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].
An address to @Ruud and the lemmy.world team:
I would like to start by expressing my sincere gratitude and appreciation for the hard work you’ve done with lemmy.world. But I am strongly opposed to federating with Threads. Please read this comment in full, as I believe it outlines our community’s sentiment and reservations.
I think it might be helpful to use an analogy that I think will help express the feelings of many of those within our community regarding the problem with the “wait and see” approach.
What’s to say Threads won’t follow in their very well-established footprints under Meta as a company?
If I go to a friend’s house and their child spits in my face every time, I don’t want to go to my friend’s house. I tell them this. The friend says, “Well this time just might be different, let’s just wait and see!” Meanwhile, this kid spits in my face without fail, every chance they get. There is a very consistent and pervasive pattern of this.
Why should I believe this kid won’t spit in my face all of a sudden, when they’ve taken every single chance they could repeatedly, knowing that it was wrong and not caring what repercussions would befall them? Do you really think this kid is going to refrain from spitting in my face this time?
Meta/FB have continually demonstrated their core business practices are unethical and that they will continue carrying them out without regard for laws or their users’ well-being. There’s no reason to wait and see. It’s not logical to believe this time will be different.
Threads would bring such a large influx of hateful, racist, violent, bigoted political extremists to the fediverse. They will also do whatever they can to exploit users on this site for their own gain. Their modus operandi has been to exploit their users.
Instead of just conjecture and analogies, I will now provide factual information regarding Meta’s practices as a company.
This really should be obvious by now… but Meta mines and sells their user’s information. Just look at the permissions you have to grant them for Threads… That alone should tell you there’s no reason to “wait and see.” Just look right now. They haven’t changed…
FB users have to agree to all sorts of unethical things in the TOS, including giving Meta permission to run unethical experiments on their users without informed consent. Their first published research was where they manipulated users’ feeds with positive or negative information, in order to see if it affected their mood. It did, and they successfully induced depression in many of their users!
Meta has played a very key role in spreading misinformation, perpetuating dangerous conspiracy theories, and radicalizing the alt right. This is present across nations, but it certainly contributed heavily to the climate of political extremism that led to a mass of insurrectionists to attempt to overthrow my duly elected government…
I will now turn to an article that surmises well the core practices of Meta as a company:
Elevates disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories from the extremist fringes into the mainstream, fostering, among other effects, the resurgent anti-vaccination movement, broad-based questioning of basic public health measures in response to COVID-19, and the proliferation of the Big Lie of 2020—that the presidential election was stolen through voter fraud [16];
Empowers bullies of every size, from cyber-bullying in schools, to dictators who use the platform to spread disinformation, censor their critics, perpetuate violence, and instigate genocide;
Defrauds both advertisers and newsrooms, systematically and globally, with falsified video engagement and user activity statistics;
Reflects an apparent political agenda espoused by a small core of corporate leaders, who actively impede or overrule the adoption of good governance;
Brandishes its monopolistic power to preserve a social media landscape absent meaningful regulatory oversight, privacy protections, safety measures, or corporate citizenship; and
Disrupts intellectual and civil discourse, at scale and by design.
I ask you now if you truly believe this is the sort of player you want on the Fediverse? Do you really want to federate lemmy.world with such a blatantly immoral and detrimental corporation?
I have really enjoyed my time here on Lemmy.world and have so greatly appreciated the hard work of you and your team. I have been donating to you to help with the costs of running this instance.
However, federating with Threads contradicts my philosophy and ethical principles, and I will be sadly canceling my donations and finding a new home should we federate with Threads in the future. I firmly believe that most users on lemmy.world share this sentiment. I hope this comment helped express the resistance and fears of our community.
Once again, I appreciate all the work you guys have done. But I respectfully and severely dissent on this issue.
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That is a real quote, for anyone wondering…
This isn’t “our community’s” sentiment, you can see a number of different sentiments in this thread.
Anyone who thinks federating with threads for the content is Naive, and should just join threads instead. Unfortunately it seems like Lemmy Worlds instance controller is naive as well based on this post. Looks like its time to instance hop again or self host. Shame too bc I liked what LW had the potential to be, but I’m vehemently disappointed with the instance owners attitude towards corporate coming in, which already has me looking elsewhere for a home. If LW doesn’t defed, ill self host and defed with LW and any other meta connected instance. I cant believe so many of yall are so naive to meta and EEE. Those who dont learn from history are doomed to repeat. One only has to look at xmpp(rip) and google for evidence.
