Meta just announced that they are trying to integrate Threads with ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.). We need to defederate them if we want to avoid them pushing their crap into fediverse.
If you’re a server admin, please defederate Meta’s domain “threads.net”
If you don’t run your own server, please ask your server admin to defederate “threads.net”.
I can kinda see the point, but also without providing actual reasons, this post just seems like a LARP.
I got a reason! It’s because people are afraid meta is doing what Microsoft did to a much earlier project. The crux of that whole story is that Microsoft adopted the new tech, became the biggest player thus dominating the area, then, when they had full control of the tech they ended up shutting it down. Some people are convinced meta is going to do that to the fediverse.
This is vague and handwavy, I’m hoping someone actually knows the name of the project. It was early 90s I believe or maybe into the early 00s but it was before my time in the tech sphere of the internet.
I think we should let meta federated to the fediverse until they try to influence it or integrate ads in posts or something else that can hurt the fediverse
I will leave my instance lemy.lol if it defederates threads.net. Defederating is stupid
no one cares if you leave. literally no one.
If anybody remembers XMPP being widespread and what Facebook, Google, Apple and others (say, I personally remember VK and Yandex in Russia supporting it) did to it, that’s what will happen if you “wait and see”.
EDIT: oh, half the thread is such comments
I remember what the standardising committee did to XMPP: users wanted to share photos, send files, and make audio/video calls; XMPP said “we’re not going to standardize that, but each application can use its own extensions”… then it all went to hell.
XMPP is still alive and well, is it not?
You don’t get how big it was in 2007. I used ICQ and felt some sort of peer pressure (and progress pressure) to switch to XMPP. You could chat in FB via XMPP, in VK via XMPP, a lot of services would just give you an XMPP account because why not. It was like RSS.
Will the Mastodon and Lemmy instances we have today cease to exist because of Threads federating?
I’m just genuinely curious how we could be worse off than before.
From a previous comment of mine:
To be clear, I want it to be users deciding on Lemmy too. Also, people already here moving to threads wouldn’t be the problem, we’re small in comparison to them. It would be a few things:
- They would bring in a huge party of users that would take it over and overwhelm the current users. It would be like a cruise ship of tourists taking over a small town and breaking everything for the current residents.
- They could post to Lemmy, but we can’t really post to Mastodon. They’re going to send ads our way disguised as content, guaranteed.
- If they can manipulate the users from Mastodon, it’s going to get out of hand fast. They have teams of devs and psych engineering to accomplish that.
- This is volunteer ran, do we have enough energy to fight Meta when they try to enforce something?
- Can they manipulate Activity Pub software because we’re a small team of devs? If they can, they will.
- One person mentioned them having instance owners sign NDAs. What’s up with that?
It doesn’t benefit them to send adds disguised because they are paid to provide ad impressions which they wouldn’t have data for. It’s just an annoying business model not a conspiracy to brainwash you.
Nah, companies did it on reddit all the time, it’s a thing.
That’s why you need Nord VPN so you can play raid shadow legends safely…
The thing is they have so much less control if they do that, I’m fed up of places with adverts where comments are turned off or heavily moderate - if their post comes here they can’t do any of that, I say we let them come, we let them come and then we smash them
XMPP was dead on arrival.
Better yet, let them enjoy the full connectivity for a month. Once they’ve enjoyed all the awesome content and got used to it - defederate.
Yeah dude let’s just federate with an instance maintained by a corporation that has undoubtedly caused a genocide in Myanmar by turning a blind eye to a far-right hate speech group that caused an entire fucking minority to flee into another country.
I don’t get why people are supporting and saying “oh it must be up to the user” like bro this is the company we’re dealing with. Fuck that fuck threads fuck zuckerberg i don’t want his shit cancer near something that’s going well so far.
deleted by creator
I’m not sure if federating will help meta so much as it will definitely (most probably) hurt the lemmy/mastodon network.
