Lemmy.world Should Defederate with Threads
I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of us are here to avoid another corporate takeover of our preferred platforms. It would seem to me to be a tad irresponsible to allow Facebook into our space with open arms, allowing them to hoover up our data. I would love to keep using Lemmy.world, but will happily change instances if need be, and I feel many share that sentiment.
Well, right now Meta is pushing, not pulling. Meaning, Threads content can be displayed on Masto, but not the other way around.
IMHO, the bigger threat is having Threads content completely dominate other activity pub clients. Other clients / communities could get dependent on it. Then Meta is basically a drug dealer with leverage.
Data collection doesn’t bother me too much. I’m not going to install their client and all of the behavior trackers that come with it, and my activity pub content is already freely available to query on the internet. If they want it, they already have access to it. Everyone does.
Since lemmy can't pull from mastodon/threads, it seems like a complete non issue for now.
Lemmy pull from mastodon if someone from mastodon mentions a user or community of lemmy instance
Data collection doesn’t bother me too much. I’m not going to install their client and all of the behavior trackers that come with it, and my activity pub content is already freely available to query on the internet. If they want it, they already have access to it. Everyone does.
I will be able to follow and see friends' posts and sports teams' posts through Mastodon without needing a Meta account nor install their shitty apps.
All I posted via fediverse is public already, traveling into some obscure instances, so I don't care if Meta uses or shares my public posts.
God why are all crying about XMPP? If you want to make it more popular just start using it yourself. If you don't have anyone to speak with over there just speak with me (seriously DM me).
Also we have a lot of open source alternatives by now so XMPP is just one of many good options which means that the people will go whith what they feel comfortable with. Trust me, if XMPP would be the only decentralized, open source chat protocol around I'd be using it exclusively and many others would probably too.
This, the real threat is the amount of content that federates out possibly hurting others servers' performance as their enterprise kit will scale better.
I like your perspective. More people need to realize that they are responsible for what they put out there.
Threads content completely dominate other activity pub clients. Other clients / communities could get dependent on it. Then Meta is basically a drug dealer with leverage.
How? Because this doesn't make an yota of sense to me.
Flipboard federated. Are you flooded with news from them?
Minds is also federated. I bet most people in this story had no idea and have never seen a single post from minds.
even if they are only "pushing", there will still need to be profile data exchanged with Threads in order to access it, if they have http signatures enabled (i.e. authorized fetch under mastodon)
This is what happened with Google and XMPP
I was surprised to see lemmy.world didn’t defederate. I hope it does. And, I hope a mod weighs in on the planned direction for the instance.
There is no real need right now. Lemmy is focused on following communities, not individuals. This is more of an issue for Mastodon than Lemmy.
It might never be an issue for Lemmy. Threads would need to start organizing people around communities, or Lemmy would need to encourage people to follow individuals (something Reddit promoted and no one cared about)
They weighed in months ago back when it was announced and said they were taking a wait and see approach, where if it did cause problems they would defederate, but didn’t want to preemptively do so. Many other instances did defederate already though.
Whichever way instances decide to go there's a few things people should remember:
Federation can also be reverted at any times if they misbehave. Why should we block them in advance?
Track record.
Historical precedent and #2/#3 on my list above make the case for erring on the side of caution. That and we've got far more to lose than to gain.
The Facebook hatred is understandable and justified, but defederating with Threads is a misguided idea:
Buddy i am here to avoid the lizardman and dont want him anywhere near me. Free software always has been an alternative to corprates and never a replacement. In the name of evangalic fediverse we should not give up our freedom. And above all this whill become like the trade agreement between Hati and the US.
As far as free software goes, how does running free software on your own server that you allow others to communicate with using established standard protocols violate your freedom? Not saying you shouldn’t be able to be selective about federation, but why would Facebook specifically being one of the peers violate your freedom?
I mean, the last point is weird. They'd never say that, and do not care about the illusion of being open.
Point 1 is true.
Point 2, what makes you think federation will make millions of users want to move away, or even know folk are on another service. They'll probably censor the word lemmy and every lemmy address to avoid folk advertising away. The fediverse will just be filled with nonsense data and they'll pull the stuff that helps their platforms and keeps people hooked on the teet. Without that data, they may not be at critical mass to sustain Threads and it might eventually die. With that and Twitter going to pot, avoiding federation actually helps Mastodon as it provides a distinguishable separate entity that has reached critical mass and has significant good will with the user base that motivates them to keep sharing content.
They'll try to dominate the way the protocols evolve. Try to push more and more crap into it because they're too big to ignore. Insert becoming ad, bot, corporate friendlier stuff. Fediverse doesn't need meta. It's nice and cosy and rather friendly here, I'ld like it to stay that way. It's like Google dominates some "open source" and pushes browsers towards more and more DRM friendly etc. We don't need that.
