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.
I’m personally opposed to defederation in all but the most extreme circumstances. I think more people communicating, even through a questionable platform, could be a could thing. A lot of people are speculating that this is some scheme to kill the fediverse but there’s no real evidence of this yet, and frankly, I’m not convinced we’re big enough that Meta would really consider us a threat. If evidence of such a scheme does materialize, then obviously at that point defederation makes sense. But at this point, I think defederation (and denying potentially millions of people from experiencing the fediverse) solely on speculation seems like a bad idea.
I was actually thinking of suggesting a defederation policy be drafted, so that we can have clear circumstances under which we would or would not defederate. That way we can operate off of consensus rather than the whims of admins—well-intentioned as they may be. Curious what the community thinks of that idea, whatever the decision on this particular topic ends up being.
I get where you’re coming from, but honestly, I think Facebook’s history is enough evidence.
I did write down some “typical reasons” for de-federation in our Wiki: https://wiki.f-hub.org/books/slrpnknet/page/lemmy-instance
But it is intentionally a bit vague and left open for interpretation as there will be always edge-cases and people trying to game rules. So no, I don’t think it will be ever possible to have “clear circumstances under which we would or would not defederate”, its always a bit of an individual judgement call related to both our specific community here and the health of the wider Fediverse.
In the specific case of Threads, I think it would probably not matter so much for our specific community here, but the threat to the wider Fediverse is very real and warrants a coordinated attempt to keep them out as best as we can.
And “denying potentially millions of people from experiencing the fediverse” is just not the case. They are free to make an account on another Fediverse server that is not run by a known bad actor like Facebook.
I’m glad there is something but I think a clear document has the potential to avoid a lot of potential issues. Such rules would help eliminate or clarify many edge cases and I somewhat doubt that we’ll ever be large enough that instances are deliberately trying to game our specific rules. But if it does we can always revise the document with whatever solution seems most practical.
And sure, people are free to join Lemmy… if they know about it. Which they largely don’t, and perhaps never will if we choose to isolate ourselves from most of the web. But it seems I’m in the minority on this issue so the decision has been made. We will see what the consequences are in time. Given Meta’s past behavior, it may prove wise. But there is also a cost to defederation that we should keep in mind when making these decisions.
I'm personally opposed to defederation in all but the most extreme circumstances.Can you define ‘extreme circumstances’?
Is literal nazi propaganda extreme enough? Because you can already find it on Threads.
I was actually thinking of suggesting a defederation policy be drafted, so that we can have clear circumstances under which we would or would not defederateThat I agree with. Instances should have it layed it out clearly.
I mean it depends on how much and how it is being managed. Unfortunately, nazi propaganda is prevalent in many societies, so I don’t think it will be possible to have a platform be completely free from it, excepting very small, isolated communities. I can find it on posters outside my house, but that clearly doesn’t reflect the views of the vast majority of people in my neighborhood. It’s here on Lemmy as well. I don’t think that alone warrants some kind of quarantine policy, if those views are being actively opposed and/or removed. If an instance is operating as a safe haven for those views to fester and spread then that may warrant defederation if it is causing serious harm to federated communities.
I agree with this.
I think that in the long run, if the Fediverse model is successful then a confrontation is inevitable, but i think it makes sense to defederate as a response to Meta doing something specific and deplorable rather than just for joining.
I also like the idea of drafting a defederation policy.
Does their history not count? Threads doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.”
Fair.
What if the goal is to use knowledge of their past behaviour to make an informed guess about their likely future behaviour?
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.
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.