Here’s a similar case that happened before, with the XMPP protocol being coopted by google but eventually killing it in favor of their own proprietary solution:
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Big tech isn’t on our side, and we have to handle outside corporate influence with heavy skepticism.
Israel have been successfully pressuring meta to remove and shadow ban accounts sympathetic to Palestinians. The level of censorship is crazy.
OK, I’ll bite. You got something more substantial than “I read it on the internet” to back that up? One reputable source on your accusation? Not sayin’ you’re lying/wrong, just asking for some verifiable proof.
At the moment this is coming from secondary sources from within meta so there are no articles about it that I’m aware of. But Palestinians and activists constantly have their content removed, account reach limited, and comments removed (which has happened to me multiple times). People also have their accounts threatened and removed.
These actions are visible constantly, meta have been doing this since the start. For example, when you go to someone’s stories at the top it might show 4 or 5 stories, but when you click through to their profile there’ll be 20+.
Some people I follow don’t even show up at the top anymore and I have to access their stories via their profile page or if I’ve messaged them recently.
After (as of this reply) eight hours, you have produced nothing more than anecdotal evidence if not outright invented. I must assume at this point you are spreading disinformation for whatever your goals may be to that end.
Thank you for wasting everybody’s time.
Go look for yourself instead of being condescending.
Welcome to Lemmy!
It’s like Reddit with the provocative takes and hyperbole, but even more extreme somehow!
This place is hilarious.
Numerous actual popular accounts and news sources have been suspended. It was major news in the Arabic-speaking world in October. Meta even apologized for auto-translating Palestinian as “terrorist.”
Hate to say it but that’s a fail on producing a reliable source.
Did you want specific accounts?
Palestinian Shebab News Agency has facebook pages shut down
@Eye.on.palestine on IG suspended by Meta, then back up after a backlash.
#IStandWithPalestine and #FreePalestine getting censored by Facebook
Thanks, that’s much better.
You know, you have access to search engines too. You don’t need to be lazy and treat the rest of the Internet as your personal stenographer/research assistant.
Fucking HELL, despite how increasingly easy it is to find information, it cannot keep pace with just how utterly fucking lazy people are getting.
If they want to hang out with us, they can make an account somewhere other than thread, bam, done!
If they want to hang out with us, they can make an account somewhere other than thread, bam, done!
“make another account somewhere” isn’t really what federation is about.
Indeed it is, they’re not saying you have to make an account on that person’s server, they’re saying that you can make it on a different server, that’s the point of federation you can join other servers that are connected to them. It’s not to be fully open without any limitations, because if it were then content moderation would be impossible.
Services like Nostr have this problem, they are like the wild West where anything goes and you can’t do anything about it. To some people that seems great but the fact of the matter is those services are filled with right-wing trolls and crypto scammers (likely plenty of other nasty stuff as well) because they cannot be moderated.
Excuse me sir, i cant be more agree with you
“Everyone everywhere should federate.”
“Not like that!”
We don’t federate with nazi instances either.
Threads has massive homophobic and racist accounts like LibsOnTikTok and MomsForLiberty. We shouldn’t federate with an instance that can’t even take care of banning that.
please take a look at the replies under zuck’s own post in threads.net and determine if that’s the type of content you want.
for those who don’t want to visit, majority of the commentators are bots. some advertising crypto, and others asking for money.
even if you think you can individually block those accounts, keep in mind the size of threads compared to fediverse.
for Lemmy: monthly active users are barely150K40K, while for threads it’s 100 million. there’s no chance you can control that inflow of bots.and if it still doesn’t convince you, you can read threads’ privacy policy, which states that they’ll gather all that pii if you interact with their content.
most of the internet is already bigtech, I don’t want Lemmy to become another arm of it. though I have faith in my instance maintainer and dessalines, the dev.
Even if there were no bots and it was only “real” content from Threads … is that the sort of content we want to have Lemmy flooded with?
This is dumb gatekeeping nonsense. It’s the exact same asshole bullshit behaviour we saw on Reddit when people complained about it getting popular.
