use the existing ecosystem to help you grow and to grow mutually (Embrace)
- Add new features that only work locally, drawing users away from other instances to your own (Extend)
- Defederate - the remainder is left with a fraction of the users since many moved away, so the users on the local instance don’t care. (Extinguish)
It depends whether 2 actually succeeds at pulling users in. Arguably most people already on the Fediverse are unlikely to jump ship to Facebook, but you have to consider what happens in a few years if it’s grown, but Facebook is a huge name which makes people less likely to join other instances.
If this wasnt needed we wouldnt even think about doing it.
By all means make good tools to allow individual users to block Threads (or other private instances ruled by amoral coporations), but doing it at instance level is just dumb.
Say it louder for the children in the back.
This is the solution.
My friend… your instance has defederated from several other large instances already. If you were on a lemm.ee account then I could take your argument seriously. It’s like the US admonishing Venezuela for going oil hunting, China suggesting religious persecution is unacceptable, or Russia shouting about gay rights.
My friend, I’m still getting used to the fediverse as well.
Try not to assume the average user knows their way around this place, lol.
Do I just automatically know which instances block which instances? Lol. Of course not.
But you decided to weigh in on the situation… I suppose I’ve already told you which instance you’re best suited for. Basically the only criterion anyone looks at for a home instance is who they federate with. Past that, your experience is largely identical. Just federation and admins. Click “instances” to see federation.
Haha. Just can’t admit when you’re wrong, can you? I’ve met people like you before.
Anyways, peace man. Gotta do my own part and choose which users I interact with, lol.
I know you’re messing with me, but anyone else reading my comment should know that it’s decent advice for picking an instance.
If you want threads, join threads or a threads friendly instance, but if you don’t like the majority of the fediverse blocking threads then get fucked because this is what the people want.
but if you don’t like the majority of the fediverse blocking threads then get fucked because this is what the people want.
That seems like an odd position to take, given the information available. The only number here – the instance count involved – has a majority not blocking Threads.
SO FAR
People seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about why Threads is adding ActivityPub support. It’s not to destroy the fediverse. The fediverse is not in competition with Threads.
FYI the 41% of instances that block or limit Threads (from the source data which doesn’t have every instance), accounts for 24% of the user base of the fediverse.
24% honestly isn’t bad. I kind of expected it to be less than that given how big some of the instances that haven’t defederated are.
Yeah the active users on the Fedipact servers is pitiful. Goes to show its not a huge group but a noisy one. Why can’t we just give everyone a fair go and if they suck worry about blocking then?
Also gives me a list of instances I’d never heard of probably because the activity is so small.
Someone should make a post about why blocking Threads is good and why it’s not to be confused with gate keeping. If not properly communicated, this could look very badly for the uninitiated and they’re not to blame.
Some people of course have an educated opinion against blocking, but many presumably don’t know the reasons behind it.
Care to give a summary on why you think they should be blocked ahead of any bad acting? Yes, there is some concern about Meta attempting EEE, but ultimately they’re a large platform that can bring a lot of users and attention to the Fediverse. There’s nothing preventing large instances from blocking them down the line, and with user level instance blocking coming in 0.19 to Lemmy (not sure if Mastodon et al have something similar), you can block them personally yourself if you wish, rather than having that thrust upon you by your instance admins.
Because Meta has a long track record of being outright an evil corporation(not figuratively, literally).
Meta has already shown its hand multiple times, why would it be different this time?
“evil corporation” is quite the tautology.
Not OP, but some corporations are “less evil” than others, or at the very least less obvious about being evil. “Evil corporation” means they’re extra evil.
Their “test run” was only sending threads posts and not receiving any fediverse posts.
This is them shouting their intent, as far as i’m concerned.
No one has articulated it well. It’s all just “meta bad”. Can’t we just defederate if they pull some crap and be no worse off than we are now?
Essentially because after they did something bad it’s likely too late. But others can explain this in more detail with more knowledge than I have.
