- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
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.
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I cannot see anything bad here. Blocking an actively malicious actor should be the norm.
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predicted? they’re facebook, they are not predicted to be bad, they ARE bad.
lets learn from history and not be deer in the headlights
It’s often advantageous to prevent catastrophe before it occurs rather than clean up the mess once it happens.
Why cover your nuts when you can just let somebody kick you there repeatedly?
Did you already forget the shit Facebook keeps doing? Repeatedly.
Facebook has and it’s doing plenty bad. At this point, assuming this time they will be good is too much of wishful thinking.
Still I would let the instances decide. Seems a bit counter spirit to try to force them. Even as a user your can block them (there are two that a lot of users are blocking already…)
Its probably good to federate so that Threads users can leanr about alternatives and migrate to a better instance on the fediverse
Just to be clear, threads can federate with an instance that is not defeated with them, and in this case threads users can see all the Lemmy content, but not the other way around.
So this means that we can just keep posting anti Facebook content all the time and they will serve it to their users or will have to be blocking it.
The more I think about it, the worse it seems for threats to federate.
What’s the number of Threads users compared to Lemmy? If the number of Threads users greatly outweigh the number of Lemmy users, then we’d simply be drowned out by all the Threads posts. That’s part one of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Extend adds functionality to Threads that Lemmy either can’t support or won’t support for a while due to development time. People migrate to Threads because Lemmy is “missing” functionality. Plus, though I’m not clear on the exact legal specifications, proprietary code can be added to open-source code, and the proprietary code would be copyrighted. In other words, Lemmy devs would have to figure out a way to interact with and mimic Threads’ proprietary code using open-source code.
Extinguish is when Threads’ support of Lemmy is eventually dropped. The users left on Lemmy have suddenly lost a huge amount of content, and they’re left with fewer users than before Threads enabled federation.
Right, so that means when someone on Threads is complaining about Threads, Lemmy users can’t chime-in and say “uhh, just register on here and thats not an issue, guy”
Well, meta plans to federate with at least some instances… Right? Else their users won’t be able to speak either.
they haven’t done anything yet
Haven’t done anything to the Fedivese yet.
“the mass murderer have killed multiple people in Spain and Italy, but we can’t just assume he will do the same thing in France”
Sure, but this is Mastodon, not murders. Much lower stakes.
if the stakes are so low then blocking them is as low-stakes as not, so why make a fuss about it?
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Oh? I missed where Meta had done bad things to previous Fediverses.
Like XMPP?
Not Meta.
Well sure MS-13 may be a brutal trafficking gang known for extreme violence, but they haven’t done anything to ME yet.
I think this comment chain is going in a circle while everyone actually agrees with the underlying point.
I cannot see anything bad here. Blocking an actively malicious actor should be the norm.
It might be true that they aren’t ACTIVELY being malicious currently. It’s also true that they have a horrible history, and they will likely be actively malicious in the future.
(I say ‘might’ because I seem to recall them being malicious towards the fediverse with secret meetings with admins, but I didn’t follow up on that)
like this?
Wasn’t the original post amended to state it wasn’t intentional but rather a bug?
“bug”
like this?
Thought of this immediately as well
So wasn’t Google when they killed XMPP.
It’s Facebook dude. To put it in Lemmy friendly terms, they’re not different entities in the way that Linux and Windows are. They’re different entities in the same way that Windows and Xbox are. It’s not technically the same thing but it’s the same people calling the shots. Expecting something different is only going to leave you disappointed.
I’m voting for Trump because he hasn’t done anything bad as a second term president.
They have done a lot of bad, not with threads, but with any other app. A wait and see approach to Facebook at this point is insanity.
imo it doesn’t matter for Lemmy right now one way or another, and maybe not ever. Being federated with Threads doesn’t do anything yet. Defederate or not, the only change (from my understanding) is about making a statement, or standing with other microblog platform instances that made a choice.
On mastodon however, I’ll likely either use a federated instance or run two accounts. It’s very likely that some person I want to follow will be on Threads, and until people can convince them otherwise ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What’s nice though is that if Threads is on activitypub, you won’t need to log in to see the content. It’s only if you want to engage with the content, and that can be done from a second Mastodon account.