It’s nice and cosy and rather friendly here
And absolutely irrelevant in terms of impact. We have at best a few hundred MAU on a good month. Facebook/Google/TikTok are controlling billions of people.
If we truly believe in the superiority of the Fediverse and that it is possible to have an alternative social media for everyone, we need to go and fight Big Tech. Defederating on the grounds of "I like it the way it is" is coward, selfish and completely lacking ambition.
That's not dependent on federating at all. Meta is a member of W3C, they can be a part of developing and evolving ActivityPub at any point without actively running a service with it.
Doesn't defederating just mean they can see our content but won't see theirs? At least it was like this few months before. Now if this is true we would lock ourselves out of the discussion while they could still do anything they wan't with our content.
am get off old place without federation
when were you supposed to be responsible for others independent actions
That's the thing: actions from other users and from the key players are not "independent". It is a social network, actions and reactions depend on the context and the relationships of everyone involved.
Unless threads implements the full activitypub spec then everyone should be defederated from meta. There is a fine line for meta to walk to not harm the fediverse. Lemmy World is one of the few instances that can handle it. But meta should not be allowed to be a guiding voice in the direction of the fediverse at all
+1, with an additional condition: when Meta inevitably tries to co-opt the activitypub spec and modify it in incompatible ways that only benefit themselves they need to be defederated immediately.
They can try to push ActivityPub development within the W3C without actually using it btw.
I'm actually really trying to play devils advocate... But I'm struggling.
I came to get away from the main stream socials.
I came to minimise my farmed data footprint.
I came to find other like minded people.
These principals alone are shared by quite a few I guess.
If we end up hooked up to the machine we were trying to escape from then coming here was near pointless.
I came to get away from the main stream socials.
You still can. Just block threads.net instance in things like Mastodon and Lemmy.
I came to minimise my farmed data footprint.
Your data is public in fediverse. They can scrape even right as we speak.
I would need someone to confirm this, but I have heard that if you block, then it prevents their instance from scraping your data because they shouldn't receive your content if they are blocked, but it doesn't change the public data being available by other means anyways.
I came to find other like minded people.
Follow hashtags and communities that are your interest. Block users and/or instances you would rather not see or be part of. Also, you can find an instance that fits your values that is already blocking instances you disagree with.
I am mostly indifferent of Threads joining at this time, but those that are not in favor, there are options.
I'm not joking when I say our only sure way of escaping the machine is to get an off-grid cabin in the woods and no longer participate in the internet.
At this point I'm limiting what I access and where. I'm targeting a more 1990's internet experience. I love learning and technical stuff and would miss it if I went off grid, no matter how tempting that is.
Seems like everyone who is "for" letting threads stay can be summed up by "why would I want to intentionally separate this from a corporate entity when they'll just get my data anyway" Like that's a fucking valid argument.
Oppose corpos at all fronts, it doesn't matter if they'll get you anyway. If that's your take, then if your country ever gets invaded, I expect you to bend over and invite the enemy inside.
Lol People are fucking idiots and these are the same people who complain about how everything is getting expensive when corporations are posting massive profits.
Not of course that that has anything to do with this topic
Well said
Well yes, if you want to be disingenuous and not actually understand their argument.
The amount of Meta bootlickers in this thread is incredible.
Noe consider how the number will increase AFTER they start federating!
Someone who disagrees with you is not a bootlicker.
Meta is a garbage company. Meta has done terrible things historically. At the moment we don't know how Threads will affect the rest of the Fediverse. I'm ok with giving Meta a short leash. If you disagree, join an instance that has already blocked them. That's how this works.
I fully expect, once rolled out, I'll block Threads, but that is MY choice to make.
People don't get that with money they can do whatever they want. Want to do something illegal, just do it because you have unlimited funds to pay your legal team to clean up the mess afterwards. We are absolutely powerless against something that can litigate you to death. Defederating is the only power we have. There is no way to react to anything that happens. There are no consequences for their actions. They don't even answer to any governments.
When it comes to Corporates it very much is like the Nazi Bar allegory: you let one Nazi stay because he's beheaving rasonably and not being nasty, and sooner or later the place is going to be full of his friends and turned into a Nazi Bar.
It's the same dynamic only with corporate logos, advertising, hypercommercialism and eventual enshitiffication instead of swasticas, racist messaging and violence.
Certainly in my eperience of it since the 90s, the Internet changed very much this from its early days and spirit as commercial interests from their original foothold almost entirelly subverted it to serve their interests.
My grandma who owned a diner used to say the same thing, but about cops
Fuck nazis and fuck cops
allowing them to hoover up our data
Hate to break it to you, but the fediverse is public. Most instances don't even require an account for read-only access. If Facebook wants your data they don't need to federate to get it.
Don’t even need that. Fifteen minutes To set up your own instance. The entirety of Lemmy still fits on a decent thumb drive.
And realistically, there's nothing stopping them from setting up a bunch of nondescript shell instances to gather data anyway.
