how to block meta from mastodon

It's worth pointing out that the wiki article lists several examples of Microsoft using this approach but I wouldn't class many of them as successful.

It looks like articles today are saying that Meta is delaying integrating ActivityPub at launch.

That said, I'm not seeing how we get to the last E, extinguish. By its very nature, ActivityPub is decentralized to avoid total control. So even if Meta embraces the technology and wants to monetize it (because capitalism, of course), extending ActivityPub would (hypothetically) be open source - or they would fork it, diverging and making their version closed, and otherwise not function in full with other ActivityPub instances (like with kbin, Lemmy, and Mastodon). Without buying the platform from the developers in full, I don't see how ActivityPub or the greater Fediverse dies. And I could just be missing something obvious, so if you can explain how we get there, I would really like to hear and understand.

I guess the only way I could see it is if Threads got so popular that people literally stopped using the other apps - but I also don't see that happening, because anyone already using stuff like Mastodon are using it because Twitter, Facebook, etc, suck ass and they've moved away from sites like that.

EDIT: Thanks to the one person that actually replied, I saw I was on the right track at the end, but failed to see the obvious (as I assumed).

I doubt that is the plan. The Fediverse is tiny, even after the recent growth. Prior to June it was basically just Mastodon, and I doubt Meta is agile enough to start this from scratch in response to the June growth. This is a lot of effort to take down a competitor that's widely considered to be rough around the edges, and is only just now hitting 2m active monthly users.

Realistically Threads has been in the works for a while as a way to eat Twitter's market share while Twitter destroys itself. I suspect they see value in the ActivityPub protocol in the same way Yahoo saw value in email in the 90s. Regardless of whether EEE is their intention or not, Meta's presence in the Fediverse is going to have major implications for its long term stability.

EDIT: on further reflection, I suspect the value they see is pressuring other would-be competitors to also implement ActivityPub. I suspect they do genuinely want to grow the Fediverse... because doing so would increase the amount of data they could collect and sell from it.

The idea is that at first threads.net will seem "normal", like all the other fediverses

Then they start adding features that either break against other servers, or straight up aren't supported, making threads.net seem more enticing just because all the neat features aren't on the other sites.

Think how Internet Explorer killed Netscape with all the Page Load errors caused by ActiveX, yet everyone wanted ActiveX sites.

Once they've walked through the path of least resistance and grabbed the bulk of the traffic, they just defederate from everyone.

People are concerned about Facebook/Meta trying to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish ActivityPub - if I've understood correctly.

You're acting like there's only two situations: The entire Fediverse defederates with them, or the entire Fediverse federates with them. That's not the case.

I, personally, do not want to interact with anyone using Threads, because Meta has a proven history of poor moderation and of manipulating the narrative for political gain on Facebook and I see no reason to think they won't do the same here. I am not the only one who holds this opinion. Those of us who feel this way can use instances that defederate with them, and have our way.

If you want to interact with them, you can maintain an account on an instance that does federate with them. You do not need to have a Threads account, nor does anyone else.

meta is not here to promote open networks. They will do more harm than good. If you want to learn more about how google achieved it with the XMPP you can read the story here https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html written by one of the core developers.

I don't want to interact with anyone on Threads. It is new and it is Facebook.

Meta joining the fediverse is like Raytheon joining anti-war protests. They are not there for sincere participation.

No worries once threads becomes big enough they will defederate from fediverse /s That sure will be hostile to fediverse users.

When Thread finally enable federation, just unleash the Lemmy meme community there. We'll see how fast they roll back the federation feature on their own after their feeds are getting flooded with beans.

They have also already declared that if you federate with them, your instance has to abide by their code of conduct, so they already throwing their weight around.

Strongly disagree here, better to cast them down now while the chance is there. No mercy or quarter provided to Meta considering their track record.

If anyone is foolish enough to go there, let them, but do not drag us towards them.

Lots of naivety here. Big corps only act in their own interest. They view the world in terms of opportunities and threats. Eating Twitter's lunch is an opportunity. The Fediverse is too small to be worth much today, but someday it might grow up and challenge the status quo. That makes it a threat.

Some instances will federate and some will block them. It doesn't have to be all one or the other.

Threads is new - unless you meet someone who for some reason only has a threads account, just talk to them elsewhere.

Otherwise, why is it the Fediverse user who has to get the threads account? Tell your people to make an account elsewhere. If you are conscientiously avoiding threads, you're probably the only one in the relationship with a principle boundary to cross in this situation.

I'm all for federating with them. But give the user the ability to defederate their posts/comments based off their settings. I would rather my information not be supplied to any company owned by Facebook, that's just me.

that's exactly what I was thinking

This opinion doesn’t seem unpopular to me.

While I think I agree we shouldn 't just defederate them. This is for a user to block them. And if you tell users how they can block them, it will maybe take a bit of pressure away from admins to do it.