It’s very likely that some person I want to follow will be on Threads, and until people can convince them otherwise
You realize that it makes it a lot more difficult to convince people to come to the rest of the Fediverse instead of using Threads if people are following them and federating with Threads?
This is exactly how Zuckerberg wants you to think.
This is exactly how Zuckerberg wants you to think.
These conversations we’re having are all speculative, and we won’t know how things play out till we get there. Trying to predict the behaviour of large groups of people is… difficult
What I predict is that defederation will play right into their selling point. We’re going up against a behemoth of evil with enough money to bankroll creators into joining and promoting their platform. Defederating (when the majority of people don’t understand what that means) will end up with people joining Threads.
Threads has a very high (artificially inflated) user count, it’s by a company everyone already knows, and all instagram users already have an account. The strongest selling point we can have is “Join Mastodon, you can see all the same stuff but it’s run by a non-profit instead of Facebook” That doesn’t work if the selling point is “Join Mastodon to see different content”.
For what it’s worth, I’m actively using Mastodon and trying to inform any friends / family that are jumping ship to shift to Mastodon. Best case scenario, Mastodon takes off properly, Threads becomes a failed project by Meta, and we can nail this shut for good.
But you’re giving Meta the same selling point, right? Join Threads and see all the same content. There’s no point in going elsewhere then. It kinda goes both ways.
You’re right that we don’t know what will happen. So it could just as well be that Threads would swallow the whole Fediverse and then if Threads blocks an instance, it’s like a death sentence for that instance. That’s the whole embrace, extend, extinguish.
But you’re giving Meta the same selling point, right? Join Threads and see all the same content. There’s no point in going elsewhere then. It kinda goes both ways.
Somewhat yes
- I think Threads doesn’t need that selling point because of the other advantages that it has
- I find that when X defederates with Y, and people want to see all the content, all else being equal they will pick Y. Usually that means that Y = “We are happy to have X, but they chose to leave”
We saw a bit of that last July for how some people picked Lemmy instances
when X defederates with Y, and people want to see all the content, all else being equal they will pick Y
Hmmm maybe? But I think that’s a misunderstanding from a lot of users. You don’t want to see all content, trust me. Defederating is not necessarily bad. In most cases, it’s healthy.
Yep I agree with you there :) It’s a useful tool, and it’s great that we have the option
The best place to go is Z, which federates with both.
Is this really a problem for Lemmy though? Threads content isn’t going to show up here because threads doesn’t have communities, and Lemmy doesn’t allow you to follow people.
Part of the concern is deceptive/astroturfed content developed as advertising showing up in Lemmy communities. While those same actors could theoretically be based on lemm.ee, that’s a lot more work than simply scaling up operations when you’re doing it on Threads anyway.
Yes, my point remains. Even if a Lemmy instance is federated with masto or threads, the content does not appear here on Lemmy right now. It’s physically impossible. Lemmy literally has no code written to support self posts and to follow users.
For example, here is NPR’s masto account viewed through Lemmy.world. You get their name, avatar, banner, and bio….but zero content.
https://lemmy.world/u/NPR@mstdn.social
Until lemmy decides to copy Reddit’s user pages, this isn’t a problem. Federate, defederate - makes now difference for lemmy right now.
TIL Lemmy doesn’t allow you to follow people. Wtf.
I feel like this would be spotted and stamped out immediately. Everyone’s eyes are on Threads right now; astroturfed content might sneak in on Mastodon, where regular Threads content will be mixed in with the hypothetical astroturfed content, but here on Lemmy there will be little to no Threads presence due to lack of interoperability, so every single Threads account that shows up will be noticed. It’s already super visible when Mastodon users show up due to the weird formatting issues that happen due to the lack of support.
I just don’t see an astroturf campaign as being viable unless Threads implements community functionality, which seems pretty far out when they’re only now implementing basic federation with Mastodon.
It’s not that crazy, the Threads devs are already looking at specific FEPs for things like quote posting. If they really wanted to, they could implement Lemmy-compatible community groups.
Threads can still participate via comments on Lemmy. I believe they can also post to communities via hashtags?
Mastodon has groups similar to Lemmy communities, Threads could definitely implement them too.
Meta: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/, https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1320040111, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039
Instance admins: Let’s give them a chance guyyyyss!!
