Lemmy.world Admin Response to Meta/Threads
Lemmy.world Admin Response to Meta/Threads
There has been significant discussion in recent weeks regarding Meta/Threads. We would like to express our disappointment with the negative and threatening tone of some of these discussions. We kindly ask everyone to engage in civil discourse and remember that not everyone will share the same opinions, which is perfectly acceptable.
When considering whether or not to defederate from Threads, we're looking for a decision based on facts that prioritize your safety. We strive to remain neutral to make an informed choice.
First, there seem to be some misconceptions about how the Fediverse operates based on several posts. We’ve compiled some resource links to help explain the details and address any misunderstandings.
Fed Tips , Fediverse , ActivityPub
Initial Thoughts:
It seems unlikely that Meta will federate with Lemmy. When/if Meta adopts ActivityPub, it will likely affect Mastodon only rather than Lemmy, given Meta's focus on being a Twitter alternative at the moment.
Please note that we have a few months before Threads will even federate with Mastodon, so we have some time to make the right decision.
Factors to Consider:
Factors to consider if Meta federates with Lemmy:
Privacy - While it’s true that Meta's privacy settings for the app are excessive, it’s important to note that these settings only apply to users of the official Threads app and do not impact Lemmy users. It’s worth mentioning that Lemmy does not collect any personal data, and Meta has no means of accessing such data from this platform. In addition, when it comes to scraping data from your post/comments, Meta doesn’t need ActivityPub to do that. Anyone can read your profile and public posts as it is today.
Moderation - If a server hosts a substantial amount of harmful content without performing efficient and comprehensive moderation, it will create an excessive workload for our moderators. Currently, Meta is utilizing its existing Instagram moderation tools. Considering there were 95 million posts on the first day, this becomes worrisome, as it could potentially overwhelm us and serve as a sufficient reason for defederation.
Ads - It’s possible if Meta presents them as posts.
Promoting Posts - It’s possible with millions of users upvoting a post for it to trend.
Embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE) - We don't think they can. If anyone can explain how they technically would, please let us know. Even if Meta forks Lemmy and gets rid of the original software, Lemmy will survive.
Instance Blocking - Unlike Mastodon, Lemmy does not provide a feature for individual users to block an instance (yet). This creates a dilemma where we must either defederate, disappointing those who desire interaction with Threads, or choose not to defederate, which will let down those who prefer no interaction with Threads.
Blocking Outgoing Federation - There is currently no tool available to block outgoing federation from lemmy.world to other instances. We can only block incoming federation. This means that if we choose to defederate with our current capabilities, Threads will still receive copies of lemmy.world posts. However, only users on Threads will be able to interact with them, while we would not be able to see their interactions. This situation is similar to the one with Beehaw at the moment. Consequently, it leads to significant fragmentation of content, which has real and serious implications.
Conclusion:
From the points discussed above, the possible lack of moderation alone justifies considering defederation from Threads. However, it remains to be seen how Meta will handle moderation on such a large scale. Additionally, the inability of individuals to block an instance means we have to do what is best for the community.
If you have any added points or remarks on the above, please send them to @[email protected].
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Thanks for being clear in what goes on in the decision making. As long as you're making your decision with the user's safety and privacy in mind, then I trust you'll make the right decision if/when the time comes.
Some points/concerns I'd like to bring up though:
Embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE) - The biggest concern I have with this is rather than people thinking of us as separate platforms, people will start to associate us as Threads. We basically become Threads but for nerds/the paranoid/weirdos to many people. And as Meta begins to use their resources to introduce features lacking in most fedi sites, we'll eventually be seen as "shitty threads". Then after relying on threads for traffic and content without developing our own community, Meta yanks the plug, everyone who's still here will have to choose to prop up what remains of the fediverse, or join their friends on Threads, and then we start to see a decline in usership. Granted, because Mastodon is more of the Twitter analogue, they are more in danger of this happening than us. But we still get participation from Mastodon via federation, and they can still see and interact with us in various ways. If you have every received a comment reply where someone responds with @username, they are likely responding from a masto-like instance (you see this a lot in kbin, which is a hybrid of mastodon's/lemmy's interface), and there's a good chance we could also get those interactions from Threads users too. Also, nothing's stopping Meta from making "Threads but reddit" later down the line, and presenting a more direct threat.
Blocking Outgoing Federation - This is a little bit concerning that even if we do defederate, they will still be able to see us, and any interacting they attempt will have to be done from their end. I thought defederation would be a little more...secure. Like if people on threads decided to target communities on this instance, they could see everything we are doing, and then all they would have to do is sign up for lemmy, and commence. Basically all that would do is make us blind to anything happening on their end.
Regardless of whether Lemmy or other fediverse sites decide to defederate from Threads, there are definitely a lot of security concerns that should be addressed before federation occurs. Giving mods the tools to do their jobs and protect their users should be top priority for the development staff.
Embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE) - The biggest concern I have with this is rather than people thinking of us as separate platforms, people will start to associate us as Threads. We basically become Threads but for nerds/the paranoid/weirdos to many people.
Isn't that already how people probably see Lemmy and Mastodon vs Reddit and Twitter/Threads, even without federation? How would federation change anything? If anything I think it would just make more people aware that Lemmy even exists.
Because the fediverse is separated from most mainstream sites, They have developed their own userbases and cultures seperate from those sites before migrations even began. These migrations were usually 50k to 100k users at most. A large surge sure, but not enough to overwhelm the communities that were already there. The people who came to the conclusion that these sites were basically shitty (mainstream site) have already left, while the onces who have adapted to and embraced the cultures of these sites remain.
Now let's say a mainstream site merges with the fediverse, and that site has tens of millions of users compared to the hundreds of thousands of fediverse users. These sites are going to be overwhelmed. The userbase from the mainstream site is going to be more visible than from the other communities, and the culture from that site will influence and maybe even replace the those of the fediverse. People start to switch from the smaller fed site to the maistream site cause their friends are there, or the features are better, etc. Before long the federated site is dependent on the mainstream site for any engagement. Then they decide to pull support and defederate. Users who want to stay in contact with their friends or following from the main site have to switch, and the fediverse site shinks even faster.
The Google Talk situation isn't even the only example this is SOP for many tech companies.
At the end of the day this is a public platform, you don't even need an account to browse here
Your posts and comments can, will and are currently being collected and stored permanently legally or not by other organisations and advertisers
It's not really a security issue, none of this is intended to be private you're posting publically to the internet
Defederating is made to be a one way block on purpose, larger servers otherwise could essentially kill off any competition so easily if they could Defederate and stop any other instances from being able to view their content, forcing users to swap to the larger instance to still be able to view the most content