On one hand: great, federated tech is catching on.
On the other hand: fuck these clowns, they're not participating in good faith. If Meta wants to join the fediverse they need to interoperate fully with other instances instead of using activitypub to poach fediverse users.
I'm 100% convinced Meta is pulling a classic embrace, extend, extinguish move here.
Last thing they need is our users. Threads is already bigger.
Meta should be fully jetisoned from the entire federation. If people want threads, join threads. edit: If people want their sports and brand posts then aggregate using RSS for corporate and non-corp social media. The whole purpose of the fediverse was to be NOT linked to tech bro empires.
Given that we've watched communities like Reddit become more closed, I would rather Lemmy not do the same. The best thing an instance can do is keep them on a very tight leash, and kick out at the first sign of a rule being broken.
What Lemmy needs, above anything, is engagement. Be open to the users from Threads, instead of punishing them because you hate Meta. Many people joined Lemmy because the idea of the fediverse meant freedom to choose, and while instances are free to allow/deny who they want, it shouldn't be a detriment to users that want to experience Lemmy.
That's not how EEE works at all. Facebook will embrace Lemmy, extend/improve Lemmy, and then extinguish/disadvantage the native Lemmy community, until the Lemmy server serves so little of a purpose it is shut down.
How? The unhinged ranting that threads will federate with mastodon, not Lemmy. And the frothy incoherent rage that Lemmy needs to defederate from something that doesn't currently exist and will not impact them significantly in any way once they do exist. Makes me think none of you have actually thought this through in a rational manner.
Defederating Threads doesn't make us a closed community. All that's going to happen is we'll basically end up on Threads without actually being on Threads. People will either migrate there or to an instance that doesn't have Meta/Facebook everywhere.
Except that Threads is not going to engage mutually so this argument is moot. If we federate with Threads but they do not federate with us, what exactly to we have to gain from this besides Meta's rage algorithms?
lemmy isnt for profit company
Theyre free to join an instance that isn't owned by meta
Same. Defederate - or rate limit - them if the load should become an issue.
Why does it seem like everyone with this position is unaware that data here is already available publicly?
Please expand on how you believe blocking threads improves your privacy.
My objection with federating with Threads has nothing to do with privacy or data access, it has to do with keeping the ActivityPub protocol alive. Embrace, extend, extinguish is a much more legitimate threat to the fediverse than data scraping ever will be. No, the danger is that Meta will begin to contribute to the protocol. At first, contribution by a corporate actor would seem like a fantastic boon to an open standard that we wish to see grow, that's the embrace phase. But it would not be long before Meta began adding features that are exclusive to a Threads user - they'll extend the protocol to better accomplish their ends. In this way, they seek to bring more and more users into their platform in order to take advantage of these exclusive features while maintaining compatibility with the larger Fediverse. The end goal is to have enough users that when they decide to break that compatibility, they will make off with the majority of the users from the open community; that's the extinguish part.
This is a well-established strategy that large tech companies have employed with open standards in the past (see XMPP). I strongly believe it is in the Fediverse's long term interests to remain defederated from Threads, and any other large corporate player. Better to have fewer users and grow organically than to federate with Meta; we may see a short term boost to the fediverse, but the long term risks outweigh any benefit.
That being said, the nice thing about the fediverse is that I can just leave this instance for another if I disagree with the admin's decisions.
I seen a lot of people post this and they always think that the counterpoint to that would be just don't allow them to build exclusive features into the standard. If they add a feature, fine but it has to be for everyone.
If they start adding exclusive features then the developers can block them at a API level. The open source GNU license still gives the original developers creative control over the project and they can shut down anything that is not contributing to open source standards. Is there a need for individual instances to take action unless you think that the developers won't block Meta, and they hate meta, so they will. But right now there's nothing for them to do because Meta haven't actually done anything yet.
Left this in another response to previous poster, but since you summarized the points, I wanted to link the article as well: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
How does defederating mitigate EEE?
Facebook is a data harvesting company. Yes, it can scrape the data but why hand it to them on a silver platter? Let them scrape it, if they want it so bad. The issue is facebook has destroyed democracies , bought out competition and never had a good track record so why risk it. If we federate, it'll be like smoking cigarettes even though we know smoking causes cancer.
Yeah Meta is a terrible company, I don't actually believe anyone is arguing otherwise, but the point is that if they are defenderated all that will happen is that people who are on instances that defederate from them won't be able to see or interact with their content. However the inverse will not be true, so the data will still be scrapable. So if your argument for defederating is that you want data privacy then you're arguing about a moot point. You don't get data privacy either way.
Now just to be clear here, I am not saying that defederating from them is a bad idea I'm just pointing out that the argument of privacy is moot. The only way to prevent your data being scraped by facebook would be to not use activitypub at all.