Those of you who think the problem is data scraping or whatever are totally missing the point. All profit-motivated social media platforms engage in promoting hate content for engagement, and in doing so have deadly real world consequences. The Fediverse is one of the few online spaces where people can just be themselves naturally without being manipulated by algorithms. Given their history, there’s no reason to assume Threads won’t be any better about handling their own community, and anything that happens with them will affect the rest of us.
for real. im new to lemmy but places like hexbear seem really good for trans stuff. i hate how so many trans places are dependent upon facebook or reddit to exist. facebook itself is problematic because those fuckers already assisted a genocide in myanmar, whats to stop them from helping to massacre trans people here?
hexbear seem really good for trans stuff.
HB and blahj are the two explicitly pro-trans instances. Hexbear is strongly oriented towards communism but I would strongly suggest them over blahj just because of their abysmal handling of c/196’s noncery. They just don’t have as strong of a track record as hexbear.
hexbear seems way more active in the trans spaces at least. its also nice seeing everyones pronouns and being able to guess what variant of transness someone is talking about when theyre describing their experiences.
im on lemmy cause i saw advice saying that you could access pretty much all the lgbt spots on the fediverse from here, which seems true. ive already seen a bunch of transphobic bullshit on this site and on blahaj so maybe ill just swap to hexbear, idk
Yeah you should make the jump if not seeing transphobia is your goal. lemmyML is a great omni-instance but as a result you’re going to be exposed to a lot of right-wing bullshit. And really, transphobia on blahj? That’s extremely disappointing but not all that surprising.
yeah one of the top trans posts the other day was filled with transphobes and people debating the merits of transphobia. i think blahaj doesnt have very active modding?
We aggressively remove transphobic/transmisic posts/comments on lemmy.ml. Please report any that you see. But understand that we don’t control the content of other Lemmy instances, so when you select “All” instead of “Subscribed” or “Local,” it’s the wild west.
i guess the question is more of bans and not just removals. for instance this guy https://lemmy.ml/comment/9833425 seems to regularly go on to write misogynistic and queerphobic screeds, but seems to not have been banned because he is a moderator and has been here for 4 years?
They do have moderators they just care more about PR-washing than actually protecting their trans base. I would stay away from them.
Hexbear is definitely a good place for trans stuff, its just a shame about all of the authoritarians.
youre starting to really sell me on it
There is a spectre haunting Lemmy
for real. im new to lemmy but places like hexbear seem really good for trans stuff.
I am not trans, and so this may be incorrect, but while of course you can use any instance you choose, IIRC it’s https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/ that is very explicitly trans-supportive at the instance level. (I’m not saying other instances are transphobic, to be clear)
Edit: I see you’ve already taken the convo far past the comment I replied to, sorry for not reading ahead!
You think lemmy doesn’t have algorithms?
Verifiable algorithms. Algorithms meant to make using the platform enjoyable, rather than meant to entrap users for profit.
Maybe I’m just being naive, but this seems like an argument in favor of federating with Threads. One of the reasons Facebook and Instagram are so effective at driving engagement is that users have basically no ability to curate, sort, or filter the content that they see, especially since third-party clients are banned. You can’t even view most things without logging in.
The implementation of ActivityPub in Threads is a strange departure in this context - (federated) Mastodon users can view all of the content Threads has to offer without subjecting themselves to Meta’s arguably predatory curation algorithms. It almost seems like an escape for people who want to use a Meta-sized platform without Meta getting its grubby little fingers all over your mental wellbeing.
If people are worried that Threads will affect likes and comments (and therefore like/comment-based sorting algorithms) on other instances, it should always be possible to exclude Threads’s contribution to those metrics, no?
f people are worried that Threads will affect likes and comments (and therefore like/comment-based sorting algorithms) on other instances, it should always be possible to exclude Threads’s contribution to those metrics, no?
That’s one of the effects of defederating. And you are still ignoring the overall point of the comment 2 layers up from your reply.
Really I think you are losing the forest for the trees. Meta/Facebook/Zuck is a known quantity. They will corrupt and exploit any environment they are a part of via any means they can. We don’t need to be able to predict every last detail of how they will do so to know it is true. They have a track record of being awful, anti-consumer corporate citizens. WHY would we want to try to invite them in and try to contain them? Can we make the fediverse invisible to them? Of course we can’t, but why would we cooperate in any way?