Reddit is far better for reaching a wide audience then it was when it was just a bunch of 20 something nerds in their echo chamber.
they arent wrong
Yeah they are.
how do you know
Mr @zuck is there any chance of you reading my messages about my request for 2M$ man i have been trying every day to contact you and waiting for your response since last 5 months . I have told you why i am asking you for 2M$ i dont know if you ever read my messages but in short you are the only who can make it happen and if there is someone who can give me 2M$ its only you so please read my messages and please make it happen for us and change our lives I am waiting for you since last 5 months .
Looks like the exact same bullshit as facebook and twitter. There might be better examples of good or bad posting though since Zuckerzuck’s posts are especially spammed out, since splammy people think they’re especially good for visibility.
I don’t really have much faith in the developers myself. Considering all the shenanigans they get upto.
I do however have real faith in the main developer of lemmy, considering his ideology, which is incompatible with bigtech values.
you can even see it from his own profile.
His ideology is why I don’t have any faith in him. Hes authotarian left wing. Generally I find tankies not to be the nicest of people and tend to ignore alot of historical facts. Like the Khmer Rouge! I wonder what happened in Cambodia at some point in history 🤔🤔🤔 The way they operated there modus operandi is almost like a certain other points in history
In favor of defederation. If I start seeing garbage from threads in my feed, I’m switching instances. I don’t want Meta pushing their divisive, hateful, misinformation all up in my feeds. Meta will kill fedi. We don’t need them.
Yeah. I’ll switch to an instance that is defederated from Threads, if mine doesn’t.
I left Meta’s other properties to avoid state sponsored hate speech. I won’t use a platform that gives hate speech a platform.
I don’t need to wait to know if Meta will do that. I already know.
Defederation is cancer and it will kill Fediverse faster than any Meta.
Exactly cuz threads will lure a lot of people in the fediverse after the fediverse gets even more accessible and for all means more recognition than we can think about defederating threads.
On the contrary, defederation is vital to the health of the network. Choosing which instances to not interact with, like far-right groups and hate speech groups, allows users to focus on reasonable content on their home server.
The instance should also be transparent on which instances they defederate with so occasionally the user can venture out into the wild west and see other instances and their points of view.
That causes fragmentation of the network, which in turn will kill Fedi over time.
On the contrary: Advising popular instances to defederate with threads will actually help promote diversity of instances, since the Threads population is orders of magnitude a larger network than Mastodon. Having popular instances defederate with threads will keep lemmy from actually just merging into the threads network.
No, as I explained in other comments.
Ability to choose with whom to federate with is a core concept of the Fediverse
If you don’t want any defederation, join an instance that doesn’t do it.
No, that’s not a core concept of Fediverse, that’s exactly the opposite. You want echo chambers? There are plenty of them already. It should be the user who decides what content to see and with which instances to interact, not instance admins.
Imagine Chrome not allowing you to visit specific sites and then Firefox not allowing you to visit a different set of sites. That would be a death of the web.
Imagine Chrome not allowing you to visit specific sites and then Firefox not allowing you to visit a different set of sites.
Imagine a worse, less fitting analogy
You can literally spin up your own instance in 20 minutes and see every instance ever if you’d like, it’s a choice and its good to have
You can build your variant of Chrome yourself as well. Analogy is fitting.
Millions of Facebook users outnumbering previous users 100 to 1 will kill it. Oh, there’ll be more activity than ever, but it will be a sanitised corporate safe space for advertisers, where millions of normies argue about politics, with misinformation and ads sprinkled throughout.
That’s called growth. Or do you want to keep Lemmy exclusive for marginals?
Yeah, close that protocol! Build the walls around our garden higher! No need to wait for them to actually do something worth defederating over, we just don’t like them!
This is silly. A major social media network is trying to join the Fediverse and everyone’s keen on stopping it. If Meta does something dirty or damaging, sure, defederate them then. But I was kind of hoping that open protocols would flourish, not just end up as another bunch of balkanized forums and Reddit-likes.
