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.
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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.
The mess left by a “catastrophe” often consists of rubble and blood, not some internet comment
What the social media algorithms did to teenagers are for sure a catastrophe involving blood. Suicide went up 48%. 131% for girls.
Jonathan haidt have a public repository of all research on the subject.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-childhood-smartphone-use-mental-health-effects/677722/
https://jonathanhaidt.com/reviews/
You mean being instrumental in facilitating a genocide in Myanmar of the Rohingya people isn’t sufficient?
Bringing the Marcos name back to the Phillipines, while minor by comparison, is also an issue with repercussions potentially lasting generations.
The thousands of extra-legal killings that were the direct result of the election of Duterte as president (who was AFAIK elected with direct help from Cambridge Analytica and a vile social media campaign on Facebook) is also nothing to scoff at.
But I think the Rohingya genocide is way more insideous, because Facebook knew that their platform was being used for direct encitement of violence and coordination of progroms and chose to ignore it because they thought Myanmar would be a lucrative market and wanted to consolidate their monopoly power there.
Yes but enough about your mother.
Why cover your nuts when you can just let somebody kick you there repeatedly?
In this analogy, they haven’t kicked your nuts.
Where have you been living the last 20 years? Facebook is a repeated offender.
Sure they have, over and over and over, just not in this neighborhood yet. Folks were either too young to witness or just weren’t paying attention to the decades of anti-consumer bullshit from this company.
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/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/netflix-ad-spend-led-to-facebook-dm-access-end-of-facebook-streaming-biz-lawsuit/
They have been very nearly the worst example of an awful tech company for their entire existence. They will exploit the fediverse to the maximum extent they can, and we should not be voluntarily accompanying them.
Not to stir the pot, but at one point Zuck was an idealist. Circa 2008? When interviewed by a news corporation about privacy concerns he said, and I quote, “It’s your data. You own your data.” At the time, he hadn’t monetized with anything more than ads, and I think he truly believed it.
A short few years later he saw the opportunity to become a multi-billionaire and probably decided ethics and idealism is for poor people. Much the same as Reddit, Google, Apple, etc. Do you remember? Those of us who lived through it remember.
One day, the largest Lemmy instances may be no different. Time will tell.
Slight difference is that Zuck has had control from the start, whereas other companies might have had “don’t be evil” leadership that was… optimized away for financial reasons.
Not that it really matters nowadays. Just an observation.
I don’t really see the point of this comment.
If so, I don’t really care how nice and kind Zuck was when he was a freshman in college. I care about what he has done since then, and leading up to now.
I don’t even get that idea, so I am guessing that can’t be it.
I lived through using 8" floppies, so yes, I remember.
Which of those are open source projects that anyone can fork and/or run their own instance of at any time, providing a place for people to seamlessly transition from Reddit, Google, or Apple if they don’t like what those companies do with their platform? The comparison you are trying to make falls apart immediately.
Take it at face value. The comment is a historical correction and gentle reminder that we only have one chance to prevent data from walking out the door, regardless of how friendly the platform is. Once your data is out, it’s out. Guard it well.
Is FaceBook detrimental now? Yes it is, unquestionably.
Was it always? No, it wasn’t.
Should we de-federate? Absolutely. Yesterday and retroactively, if possible.
Reddit. Once upon a time.
Ah, 8" floppies. Good memories. And bad. “Please read that… Why aren’t you reading it? If you’re not going to read it, spit it out… Let go. Now try again. Why is it blank? It wasn’t blank after I wrote to it. Why did you wipe it? Damn.” It was the best of times.
I was so excited when 3 1/2" introduced attached switchable write protection. The peak of convenience.
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.
cough
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”
Oh? I missed where Meta had done bad things to previous Fediverses.
Like XMPP?
Not Meta.
Facebook allowed connecting with XMPP clients for a while and then cut off that access. While they were not the main offender compared to Google, they still did nothing but leech off the XMPP ecosystem until they decided it wasn’t in their interest any longer.
I’m failing to see what’s wrong about this. They used XMPP and then stopped? That seems to be exactly what people angry about Threads federation want Meta to do with ActivityPub.
The point is that at no point in time where they actually interested in supporting the XMPP federation. It was only a short term tool for them to capture some audience that it would not have otherwise.
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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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.
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”
So wasn’t Google when they killed XMPP.
like this?
Thought of this immediately as well
if only Facebook had started in 2004 and not 2024 we might have some historical evidence about how the company handles moderation or community safety or protecting user data or…
if only threads wasn’t launching literally today and we knew if they’d enthusiastically welcome hate accounts like Libs of Tiktok https://www.mediamatters.org/libs-tiktok/timeline-impact-libs-tiktok-told-through-educators-health-care-providers-librarians
The thing is, Meta does not care about community safety, or moderation, or protecting user data. (Fun fact: they don’t have a data protection agreement, but a data usage agreement.) All they care about is how they can get the most money out of something. Killing off things left and right of their path.
The question is not IF Meta kills the Fediverse but only WHEN they do it.
Ounce of prevention > pound of cure; or in Meta’s case, imperial fucktonne of cure.