During the first wave of Twitter refugees , there was a lot of explaining about ignoring and blocking users. Which can never hurt IMHO. Certainly because it can decrease the load on the volunteers that run an instance

I agree with you.

Instances can defederate from meta at any point they choose, should it become necessary in the future. Until then, it is a huge boon to the more decentralized parts of the fediverse to get content from where all the "normies" are, as well as giving more visibility to non-meta instances and giving said normies a road to the less data-hungry parts of the network.

I'm with you. What's the hate with Threads? It's going to basically just be like another Mastodon instance anyway, right? Just keep using whichever instance you want and Threads will end up adding more content to the fediverse. I don't really see the downside.

Scary stuff! Fuck google , Microsoft and facebook

Same reason I am highly critical of Jack Dorsey's BlueSky and its attempt at rolling out a separate protocol. The last thing we need is for the Fediverse to be fragmented into a dozen protocols that do things ever-so-slightly differently and prevent network convergence.

i steal your formatted post, to post it again. I want visibility for this.

@Nougat It doesn’t prevent them now, as they can just easily crawl all of your posts on here because you are posting on a public instance. Defederating from them does nothing to make your public content private.

Easy peasy!

This is exactly my concern, I don't want my online activity to become another revenue stream for meta. If they can put ads next to our posts then we're back to working for free for the billionaires.

Yeah, not a fan of the ominous shadow threads™️ casts. I don't trust them not to flood the fediverse with assorted toxic garbage to push people back towards their walled garden platforms.

The fediverse offers something radical - a new shot at genuine self determination and a socialised, self-governing internet. That shit spells B-A-D N-E-W-S for incumbent platforms (imo) and they're bad actors in general; they wouldn't think twice about smothering anything that threatens their short/long term profits. Who'se going to stop them?

Might be a little bit overly risk concious but goddamn. If I were them, I'd be trying to kill alternative ecosystems before they grew - especially if mine (metas) is both trash to use, and be used by.

based

I feel like avoiding a corporate trap for instant growth for the sake of protecting more sustainable long term growth is still in essence a focus on growth.

I agree with the decision to try and dodge this poison pill, but I disagree on the ideology that we shouldn't try and get as many people on board the fediverse as possible. I want federated social media to have revolutionary power, and you can't have power without leverage.

Thanks for the article. Well worth reading.

Meta is also a threat to the privacy of fediverse users

Ross Schulman, senior fellow for decentralization at digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that if Threads emerges as a massive player in the fediverse, there could be concerns about what he calls “social graph slurping." Meta will know who all of its users interact with and follow within Threads, and it will also be able to see who its users follow in the broader fediverse. And if Threads builds up anywhere near the reach of other Meta platforms, just this little slice of life would give the company a fairly expansive view of interactions beyond its borders.

https://www.wired.com/story/meta-threads-privacy-decentralization/

It’s actually entirely possible that the vast majority of the team there is pro-fediverse and Meta “wants” it to succeed. But the thing about corporations is they’re fluid entities and could turn anti-fediverse overnight for no reason other than it’s the best financial move now.

The only thing we have to ask ourselves is, at any point in the future will the best possible financial move for Meta be to begin sabotaging the fediverse? It almost seems like a certainty, doesn’t it?

Same with Kbin. I would honestly go back to reddit sooner than I would accept being smooshed together with Meta.

I don't think so. How would they kill the fediverse? Like there will still many communities that will not federate with Meta and still continue to operate as usual.

That seems to be a tactic they use to obtain the pieces of info you didn't already give them.

It's not widely shared because the actual facts of that story don't help the "Facebook will kill activity pub" narrative.

Before Google Talk and Facebook Messenger adopted XMPP it was an extremely niche messaging protocol only used by nerds. After Google Talk and Facebook Messenger dropped XMPP it went back to being a niche messaging protocol used only by nerds.

The standing of XMPP was, if anything, better off after it was abandoned by Google Talk and Facebook Messenger than before those platforms adopted it.

So then for somebody trying to scare monger about Meta, this story doesn't help. It hurts that narrative, and that's why people panicing about Threads aren't talking about XMPP.

The entire fucking point of fediverse is that corporations can be disconnected when they try to come knocking. You're literally arguing against the reason the platform exists to begin with.

No offense, but I have plenty of ways of interacting with my 'normie' friends that don't involve removed out my personal data. If someone insists they want to hang out with you but only when they're hosting a Pampered Chef party, they can fuck right off.

999/1000 users won't do any research on how 'this new fb thing' actually works beyond 'where can I sign up'. All they want is a stream of content which the greater fediverse provides free of charge. It is going to be the whole Reddit situation with one more step. Portray yourself as the shining beacon of love and liberty, slowly start creeping in more monetisation and then build a wall once you get big enough. Meta and the overwhelming majority of the user base don't care who is morally 'better'. That's not how capitalism works.

You're missing the bigger picture. If threads is federating with the fediverse, then that means Zuck is downloading and indexing a copy of everyone else's posts OUTSIDE of threads.