Folks who don’t think this is a problem can use an instance that federates with them, just as I’ve chosen ( and will always choose) an instance that does not.
There is no reasonable argument for trying to be a good neighbor to Meta, because you can always, always be sure that Meta has no concern for being a good neighbor to you.
They will corrupt and exploit any environment they are a part of via any means they can.
Right, unless they can’t, though. Ideally the Fediverse should be resistant to this kind of influence without resorting to defederation. I’m also concerned that defederating from Threads will make more Threads users than Mastodon users.
We don’t need to be able to predict every last detail of how they will do so to know it is true.
I mean, some idea of what they might do would be nice.
They have a track record of being awful, anti-consumer corporate citizens. WHY would we want to try to invite them in and try to contain them?
I couldn’t care less about Meta itself. My interest begins and ends with Threads users. There are a ton of people that would never give the Fediverse a try for one silly reason or another—predominantly, I would argue, the fear of the unknown—and this seems like it could be an opportunity to overcome that obstacle if leveraged correctly. The prospect of everyone and our parents using social media that is not completely beholden to Meta is exciting to me.
Again, maybe I’m wrong, but this whole thing is basically an experiment, isn’t it? I’d like to see what happens before reaching any conclusions.
I’m also concerned that defederating from Threads will make more Threads users than Mastodon users.
Already done, and by an order of magnitude at least. (probably many orders, I don’t have the numbers at hand)
I mean, some idea of what they might do would be nice.
You can look at their entire history for that. And somewhere in this very discussion some other person has given a very plausible overview of their potential EEE approach. I’ll add a link to that comment later when I have time to find it again.
But, I’m starting to realize that no amount of evidence is sufficient for folks who want to federate with Meta, and at the end of the day my freedom ends where yours begins, so although I will continue to advocate for defederation and flee any instance that does not make that choice, I very sincerely encourage you to do you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_controversies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_involving_Meta_Platforms
Here’s a couple recent individual ones:
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/26/meta-gaza-censorship-warren-sanders/
The prospect of everyone and our parents using social media that is not completely beholden to Meta is exciting to me.
I firmly believe that hoping Meta isn’t going to be the worst possible company they can this time is not the way to achieve that, and is in fact actively working against that future possibility.
I’ve been alive, adult, and working in IT for the entirety of the existence of Facebook, so I’ve had a long time to see everything I needed to see about them.
But, I’m starting to realize that no amount of evidence is sufficient for folks who want to federate with Meta
This is an incorrect assumption, because
And somewhere in this very discussion some other person has given a very plausible overview of their potential EEE approach. I’ll add a link to that comment later when I have time to find it again.
I would be very interested to read this! There are definitely limits to my optimism here. I think Meta is a horrible company and I don’t expect them to act in the best interests of the Fediverse; I’m just not yet convinced that them giving up what is essentially free and ad-free API access to one of their platforms cannot be used to our advantage. Threads federation could absolutely be catastrophic, but it’s also possible that it’s a good opportunity; that’s all I’m saying.
That’s the same thing with a different label.
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.
@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.
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?
I think this article, How to kill a decentralized network, gives one of the best explanations, because it uses a real world example of how it has happened in the past.
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?
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.
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.
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.
It’s not about looking what’s happening in the garden, it’s about entering in the garden. It’s two very different situations.
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
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.
I’m kinda against defederation or blocking anything at an instance level, unless the instance causes straight up legal issues or is literally created for the sole purpose of harassment
Well, I think Threads meets your litmus test requirements.
It is a certainty that Threads will heavily influence the future development of Activity Pub. This will inevitibly lead to the corporatization and enshittification of any service Threads can affect.
The only resistance we can offer against this is defederation and noncompliance with the will of the behemoth.
I understand your “what if” scenarios, but this is an existential crisis that needs to be resisted against with all instances working in concert. This is not a “what if” scenario. This is the actual iceberg and it is big enough to ruin the fediverse for all instances, no matter their affiliation with the garden.
So, we either unite to defend the independence of the fediverse, or we let a corporate giant take it by ovewhelming us with their “important updates for your security” until we are all assimilated.