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.
the one reason I joined the instance Lemm.ee was because its mission was to avoid defederating and be the widest firehose nozzle of lemmy content available.
even i would prefer for lemm.ee to defederate threads.
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.
And what kinds of trouble do you expect Threads users to create by participating in our communities?
Well, for one thing, Threads is already full of ads. And I don’t mean Threads ads, I mean users posting ads, like ads for their own products or services or for their audience, trying to be an influencer and all that.
But it’s not necessarily the users that will be problematic. It’s more that by federating with Meta, you’re giving value to Zuckerberg. And I don’t want to do that.
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.
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.
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.
Somewhat yes
We saw a bit of that last July for how some people picked Lemmy instances
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.
I think that even if EEE is what Facebook is going after here, after a certain point some users will just get fed up with the demands/changes they’re making and move to an instance that is incompatible/defederated with Threads and then we’re pretty much back at where we’re right now.
Like when reddit gave the ultimatum to switch to their app or stop using reddit we didn’t really have a 3rd option. However if reddit was in the fediverse we could have just told them to have fun with their new platform while the rest of us stay with the old one among ourselves. Sure, you’ll still lose majority of the content there but when it comes to threads we’re not really interested in their content in the first place so it doesn’t matter. If a Lemmy user is willing to play by Facebook’s rules just so that they can stay connected to a bigger userbase then I’m not sure if we’re actually losing anything of a value if and when our ways apart. Facebook can poison the majority of the fediverse but there’s not much they can do with the instances that don’t care if they get defederated or not. The niche instances will continue existing.
I’m not personally against my instance blocking them but I’m strongly against people pushing their values onto others. I would much rather have individual users block that instance if they so wish instead of someone deciding for them. Sure you can always switch instances but what Fedi Garden seems to be doing here is going against the essence of fediverse and bullying instances to do as they want just like we’re worried of Facebook doing.
But many users might now and then we’ve given Threads leverage - stay federated with Threads and give in to their demands and changes, or lose a big chunk of your users. That’s not leverage I want Meta to have. So I say defederate ahead of time.
I’ve seen this sentiment before and I understand how it can seem appealing. Why should anyone decide what any user sees? Just let every user decide for themselves.
However, there’s multiple problems with that idea. Firstly, it doesn’t scale. It’s not sustainable to have every user block all the bad stuff for themselves before they get a sane feed. Secondly, it’s not a whole solution. A single user can block an instance, but that instance will still have an influence with votes (and blocking an instance right now in Lemmy is only blocking community posts so you’ll also see comments from an instance you “blocked” and this is by design). So user blocking simply doesn’t do the same thing as defederation does.
Also nobody is pushing values onto others really - each user decides for themselves what instance to join. They can join one endorsed by the Fedigarden og fedipact or whatever else they want. Or they can join another one. Up to them.
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 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
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?
He’s gotten some temporary bans as well as post/comment removals. Omega_haxor is right about hexbear: it’s explicitly socialist, unlike lemmy.ml, and it’s even more explicitly supportive / aggressively protective of the trans community. Several of the largest instances have defederated from hexbear, so for better or worse, access is more limited.
my thing is this guy is a clear misogynist, hes discussed his misogyny for 4 years now. you dont have to be a socialist to think thats unacceptable. are the rules simply never enforced with bans?
no answer? alright jotting that down… ✏
Okay, let me know how this passive-aggressive pressure tactic works out, person who just just got here. I’ve given you my answer.
getting all defensive about keeping misogynists around? maybe just ban the misogynist? doesnt take someone being new to realize that youre just inviting reactionaries that will drive people off the service, i had this whole interaction and understanding within three fucking days. people come here to leave reddit, not to find more redditors
i asked, and you did not answer, do you actually enforce your rules with permanent bans? what causes someone to be worthy of a permanent ban? do you simply just like this guy and go to bat for him?
I’m not going to take the time to dispel your presumptions nor explain myself, my motivations, or this Lemmy instance. I’ll just say that I’m not convening a grand jury trial and constitutional convention because one new user (who on first impression is giving Western chauvinism vibes) had one negative interaction with one Global South socialist who has been here over four times longer than me.
Edit to add: Again, please note that this is not an explicitly socialist instance. I won’t elaborate as to why, but it’s no more by accident than the explicitly socialist ones. What is lemmy.ml?
🤣 im a communist, dweeb. you dont have to be a communist to think misogyny is bad, in fact, thats the prevailing opinion almost everywhere. the idea that the global south is in some way inherently reactionary is absurd
all youre giving off is chauvinistic reactionary misogynist vibes. jesus christ this place is a shithole, good luck getting anyone that isnt a white guy and/or a techbro here. all im getting is you got a handful of bigoted buddies that you hang out with and are completely uninterested in introspecting on it
They do have moderators they just care more about PR-washing than actually protecting their trans base. I would stay away from them.
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?
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.
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.
I mean, some idea of what they might do would be nice.
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.
Already done, and by an order of magnitude at least. (probably many orders, I don’t have the numbers at hand)
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/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/netflix-ad-spend-led-to-facebook-dm-access-end-of-facebook-streaming-biz-lawsuit/
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.