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].
I appreciate the thoughtful response and agree - no need for a knee jerk reaction when there is still some time until a decision needs to be made, and there are still quite a few unanswered questions.
As long as you maintain this level of transparency I trust that you make the right decision for lemmy.world.
As usual, thank you!
Just keep one thing in mind: even Meta themselves are saying they'll wait until they have a billion users, and then they'll decide what to do.
Freely admitting they'll play nice (not even ads) until they have a monopoly.
Now it's not surprising, that's how companies like Meta operate anyway. It's just quite brazen for them to just say it outright. That shows how confident they are that nobody will challenge them.
So that's the kind of company we're talking about here.
I would prefer to defederate, but as long as Meta doesn't attempt to fuck with Mastodon or Lemmy I don't care what the devs here do. That being said,
Fuck Meta.
Thing is, once they do decide to fuck, or cause other problems, it will be too late to be reasonable. The only recourse will be to defed and destroy all the connection that have popped up in the meantime.
It's like cancer, once it spreads, you need to cut off the whole leg, or it can just kill you outright.
Please don’t give Meta even an inch.
They wouldn’t be stepping into the Frediverse if they didn’t have a plan to either monetize the user base or destroy their competition.
Don’t let them take a pound and then some.
One FUCKING hundred percent this.
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.
It doesn't start out with maliciousness. The rank and file technical staff at Facebook aren't evil. Facebook understands the value of top tier tech talent and top dollar buys you smart people.
The initial federation is rough, but the problems are resolved surprisingly quick. None of the doom and gloom comes to pass, and Facebook consistently acts as a trustworthy actor. Their employees aren't really different than their open source counterparts. They make good faith contributions to open source codebases. Their collective experience with distributed systems proves useful in solving growing pains as the Federation grows.
They eventually start to make proposals to ActivityPub. There's outrage but no one can come up with good technical objections, so they are approved. The doom and gloom didn't come to pass, and looks like it never will.
Facebook doesn't need malicious intent for what's going down. It slowly, maybe quickly, becomes the dominate actor in the space. Facebook is pouring money into making Threads the best it can be, and what's wrong with them trying to build an audience?
Thread's improvements set an increasingly high standard for what people expect. More uptime, cleaner UI, more responsive API calls, more personalized frontpage algorithms, higher resolution videos - more and more features. More and more cost. Even people who kneejerk reject Facebook recognize how much better their site is. There are still important reasons to go with Lemmy or Kbin over Threads, but FOSS projects have never been good at making their case in ways random-not-technical people can understand, let alone why they should care about them.
After a while, Facebook starts walling people into their platform. Starts with little things like how Reddit added video and picture hosting to replace Imgur et al. It's not malicious, but rather from TPMs who are under pressure to increase engagement. After a while what else is there? Just don't turn the heat up too many degrees at once.
It's wrong to think of Facebook as a uniquely bad actor. This isn't 90s/2000s Microsoft with blatantly transparent EEE aims. There have always been bad actors. There will always be bad actors. There are bad actors with us right now.
Facebook needs to make money, and they won't do so by directly charging users. There's only one path forward for Facebook in this, and it will come at the expense of its users and everyone else in the Fediverse.
Build something useful, then put up walls around it, and then exploit it for profit; the internet's monomyth. You don't have to read the writing on the wall, but it is there. Federating with Threads is signing your own death warrant.
If the Fediverse experiment is going to survive, it needs to be able to withstand these bad actors. One of the ways it can do so is to recognize and reject them. Facebook has so many resources and so much power and we don't have to run the experiment to know where this will go. It is important to explicitly say "your goals do not align with what we are trying to build, and therefore we will not voluntarily interact with you."
Threads is already significantly bigger than the fediverse. They seeded their network with Instagram which already has more than 2 billion users. If people on the fediverse wanted the shiny big tech experience they'd already be there. I'm not against defederating with them but I don't think they need to federate at all to attract users based on uptime and features and a larger network. We're here because we don't like them.
