A community index of servers added a new rule recently, that requires every participant to defederate from Threads. Some admins are unhappy.

Server indexes of places for newcomers to join can be instrumental for Fediverse adoption. However, sudden rule changes can leave some admins feeling pressure to change policies in order to remain listed.

  • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
    39·
    6 months ago

    Maybe I’m naive but I kinda don’t get it. People talk about defederating as if…what, all Meta IP addresses will be magically blocked from scraping your content? Any script kiddie can harvest Lemmy/Mastodon/whatever content.

    Has Meta shown itself to be a bad actor? Yes. Should my email provider block all emails from Meta? Well…that’s a bit much I think? If Facebook email still existed, should my email provider block that?

    My point is yes, Meta bad, but all Thread users also bad? I thought — and apparently I’m very wrong here — that the Federation paradigm was kinda like email. And the only email I want blocked is a domain where every single user is malicious, not a domain run by a malicious entity which has normal people as users, who aren’t necessarily very tech literate.

    I don’t actually care, but I just find it a little confusing tbh.

    • livus@kbin.social
      37·
      6 months ago

      @qjkxbmwvz I think the main fear is Embrace Extend Extinguish.

      It’s not about interacting with Threadworms, it’s about sleepwalking into a situation where Meta is changing the very nature of ActivityPub itself.

      • ErilElidor@feddit.de
        4·
        6 months ago

        I’m actually curious about “Embrace Extend Extinguish”: What can they do? They “extend” the ActivityPub protocol in a proprietary way, ok. Doesn’t mean any other instance has to use that, no? Ok, that would mean if an instance doesn’t follow that extension, it can’t interact optimally with Threads, but how does it matter? To me it seems all that can be lost by that is the content/user base that Threads brings into the Fediverse and then we are at the same point as we would be if we defederated immediately. Maybe I’m missing something here?

          • ErilElidor@feddit.de
            4·
            6 months ago

            I guess it is impossible to say what would have happened if Google never used XMPP. To me it mostly looks like google joined XMPP and made it way bigger than it was before and eventually left it again, making it small again. But is it worse than before Google even joined?

            Maybe, but can we say for sure?

            Maybe the lesson is not “don’t let the big corporate players in”, but rather “make sure the development of the underlying protocol itself is done in an open way”. If Google/Meta adds proprietary extensions, just don’t add them to the main protocol. If they leave the protocol again or changed their implementation in a way that is largely incompatible with the open version, nothing is lost than what they brought in initially. Doesn’t that make sense?

            • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
              5·
              6 months ago

              I agree.

              I think a good example is how Slack started off by having good IRC integration, then slowly added features which were incompatible with IRC, and finally terminated IRC integration.

              So clearly, Slack killed IRC, right? (…of course they didn’t!)

              I see the potential situation with Threads as similar.

              • niartenyaw@midwest.socialEnglish
                3·
                6 months ago

                the problem occurs when most of the content comes from Meta (they will likely have the vast majority of Fediverse users). especially if major communities exist on their instance. when meta decides to no longer support fedi integration, those in the fedi are forced to decide between staying with their communities by ditching the fedi and moving to threads or having many of their communities ripped away.

                meta will do this at some point as a play to draw users to them, but we can decide if we want to be affected when that comes to pass.

    • young_broccoli@fedia.io
      31·
      6 months ago

      I dont care if they scrape my comments I just wouldnt want to see sneaky “promoted” posts aka ads and I enjoy the idea of boycotting facebook.

      Ultimately the decision is for the instances owners and admins to make, not ours. I will just migrate to one that doesnt federate with facebook if I have to.

    • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
      12·
      6 months ago

      I agree, and I predict people will eventually pick instances that are doing what you suggested.

      My understanding is that the defederation is to prevent MetaFacebook from getting to a point where they control the entire thing and then destroy it.

      I don’t think defederating is the right move for that, but it’s a move

    • moitoi@feddit.de
      12·
      6 months ago

      It’s not about looking what’s happening in the garden, it’s about entering in the garden. It’s two very different situations.

    • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
      10·
      6 months ago

      And the only email I want blocked is a domain where every single user is malicious, not a domain run by a malicious entity which has normal people as users, who aren’t necessarily very tech literate.

      You’ll never get the tech iliterate people to switch to the rest of the Fediverse otherwise. Defederating Threads is about making it as bad as possible for its users - it’s about hurting Meta and stemming its bad influence on the web.