1y ago

YSK: Threads soon joining the fediverse.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1085036

I personally feel as if its like polluting the fediverse!

General Discussion @lemmy.world

Threads soon joining the fediverse. Thoughts?

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93 comments

Hey @zuck@threads.com , you should really flag your account as a bot, thanks!
- Negative. Zuckerberg is an actual human, not a quasi sentient conglomerate composed of experimental AI platforms developed by the US Air Force to explore alien worlds via the Stargate program.

Moved to Fediverse to get away from the data hoarding and selling that those types of companies partake in. Really hope most instances will defederate from threads and prevent Meta from collecting more data.
- The only thing they can collect (as long as you aren’t on their services) are the things that are available for the entire world to see. So your comments, usernames etc. are already visible and they won’t get any of your personal data as that’s not known except to your instances admins.
- They will collect or probably are already collecting. Even if everyone defederate from Threads, they can and will open a secret instance and get all the data without anyone knowing it

I'm interested in seeing how the enshittification of Threads will unfold. It's all super neat and cozy right now with a clean UI, no ads, not many sign up nags, and such. When they build up their userbase, we'll see how the platform devolves.
- This article sums up what has happened a few times already: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
  This isn’t any different.
  
  Thanks for that article, was a great read. Hope history doesn't repeat.
  
  I said in a different thread but: It's a good, and very scary, reading but I would argue that it does not directly translate here because Lemmy / Kbin and Reddit are not social media per se, they are content focused instead of being person focus. Here no one cares who you are, we are all here for content. The XMPP EEE succeeded because once defederated people were not able to talk to their friends, defederating Threads would cut us off from strangers and their content, it's not a big deal.
  We'll see what happens, hopefully the Fediverse will not be another free social media attempt killed by greedy corporates.
- It surely won't take long. I'm expecting a speedrun.
  
  Enshittification Any% WR
- Well, we have our ace in the hole! When people get sick of being advertised at, move them to the Mastodon client, or Jerboa, or Artemis - no ads, no tracking (unless you keep using Meta's servers).

I just started the use the fediverse to get away from Meta (I have a somewhat active Instagram) and Reddit.
Now unfortunately my userbase is going to threads without knowing what it even is. I'm trying to spread awareness about the fediverse but it's like yelling into the void. I signed up for threads and will continue to try to post content about the fediverse, but I also have to have an audience to share my art to as I'm trying to build some interest for a game I'm making.
This really sucks. I feel extremely upset about this whole meta thing. I could continue to try to build from scratch, but I am hoping to release the game next year and I already have 3 years head start on Instagram, it feels bad to also just abandon what I've worked hard on.
I dunno, I'm just venting. I hate Meta. I don't even have a actual Facebook account. Hell I didn't know Facebook owned Instagram until a year in.
I'll just try to continue to stay active on my fediverse accounts. And try to promote the fediverse on the centralized BS networks.
- Hey man don't overthink it. You need a meta product for work or for a project, just use it professionally. You need to think about your own success and go where your audience is.
  Now on your personal time if you don't want the toxicity of those places come to the fediverse and let's have a nice chat.
  I think the goal of the fediverse is not to eat the world but on the contrary to give us alternatives so we can compartmentalize our internet life.
  
  Thank you so much, seeing the whole threads thing ruined my day yesterday night and this morning. I felt like a sense of hopelessness for the future of decentralized platforms.
  You're right, I can continue to use both for different purposes.
  Thank you so much. Seriously!

Is it possible to defederate them as a preventive measure?
- Yes, the domain to block is "threads.net". Ask your admins to consider doing that.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
If Kbin or Lemmy allows them to federate with us, I'm out of here.
- Same. If kbin joins in, I'm gone. I haven't been here long enough to give a fuck, but I do love it. I want kbin and Lemmy to make the right decision, but won't think twice about leaving the second I see things taking an enshittified turn. Fuck off, Meta - nobody wants you here.
  
  The beauty of this all is that you can just head to a different Kbin or Lemmy instance. There absolutely will be instances that refuse to federate with Meta.
- I felt the same way but then I read this and changed my mind about it https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/
  Thinking about it I'm in an European country where Whatsapp is the default messenger app, if it had interoperability I could be on another FOSS app and be tracked by Meta just when I talk to people who are on Whatsapp and be free when talking to people not on Whatsapp, this could be great to make people switch "clients", which is damn hard now because "everyone is on Whatsapp". Interoperability is the shit and we should embrace it!
  
  No, we should not embrace interoperability with them. Read this https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
  Don't let them get the foot in the door. Preemptively block everything.
  