Ever play Plague Inc? The secret to winning is to not become deadly until you’ve already become engrained and established throughout society. Then you add the deadly features once you’re too deep in.
Don’t let the cancer establish itself as something innocent. The owner of the platform WILL take any opportunity to seize control of the media so it can seize control of the message.
If you haven’t noticed them doing dirty or damaging things for the last twenty years, feel free to engage with them.
There’s more than enough evidence to show their intentions are far from pure.
How are we supposed to do that when people like you are encouraging admins to defederate which removes any semblance of freedom of choice that you are fucking trying to imply we act upon?
They’re a multinational corporation, they don’t need us to host their shit for you to be able to read a goddamn article and learn something.
If you don’t yet understand that they’re evil that’s on you.
But why do YOU get to choose for everyone else?
Choose what? If you want to find an instance unscrupulous enough to federate with that company then go for it. Who is stopping you?
People like OP here, begging admin to block it?
Like are you for real? He’s literally asking them to take my choice away.
It is always the admins’ choice, that has never been any different. You are free to choose which instance you are part of.
This petition changes nothing about that.
What if some of us don’t care if they’re evil?
Then you’re evil. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Go ahead, be evil. It is certainly your prerogative.
Edit: just look at how many votes “But what if some of us don’t care if they’re evil?” got. Like, what a wild-ass bullshit thing to say. This thread is definitely being astroturfed.
Lol
I’ve noticed a lot of turfing on all of these threadsfed posts. It’s becoming more and more. People just need to get a threads account if it’s so important to them.
It’s sarcasm. I upvoted them because I would have said something similar to highlight the absurdity of any argument against defederating with Threads.
Read their replies. They are apparently being sincere. You have fallen victim to Poe’s law.
Thanks, it is my prerogative.
This is the point of the freedom of federated communities: we can read whatever the fuck we want from wherever the fuck we want without having authoritarian censor-heavy limp-wrist adult-baby moderators and corporate fascists determining what we are allowed to read or affiliate with.
The freedom to read both sides and control what I want to interact with on my own will, and make my own decisions is why I’m fucking here. I don’t want people like you making decisions for me, go fuck yourself.
Thanks for noticing I’m evil. I’ll go make a nice blood sacrifice to my effigy of Satan by eating another baby.
So when they steamroll this place so hard you only get their side of the story, what then?
Right, so nobody’s stopping you from joining threads, or making your own instance. You can call it evil.villain. Why don’t you?
Well fucking said.
Then get fucked?
Meta are largely responsible for the current state of affairs right now. Nearly every current war, genocide, fake news, and more can be tied back to Meta.
Are you seriously simplifying all current conflicts caused down to simply social media? So if we completely remove all social media, humanity instantly becomes the utopian society from science fiction. STFU with this stupidity you ignorant child.
Then feel free to go to threads or somewhere that does federate with them. You don’t have to stay on a particular instance if they don’t federate with something you want to engage with.
That’s your freedom of choice.
There is no plan for kbin to defederate with Threads, which is why I’m here you dolt. Maybe you should leave.
I’m sure there will be instances that remain federated with them, and you can join those… or just join Threadstagram.
So… admins aren’t free to choose? Why are you trying to take away admins freedom of choice? Sounds kind of authoritarian to me.
If you’re self-hosting a personal instance, do whatever you want.
But if you’re hosting a community for other people, you should consider what they want. That’s the responsibility of a community leader.
That’s the beauty of the fediverse, if the instance you’re on isn’t doing what you want, you can move to another one. Or create your own.
I’d say that’s a pretty clear indicator of the popularity of decisions. Saying “No, you can’t do that, cause I don’t want that” is putting your desires above the desires of others.
This is why I love federated communities; the freedom of choice is great to have.
decentralization purpose is choice to move to other instance
Or build my own, which is great to have as a contingency.
I’m sure Meta won’t be awful this time! Sure they’ve been awful quite literally every single chance they’ve gotten, but they won’t be this time!
If you like meta so much, why are you here?
