A clear victory for the free fediverse: Meta now says integrating with ActivityPub is "a long way out"

🙄 "Saying slurs on a private forum is mah god-given right!"

There's plenty to criticize about Twitter and Threads, but the unmoderated parts of the internet are cancer.

Also pretending that Elon doesn't remove things he doesn't like is a joke.

Reduced censorship, so long as what you’re posting paints musk in a positive light, doesn’t upset him, and so long as it’s mostly racist.

Reduced censorship. Lol. No man, just no.

Yep. Federation could conceivably respond to the EU's requirement for interoperability -- and they could do it in a way that puts a lot of barriers to people actually moving, so works well for them. Of course the EU would say that didn't meet the requirement, which would lead to a multi-year legal battle and eventually Meta would probably pay a billion dollar fine (as they routinely do -- it's just a cost of doing business) and promise to remove the barriers (which they wouldn't, and then there would be another multi-year legal battle).

But none of that works if the EU won't allow Threads for some other reason!

Still, my guess is that they'll figure out a way around the EU's objections to Threads ... we shall see ...

yeah, they'll need to fix a lot of their permissions if they want to get into the EU - which is probably a much higher concern than some piddly mastodon users.

Agree, if Threads majorly flops they’d just pull the plug, add they’ve done before.

I still don't get their target audience for Threads.

Facebook users don't want to leave their weird boomer Internet bubble. Instagram users will continue posting pictures on Instagram and advertise their linktr.ee account where they link to their 18+ content because they're not allowed to link in directly from Instagram, and 𝕏 users ... well ... they will continue using 𝕏.

Ironically the only ones wo really care about Threads is people in the Fediverse.

Governments will always exist. Sorry to burst that bubble. They always have and they always will.

That's called a state, governments are the state's employees

I personally believe that Meta never intended Threads to be support Activitypub and just chose it so they could do the bare minimum to comply with the EU digital markets act.

This is the 1004th time I am seeing people mentioning this article.

I keep seeing this article posted to scare people, but Lemmy and Mastodon aren't in the same situation as XMPP. XMPP had barely any users outside of Google Talks, with the overwhelming majority of interactions on XMPP being between Google Talks users. Google was tying their product to a public standard that they couldn't develop however they wanted, all for compatibility with very few users. When they pulled out of using XMPP to develop their own platform, the sheer lack of users on XMPP outside of Google Talks became apparent. This will not be the case with Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon/ect. Mastodon has 10 million registered users, and Lemmy has hundreds of thousands. The majority of both service's users are not about to switch over to sell their soul to the Zucc, so if Facebook federates for a while before defederating, Lemmy and Mastodon will have as large and robust communities as they have now, and the services will live on unlike with XMPP

I think the u/Kes put it really well. People on fediverse platforms are already staunchly opposed to big tech so they have no reason to leave for platform made by Meta of all people.

Unless I'm mistaken, if you remove the LGBTQ community everybody that left... Is cis persons. As in general "techy" world, most of the person using fediverse (and it's currently changing rapidly, which is good) is male.

I may very well be mistaken, but the way this sentence is constructed make it feels like one information is being phrased in a way that fitting a certain point of view.

Anyway, I'm probably over analysing, as usual.

Yes totally agree. Give individuals the power to do what they want without assaulting the rest of us would be really nice.

That's the neat thing, you don't actually have to subscribe to any of these streaming services in order to watch their shows.

and if they join the Fediverse, of course they’re going to harvest data from anyone federating with them too.

From the Mastodon blog post about Meta federation:

Will Meta get my data or be able to track me?

Mastodon does not broadcast private data like e-mail or IP address outside of the server your account is hosted on. Our software is built on the reasonable assumption that third party servers cannot be trusted. For example, we cache and reprocess images and videos for you to view, so that the originating server cannot get your IP address, browser name, or time of access. A server you are not signed up with and logged into cannot get your private data or track you across the web. What it can get are your public profile and public posts, which are publicly accessible.

I just want to make this clear I'm also anti-meta and that's why I want them to feel a need to open up for users to make it easier to switch platforms.

I would trust them as much as any other new instance of any other platform that joins the Fendiverse. That's my point.

Yes I read it and I simply do not agree with most of what is said there. XMPP is not dead and saying google killed it on purpose is to much of a simplification.