Honestly, after literally over 30 years on the internet, I can safely say that this idea of bringing everyone together into one space, that will make both the space and the people better, does not work. Even back in the 90s it affected the signal to noise ratio badly. Now there are significant sets of bad actors, shitposting/meta and general noisy ignorance and hate that can easily, easily drown out any decent signal. It's like a permanent Eternal September.

Think of this like the subject of tolerance - typically criticised that as a philosophy, in that it would thus tolerate the very things that would undermine and destroy it. Rather, it is not a philosophy, but a social contract - if you don't use tolerance yourself, others are not bound to be tolerant of you. Of course, I'm not talking about being tolerant/intolerant here, but using the quality of engagement and participation in a community, as a barometer for whether that user should be engaged in that community.

Some barriers to entry are self-selection for appropriate users, and therefore a good thing - whether through obscurity, level of engagement, education or whatever. Without these, everything gets overrun and crushed. We haven't yet found a good self-moderating system for online communities that provides everyone with a positive and fulfilling experience.

Threads can be Threads. The fediverse can be the fediverse. No-one is forced to choose just one, and trying to force them together is going to crush the fediverse. Lemmy has about 20,000 active users. Threads got 30 million signups in 24 hours.

Naw man, don't play games with your abusive ex. Meta can stay over there, we can stay over here. We don't need to talk to each other.

Do you honestly think only the positive, friendly people would hop over? The entire fediverse will be overrun by crazy political conspiracy theories and hostile homophobic/transphobic/anti abortion stuff in no time.

Yup this is dumb and misguided

As far as I could tell they haven't signed the anti meta pact so probably not.

There is an anti meta pact. Encourage your instances to sign and follow through. https://fedipact.online/

I don't understand why this is even a question. Is the tragedy of the commons not taught in american education? Is Land Clearance(one example of many linked) and Enclosure not taught? (Serious question open to anyone, I do not know what history is taught outside major european countries)

This is essential basic history to understand how land developed from being a collectively worked upon thing, decentralised, owned by everybody that worked on it, into something that was owned by a tiny tiny number of people so that they could exploit it to the maximum degree.

Decentralisation is the creation of a commons. The goal of corporations is centralisation of power and monopoly. They are at complete polar opposites in goals. The entire point of the fediverse in the first place is to destroy the centralised power of web corporations who took what was originally a digital commons populated by thousands of sites and communities and through a form of digital enclosure turned it into a space controlled by a handful of companies.

Learn history other than the popular military shit folks. It is essential in analysing what affects you.

From what I've seen, irregardless threads/there version on the fediverse is going to scrape any and all instances also on the fediverse. Blocking them wont necessarily help with any of this, but maybe if even communities do they wont have enough content to make it profitable? Maybe I'm naive. Well, I know I am, but any way to stick it to the man is a good idea in my book.

Haven't you seen what RHEL is doing? Apparently if you're big enough you can just say fuck that. I mean who you gonna answer to? Is anybody really gonna take this all the way up to the supreme court?

This is for instance admins rather than users.

This function is designed to allow you to maintain a list of blocked domains rather than just one.

Complicated and pointless. There's no reason why you wouldn't want more engagement.

I feel like we are seeing lots of these tech companies just clawing at new innovations for profit cause they can't seem to run a stable business otherwise without fucking things up somehow. See the the crypto/nft boom, AI and it's rapid and still somewhat untested and shoddy implementation, etc. We've got strikes popping up in the US as the months go on cause people are definitely feeling the shittification of things in multiple industries including tech and entertainment as of late.

Everything tech companies like meta have been doing in the last several years is looking for their next growth fix to keep their investors happy while running their business like a toddler between sweets.

Elon happened to set Twitter on fire, Instagram is failing to beat TikTok in short form content or even competing with things like YouTube, Facebook itself has been shriveling up over the years, now there's some cool new tech space in the Fediverse and no corporates taking advantage of it - probably looks like early crypto to Zuck if he can swoop in and outpace the open source projects with enough funding.

While you may dismiss Zuckerberg as delusional, he's shown a talent for using others' ideas and making them profitable under Facebook. The success of Instagram and WhatsApp is proof. Google+ is nowhere to be seen anymore.

As for Mastodon, underestimating Meta's potential threat, particularly federating with Mastodon (this can be seen as "easy hosting" of something like Mastodon), might be a mistake. Even without originality, they have the resources to cause significant disruption.

I think that an important part of twitter was the proximity to power through politicians, journalists and celebrities. If threads is good at making those people switch over, then I think a lot of other people will switch over as well. On big part of twitter users is people who love discussing the news and current events and that's much more appealing when you can do it on the same platform as people who are in the news or write the news.

(On the other hand lemmy has Margot Robbie so maybe we're in the race as well?)

Sure hope they get defederated at least.

Can't you get banned from Threads? What happens when someone posts content on a Fediverse server that isn't supposed to be allowed on Threads? Porn, for example.

ffs.

All my homies hate meta

Fuck the Zuck!