  We have interoperability for emails but most people use gmail/microsoft , so you could be tracked even if you use protonmail
- There's nothing here to leave from in the first place, this place is pretty much empty at the moment. At least when a big player joins the fediverse it will bring users here and we will finally get decent content. The good thing about the fediverse is that the bad actors can just be defederated if things get too bad, unlike reddit for example.

Right now I think getting people familiar with the fedeverse is a good thing
- Nothing good will come from meta, ever. They will alway look for a way to corrupt any social media to their favor in order try to dominate the Web. At this point of the internet history anyone giving a speck of trust to them is dream walking into a disaster waiting to happen.
  
  Except VR! Although awful decision to make games exclusive in an already niche environment
- If meta pushes this it will be to brand themselves with decentralized social media. The average person will associate the concept with meta and assume it was a meta invention. This may be a long play by meta to get in front of things like mastodon/lemmy/kbin/etc and become an established player in the space to the laymen before the actual established players can do so
  It’s a gross misuse of their obscene power bordering on monopoly and hardly a good thing. Even if the above isn’t true they will 100% use it to harvest as much data as humanly possible without consent and tons more if you’re stupid enough to give them consent. They will tune algorithms to feed people rage bait and stupid bullshit to drive engagement at all costs. And they’ll load it with intrusive targeted advertising
  Fuck meta
- I agree, but I don't think Facebook is going to openly promote the ability to choose instances or explain federated software. I'm pretty sure everything that makes the fediverse cool is going to be hidden from users.
  
  If this allows at least people to discover how the fediverse works (even if I doubt they will push people to it), it will be a great victory, because it's the biggest pain for newcomers imo.
  Also the simple fact that the fediverse is mentioned will hopefully bring more people here.
- They won't be getting familiar with the fediverse though. They'll be getting familiar with Meta/Threads, as happened with Google Talk and XMPP.
- The problem is you don’t want the kind of people Meta will bring here to be here. Also the fact that they’ll take all your info and sell it to every company and government on Earth.
  
  It really needs to be considered that included in that group of "people Meta will bring here" is the vast majority of people's real-world friends and family. And for better or for worse, a lot of people are going to want that, actually.
- Same thing people thought of when Google made an XMPP based client.
- Agreed.

I’d delete my account and join an instance that would defederate from corporations

Some clever coding genius should host an instance for a bot they make that stays federated with everyone, and the entire point of the bot is to crawl across posts and anyone posting from Threads gets a nice public reply about why Threads is a toxic instance and they should switch to a non-Meta one immediately.
- You absolute legend, I'm disappointed I can't code now..

I'm also concerned about the potential for embrace/extend/extinguish, but searching for other fediverse users and posts is enough of a hurdle that threads might end up naturally staying a fairly separate instance.
- Honestly I don't think the fediverse is big enough for zuck to consider it a threat.

FWIW their doc about the fediverse:
https://help.instagram.com/169559812696339
- They will collect data of third party users/services as well -_-
  
  Did someone expect otherwise? That may be why they're not in EU yet, that should be (legally) impossible under GDPR.

Can somebody explain me exactly how defederating them would give us a different outcome?
I'm genuinely curious.
Meta couldn't give less fucks about 100k users on lemmy, they are targeting people that isn't and will never use nor understand what the fediverse is.
You keep them out, good. They don't care, they just want to fill their own bucket with stuff that is outside anyway
Twitter people going to threads is completely independent from anything in the fediverse. Those people won't even notice any difference if they are federated or not.
They are in for the brand and the fomo, not the content
- Defederation isn’t about punishing them. It’s about keeping their garbage off this platform, and keeping it separate.
  
  That's good, but people are proposing it as a defense against an eventual EEE, that's what I don't get

Threads, where you can live in a pretend simulation that your ass isn't owned by Captain Facebook.

I mean I know why ppl are scared it will kill off the fediverse, but the only thing that can kill off the fediverse is the Devs. As long as they don't sell it or start involving a bigger company in the development, we are fine. And pull requests are transparent and therefore not a thread with enough common sense.
I see the risk but I don't think it's that imminent.
- I don't think it's that imminent.
  It'd be best to avert the risk while it's not imminent though
- The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago, the second best time is now.
- Even if they did, whatever open source code is available before they sold the code will always be under that license, meaning if you have an older version of the code you could simply fork it and start a new project with the same codebase. Furthermore, Lemmy is under the AGPL which means you couldn't even rerelease it under a different license.

The instance I'm on has already preemptively defederated/blocked Threads.

Hey @zuck@threads.com , you should really flag your account as a bot, thanks!

This is how it should work. I don't want to have to sign up on every different service. If people I want to follow choose to post stuff there that I want to read, I can do so from my Mastodon account.

well, sooner or later the normies™️ will find a way here, whether through Meta or some other corpo

93 comments