Are we going to block Meta’s Threads.net? I get it if people want to keep things open. However, Meta is a proven bad actor. They claim they didn’t put in ActivityPub because it was too complicated to get it done at launch, and they can’t get EU approval of their service because of the rampant and invasive data they gather. IMHO, they are going to attempt to muscle the fediverse out of the equation.
i said this in a reply, but think it’s important enough so I’ll put it on its own too.
to me, this is very reminiscent of the paradox of tolerance. just because we want an open platform doesn’t mean we need to, or should, support those who do not have that same thing in mind. and allowing it is at the risk of allowing them to operate unencumbered and most likely take advantage of open stance.
Openness, like tolerance, is a mutual contract. If one party breaches a contract or fully intends to, the other cannot be held at fault for not fulfilling their end of the bargain. Tolerance cannot extend to people who intend to violate others.
We know that given the opportunity, Meta would control the fediverse to its own ends. Failing that, Meta will try to destroy it and replace it with something they can control. Whether or not you think these are possible, this is sufficient grounds to block them. It boggles my mind that anyone would think otherwise.
@aberrate_junior_beatnik @niartenyaw how do you know that? Isn’t it entirely possible that they just decided to build a Twitter knock off and realized that building off ActivityPub gave them a headstart and some good PR? Meta is a giant compared to the fediverse and it’s trying to compete with other giants, not ants. Declaring we won’t eat crumbs dropped from the giant’s table isn’t going to even be noticed by the giant. We get more out of federation than they do by a mile.
that’s very fair, but i think they are going for control here.
their entire business model is to monetize via selling data and ads. so trivially they need users to give them data and see ads. to maximize this, they need to maximize the number of people using the app and the time each person spends using the app. both of these require control. easiest way is to lock in users via their network/communities being there while manipulating content to get people to spend more time.
open protocols are in direct opposition to this type of control. for instance, the tech giants see how they can’t control email and hate it. they struggle to monetize it via their business model because ads and manipulation result in a terrible user experience. users will just leave and go to another provider (in this example, they obviously lose the domain unless they own and use a custom one). google killed the xmpp protocol with embrace, extend, extinguish for the same reason. as an open protocol gets going, it only gets harder for the tech giants to stop.
so, if they want to stay in control, they need to squash a federated platform as early as possible, the most proven strategy being embrace/extend/extinguish. so, given history, this is what the tech giants have planned for the fediverse.
Isn’t it entirely possible that they just decided to build a Twitter knock off and realized that building off ActivityPub gave them a headstart and some good PR?
I mean sure but I don’t see how that’s in contradiction with what I said.
Declaring we won’t eat crumbs dropped from the giant’s table isn’t going to even be noticed by the giant
So which is it? Do they get a headstart and good PR or are we completely insignificant? Seems like if we have the chance to deny them a headstart and good PR we should.
We get more out of federation than they do by a mile
I’m not getting anything out of it, and many others feel the same way. I’d be happier if they just made their own thing and left us alone.
@aberrate_junior_beatnik the headstart I was referring to was in developing the technology. As you pointed out it would be hypocritical to cite the fediverse user base as a draw to using ActivityPub while simultaneously downplaying the size of the user base as insignificant. Sorry I wasn’t clear what I was referring to.
That makes no sense. It would be much faster to simply not federate.
Replying here instead of your other reply but yeah it definitely is like the paradox of tolerance but I will also add that for most people an open platform is probably not the #1 priority. I think a lot of people just want to be able to access content and/or update their friends and separating off threads wont help that
However who knows what can happen maybe threads will flop, or maybe they will make the fediverse mainstream and we will have the interconnectedness that we all want
At the end of the day though, some servers will block threads and some wont but with enough options everyone can join a server that fits their needs and that really is what the fediverse is about
I feel like if you want to update your friends, an anonymous forum is not the greatest place to do that and I certainly don’t want the fediverse to be about attaching your name to something.
Personally, I’ve never had a Facebook account and have no interest in their offerings. Nothing of worth seems to have ever come out of that place.
yeah, i think it’s totally fine that most people don’t have being “open” as a priority. and to me, those people will continue to ride the waves of social media enshittification until they realize what’s going on and look for something different (much like many of us here have done).
i think we have a chance to have a community break away from that. but giving the big players the ability to rally the masses and own most of the communities and content we end up interacting with is how we set ourselves up to be extinguished. maybe we will be able to avoid this by making sure we are interacting with many diverse instances, but only time can tell. the one thing we can be sure of is that meta and any others will be attempting to monopolize the platform.
