The fediverse is discussing if we should defederate from Meta's new Threads app. Here's why I probably won't (for now).

The fediverse is discussing if we should defederate from Meta’s new Threads app. Here’s why I probably won’t (for now).

(Federation between plume and my lemmy instance doesn’t work correctly at the moment, otherwise I would have made this a proper crosspost)

  • dfyx@lemmy.helios42.deOPEnglish
    11·
    2 年前

    Do you want Facebook to do to us what everyone else did to open standards???

    Build a closed alternative, ignore that we even exist, bind all the users and have us fall back to the low levels of relevance we had before Twitter and Reddit went crazy.

    At least with open standards we have a slim chance at giving our input on how we want things to be.

      • dfyx@lemmy.helios42.deOPEnglish
        11·
        2 年前

        Could you please be a bit less aggressive? The post is titled “Why I probably won’t defederate from Threads” and I’ve given my personal arguments. I’ve also addressed the points you’re making, both in my post and in other comments over here.

        It isn’t titled “Why you shouldn’t defederate from Threads” or “Why we shouldn’t defederate from Threads”. It’s not even titled “I will never defederate from Threads”. There are many valid and well-written arguments for defederating. I posted my counter-arguments for a bit of balance yet I have no intention to force or even convince anyone to do as I do.

        So let’s please be civil around here and not go around brigading people who have different opinions. If you want to set a good example, then do that for a respectful discussion just as much as you try to do it for the ethical aspects of federation.

          • dfyx@lemmy.helios42.deOPEnglish
            4·
            2 年前

            I don’t see how Google killed XMPP. They removed it from their own application which is the exact same effect as not speaking an open protocol in the first place. Nobody forced other XMPP-based applications to change. You know what made me stop using XMPP and not keep my Jabber instance when I moved to a new server? Clunky applications and the fact that everyone I had in my contact list was also on another more comfortable platform (at first ICQ and MSN, later Discord) and prefered to contact me there.

            If we federate with Threads, they may use their power to push changes to ActivityPub but nobody forces any of us to implement them, making them effectively irrelevant. If they do something that’s incompatible with the rest of the fediverse, they effectively defederate from everyone else. So either way the end result is two separate sub-fediverses and the more popular one will win out. Hint: it’s gonna be the one with billions of dollars of funding. If we let them in as long as they play by the rules, we have a chance to educate people on what’s beyond Threads, it gives Meta something to lose if they defederate (their users’ ability to talk to people in their friend lists). At least we don’t lose anything that we wouldn’t also lose by not talking to them in the first place.

              • dfyx@lemmy.helios42.deOPEnglish
                3·
                2 年前

                When they removed XMPP, they disconnected the Google users from the rest of XMPP. And since it was the largest instance, XMPP as a whole basically died. People couldn’t use XMPP to stay in touch anymore with people using Google’s thing, and vice-versa, which XMPP as a whole kind of came to rely on.

                And how is this different from not using XMPP (or being defederated) in the first place? Their platform would still have become huge and pulled over users. People don’t use a platform because they like the technology. They use it because it has people they want to talk to. Even google themselves had to accept that with their failed Google Wave which didn’t even survive the closed beta because people who got an invite couldn’t talk to their friends who didn’t get one.

                And I’m explicitly not assuming Facebook will play by the rules in the long run. I’m saying while they do, let’s talk to them, even if it’s just for a month. When they eventually start breaking the rules, we can still defederate and I assure you that we won’t lose significantly more users than we would have if we had defederated earlier. Because why would we? We’re on the side of the open-closed divide that values privacy and open source software. Our only reason to ever switch to Threads is to talk to people that aren’t on Mastodon/Lemmy/Whatever. If that’s a requirement for someone they have to do that either way. But for someone who starts out on Threads, we might suddenly create an incentive to create a Mastodon account to keep talking to their friends. They probably won’t leave Threads but they will use both, pulling the fediverse into the public conciousnes.

                  • dfyx@lemmy.helios42.deOPEnglish
                    2·
                    2 年前

                    And how many of those Google Talk users would have created an XMPP account if there hadn’t been any federation at all? If someone was on XMPP and asked a Talk user to come over, the odds they would be convinced were very small. Why would they when they can ask you to create a Google Talk account instead?