Ngl, this screams “think of the children.”
common Fedi Garden W
Seems like a way of bullying community leaders into running their instances how Fedi Garden feels is appropriate. Which is intrinsically against the nature of the Fediverse, in that instances are meant to have their own autonomy.
Fedi Garden’s position in this space is to be a directory, not a dictator. This feels like an overstep.
The nature of federation is that you can make your own instance with your own rules independent of a single walled garden and still participate with the other members. Create your own index if you don’t like this one.
I think communities/sites etc. on the fediverse should live and die by their decisions. They can make this decision if they want, time will tell if its the correct one or not. That is the nature of the fediverse!
It’s funny to me how many big flare-ups and popular issues have been about defederating or controlling other instances but we’ve not really had a single popular event where users work on anything together to benefit community.
Individuals have made tools but there’s not been calls to action and mass cooperation events for anything beside silencing unpopular groups. No community design discussions devising and implementing tools or features, no group efforts to catalog or document or display useful data…
I don’t know if it’s just that people here haven’t considered the possibility of doing something positive or that outrage about others is just so much more compelling
Fedi.garden also has their own autonomy. They have the right to make whatever rules for their website they want. If you don’t like how they run their list, then don’t use it. Make your own. If people like yours better, they’ll use it instead.
the crochet(?) veggies are adorable
Sean, I think your article is missing the most important section: alternatives to Fedi Garden.
Can you at least list a few at the end of the article?
Finally someone with enough balls and brains.
Every time something like this gets posted, there are always Lemmy users crying to defederate their Lemmy instances.
But remember, the current concern is with Mastodon, NOT Lemmy. Lemmy can’t actually view the post types that Masto and Threads make. Wendy’s can post all the Threads ads they want - we’re not going to see them here. We can’t. That hasn’t been built.
Try it. Go view someone’s Mastodon account in Lemmy. You don’t see their posts.
we’re not going to see them here. We can’t. That hasn’t been built.
It has been partially built insofar as Kbin and Mbin can see Mastodon posts here and Mastodon interacts with us. Wouldn’t surprise me if Lemmy eventually gets some of that functionality too.
If Meta starts to EEE ActivityPub that will affect all of us.
To illustrate even more: I follow a Lemmy privacy “group” with an Akkoma account.
You will in fact see their posts if they reply to Lemmy comments. They’ll then appear as comments in Lemmy. I believe Mastodon users can also post to communities by using hashtags, though I’m not 100% clear on that.
When you @ mention a community from Lemmy as a user on Mastodon you can post to that community from Mastodon. The first sentence of your Mastodon post will be used as the title, which is why they often look so strange on the Lemmy side.
You can also follow a Lemmy community from Mastodon, but it gets a bit messy as every comment will be shown as a boost Mastodon side.
I hope the groups addition that Mastodon is working on will fix that mess.
@Ghostalmedia @deadsuperhero I think the fact that I was able to see and reply to this comment of yours from Mastodon proves this idea false, if you check the Post history of this account you will also find that content posted in Lemmy is visible.
They absolutely do interact, lemmy is way more Mastodon friendly than most people give it credit for, considering the fact that communities/groups, automatically boost every post and comment for visibility.
So people on Lemmy being concerned about poorly moderated or cesspool microblog instances is indeed a valid concern.
I post stuff on lemmy via my mastodon account so I don’t have to deal with image hosting on my lemmy instance, so its not quite that simple. You’re not wrong, but they do interact
It’s not us seeing Threads that’s the problem, it’s Threads seeing us (and thereby trapping all of us in their sticky web we tried to escape, what with their shadow profiles and whatnot).
So what would stop them from shadow profiling you by scraping content, or using a different domain? Most lemmy instances are configured to federate with a blocklist, meaning any unblocked instance can download data. Facebook can just make an instance under a different domain and download the data that way. Or they can just scrape user data from the web facing interface.
Posts and comments on lemmy are public. If facebook wants your publicly accessible data from the fediverse, de-federating from threads isn’t going to stop them.
The entire point of the Fedi-verse is so that one person or small group of people can’t ruin the entire platform for everyone else. Anyone who tells you how to moderate your content, backed up by a threat can screw off.
Removed by mod
The beauty is that people can do what they want with their own instance, and I can move and still be in lemmy/mastodon.
Is this the last migration?