If they're really just after data at all costs, they could easily spin up an instance that has no apparent link to threads and federate secretly. I agree with other arguments about not federating with them but idk, all these data privacy arguments against federating with threads are so dumb. If they want it, they'll get it because getting it is so absurdly easy.
Privacy is the less relevant point here. Keeping the fediverse alive is the central point. Just look at reddit to see how corporate greed can fuck up a social network. Or google groups killing the usenet by "federating" with it. If you want the expanded version: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Honestly I dont think they are data scraping the entire internet. There is no evidence to believe they are.
I dont want to manually feed my data to them on a silver platter.
They also don’t get access to all the data that I think is most invasive (federated or not). I expect my posts, comments, votes, and follows on a public forum to be public. I don’t expect which posts I open, which comments I read, and how long I view each one for (a much larger and more invasive pool of data) to be public, and that’s what I don’t want Meta to get. By not using threads, they don’t get that. By using threads (or any Meta product) they do get that, and they probably use it to shovel more ads in your face.
While I am a little cautious of the possibility of EEE, I feel like the majority of fediverse users are anti-corporation and relatively technically informed, and would anticipate any attempts to extinguish it would be poorly received and ineffective. (Edit: although I do think this argument is reasonable and haven’t really decided whether I think federating with threads is a good idea)
Either way, federating with threads won’t give them any non-public information, which is substantially better than if you used their products directly. The other information is there for anyone to grab, so it’s kind of weird to complain about them reading it. If you put up a sign in your yard, you wouldn’t complain about people who walk by reading it.
If they want mastodon or lemmy data, they already have access. Full stop.
Downvoting facts you don’t like doesn’t change reality, unfortunately.
Because they don't know what's going on and are just trying to fit in.
Those people aren't great at thinking things through. They're "idea people".
Seconded. Fuck Meta.
Why can’t it be as simple as fuck Facebook! I don’t want a multi billion dollar corporation playing in my sandbox.
To be fair, ActivityPub is an open standard, so corporate adoption was a guarantee following any amount of success.
As an advocate for ActivityPub, I want to see more entities using it. The fact that Threads and Flipboard will interoperate will likely convince more corporate actors to join the fediverse, and I don't think that's a bad thing.
There will always be instances that block out the entire corporate fediverse, and those communities will still thrive alongside instances that do federate with the corporations. People will have freedom of choice without having to exist in a bubble, and I think that's great.
The strength is in defederation, where communities can decide who they want to play with. I'm not personally worried about big companies like Meta embracing ActivityPub because their bad behavior will have consequences for them, and the community is starting off vigilant and aware. If they play nice, the community might loosen its grip, but if they act exploitive or abusive, they'll get shut out from most of the community forever.
Hard agree. Fuck da Zuk.
There sure are a lot of accounts here NOT from .world throwing in their opinions
There should be an option to make posts instance-local for such things.
Lemmy.one had a user only meta community for this purpose.
This is !fediverse@lemmy.world not !support@lemmy.world
It's a thread specifically about .world
Id love for an official members only lemmy.world poll
All dozens of us responding to it would vote yes to defed
everyone's opinion is valid, especially mine
Some instances have a vote and point discussion here.
If the majority of us are truly here specifically to enjoy the freedom of choice, then it would follow that peering with Facebook wouldn't be a major risk for active users here, and possibly an opportunity to reach a less savvy audience.
Lemmy and mastodon are platforms good for connecting broadly. There could even be a separate instance that is a subsidiary division of a major player.
And as far as hoovering up our data, we're already out here putting it out there. Don't put sensitive data on here and don't sign up for an instance owned by surveillance-capitalists.
They are not federating with anyone as far as I heard, so why federated with them.
Yeah the mutuality argument is a strong one IMO.
It would be great if the fediverse did have the leverage to influence meta to accept other content.
At the same time, I wonder if there could ever be an implementation that detects asymmetrical & unfair practices across instances to give them consequences in real time.
I also wonder how the rest of the fediverse can do better to demonstrate its value, in terms of users and content, which would cause threads users to desire content from us.
If this functions to poll users broadly, then count another one for NOT federating. I came to Lemmy to not have my feed dominated by a tsunami of corporate junk curated by one of the worst influences in modern society. And if the counter argument is that I can block their content, then you can go join threads. I have no desire to be on a service where the majority of other users are constanly being fed crap from Meta and then interacting here, even if I can't see the initial influence. I can go elsewhere, sure, and will if they federate, but I like it so far and would rather not. But consider, at least, the kind of thing .world will become if the only people here are people who think, "Hey, maybe Zuck's new project won't be so bad!"
Agreed.
I agree that we should defederate. I like it here, but I'll definitely change instances if Lemmy.world decides to federate with threads (or any similar platform) and isn't very cautious about it. No hurt feelings of course, if I'm not part of the majority here, but from the responses I've seen so far it seems like most people here agree.
