I just saw that lemmy.ml has pre-emptively defederated from threads. Are there any plans to do that here? I personally want nothing to do with Meta/Facebook, and I’m sure that’s not an unpopular opinion around here.

edit: y’all, please pay attention to where you are when coming from all.

edit again: kbin really ought to make a post’s home instance more clear.

  • CeledielOP
    22•1 year ago

    Meta doing something specific and deplorable

    Does their history not count? Threads doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

    • Andy
      6•1 year ago

      That’s definitely sufficient if the goal is to cast a judgement on their ethics. But I think the point of defederating isn’t to express general disapproval. It’s to maintain the best possible experience for the users of the instance. Defederating from Facebook just seems like it’s motivated by giving them the middle finger. Which is fine, but as a tool, I don’t think that’s what federating is for.

      I don’t feel strongly about this, though. It’s an opinion. If the rest of the instance or the admins decided to defed meta I would not care at all.

      • CeledielOP
        14•1 year ago

        Defederating from Facebook just seems like it’s motivated by giving them the middle finger.

        Well I’ve found where we disagree! I think defederating from Threads is more of a safeguard of the users of this instance from Meta’s predatory data practices, and history of employing the classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy. Personally, I think having zero connection to anything run by Meta is certainly giving the users of the instance the best possible experience.

        • Andy
          3•1 year ago

          I want to point out again that currently, Facebook offers no federated instance to defederate from. They’ve promised this in the future, and it may never happen, so it’s all academic.

          Also, I don’t feel strongly about any of this. People are free to ignore me.

          With that said, if Facebook did offer a federated product I would want to federate so I could see content from friends and family on that instance. Facebook can’t harvest data or show me to ads on a different instance. If they tried to do something really stupid, like push ads to me through by posting them on behalf of my grandma, THEN I’d agree we should defederate, and most likely we wouldn’t need to hold a vote, because the admins of this instance would just send out an announcement that Facebook is in violation of the instance’s guidelines and has refused to correct behavior, so they’re being defederated, as dictated by the defederation policy.

          I think that’s how it should work.

      • ProdigalFrog
        M
        12•1 year ago

        I think considering how incredibly harmful Facebook/Meta has been to society, and that Meta intentionally pushes divisive and hateful content because it creates the most engagement, it makes sense from a pragmatic point of view to simply pre-emptively block them in all ways possible. Their entire history as a company has shown they will make anyone who uses their services, and society as a whole, worse off. Intentional or otherwise. It need not be motivated from a metaphorical middle finger, but as self-defense against a practical certainly of something bad coming from interaction with them.

        It takes only a short glance at the ‘Facebook papers’ leak to see why it makes sense to distance ourselves as much as possible:

        The so-called “Facebook Papers” include a mix of presentations, research studies, discussion threads and strategy memos. What the documents reveal about Facebook’s behavior is stark and damning. They show how some of Zuckerberg’s public claims about Facebook’s principles and activities clashed with internal company findings. For example, he once told Congress that Facebook removes 94 percent of the hate speech it finds. But the inverse was true — according to internal estimates, the number was probably less than 5 percent.

        Ahead of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Facebook’s efforts to stem the flow of misinformation proliferating on its networks fell short. Company employees were unhappy as far-right groups spread the call to join the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the attack.

        “This is not a new problem,” one unnamed employee fumed on Workplace, an internal message system, on Jan. 6. “We have been watching this behavior from politicians like Trump, and the — at best — wishy washy actions of company leadership, for years now. We have been reading the [farewell] posts from trusted, experienced and loved colleagues who write that they simply cannot conscience working for a company that does not do more to mitigate the negative effects on its platform.”

        The Facebook Papers also make clear how Zuckerberg prioritized maximum engagement and the company’s bottom line over ethical concerns about safety and best practices. While he espouses a form of free speech maximalism in public in the United States, he has participated in enabling regimes of censorship elsewhere. My colleagues also pointed to a 2019 episode in Vietnam, where Zuckerberg personally decided to comply with demands from the autocratic government in Hanoi to censor dissident voices on his platform.

        “Ahead of Vietnam’s party congress in January, Facebook significantly increased censorship of ‘anti-state’ posts, giving the government near-total control over the platform, according to local activists and free speech advocates,” my colleagues reported.

        The Facebook Papers “are astonishing for two reasons,” wrote the Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance. “First, because their sheer volume is unbelievable. And second, because these documents leave little room for doubt about Facebook’s crucial role in advancing the cause of authoritarianism in America and around the world. Authoritarianism predates the rise of Facebook, of course. But Facebook makes it much easier for authoritarians to win.”

        To assume that some good could come from interacting with Meta is, in my honest opinion, a naive stance. But that’s just my two cents.

        • Andy
          4•1 year ago

          I’m sort of tired of talking about this, particularly because it’s all academic: they don’t offer any federated instance currently to defederate from. But I want to clarify my reasoning.

          My point is NOT that we should “gIvE tHeM a ChANce!” We all know they are run by greedy, exploitative, untrustworthy people.

          My point is that I think our response should be rooted in causes and effects rather than vibes. If they offered a federated instance that I had friends on, I’d want to be able to see my friends posts and have them see mine. And if Facebook then tried to find ways to push ads to a remote instance, then we’d obviously defederate. Because that’s an appropriate tool to correct a specific harm.

          That’s all I’m saying. Currently, Facebook has no means of affecting my experience on this instance, so I don’t care whether we preemptively reject them from federating. The moment that they DO affect my experience, they’ll obviously be booted. That’s good enough for me.

          • CeledielOP
            4•1 year ago

            My point is that I think our response should be rooted in causes and effects rather than vibes.

            I gotta be perfectly honest here; if despite all the discussion that’s happened in this thread, you can still say something like this, then I really don’t think anything we’ve said has really gotten through to you, and I too “tire of talking about this.”

      • livus
        9•1 year ago

        if the goal is to cast a judgement on their ethics

        What if the goal is to use knowledge of their past behaviour to make an informed guess about their likely future behaviour?

    • @LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
      2•1 year ago

      I guess what’s the specific history you think is relevant here? I’ll admit to not being an extremely close follower of Meta’s various activities. I have a sense that they are vaguely nefarious but that’s about it.

      • CeledielOP
        4•1 year ago

        It only relates to a single issue with Facebook, but I highly recommend the documentary The Great Hack.

        tl;dw: Cambridge Analytica manipulated the 2016 US election, the Brexit vote, Ukraine’s 2004 election in which they supported pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich, and various other elections, and they got their data mostly from Facebook, who was complicit, and even cooperative.