At the end of the day though, some servers will block threads and some wont but with enough options everyone can join a server that fits their needs and that really is what the fediverse is about
yeah true, this part will be very interesting. i am just glad to be a part of a community with a common goal of being open and having discussions like this about what that means. i think that common ideal might actually have the potential to keep it together long term. and i think that’s worth fighting for.
this new meta product will undoubtedly go through the process of enshittification, just like all the others have, but we can sit back and continue to grow organically. those that care or get fed up will join, and that’s great.
i don’t think we need to be the next reddit, just a place that we all enjoy being. a place that is not driven by profit, unlike reddit, will surely be a fundamentally different place. striving to be reddit is doomed to fail.
i personally would be fine without meta’s content if it means we are more likely to survive.
What leverage will threads have over independent instances?
i have mentioned this is some other comments, but if threads ends up hosting/owning many of the popular communities within the fediverse (which they certainly will try to do), the independent instances can’t do much if threads ever decides to leave the fediverse.
I agree there, but I think the most important response is to encourage users to make accounts through independent instances. Defederation with threads forces users who want threads content to make accounts directly with meta
Embrace, extend, extinguish. Something that has been used by large companies in the past to push out the smaller, more open systems many times.
That said, I agree with @Dsaf@midwest.social that blocking by default would be against the open platform that we claim we want. Users can choose to block accounts themselves or not interact with Threads. So long as these instances are publicly available, there’s nothing stopping big companies from hovering up the data passing through them whether or not they are attached as a peer.
Those are the two main points that I’ve seen as possible concerns with allow federation with Meta or any other commercial property and neither is really that severe.
The good side is that, for folks who are only ever going to go with a big company’s site, it still allows us more privacy-minded folks the chance to interact with them. Something that is just flat out impossible today without compromising our own principles.
That said, I agree with @Dsaf@midwest.social that blocking by default would be against the open platform that we claim we want.
to me, this is very reminiscent of the paradox of tolerance. just because we want an open platform doesn’t mean we need to, or should, support those who do not have that same thing in mind.
Yeah, it’s a complex topic with no clear “right way”. That’s why the major social networks have always had trouble finding a method that works and there’s always some group who feels oppressed and/or marginalized.
i think the major reason social networks always seem to fail so far is that they are completely controlled by a company and can’t escape enshittification
@MrFrobozz this a good take. Do people want the web to be more open generally or just have an ideologically pure corner of it? For the time being, the only reason to defederate with Threads is because you want to gatekeep open standards, but to me open standards are supposed to be agnostic. I think it’s totally possible that very legitimate reasons to defederate show up- but just wanting to defederate because of the company that created it isn’t something I agree with.
Personally I think it’s a test to see if the fediverse has the legs to stand on. I dont think we will see an internet in the future that exists without corporation run social media and blocking them before they even launch is against what the fediverse is for
Now if they have rampant content moderation problems and degrade the site then sure block them but I think they should be treated the same as any other fediverse site
My problem isn’t with corporate run instances, but Meta. They are a proven bad actor. They are the leopard that will try to eat our faces.
it’s a test to see if the fediverse has the legs to stand on
A week or more ago when I first learned of Meta’s project my immediate gut reaction was to defederate, because fuck them. And that attitude is understandable by anyone who is on Lemmy out of grievances with Reddit or corporate tech or whatever. But when I then tried to think more about the actual reasons why the Fediverse would be worse off with Meta participating, it’s not that simple.
The privacy concerns immediately fall apart when you realize Meta doesn’t have to have their brand-name service to get access to everything going across ActivityPub. Literally anyone can spin up an instance and has access to everything. You will never stop them. In fact, they probably already have instances on the network.
From a technical standpoint you could be concerned about the amount of data that will flow into the network from such a product. From what (little) I understand about federation, it’s a peer-to-peer system that naturally births incredible amounts of data duplication, so the performance hit from Threads coming online will certainly be felt. But, if you’re already ok with the idea of the Fediverse growing organically, it will eventually face those problems anyway and so now’s as good a time as any to solve them.
So it seems it may come down to what kind of community do you want embodied by the Fediverse? Facebook-quality content just seems disgusting to me, but the users posting that stuff can always just join Lemmy outside the bounds of Meta products. So I’m kind of landing in the same space with your quote; this is a test to see if what is happening here is really something that is more than just anti-Reddit posturing and will stand on its own over time. If it is, it will exist alongside Threads and will not be muscled out, and that will be great.
I think the one thing that would really give me pause and would motivate me to fight against it is if Meta gets a presence in the WWWC or whoever it is that governs ActivityPub and begins to influence it’s direction. Then we might see a Google-Kills-XMPP story play out again. They will certainly want to integrate new features into ActivityPub… namely, advertising. And it’s all downhill from there.