Shutup bro
I feel like that one instance not blocking threads should exist, like a common ground where people can interact and maybe convert threads user to leave big corpo and join us
It is gatekeeping, but gatekeeping in the way of “Stop corporate offices in this town” and not “Stop people who we don’t think worthy from getting in”.
As for why blocking threads is good, please google “Facebook Cambridge Analytica”, “Facebook russian accounts” and “Facebook fake republican accounts”. Also: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-knew-radicalized-users-rcna3581
Please don’t treat facebook like a “decent corporation which only committed honest mistakes”. It sold users’ data to corporations, to the Kremlin, allowed users to be specifically targeted by extremist right-wing propaganda and spread disinformation about various international affairs.
Furthermore, there is absolutely zero guarantee that Facebook won’t scan OUR posts for training AIs.
It’s a known bad actor. Allowing Facebook into the fediverse would be as ludicrous as allowing Russians to live and establish bases in the US during the cold war.
Because , we know better than to trust lizard people.
Nailed it. No one can argue with that 🧠
EEE is the reason to defed
This is a great example to explain it to people who are familiar with the topic. But if I tell that to a “random” friend, word for word, they won’t know what I’m talking about :D
Mob mentality?
ITT:
“Nobody understands fedipact, Jabber, activitypub, Ruby, embrace/extend/extinguish, mastodon, lemmy, Java, federation, Kubernetes, XMPP, Docker, architecture, carburetors, Ikebana, midwifery, Filipino stickfighting, Zoroastrianism, hegelian philosophy, or XML but me, and therefore you’re all morons with nothing to contribute to this conversation”.
I left Facebook to get away from the brain rot. Please don’t bring their demographic to spread here.
Allowing threads to federate is like allowing a virus to enter the system.
Maybe a hot take, but if you want this big libertarian anarchist federated system you get all the pros and cons along with it. Not having a central authority means you have no real power to stop someone from coming in and taking it. It’s inevitable by design.
Ehm… Shouldn’t Fediverse be… Open?
Meta is a company that is gonna join us in being open and when they get enough users to have their platform running organically they cut us off.
So Threads, which is has 140+ million users and has consistently grown since launch without federation is worried about “getting enough users” from the fediverse, which has less than 10 million?
Fedi users are also about a bajillion times less likely to migrate to a Meta product than the other way around. There was the opportunity to catch some people and help grow the fediverse, but between this and the mastodon HOA (pushes glasses umm excuse me you forgot to put a CW warning on your post about flowers a flower killed my dog when I was five and this is very problematic trauma you’re causing and your alt-text should be at least 3 paragraphs and include a bibliography) it’s likely the fediverse just did what it needed to ensure it stays a niche for like 3 audiences and that more people are stuck with the corpos if they want content that’s not about being a communist or using linux.
Anyway, this is a step for Meta to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Everyone keeps saying how Meta is going to destroy the fedi (don’t worry, we’ll take care of it for them) but no one is saying how. For example, they cut us off? So what? We’re cut off right now.
No one knows the exact way Facebook will try to destroy the fediverse, but I guarantee you they will try.
It challenges the foundation of their entire companies’ profit model. If they lose total control of the social network they will be out of business as quick as you can say Myspace.
Disagree entirely.
For one, Meta has diversified enough that it’s going to be nearly impossible for them to pull a MySpace. They have Insta, Facebook (blue app) and WhatsApp with a billion+ users each. Even Threads on its own is probably sustainable enough to carry them for a decade, and though far, far down the list, they’ve branched into other business like with the Quest. Except maybe pixelfed, there isn’t really even a direct competitor (other than just the vague “social media”) to Meta’s properties.