I do respect one thing, and it's that everyone I've encountered in this discussion is interested in keeping the fediverse alive and well. ╰( ‿)╯
For me it's the other way around. Lemmy.world blocking threads for exactly no reason except to make a circlejerk happy is a reason for me leave Lemmy altogether, not just this instance. So far yall just show me that here only the "I want to special" crowd exists. Doesn't even matter which instance.
I can see it playing out fine either way, although it's certainly more turbulent federating if we are to see their content and it washes out the other communities (which to my understanding is unlikely since it's user based content like Mastodon). As others said, they already have our data, too.
Instead, I just wish the more... extreme communities didn't defederate already. I'd love to see Meta users react to Hexbear or Exploding Heads in an unfiltered, unadulterated way (or those much much worse instances that everyone defederates from). Instead they get us relatively tame, generally nerdy Lemmy users. I didn't even know what a Tankie was back in the before times!
Exploding Heads gave up on Lemmy a few months ago.
Huh. Well, wouldn't know. Kind of the point of defederating, I guess, you just stop thinking about them.
Defederating and deplatforming works lmao.
We went to Nostr. Probably else where too, now. I haven't been on Nostr in a long while so, yeah.
Not federating it seems like a weird choice. Can't each user block Threads themselves if they want? Isn't that the point of the fediverse? User control?
Yeah you are correct, and you dont even have to lift a finger in the next release 1 click and you block the whole "threads.net" instance.
New users will look at lemmy.world before they create an account. They will choose to join after seeing threads posts and comments on the front page. The default settings will keep them looking at threads untill they figure out they can block it. But when they do, they realise that 90% of all posts and comments came from threads, and they just disabled most of the content.
I would be ok with an opt-in mechanism, where the default settings and the anonymous settings disable threads content, but you can unblock them.
why unblock? again, you're making the choice for them? Most people will use the Threads app and never realize that it's part of the fediverse... but SOME will and come over. The rest of the people already on lemmy or whatever, will just block it when it annoys them or they will engage and it will be fine.
Not with the way instance blocking works on Lemmy, unlike Mastodon which limits interactions from blocked domains lemmy doesn't limit interactions at all through user blocks, it just makes them not appear.
Combined with the fact that instance blocking doesn't even actually block the users from those instances. All it does is filter out every single community. If you read the page on join-lemmy.org it'll tell you that clear as day.
Like I said for both of these reasons user-based instance blocks on Lemmy should not and cannot be considered an alternative to defederation.
Yes. Certain types of people like to pretend they cannot do that for themselves, how ever.
I believe that it is the same type of people that don't want stuff like infinite ammo cheat codes, easier difficultis or other similar options in games, because they think it makes it to easy and boring. If you don't want to activate god mode don't do it, but don't go acting like a completely optional thing, somehow is mandatory and required.
Users deciding for themselves? Literally fascism! /s
Is threads federating with Lemmy??? I thought it was federating with mastodon (and mastodon-like).
Yeah although since you can also see Mastodon content here (from what I understand), I guess you can also see Threads, well, threads here.
It's the same network.
Once you implement ActivityPub, you federate with everything that uses ActivityPub. Your server might simply not see every other server yet, but you're on the same network. With the current implementation, Lemmy will never display a Threads post and Threads will never display a Lemmy thread/comment. But they might send data to each other.
Imagine blocking hexbear and allowing Facebook.
Fuck lemmy world
Imagine thinking a few hundred people you disagree with is worse than a mega-corp manipulating information for profits.
Honestly, the more I think about this, I feel like keeping Threads will pull more people FROM there than it will push people away from Lemmy... once they learn what the fediverse is.
Anyone that's on Lemmy **now ** isn't going to go over to Threads.
Lemmy.world benefits from threads and it allows a massive pool of users to subscribe to communities.
That is currently impossible though and we have no indication whatsoever that Threads will implement that part of the protocol
I'm in favor of federation. The point of federated networks isn't that there are no evil corporations, but rather that they can't cause damage.
What Facebook can do:
What they can't do:
I think this is mostly relevant for Mastodon servers due to the format of the content, but the arguments are the same.
This is like saying "my email provider should block all emails from Gmail".
And they can hoover your data right now. Like, you think bots aren't spidering the site already? It's a public website.
I actually think this demonstrates the exact problem. The reason you can't do that at the email levels because Google has taken over the entire email space. Ideally, we don't let threads do that.
Nowadays you have services like Outlook blocking emails Tutanota for "spam protection". I'd really rather threads not get so big that they can start dictating how the Feduverse operates in that fashion.
As I said down thread, the easiest way to get information with the structure of activity pub is to have a bunch of users and that is because the only way information gets transmitted to a server is by caching it based on post interactions.
That is exactly what millions of thread users in the Fedeverse would accomplish.
We do this all the time. Email providers block millions of domains for spam.
I don't see any spam from threads.net.