This is a good analysis, but I think you’re missing one important factor, in assuming that Facebook-quality content is purely the result of the users on Facebook. Sure, there are a lot of jerks on Facebook, but more than that, Facebook knows that enragement drives engagement, and uses an array of psychological tricks to push that. They also have a proven track record of poor moderation. So in Facebook land, the most toxic voices are amplified, and regular folks are constantly pushed to be more aggressive. Wouldn’t we want to block any instance that acted like that?
This is a good point. They would be able to manipulate the feeds of users on their servers. And if the algorithmically inspire bad content above some threshold, that would be a concrete reason for instances to defederate. But I still wouldn’t defederate preemptively.
This is my biggest concern as well. Especially with the ties to Instagram, I have a feeling that Threads is going to have a similar majority-right wing userbase like Instagram does and have problems with things like, as with Instagram, rampant transphobia and racism.
Very well written response. I appreciate it.
It will be interesting to see how much growth will remain thats not just anti-twitter anti-reddit users willing to momentarily move out of spite and will remain here in the long term.
I really hope ActivityPub/WWWC does not get overrun with corporate interests but only time will tell
The privacy concerns immediately fall apart when you realize Meta doesn’t have to have their brand-name service to get access to everything going across ActivityPub.
There’s far less incentive to scrape that content when you remove the ability to interact with and find it through Threads. It’s unlikely facebook itself will be combing though lemmy instances looking for quality content to
rip off“share” – it will be the users.Defederation creates a far higher barrier for Thread users to find and engage with posts on the wider
lemmyActivityPub network, which means far less of the fediverse’s content being used for Meta’s benefit.
I think we should federate at first unless there are actions Facebook is currently taking that could harm our instance. My home mastodon instance fosstodon is taking a measured approach that I think should be mirrored.
imo you are giving benefit of the doubt to a company that clearly doesn’t deserve it
I just don’t see the point of defederating from them. If they want to steal users they can do that without federating. All we are doing is sharing content.
Facebook will build a good service no matter what. If we want any chance of the fediverse to extend to every social media user I’m of the belief we should federate.
To be clear I think it’s totally fine for a server to defederate. I’ll be staying on an instance that does federate as I want to be able to see my local community and also interact with friends and family from threads
If we want any chance of the fediverse to extend to every social media user I’m of the belief we should federate.
that’s fair, but i think this is an unreasonable goal at the moment. right now, i think the fediverse needs to focus on surviving in the face of being infiltrated by the social media incumbents. they have already wrung their own social medias for as much money and data as possible at the expense of their users. they may say or pretend to be ok just being a player in the fediverse for now, but make no mistake they will certainly be positioning themselves to try to take it over for their own benefit (and yet again at our expense). if major communities are hosted by the incumbents, you can bet they will eventually turn to manipulating them for money, including cutting them off of the fediverse if that will benefit them (see xmpp).
to counteract this, i think we need to focus on sustainability, including cultivating a diverse set of communities across a diverse set of instances, among other things. anything owned by the incumbents will eventually be tainted, so do we really want to wait until that happens? we know it’s going to happen, so why wait until things get bad? they will be posturing to monopolize and monetize. by the time they take actions that would cause other instances to defederate, they will have already ensured that it is too late for that to matter. they are smart, don’t underestimate their drive for control and money.
I think this is a good point, but I think the fedi community is established enough to bring people in when threads starts federating. If people show others tools like mastodon groups, following hashtags, etc it could encourage users to interact enough with outside instances to keep the federation necessary.
That’s the big question I think, can we convince new threads user to want to be apart of the fediverse? The door is going to get opened between the two communities and we need a substantial amount of cross-instance participation to justify Facebook not being able to defederate or make breaking changes without angering their user base and jumping ship to a non-threads instance.
we need a substantial amount of cross-instance participation to justify Facebook not being able to defederate or make breaking changes without angering their user base and jumping ship to a non-threads instance
yes! this is a great point and i think this will probably be the key to the fediverse surviving. now we just need to hope that naturally happens? not sure what exactly we can do to foster it lol
I’m hoping corporations start their own instances (like nytimes makes an instance for its main account and its journalists) and institutions like universities make their own instances as well (there’s so many .edu emails, there should be .edu fedi accounts). This prevents their posts being governed by a big entity like Facebook and prevents a Twitter style enshitification.
From a normal user standpoint, follow your friends on threads, talk to them about how they don’t need to be on the threads app, and encourage posting/replying between instances with those around you.
ah interesting, i like the idea of using instances as a form of verification. in that case, maybe it makes sense for there to be something like private communities so only those in the instance can see it.
Edit: i am on lemmy, so using communities. but essentially having some content that is private to the instance