Second, I don’t think this is any indicator that Meta views the fedi as a threat. Had they, they probably would have just simply tried to buy their way in somewhere, as they did with Instagram and WhatsApp (this is definitely their MO, Facebook is the only true Meta product.) Further, I am not even sure how so many are making the case that the fediverse is somehow inevitable. Projects don’t succeed on pure ideology, and in particular with social media not only do you have to do the technicals right including building a product that users actually want to use, you also have to get the right combination of deliberate community building and sheer luck to get it to stick. Already, the entire point of the fediverse is at odds with how the majority of people want to use social media. With fediverse stuff, you’re expected to curate and deliberately shape your experience. I’ve found more use for blocks and mutes on Lemmy, which is ostensibly the smallest social media site I’ve ever used, and by a large margin. The default these days for most people are Instagram and TikTok - just open the app and watch whatever is served up.
So we’re basically starting at a point that the fediverse is offering a niche product with technical hurdles (which, are very small, but it doesn’t take much) for users to even get on, they’re going to have to spend a decent amount of time to getting to a usable product, find out they joined the wrong instance and rebuild that, and the communities seem to be made up of the gotcha police half of the time. And then there are just the pure numbers. Even with multiple external exogenous events (like reddit had with Digg, for example) from direct analogues to Lemmy and Mastodon, Lemmy is barely growing and Mastodon probably gained about as many users last month as Threads did while I was writing this.
This whole debate on the fediverse is very “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day in your life, but for me? It was Tuesday.” The fediverse, for its part, couldn’t be a better stooge for Meta at the moment. They can say to regulators “look at us, we’re open” and then watch as the fedi preemptively blocks millions of users from an introduction to the fedi.
lmao you guys are cringe as hell. You really think Facebook is worried about a group that’s a fraction of Reddit’s userbase, which is already a fraction of Facebook’s userbase?
If Threads, which has the biggest userbase of any instance, is allowed to connect with Lemmy, their communities will naturally become the most trafficked (embrace).
Over time, the Lemmy userbase will largely move everything to the communities with the most activity. Facebook could also add its own proprietary features that Lemmy users wouldn’t be able to see or use without the Lemmy devs somehow found ways to enable compatibility (extend).
Then, after a while, Facebook could simply say, “Eh, ActivityPub isn’t worth it,” and turn it off, leaving us without most of the communities we’ve become accustomed to and without most of the users we’ve come to know through those communities (extinguish).
This is known as “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish”.
Embrace a competing product and enable compatibility with the product. This may seem like some sort of goodwill gesture, but it’s not. Companies are in it to make a profit, and any users not using their product is profit lost.
Extend the capabilities of your own product beyond that of your competitor’s product, creating compatibility issues. Some existing users may jump ship to the “better” product because of this, and new users will be pressed to use the “better” product because of the compatibility issues.
Extinguish the competition by disabling compatibility with your competitor’s product after they’ve lost users and stopped growing since you offer a better product with more features.
By using this method, you may successfully kill any potential competitor before they become a problem, nipping its growth in the bud.
You can find more information and examples on the the Wikipedia article about this method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Aren’t they doing this already without federating?
Okay? How would that effect us
I dislike Facebook as much as anyone else, but open is open. Once we start with “open to everyone, except you you and you”, it can’t be called open anymore.
Being open doesn’t mean you let leeches enter your home
If you want Facebook controlling the fediverse with their overwhelming bulk of users.
Gosh this giant group of White Nationalists wants to come to my house for my birthday, well wow golly gee every opinion is a rich and valuable thing better let them in
We don’t need to tolerate nasty megacorporations.
relevant xkcd my friend ;) The fediverse is still open.
Not if they disagree with me!
What is the share of users that those 41% have?
Weird middle ground here. I kind of wish that 1 communities FROM threads were blocked, and 2 we had an active dev fund for ad blockers. I’m glad to have threads users come here and add to our communities personally.
Based, actually. People are welcome. Meta is not.
Right cause I think having both having access to normie content and giving normies access to fediverse content is a positive thing if we can balance out the power dynamic with meta. Blocking threads content would just defeat the purpose imo, it would prevent people from leaving threads for the fediverse because they wont be able to get the same content. If threads has it all and fediverse doesn’t, most people are just going to go to/stay at threads. It could backfire.