Setting aside the absolutely ridiculous logical fallacy of “if you disagree with me, you’re just naive”, you did land on the correct answer. Someone will spin up a Threads-free instance and people who care should certainly go to that instance instead. That is the correct answer; not insulting anyone who disagrees (before you even read their disagreement!)
Bullshit, this server could resist corporate influence and YOU could find another instance. You’re acting like the people that don’t like your point of view should leave. That’s not any worse whatsoever than “if you disagree with me, you’re just naive.” They are 100% both “My way or the highway” sentiments.
Personally, the burden is on you all to prove why you shouldn’t just go make a threads account if you care about threads?! Those of us that want nothing to do with Meta really shouldn’t have to opt out of a Lemmy instance to keep corporate influence away from us when so many of us are Reddit refugees who came here specifically to get away from corporate bs. Especially not when the fediverse is an answer to and result of big tech’s outsized social media influence in the first place.
It’s like you all joined the Rebels and want to invite the Empire over for tea…wtf?
Calm your pantaloons, buddy.
Nah hes got a point and you dont have a decent rebuttal lol
It is naive to not treat dangerous actions of your biggest competitor seriously. It’s in their best interest to either use us in a way that would make them the most money or to destroy us.
@joe What are you like 12 years old? maybe you should take a class in reading comprehension. You completely twisted what i said to make it seem offensive, like a teenager. There isnt any fallacies in my argument. Just issues with your understanding of my argument. I wasnt calling anyone naive simply because they disagree with me lol idk how you got that from my comment. I did not say, if you disagree with me youre just naive. i specifically said “Anyone wanting threads ro federate for the content is naive” and “naive to meta”, as in if youre willing to trust meta threads federation, then youre naive to big corporations. That’s just a fact plan and simple. My opinion on the subject is completely objective. If little red riding hood is trusting of the big bad wolf, then shes naive. I cant help you felt defensive, but that alone kinda infers there is truth in what i said.
Another thing you misunderstood from my original comment(which you incorrectly stated i got “correct” lol), I think threads sympathizers should just join threads. Ill self host if i have too just to get away from threads. But dont turn Lemmy into threads. Thats like turning lemmy into reddit. Go join threads and just let lemmy be lemmy. But honestly I’m at the point if this goes through and Lemmy doesn’t do anything to stop it ill just leave social bs altogether. go back to RSS and webscrapers. Its really sad but apparently people cant have a space without corp trying to shit on it and profit from it so im done.
I really hope that threads doesn’t just fragment world. I guess only time will tell.
It’s probably their goal to do that anyway. Even if we all federate with them, they will do anything they can to damage their competitor.
You can also see sentiments shared across other posts. The vast majority I’ve seen has been users here expressing concern and disinterest in federating with Threads. I’m going to go off of the cumulative discussions I’ve seen across posts rather than limit it to judging a userbase by comments in a single post.
I’m not saying that all users here share the exact same sentiments as I; rather the majority is opposed to federating with Threads. Maybe I’m wrong. But the outspoken majority I have seen is opposed.
The people who are unhappy with the idea are the ones making posts. People who are ambivalent or don’t care aren’t, and the likelihood is that a large portion of the users, if not the majority feel that way.
Please don’t assume a “silent majority” in this matter.
From what I’ve seen so far, the majority of users who have expressed their opinion have spoken out against federation with Threads. Combine this with the fact that Lemmy’s userbase grew substantially with former reddit users who not only are more likely to actively participate on Lemmy than they were on Reddit, but also left that social platform for reasons that mirror some of the sentiments expressed against Threads/Facebook/Meta, I don’t think the idea of silent majority applies here.
If you are ok with Threads and all that comes with it, you are free to create an account with them. If you have an Instagram account, you might already have a Threads account automatically created for you by them. On the other hand, if you are a user who does not wish to interact with Threads, you wouldn’t have the option to opt out short of finding a new instance that has defederated from Threads.
I would agree with you if we were on reddit right now. You have to remember that a very significant population of the users here are the redditors who actually gave enough of a shit to leave, and try to start from scratch here.
From the beginning, what I was trying to state is that I felt my listed concerns were largely consistent with the vocal majority that I have seen discuss this topic among various communities on this instance. I’m not saying everyone shares my views. But we can see how things play out. I still see the majority of users here sharing these sentiments.