I don’t like Meta. Why do you assume everyone has to be on one “team” or the other? I’m in favor of open protocols and open protocols can be used by anyone. Even if you don’t like them.
I’d be closer to agreeing with you if XMPP didn’t completely invalidate your point. They did it there and they’ll do it here.
XMPP works great, you just have to use it. It doesn’t invalidate anything.
Theres a reason nobody uses it anymore. Google extended the crap out of it, effectively took over the protocol and then retired it. It bears the same echoes of what’s happening here.
This didn’t happen. In fact Google was the one who fell behind development when the protocol moved on and deprecated unencrypted connections for example. People just don’t make it a priority to use XMPP instead of the walled gardens they are using now.
Comment stolen from user “copygirl” from blahaj.zone:
Looks like they’ll be harvesting your data if you follow anyone from Threads, maybe even injecting ads. Unsure what happens to the data of people that get followed by a Threads user. A large part of the fediverse is here precisely because they want to escape corporate meddling, data-hoarding, advertising and other anti-user malpractices. There’s a number of people talking about this, here’s a recent post that highlights some of the things from their TOS.
Anyone can collect the data anyway, and I’m sure at least one person out there is already harvesting our Fediverse data.
There’s a big difference between some random person and Meta collecting the data.
Everything is public on fedi (if we’re talking about communities alike), so any bot can and is already scrapping everything through regular HTTP. You must be extremely ignorant to think otherwise.
Meta can collect every scrap of Lemmy right now
It’s not as if something was preventing them from
data-hoarding
and
harvesting your data
here anyway.
So that part about being followed by a Threads user is just a bit stupid.
The danger is in them becoming an integral part of the network where people don’t bother to register at a normal instance, and then Meta pulling out and the network remaining half-dead.
I hate Zuck and Facebook as much as the next person, but I think the rollout is going slowly enough that we don’t need to fight about it yet.
The discussion is important and needs to be had, but it’s premature.
Everywhere this pops up, the users have decided:
Fuck meta. Fuck threads. Fuck the zuck.
Do not associate. Defederate now
Just block their domain, no need to take away the freedom of other users even if you hate Meta.
And get my server hoggud up by 1.000.000 biased meta shitposts a minute? No thanks.
That’s not how federation works, which makes me worried that users who get to “vote” on this thing (they don’t, it’s the instance owners that do) actually do not understand what would happen.
It’s exactly what would happen, as users on my server would look up instances on meta servers.
The best case scenario of letting Meta in is neutrality. Far more likely is then actively destroying stuff. Remember, their motto is move fast and break things
So what are they going to do?
The whole “Oh they’ll microsoft it!”-narrative is clearly false already. As plenty people said the last time someone posted that sensationalist “how to kill the fediverse” (or so) blog post already, this is not about Meta trying to “kill” the fediverse. If anything, the opposite. This is them Mozilla-ing it, using it as a defense against new regulations. They can even point to instances defederating en masse as “See? We tried! They’re all blocking us, so it’s not our fault this cross-compatibility isn’t working.” and then in the future use that as a defense against further attempts to open up walled gardens. They tried, the supposedly “open” side actively blocked it, now the other side has to move before they try again.
People misunderstand the actually extremely obvious reason they’re doing this. There’s also an easy reason they’re dragging their feet so much: They don’t want to. But they have to. So they promise they’ll federate, actively hope they get blocked (see above), and only actually do it last-second to avoid issues with new legislation.
So naive.
People are overreacting.
Just because you have no experience, you think it’s overreacting.
Compared to you who has so much experience with threads joining the fediverse.
No we’re not. Read up on what happened to xmpp. Google joined it, made the service much slower for people not on their servers, everybody joined their servers, they shut their service down for their own proprietary stuff.
Edit: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Embrace
Extend
Extinguish
I really don’t think that’s the case.
This is a nice little place, meta barging in Will fuck it all up
They aren’t barging in. You need to follow the threads user. Only on mastodon are they “barging in”.