Maybe if instances could allow meta users to see their posts to pique their interest/gain exposure, but meta users have to join any other instance in order to interact? Kind of like an ad I guess but UI native and unpaid. Though I’m really not sure if the fediverse platform would even support such things in the first place, and if meta couldn’t just fire back with the same thing. It’s just the first thing that comes to mind.
The fediverse’s number one issues right now as I see it are accessibility and content density. I get the concerns people have with EEE but I also struggle not to see this as handling that last E (exterminate) ourselves just to spite meta. I want to join threads just to see what my friends and everyday people are posting, and I’d really like those people to join the fediverse so I can interact with them here. The only things keeping me away from threads however are privacy concerns and supporting meta, so being able to see the same content on a different instance might just be the best of both worlds.
How do I know if my insurance blocked threads
This metric seems kind of meaningless if it doesn’t account for the size of the user base
It’s about 24% of the userbase according to this comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/6148151
As I expected, it’s mostly smaller instances, but it’s not an insignificant amount. I wonder how much lemmy.world’s decision affects these statistics.
FOSS bros: we’re all about user choice!
also FOSS bros: no not like that
It’s pretty logical actually: The advocates of openness must be closed to one thing, and that is whatever aims to destroy openness itself.
Social Contract.
Exactly.
This is like inviting the Catholic church in an institution specifically built to protect former victims of same and similar institutions.
Given that anyone can start an instance and federate with Threads, or join an instance that does, freedom of choice is unaffected.
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Meta is partially responsible for genocide, so it’s not actually that much of a stretch, honestly.
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They were warned multiple times that their platform was being used to fan the flames of a genocide, yet they did nothing. And their algorithm is designed to spread whatever gets the most engagement, which is usually hateful things.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
partially responsible for genocide
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
What a ridiculous argument. They’re not saying big tech companies are necessarily as abusive as those other organisations, they’re saying people might want to avoid them in the same way.
By contrast your comment, intentionally or otherwise, suggests the only valid reason to avoid interacting with an organisation is if you were literally raped by them. Now that is fucked up.
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Which group, institution or ideology specifically are you talking about? Genuinely curious. Cause I can’t think of any that are the same or worse than fb/google/etc. That are supported here. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist, ofc, I’m just unaware, hence the question, would you give me some examples?
Do you not understand how metaphors work? Nothing is being “compared” here. Keep looking for things to be upset about.
This is actually a simile, not a metaphor. And a simile is a type of comparison .
A simile is a type of metaphor. All similes are metaphors, but not vice versa.
We just don’t want history repeating itself like what happened with xmpp. Do you really think facebook of all companies is joining the fediverse with good intentions? Do you really think they’re not trying to monopolize this?
I would like to point out that xmpp still exists. Google Talk does not. WhatsApp killed xmpp, not Google
XMPP still exists - and I use it for chatting with one person. Nobody I know uses it. Techies I know use IRC and, more recently, Matrix. Or discord, disappointingly enough.
And I mention techies because the rest of the world is just happy with WhatsApp/Messenger/Slack et al.
What I’m getting at is that XMPP feels pretty dead in my experience. But who knows, maybe it would be in this same position regardless of Google like you allude to.
I never mentioned google. And sure, xmpp exists but it’s dead and would be much better off if not for big tech giants
Where did they even mention Google in their comment?
Because every time this argument starts, someone mentions how they don’t want the fediverse to go down the xmpp path, and the argument has its origin in this article
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Last I checked, the people using XMPP are still running happily using servers and clients.
All 17 of them.
I gotta ask… were you around and actively using xmpp around that time?
Because I was. And xmpp struggling had nothing to do with Google
You’re downplaying your own part, in between those two statements.
Internet rando: “I choose to enable this corporate, repeat privacy offender in strongarming its way into the open, federated web”
Edit: spelling
How is Threads going to breach your privacy by federating with your instance? How is de federating from Threads going to protect your privacy?
Do you think this is Threads’ final form? Embrace, extend, extinguish. This is what corporations do. Everything is a zero sum game in their minds, and they will act in the best interest of shareholders. That shit has no business here.
