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].
Then what good will defederating do if they’ll just do whatever they want anyways, like if defederating is the best solution, because otherwise they’re too powerful, why can’t we just defederate at a later date? We can disconnect at any time going forward.
Because if you do it later, you’ll break all the connection people will have made in the meantime.
If you never federate in the first place, the Fediverse can grow on its own in peace, and people who want to join, can join.
It’s the same problem as what happened with Beehaw. They’ve always wanted a small community and do their own thing, but they left the door open and after closing it, made a mess of everything.
(Except thousands of times worse.)
You know, that’s actually a good point. Alot of others are solely saying “well it’s meta, so no!” But that argument makes a lot of sense, especially with the beehaw comparison, I was annoyed with that because while I understood parts of their argument, doing moves like that just feels like people trying to gatekeep the fediverse, but it would have been much easier if it started disconnected. For that reason alone, I’d be ok with starting defederated and possibly reconnecting later, but that way the band-aid never needs to get ripped off when it turns out thread will be worse than people like me hope.
Tbh though, I know people are flipping out here demanding it be defederated today, but the moment the federated posts start to flood in (I mean thread is huge in comparison to the fediverse), it’s going to get turned off probably right away until things can adjust and they figure out a plan. I’m not 100% sure how federation works on the server side, but I remember kbin not being able to federate due to intense server load, I wouldn’t be surprised if lemmy.world struggles HARD the first few days after all of the thread posts start flooding in, if they even come to Lemmy (rather than just Mastodon like they talked about)