There has been significant discussion in recent weeks regarding Meta/Threads. We would like to express our disappointment with the negative and threatening tone of some of these discussions. We kindly ask everyone to engage in civil discourse and remember that not everyone will share the same opinions, which is perfectly acceptable.
When considering whether or not to defederate from Threads, we’re looking for a decision based on facts that prioritize your safety. We strive to remain neutral to make an informed choice.
First, there seem to be some misconceptions about how the Fediverse operates based on several posts. We’ve compiled some resource links to help explain the details and address any misunderstandings.
Fed Tips , Fediverse , ActivityPub
Initial Thoughts:
It seems unlikely that Meta will federate with Lemmy. When/if Meta adopts ActivityPub, it will likely affect Mastodon only rather than Lemmy, given Meta’s focus on being a Twitter alternative at the moment.
Please note that we have a few months before Threads will even federate with Mastodon, so we have some time to make the right decision.
Factors to Consider:
Factors to consider if Meta federates with Lemmy:
Privacy - While it’s true that Meta’s privacy settings for the app are excessive, it’s important to note that these settings only apply to users of the official Threads app and do not impact Lemmy users. It’s worth mentioning that Lemmy does not collect any personal data, and Meta has no means of accessing such data from this platform. In addition, when it comes to scraping data from your post/comments, Meta doesn’t need ActivityPub to do that. Anyone can read your profile and public posts as it is today.
Moderation - If a server hosts a substantial amount of harmful content without performing efficient and comprehensive moderation, it will create an excessive workload for our moderators. Currently, Meta is utilizing its existing Instagram moderation tools. Considering there were 95 million posts on the first day, this becomes worrisome, as it could potentially overwhelm us and serve as a sufficient reason for defederation.
Ads - It’s possible if Meta presents them as posts.
Promoting Posts - It’s possible with millions of users upvoting a post for it to trend.
Embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE) - We don’t think they can. If anyone can explain how they technically would, please let us know. Even if Meta forks Lemmy and gets rid of the original software, Lemmy will survive.
Instance Blocking - Unlike Mastodon, Lemmy does not provide a feature for individual users to block an instance (yet). This creates a dilemma where we must either defederate, disappointing those who desire interaction with Threads, or choose not to defederate, which will let down those who prefer no interaction with Threads.
Blocking Outgoing Federation - There is currently no tool available to block outgoing federation from lemmy.world to other instances. We can only block incoming federation. This means that if we choose to defederate with our current capabilities, Threads will still receive copies of lemmy.world posts. However, only users on Threads will be able to interact with them, while we would not be able to see their interactions. This situation is similar to the one with Beehaw at the moment. Consequently, it leads to significant fragmentation of content, which has real and serious implications.
Conclusion:
From the points discussed above, the possible lack of moderation alone justifies considering defederation from Threads. However, it remains to be seen how Meta will handle moderation on such a large scale. Additionally, the inability of individuals to block an instance means we have to do what is best for the community.
If you have any added points or remarks on the above, please send them to @[email protected].
Was this considered? https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Google essentially destroyed Jabber this way.
I was there and Jabber at the time also looked promising and Google adding its GTalk was the push everyone thought Jabber needed and everyone was welcoming it.
Meta will join Fediverse only if it will be still a threat to them, once users will switch to it (let’s be honest, majority of users on Fediverse aren’t purists, and if metra will have some unique features they will switch) they will defederate and Fediverse will lose meta users as well as old users. Just exactly as it happened with Jabber. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Some people think we are stronger than Meta and their influence, which is nonsense, they can ddos all federation with legitimate trafic, let alone influence community.
A lot of people forget that they are master manipulators and have algorithms decide what is popular. Thay can easily choose what they want from fediverse and make it popular, which could lead to painting totally wrong picture of this community.
They can also exert influence on the communities directly by going after their mods and convincing them to move the community to a Threads instance and lock the non-Meta community up behind them.
This will be sold to the users as a way to simplify things, to keep everything from being too splintered, to make things more convenient by having everything in one place…ya know, centralization.
It literally just happened with one of Lemmy.worlds biggest communities: [email protected]. After “speaking with” the moderators of a different instance, the lemmy.world mods decided, with no apparent input from the users that I can see, to lock the community and force it over to a different instance. And instance that seems to want to set itself up as the “primary” place for Android discussion. A more locked down instance with a very different style of moderation which is effectively killing off the ability for users to post anything and deleting just about everything, which wasn’t a problem here on lemmy.world.
So in effect, [email protected], as it was, has just been taken away from the community, all because of external pressure. And if that instance defederates from everything else? Then it was in effect lifted from the fediverse wholesale. Forced centralization by mods that want to go work for the bigger instance.
This will happen again with Threads, and it will happen a lot. Just you wait until the bribes start.
I still don’t understand that decision. Seems like the original community was a lot more popular and was more established, and exactly like you said, they just decided to move with absolutely zero input from the community.
I think this might be somewhat the wrong lesson for Freddy.
The harm Google and Microsoft did to open protocols wasn’t federating with them. The harm they did was snatching up devs from those projects and then later killing their support for those protocols. That is, they sucked up the brainpower maintaining these things and left them to rot.
It’s important the realize this because whether or not every mastodon or lemmy instance says “screw meta” and defederates, the real damage happens when meta hires a bunch of Freddy devs to support their support of Freddy tech, puts them under aggressive non-competes, and ultimately abandons the effort.
The solution to this is figuring out how to pay our devs so they can refuse offers from meta. That or ditch capitalism, but that seems more daunting.
Boy, I sure hope Freddy is careful. Sounds like they’re in danger /s
But more seriously, Lemmy is developed by like, 5 people, most of whom are wholely anti-capitalist. I’d be quite surprised if any of the official devs jumped ship.
You would be surprised at how many anti-capitalists flip on a dime when someone backs up a dump truck filled with cash and empties it on their porch.
I know I was shocked when I found out.
The thought process probably goes something like “This is obviously a ploy to destroy what I’ve helped build but it’s not gaining as much ground as I hoped anyway, this capital will give me the ramp I need to build something that will be better, with blackjack and hookers…”
I think it’s more “Woah! That is a shitload of cash! Let’s go swimming in it!”
There is well-documented impact that money has on thought. You can see it everywhere. Remember what happened to that Minecraft guy…?