Well gmail already blocks any non cabal emailaddresss so yeah we should all block gmail.
I've got my own SMTP server set up on a VPS and I can send to GMail addresses just fine. Am I part of the "cabal"?
Is the cabal in the room with us right now?
That's entirely different. As an individual, I have the choice to send emails to, or block emails from, Gmail.com.
But on Lemmy, if I am on an instance that federates with Threads, and I don't want Threads.net to get a copy of my content or posts (or have my content or posts show up on Threads.net in the future), then tough shit for me, my only option is to either go silent or move to an instance that has defederated from Threads.
People keep making the email argument, but it is not the same thing at all. I don't think it's fair for a large percentage of lemmy.world's users to not have a voice in a decision that will absolutely impact them, nor is it fair to have a stance of "then leave then."
Absolutely the same for me. Threads must not be allowed.
If meta wants to data farm lemmy, what's to stop them from hosting a 1 user instance, being federated with lemmy, and....? Profit?
I'm not worried about information going that way, it's an open source deal, information is already going that way.
As for getting more content from another instance? I'm not against it, as long as it's regulated, and at risk of defederation if it gets out of hand
So my understanding is that the way Federation works in the activity pub standard is that information is not cached on a server unless it interacts with another piece of content. It's basically a web of users, and one user cannot reach far on that web. That would mean the easiest way to collect mass amounts of data is to sicc their users over here by the millions.
Although if my understanding is incorrect, I would be happy for someone to educate me.
No, they don't even need an instance, all of the data is public and freely accessible.
People who keep touting the point that defederating from Meta means we are cutting people off from fediverse are picturing this situation wrong. Based on what I've read, people see this little island of people compared to the mainland where there will be physical barrier because shouldnt tear down the bridge.
But the net isnt like that. People have just as much freedom creating a Threads account as they do a Lemmy or Mastodon account.
And don't say that the fediverse is too difficult to understand for the average person. That kind of rhetoric is what will push people away.
Everyone needs to be patient with growth. It's not going to happen in a year just like it took years for reddit to grow. I do believe that more and more people will be interested in the fediverse once they realize that corporate oversight is non existent here. And that can only happen if we keep the major instances disconnected from Meta or any for profit company.
But the net isnt like that. People have just as much freedom creating a Threads account as they do a Lemmy or Mastodon account.
It's not about creating an account or not, it's about the conversations, who views them, how inclusive are they to all.
The people who would be making comments are not the same people that are running Meta.
And don’t say that the fediverse is too difficult to understand for the average person. That kind of rhetoric is what will push people away.
It is a barrier entry though for many (for whatever reasons). I don't think you can just hand wave it away like that; that's not constructive.
Everyone needs to be patient with growth. It’s not going to happen in a year just like it took years for reddit to grow.
The situation is different now, than back then with the starting of Reddit. This time you have a 800 pound gorilla dancing in your living room.
I do believe that more and more people will be interested in the fediverse once they realize that corporate oversight is non existent here.
Unfortunately the Fediverse account creation difficulty barrier of entry may be higher than avoiding corporate oversight. People take the path of least resistance usually. (And yes, it bums me out big time saying that, as we should all try to avoid corporate oversight.)
And that can only happen if we keep the major instances disconnected from Meta or any for profit company.
That's not the only way though. Good moderation will also prevent that from happening.
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So, I don't have a dog in this hunt. Personally I would lean more towards not defederating, to be inclusive, as I'm just an 70s/80s liberal who believes free speech for all, and that it would do more harm than good by excluding a whole bunch of people from conversing with a whole other bunch of people.
Having said that, I do see good points being made on both sides, it's not a clean decision to make, it's not binary, it's analog.
But it does seem to me like a lot of the comments being made on the subject are knee-jerk advocacy based, gatekeepingy.
Any admins of Lemmy.world reading this? Can we tag them?
It doesn't seem like tagging on Lemmy is working at the moment, but you could reply to the thread on Mastodon tagging them there, and that would work (only if you tag their Mastodon accounts, lemmy accounts don't support tagging on Mastodon, as far as I'm aware).
I thought Threads was supposed to be a competitor to twitter? I don't understand how they'd even integrate with Lemmy instances. I'm here to see posts from boards/forums/subs, not from specific people. Would posts from random Threads user profiles start showing up on the main page?
Well like Mastodon does. It's not exactly a smooth integration. I have no idea how Lemmy posts would show up I'm assuming almost as a separate tweet equivalent.
No. Lemmy integration of ActivityPub doesnt enable that. Either Threads or Lemmy would need to change their implementation of ActivityPub in order for us to see Threads posts. Currently that's impossible. All federation happens beneath the hood and isnt shown.
Threads will kill the Fediverse and chuds welcome it with open arms.
"everyone who disagrees with me is a chud"
Chud identified
Nah just every corpo lover is a chud.
Threads will kill the Fediverse...
How?