I was going to reply but you nailed it. Its about outmaneuvering smaller competitors and controlling the marketplace, and then harvesting user data for profit.
They can already harvest the data. Nothing on the ActivityPub is private
Sure, ignore my actual point. This is getting monotonous; enjoy Threads.
What point was that? If you don’t join Threads, they don’t have your data. They do have everything you publish to the Fediverse though, no matter what you do.
Yeah, yeah, parrot the line and then please explain how?
Extending means making extra functionality that others haven’t implemented, so that your offering is more attractive. You use it to build a walled garden. Defederation just skips that step and does it for them. They don’t even have to extend.
You missed the point of my comment. I don’t need to explain how, I’m sure they’ve got brilliant engineers working hard on it. This is just how capitalism works, Meta isn’t a benevolent force here, their ultimate goal is to make money off users and their data.
I don’t need to figure out exactly how they will do it to know that they will.
Ah, so just fear mongering and hoping that the fear based knee-jerk reaction isn’t actually playing directly into their hands.
Dude, Meta has a terrible track record. They’ve shown us time and time again that they are outright evil. Why would it be different this time?
What’s the saying? “When someone shows you who their are, trust them the first time”
In this instance, Meta has shown time and time again who they are and you still believe they will do something right.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
Serious question: how?
Second question: why?
What are the mechanics by which they are going extend or extinguish the fediverse and how would they do that from a technical standpoint? Second, why when the entire fediverse with years of time behind it is a rounding error compared to a product they launched like 6 months ago. Why does Meta give a tiny shit about the fedi compared to TikTok, for example?
What are the mechanics by which they are going extend or extinguish the fediverse and how would they do that from a technical standpoint?
“Extend” typically means adding proprietary features to your own product that are incompatible with your competitor’s product. For example, what if they added Gold (as in the old Reddit kind, not the current Reddit kind)? That obviously wouldn’t work with Lemmy, or at least not right away. The Lemmy devs would have to try to play catch-up whenever Threads launched a new feature. And not every would be able to be made compatible with Lemmy in some way.
Second, why when the entire fediverse with years of time behind it is a rounding error compared to a product they launched like 6 months ago. Why does Meta give a tiny shit about the fedi compared to TikTok, for example?
There are several potential reasons for this. They could see Lemmy as a potential future threat, and using the EEE method may squash the potential threat before it actually becomes one.
ActivityPub itself is also actually a neat feature to offer. It’s basically Single Sign-On (aka SSO) without a few steps. (This is not me giving Facebook the benefit of the doubt. Companies can have multiple reasons for doing something, and I cannot believe this is the only reason Facebook would experiment with ActivityPub.)
As for your point about TikTok, TikTok itself is already too big to use the EEE method. (It usually only works on smaller competitors.) Facebook is using a different method for that: it cloned TikTok. Their version is called Reels.
As for the “rounding error” comment, Facebook actually had “accounts” created on Threads for all of its Instagram users, so, while there may be billions of accounts, not all of them are active. As a matter of fact, I’ve heard Threads use dropped pretty significantly after its initial launch. In that case, Facebook could be using a strategy I’ve seen both Sony and Microsoft use in regards to their game consoles: whenever Sony is in “second place” in the its console war with Microsoft and losing users to them, it tries to get people to migrate back over by adding features its userbase wants. Whenever Sony is on top, however, they tend to stop listening to customer feedback and sit on their laurels. I’ve seen Microsoft employ a similar strategy, too.
sometimes, it’s just about the principle.
and if the principle is “keep zucc the fuck away from the fediverse”, i’m all for it.
But it doesn’t keep him away. Defederation means they consume all of the data from ActivityPub, you consume none of theirs. You are creating a walled garden for them that makes it harder for Threads users to leave.
Defederation means they consume all of the data from ActivityPub, you consume none of theirs.
It’s not that simple.
Their instance will be sent the data only if the post originates on an instance/community that is still federated with their instance. If a new post or comment is made in a community who’s instance isn’t federated with their instance, it will not be sent via ActivityPub. A more detailed explanation of how that works is in this post.
