1. Meta/Facebook has a horrific track record on human rights:
- https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/ethiopia-facebook-algorithms-contributed-human-rights-abuses-against-tigrayans
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-so...
Meta just announced that they are trying to integrate Threads with ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.). We need to defederate them if we want to avoid them pushing their crap into fediverse.
If you're a server admin, please defederate Meta's domain "threads.net"
If you don't run your own server, please ask your server admin to defederate "threads.net".
If anybody remembers XMPP being widespread and what Facebook, Google, Apple and others (say, I personally remember VK and Yandex in Russia supporting it) did to it, that's what will happen if you "wait and see".
I remember what the standardising committee did to XMPP: users wanted to share photos, send files, and make audio/video calls; XMPP said "we're not going to standardize that, but each application can use its own extensions"... then it all went to hell.
I agree, but one can ascribe that to corporate influence (or wish to win corporate love) too. Such a decision on first glance makes sense for using XMPP as a constructor for various system integration tasks, or for making proprietary services using it inside (not retroactively, but well).
You don't get how big it was in 2007. I used ICQ and felt some sort of peer pressure (and progress pressure) to switch to XMPP. You could chat in FB via XMPP, in VK via XMPP, a lot of services would just give you an XMPP account because why not. It was like RSS.
To be clear, I want it to be users deciding on Lemmy too. Also, people already here moving to threads wouldn't be the problem, we're small in comparison to them. It would be a few things:
They would bring in a huge party of users that would take it over and overwhelm the current users. It would be like a cruise ship of tourists taking over a small town and breaking everything for the current residents.
They could post to Lemmy, but we can't really post to Mastodon. They're going to send ads our way disguised as content, guaranteed.
If they can manipulate the users from Mastodon, it's going to get out of hand fast. They have teams of devs and psych engineering to accomplish that.
This is volunteer ran, do we have enough energy to fight Meta when they try to enforce something?
Can they manipulate Activity Pub software because we're a small team of devs? If they can, they will.
One person mentioned them having instance owners sign NDAs. What's up with that?
It doesn't benefit them to send adds disguised because they are paid to provide ad impressions which they wouldn't have data for. It's just an annoying business model not a conspiracy to brainwash you.
That's why you need Nord VPN so you can play raid shadow legends safely...
The thing is they have so much less control if they do that, I'm fed up of places with adverts where comments are turned off or heavily moderate - if their post comes here they can't do any of that, I say we let them come, we let them come and then we smash them
... And then they can use it through Threads, and over time forget something and move to Threads, and then oops. Such things happen. Humans are not principle-driven nor should they be.
I think you misunderstood me. I'm saying that whenever someone finds out about Lemmy, it's because they've already sworn off Facebook, Reddit and other big platforms.
Do you think such a person will go back to a Facebook-owned platform just because it happens to federate?
I'm fairly new to the fediverse, but I see it this way. If Threads integrates with the Fediverse then users will become accustomed to the content from Threads, which could cause more friction in the future if there's a movement to defederate from Threads. I think it would just be easier to avoid all that in the first place. I also feel like if anyone really wants to see Threads content they could make an account there, and then everyone gets what they want. Then there's all the downsides others are theorizing could happen, but they can't be comfirmed until Threads actually joins the Fediverse.