I'm still on the fence on this. I feel like they should federate fully instead of only one way, but I'm trying to understand the threat from Threads. I know it's probably been done to death, but do you have a link or thorough explanation of why bringing more users and content to the fediverse is harmful?
Aside from E3 as shown below, my biggest fear is overshadowing the rest of the Fediverse
It’s one thing to say users can just individually block the instances, but that won’t help once the majority of all content is coming from them (and it will their user base dwarfs the entire Fediverse combined).
Individually blocking threads will lead to losing visibility of non-Threads users who are engaging with their overwhelming content generation.
Fuck anything and everything about Meta. Don't let them near this.
I am in agreement on this one.
I will absolutely change instances to one which has defederated from FB.
I'm planning the same.
It's encouraged to not stay on lemmy.world anyway
I wish lenny made it as easy to migrate as Mastodon did.
Since 1.19 launched it is. Now you can export your subscriptions and settings to another Lemmy account
I'm not worried about Threads joining the fediverse. They can't even properly implement hashtags and trending topics, which already puts them far behind Mastodon and X.
Also, how would users on a microblogging platform be able to interact with a Lemmy instance? I'm a bit confused about how ActivityPub works in that respect.
The 'they can farm our data' argument is a bit moot when Lemmy is already publicly accessible, and it makes us no better than Spez if we are trying to combat people for 'data scraping"
Agreed about the data farming, but I would recommend reading this if you haven't already. Not properly implementing the conventions is basically step 1 in that article.
What public info could they gather? My IP?
Not even that.
IP address isn't part of your public profile, so it's not something they could ever access unless you make an account on there directly.
Well, they could gather that, then skim through your posts, and then look at all the other ways they've gathered your data, like any of the Facebook trackers on various other websites, then create a shadow profile of you with all of the collective sum information they have.
And that's assuming you don't already use Facebook or messenger, in which case they basically have everything anyway.
It also assumes that they haven't purchased any data from data brokers to create these shadow profiles. Having an IP is actually pretty bad, all things considered, when you have a trove of information
They could already get all of your profile and post info… I could get that right now through the free api for every account on this and every other thread with a couple dozen lines of code.
Edit: I’m also unclear on how they would ever get your IP- if you never use their frontends the only IP they’d have access to is that of the server your account is hosted on.
I'm copying pasta from my previous reply on other post
Once they can interact with your account, they can pull your data into their server and analyzing it to deliver ads campaign.
Just look at this
They can connect the point of interest based on their users interactions with other users on other instances. It doesn't matter even if you don't use their apps, they just need to connect the points.
Whenever an account from Threads upvote/ downvote or reply to your comments/posts or vice versa, Meta will analyze that and they can sell ads based on your political leanings, gender, geo-location, hobbies, marital status etc.
That's the options from what I saw on fb ads dashboard years ago. If you're from US, that options are broader and more detailed.
I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding how data is handled in federated systems. When an account from Threads interacts with your post or you interact with a Threads post, information is exchanged exclusively through Actions sent between the servers- never to or from your or their client and another server. It looks like this:
Client <=API=> Instance <=Action=> Instance <=API=> Client
They don’t get any information that isn’t already available publicly to any random user on your instance- no IP address or anything otherwise. Threads’ mobile app data collection has no bearing on their ability to collect information on you.
Edit: To be clear- there is theoretically a set of protocols in the ActivityPub spec that allows for direct client to server communication (unimaginatively called ActivityPub Client-to-Server), but it hasn’t been adopted by any current Fediverse software implementation that I’m aware of.
What a wild conspiracy theory.
Legally, they can't collect and process any of the data unless you accepted a contract with them. Just by sending an upvote or a comment to their instance, you don't agree to any of this.
And if they choose to ignore the law and just do it anyway, they still can't, because all they have is the data that your instance sends them. They don't have your geo-location, device Id, etc.
I will be leaving if lemmy.world defederates with threads.
Just give users the ability to block instances themselves so we can be done with this.
Stop letting other people make decisions for you.
I am still new at this. If I block threads, and lemmy.world doesn't defederate, will threads users still see my posts and comments in the communities I participate in? Is the relationship recpricol?
If not... What incentive is there to give my (admittedly mediocre) content to a mega corp whose goal is to take over this space?
I'm genuinely asking.
I read the users can blacklist instances already, from the latest Lemmy release note.
Yeah, looks like it's in 0.19
I can't see it myself, because my instance is still on 0.18
I've heard this, but haven't seen it explained how to do it.
And you're free to do so, that's the entire point of a decentralised system.
They aren't making decision for anyone but themselves, again, as is the point.
If you don't agree with whatever they do, find an instance you do agree with or start your own.
Staying or leaving has the same amount of personal agency.
Proof the system works right here.
Don't wait, you can leave right now.