No, this isn’t reddit. People are here to avoid corporate social media, the majority don’t want to federate with Facebook.
Some people are, not everyone. Personally I don’t give a shit about meta and am completely fine with federating. Doesn’t cause me any trouble. I really doubt it’s a majority who want to defederate anyways. Once somebody shows concrete numbers maybe, but all I’ve seen is a few very vocal whiners
Corporate threads federation will literally kill lemmy. Again EEE. Google killed Xmpp the same way. And if your naive enough to believe otherwise you should just join threads instead.
Google didn’t kill XMPP - the just stopped using it. XMPP died because it wasn’t particularly useful outside of a few applications.
I very likely will make a threads account. Especially if it has a lot of the features from Reddit that I’m missing.
more power to you.
You pretty much summed up everything I fail to articulate because i’m pretty stupid lol. Well put man.
This, all of this. Meta is the one company I really manage to completely shut out of my life, partially through use of extensions like Facebook Container and partially through simply never interacting with anything I see from them. I’m on places like Lemmy because I want nothing to do with these huge corporations, because they always bring nothing but corruption and exploitation.
Any social media or advance size plays a role in promoting disinformation. Even small social media sites do.
There is an entire federated server full of nothing but communists
Only one of my many criticisms. And the fact that misinformation happens on other social media sites is a strawman fallacy you have created. The problem does not lie in the existence of misinformation; it is all about Meta’s response to it. They ignored, enabled, and perpetuated harmful misinformation and outright propaganda that led to deaths and radicalization of the masses. Don’t obfuscate from Meta’s aberrant practices with the shift in topic critism and whataboutism.
Not a good thing, and a total red herring and more whataboutism.
It’s not whataboutism if it’s serving my original point. You can’t remove all bad actors from social media because eventually the bad actors are just the gullible. It’s the same reason companies with good security policies can still have breaches due to the human element.
There has never been and will never be a social media platform that doesn’t contain morons spreading disinformation. My example of a community in this SM family being entirely communists is supporting that initial thesis.
I am aware it’s only one part of your post but the rest of your post is largely opinions (e.g. “harvesting my data is bad”) and not worth digging into. One either shares that opinion or does not.
You are absolutely engaging in whataboutism. Two things:
The existence of bad actors does not mean we should become complacent with bad actors.
Meta is a particularly bad actor, and the existence of other bad actors does not mean we should refrain from holding particularly bad actors especially accountable.
Your definition of “bad actor” seems based on your opinion of meta rather than on proof that they are a moustache-twirling villain, which is my entire point.
Wow, what a compelling argument! Not hollow childish accusations and distraction at all…
You sound amoral. You are arguing that mining and selling user data is permissible, and you are arguing that the clearly unethical business practices (in regard to widely accepted international ethical business standards) listed above does not qualify them as a bad actor.
What does in your opinion?? Do you find them providing information that leads to persecution, that aids in genocide as acceptable business practices??
I don’t know what to tell you man. You sound like you’re straight up astroturfing for Meta. We clearly fundamentally disagree.
Starting to genuinely wonder if these folks aren’t paid corporate shills. How did these people even find their way to an anti-corporate environment just to argue that Meta and all the rest are just fine people and that their absolutely terrible reputation doesn’t even exist? It’s straight-up gaslighting, their list of offenses and abuses is pretty long. Meta is certainly not above paying people to astroturf and defend its reputation. To anyone that knows a damn thing though, that ship sailed a long time ago.
maybe they’re playing devil’s advocate?
I’m not arguing that selling data is permissible, but rather that your view that it isn’t is an opinion. That’s why I didn’t bring it up in my initial response. You’re unlikely to budge from that opinion.
Not sure what you’re struggling to follow, but I also did not engage in any “childish accusations.” Are you responding to the right person?
If you’re genuinely curious then yes, I believe social networks should give free reign for others to espouse whatever they’d like, with the sole discretion being speech that could bring harm to the network itself (e.g. child porn and similar). Individual countries can pass laws banning certain communications if they so desire. I don’t see how that is a social network’s job.
Pretty sure it’s already illegal to plan a genocide online, so idk what to tell you.
I have no interest in arguing these points further, only answering because you asked. My point of disagreement remains what I pointed out above.
It’s sad that people are just downvoting you rather than engaging. This is becoming another Reddit-like echo chamber
Well said. Why should we expect anything less from a company like Meta
This is not the sentiment of “the community.” I will be leaving lemmy.world if it preemptively blocks threads.
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