I suspect Facebook's interest is not in users, but in content. I don't have an account but Threads seems to be mostly thirsty grindfluencer nonsense, which isn't the appeal of Twitter and friends. Regardless, if the Fediverse survives this particular threat simply because it wasn't big enough to be eaten, then I'd still be concerned. There will always be another bad actor coming down the pipeline.
There are still important reasons to go with Lemmy or Kbin over Threads, but FOSS projects have never been good at making their case in ways random-not-technical people can understand, let alone why they should care about them.
Requoted for emphasis and truth.
The F/OSS community is utterly terrible at messaging by and large and the result is that F/OSS looks like a place for whiny nerds, not the critical concept it needs to be perceived as.
Agreed EEE doesn't need to be strictly technical (but it certainly could be! See the example of increasingly complicated and quick moving web standards driven largely by Google which makes creating a new browser so hard).
But a UX path could easily look like:
Find the top 500 lemmy communities by size/engagement. Create those communities before the server ever opens up to the public. Pre-poulate with content.
As people join, sort them into these communities based on their FB/Insta/Twitter/Threads profile. Indicate in some way that their existing contacts are into those things too and "may" be there to encourage adoption. Open up to federation.
Voila, f/linux has 200k users in the first month all chatting and posting. People like content, so native lemmy users subscribe and start engaging over there. The UX is great, very polished, etc. Maybe they create an account migration tool.
A while later, BigCorp decides it's time to pull the rug, defederates (for whatever reason, probably moderation issues), and now everyone who's still a Lemmy user is cut off from the communities they followed and the "native" Lemmy communities are tiny and quiet. Lemmy users cry foul, and no one cares because Big Corps get to set the message and for some reason people come out of the woodwork to defend them.
Facebook has no incentive to Federate (seriously for what?), but has insane incentive to kill a federated service before it gets off the ground or ever grows to be anything approaching the size of reddit.
I acknowledge Threads is a bigger problem for Mastodon, but you would be incredibly naive if you think there wasn't a team of people working feverishly at getting a FB owned ActivityPub targeted at a Reddit replacement. It would even integrate with Threads, like Kbin has microblogging.
Hey - thank you for this response, it's the first one I've seen that tried to take the question "How could they EEE?" seriously.
What I still don't really understand is - how is this different from just creating a better competitor, without the federation at all? If you're worried about people choosing a superior, shinier corporate product, then surely they'd do this even without federation. At least with federation, we're not excluded from the walled garden, and don't have to have an account on their platform to interact with users we know or like there.
I have a Facebook account because there are people in my life that I want to communicate with on there, and that is my only way of contacting them. If FB was a federated platform, then I wouldn't have to have that account to do that.
The only (EEE-related) risk I see is that if Threads federates, they could then choose to defederate one day. But that would just make them into a walled garden again, the situation we already have today.
The way I see it is two fold.
One, any success on Lemmy/Mastodon will contribute to their platform as well. These platforms are all about content and critical mass. By federating, they get access to "free" content. At their current states, these platforms are drops in the bucket for Facebook so I doubt it's a primary interest.
Two, if they can get their content in front of Lemmy/Mastodon users, they hope some of those users will see it as "grass is greener" and switch sides. There's another comment in here where someone mentioned all their friends moved to FB Messenger but they didn't want to, but all their friends were using it, and it had features that weren't supported in standard texting, so they eventually gave in. Imagine that, but you can also see your friends feeds in front of you, just not some of the bonus stuff. It dangles the carrot closer to your face. Not only do you know about it, but now you also directly see it.
This is all leading up to the "extinguish". They probably see the fediverse as evidence people are willing to move off Twitter, so they may also be willing to swith to Threads if they aren't too invested. On top of that, they may see the fediverse as a potential future threat. And it's much easier to kill off that threat early than to wait until it has evolved and grown. Again, these platforms are about critical mass, and if they can nab at it before it reaches that point, they're more likely to succeed in killing it.