Question: did you read the article linked? If the answer is yes and the comment still reflects your opinion, please leave
Edit: thought i was under a different post 🙄
"Stop letting other people make decisions for you"
"If you do X I am leaving"
Maybe you should stop letting people make decisions for you.
Be bold, be brave, and just go ahead and leave now.
Threads content won't show up in your feed unless you go out of your way to follow a threads user. All defederating does is deny your users the benefits of activity pub. If twitter is anything to go by then Threads content will be on this platform through screenshots anyway.
By that logic, and I'm not disagreeing, then any time we defederate, like from explodingheads.com or hexbear.net, then we are just limiting options.
The flip side to Federation is defederation. It's not Federation if there isn't the option to defederate. It's one of the core features of the protocol.
I mean, they can easily flood the ratings and sure All is just Threads content, then you're not getting involved in Lemmy/Mastodon content, you're just talking and engaging on content sustaining Threads and your comments are probably helping engagement next to adverts displayed to users.
It isn't a good proposition, at all.
Meta doesn't do anything that doesn't benefit their bottom line, especially for their ad business.
Yes.
They should, but they're not going to. If mastodon.world isn't doing it, lemmy.world isn't either.
Edit: both mastodonworld and lemmyworld are owned and operated by the same admins and such.
I'm of two minds about this. I have no love for Facebook and Zuk can go fuck himself. I want Lemmy to be free of the same fucks that ruined Reddit and formally corporatized it.
At the same time, I want Lemmy to grow. I don't want this to be our little corner of the Internet that's tucked away. I don't want an information bubble. I want to see user-managed spaces like this grow and overtake the corporate ones.
So I choose to stay neutral. The two philosophies I described are at odds with each other here. I'll go with what the majority decides -- that's the whole point of it being user-managed after all. I'll just say that I think we should give ourselves options to reverse and monitor any changes as time goes on. We need to see how things progress, regardless of what decision we make, so we can course correct if necessary.
I feel strongly that we should defederate, but i really like your reasoning for being neutral. The fediverse is currently a small community of advanced internet users who see themselves as separate from mainstream users, and the temptation is to gatekeep.
I can understand this perspective: wanting to spread the gospel of federation, etc.
But I'm starting to come around to the realization that the growth mindset is rotten. It's what leads to these big centralized/unified platforms that concede on their core in order to reach a wider audience.
I can't blame corpos for conceding away all identity, because engagement is how they make money, but what's our excuse?
These aren't refugees. They're free to make a lemmy or masto or whatever account any time they want. We don't have a problem with most of the people. It's the platform, and all the fucking out and proud racists who are on it.
It's interesting, because wanting to grow to supersede the corporations can become just like the corporations wanting to grow for profit. The ends don't justify the means here.
The idea would be that as people here and see about it more, more people would join, but there's a lot of assumptions baked into that, including that these people are actually people you want on the platform. Like you mention at the end, racists are going to find a "corporate, government free" space to be their own paradise. And we can't let that happen.
I wonder if this would be possible: content from Facebook is not shown on Lemmy, but content from Lemmy can be shown on Facebook. Facebook users can join Lemmy, but there's an application process for them so we can vet them.
I'm fine with however things end up, but I do want us to keep in mind that we risk becoming too insular and developing a groupthink. I don't think it would be a danger to society like conservative ones tend to become, but I don't want to think Jill Stein has huge support because Lemmy castigates anyone else, for instance.
I don't think we're in that position right now, but it's one to be wary of.
I agree. Defederate.
Federate with
Defederate from
Federate, let them get a taste of sweet Lemmy content, then cut them off. Will make the Threads experience feel broken for native Threads users.
I think every lemmy instance that is concerned about its users should defederate. If their users start mingling with our communities, the comment sections and the posts would be completely different from what we see today. Today we have a small but passionate user base and should remain that way. New users should know about lemmy and join any instance on their own, and not by their threads client.
Facebook will definitely pay the admins and mkae them sign a NDA. If I was the admin and they offered me $5-10million, I'll sure sell you guys to facebook so I understand if Lemmy.world Admins did the same.
I think that interoperation with big walled gardens is part of the reason why #activitypub exists. Furthermore, there are no technical measures to completely shut off #Threads, and the social measures are unlikely to work.
I know the risks, I'm old enough to remember #Microsoft embracing and extinguishing browsers and open documents, #Goggle defederating from #XMPP and #Facebook predatory tactics.
On the other hand, I think that federation with the big players is unstoppable. The protocol is open and there is no way to get every last instance to defederate. If people want to see the big players' content they'll move to an instance that federates with them. And defederating from those that connect to threads sounds like a Zealot's suicide pact.
I think that the best way to ensure that #Meta plays fair is to create a fediverse that is as diverse, open and vibrant as possible, with plenty of open services (Lemmy, mastodon, misskey...) and commercial ones (Flipboard, tumblr...) so that threads users will feel compelled to interact and miss us if Meta stops federating or shadowbans external content.