Worst thing that could happen if we federat with meta and decide on some point that this is a bad instance and block it, is that we go back to where we are now.

But since some governments and news companies already started to run their own mastodon instances it would be easiest for them to just keep up their own instance and federate with threads instead of creating another account on threads.

This plus all de Content created by people from the "free fedivers" would meta bring into a situation where they would want to be federated and therefore would (to an extent) do stuff to satisfy other instances. Our position against meta would be much stronger than how it is now.

So definitely not growing at all cost but excluding all form of commercial use of the fedivers by default would lead to fedivers remaining just a footnote in society without changing anything.

So I want not only meta but all of the big player to use ActivityPup and fighting for our (the users) favor without all their lockin tricks.

Yes by making it like a one-click Join from their other very popular platform "Instagram" and advertising it there.

That's (most probably) why threads is currently not available in the EU. Gatekeeper practices like this would be illegal with the Digital Markets Act. But honestly it would be very easy to get around this. Just make it possible to join without an Instagram account. So I guess there are more concerns from Meta to not fullfil EU Standards than just this.

Sooo I guess EU finally did a good job here.

Because social media, by definition, only works when "the masses" use it. I don't just want to interact with the fellow nerds currently on the Fediverse, I want decentralized social media to be the norm.

What is this terrible gatekeeping mentality? We want more content, and we want more people to have freedom. Everyone deserves privacy and decentralization. This gatekeeping is toxic and conservative in nature.

So that...people will use it?

I mean the whole purpose of social media is to interact with others.

Maybe you prefer spending your time interacting with strangers. There was once a time when social media was actually about networking with friends and family and people you otherwise actually knew. That's why I joined.

Also to get more people AWAY from the tech giants and basically reimagine advertising and business as we know it.

I mean really it's good for everyone who's not a conglomerate tech company.

from my experience there are some decent communities and people on FB, it's just that you have to find them hidden under heaps of bullshit. No different from Reddit, Twitter or YouTube in that sense imo

With something like Lemmy though, both the users and community moderators have way, way more agency over what they're interacting with, so I don't think federating with mainstream social media would necessarily be that bad

I think, at least?

Then block their domain. Problem solved. Any other objections that can't just be resolved by personally blocking the domain? Don't ban it by default, give users the choice to ban themselves or not. There's no downside.

So who determines what's healthy, and why do you feel the need to take away the choice from others?

They don't need to. There's not any more information they'd get that they can't already get. You realize all our comments are public and scrapable, right? Regardless if they're federated or not, our content is public for anyone to scrape.

You realize you can just personally block the domain lol. Problem solved. This is what I mean by people don't understand the technology.

Don't know how many times this needs to be said. All your content on the fedi is public. There's nothing they can see by federating that they can't already see. Please understand how the technology and privacy works on fedi.

We need multiple corporations joining activity pub

As soon as they start pushing features, it's no longer ActivityPub, but a fork of ActivityPub. There's no reason why our fedi clients would be forced to adapt. We already have this weird display issue sometimes, like upvotes and threads on Lemmy not properly showing up on Mastodon for example. It's not a huge issue if it's not entirely interoperable.

That just download threads mentality already exists. If you think it's an issue on the internet, it's 10x more powerful in person. It already exists, it won't suddenly appear when Meta federates. If you make a new best friend in threads from Mastodon and Threads defederates, surely that isn't your only point of contact? If it's that important to you that alternative means of communication isn't viable, then maybe just download Threads if they aren't willing to download Mastodon. That's more of a social issue which greatly varies per person.

I think you're speaking for others when you say it's too hard to defederate for users. For the sake of Mastodon, you just press the three dots and block threads.net. That's very easy UX, no settings involved. Also I can say the same, if choosing to restrict everybody from threads instead of just yourself is so important, why can't you simply press that block instance button? That way you aren't taking choice away from others.

The reasons to federate should be obvious. People. That's the whole point of social media. I don't want to be restricted to fedi users who think they're superior then the average person who uses Facebook. I'm not going to stop using Mastodon either just because I don't like these people. I want to talk to family and friends. I want to invite the people I actually like because decentralization and growing the fedi is good for all. More content the better. That's what social media is.