It’s about the principal of throwing out our own principals because we hate someone!
Throwing out your principals [sic].
Please don’t speak for me.
Lol I work and finance and it was pre coffee, went into default mode I guess, thanks for the correction.
And good on you for your principle being the illusion of “fuck zucc.” truly a noble pursuit.
Someone failed ethics class really hard.
This critique of “user choice means that every instance should try and be as open as possible and try and federate with as many compatible entities as possible, so that any user, from any instance, might find and interact with content from everywhere” is as valid for instances blocking Threads as it is for blocking instances for allowing hate speech and bot-boosted corporate ads.
Personally, I prefer those to be blocked and have “user choice” mean users choosing to participate and promote the instances they believe are more useful, because my “user choice” is “I don’t want all kinds of bullshit to arrive unfiltered at my feed”.
So many people here are acting like lions, jaguars, attack zebras etc don’t exist. There is no way on this earth that meta is coming into the fediverse with good intentions. Just because we advocate for FOSS doesn’t mean we have to be foolish and vulnerable. Being closed to meta is consistent with being supportive of FOSS, because make no mistake, meta is here to kill the fediverse.
relevant xkcd my friend ;) The fediverse is still open.
Yeah, can’t expect people in power not to use it to further their agenda.
You just sounded like:
You don’t allow nazi clubs in your area? Ah hah! Gotcha! So much for the “tolerant left”!
🙄
Seriously, why are there so many people ignorant of the damage Facebook has done not only to social media, but to democracy as a whole? You’re aware of Facebooks role in Trump’s election in 2016, aren’t you? Haven’t you heard of Cambridge Analytica? Of the Russian troll farms? Of the millions of fake Republican Facebook accounts?
(Sometimes I wonder: Is Lemmy getting filled with shills, or are people THAT clueless? Has the pandemic suddenly affected our long term memory or something?)
How can you not know about this? Seriously!
Yes, I’m aware. Fediverse also has nazis, they’re everywhere. I can put on my big boy pants and block them as I see them, instead of an admin doing collateral damage and preventing from talking to all the other people who won’t leave Threads.
. I can put on my big boy pants and block them as I see them, instead of an admin doing collateral damage and preventing
Okay first, you have no fucking idea how online harassment works. I’ve seen numerous cases of people being attacked, even doxxed, hy hordes of assholes. Imagine a single mother who can barely have time to work and attend their children, to deal with this shit. And you know? It happens ALL THE TIME to BIPOC users on the fedi.
“Hey, the nazis are invading Poland, why aren’t you on the frontlines carrying your gun?” As if there wasn no such thing as innocent CIVILIANS. In a world where speaking up is punished by dogpiling, harassing and doxxing, people just prefer to flee because their admins don’t do shit to defend them. Ask ANY Black person on Mastodon what it’s like to be harassed online.
Second, forcing people deal with the problems of harassment puts the burden of blocking on the end user. (From another POV, it’s the e-mail spam problem if you think about it. Dogpiling is a social form of DDOSing someone, and there’s no way to prevent it except by mass blocking the source of the attacks.
Letting an instance admin defederate from a problematic instance protects ALL the admin’s users with minimal effort on their part. If a threads user is defederated they can as well switch to another instance, nobody stops them.
Are they not happy with how their instance is treated? Demand changes to the instance, after all they paid for it, didn’t they? Oh they didn’t? Then who’s finacing and controlling it then?
Consider defederation the invisible hand of the market turned visible.
Defederation is NOT damage. On the other hand, people suffering emotional distress from harassment IS damage.
Percentage of instances is meaningless without knowing their representative size in the overall context of the fediverse.
Been enjoying Lemmy, so I wanted to see how Threads is. “It’s just going to seem like another instance, right?”
It’s Facebook with another skin. The posts are pretty much all the same sort of posts memes take the piss out of. Literally feels just like Facebook… Going to stick to Lemmy, myself.