Elsewhere I've contextualized the Reddit uprising away from the API changes and towards a broader question of "What actually is Reddit? Who is it for? Who gets to decide what direction it goes in?" Spez and the admins have an obvious answer, but they only own have the software and the servers. It's the communities that make Reddit, and communities are not owned by anyone.
I like the Fediverse because it reflects that. It's up to the communities to form themselves and decide what rules they want and what servers they will reside on. Participating in the Fediverse means you provide some small amount of influence of what direction it goes in. Allowing a company like Facebook in means they will also get to influence it.
I was trying to weave a narrative on how Facebook could slowly dominate and bend the Fediverse to its will and its interests - even if they aren't actively trying to do so. I suspect they don't have time to slowly ramp up Threads and I'm skeptical they are actually interested in federating. But there will always be more bad actors.
An engineer notices a significant delay between when new posts appear on Threads and when they appear on the public API. There was a database issue their team resolved a few months ago, but another team owns the API server. They file a ticket and details their fix in the body.
The intuition was correct and the issue is quickly fixed. A project manager tracking growth metrics notices a slowdown a few months later. After finding the ticket, they notice an increase in growth when the API issue was introduced, and the slowdown occurring not long after it was fixed. They are not comfortable with intentionally reintroducing it, but the conclusion is in the data.
Later a very senior engineer learns all this. They like the Fediverse, but that's not what they are worried about. Their last performance review was poor. Their manager softly sounds the alarm about the next one. Their parent's nursing home is burning a hole in their finances. They can't afford to lose health insurance. Putting their kids through college is on the horizon. Their org chart has already been cut down over the last year, and there are rumors of more layoffs next year. Important people are asking difficult questions about Threads.
Maybe just a fifteen minute delay so Threads can reach its target numbers.
So your argument revolves around the fact that Lemmy/kbin/FOSS projects are inferior interfaces and that will draw people to FB?
If FB/Meta make a better product people should use it. Stop expecting users to kneecap themselves into using a worse product. All of the things you mentioned (uptime, cleaner ui, more responsive, better algorithms) are legitimate reasons to use other platforms. The average user doesn’t care about federation or instances or any of the other technical details and they never will. People don’t want to care about that stuff anymore.
You read my post and thought about it, even if you disagreed with the conclusion. I read yours and also disagreed, but thought enough about it to type this reply.
That's what this is all actually about. Thinking about things you find interesting with other people you find interesting. I agree that people don't want to think about technical things, and that is my complaint about the FOSS community. People want to think about cats.
The problem is not with any of the features themselves - they are all good things to have! If you run a service and rely on donations (and aren't Wikimedia), then maybe you can cover $300 a month but probably not $30k. Things are going to have to be frugal. The upside is they can run it however they think it provides the most value to their communities. Everyone wants to think about cats, and no one will try to dissuade you or try to nudge you into using the platform more.
Facebook/Threads present themselves as free, but $30,000 will maybe cover a few junior employee's salary for a month. These things are expensive, and the money needs to come from somewhere. They'll operate at a huge loss while building up the platform, but eventually they'll need people to stop thinking about cats and start thinking about brands. That cycle has played out over and over and over again. Build something useful, build walls around it, and then exploit it for as much shareholder value as you can.
Facebook doesn't want you to think about cats. It wants you to think about brands. If it is allowed to be part of the Fediverse community, it will flex its influence and move it towards its own interests.
Pinboard is a simple one man Delicious like bookmarking site that charges a flat yearly fee for use. It comfortably covers its owner's living expenses. I've been on the lookout for my own Pinboard idea for years, and I'm toying with the idea of starting a feature packed instance that charges people a yearly fee to have an account on it. That would be fun to build but miserable to administrate.
The different between PinboardLemmy and Facebook is I would have no reason to act against my user's interests. You get all the fancy features because you pay for them. Why would I not want people to think about cats? Why would I care about maximizing their time on the site? I care about making my mortgage payment each month.
So go forth, and think about cats.
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.
I'm glad you mentioned this, because this seems like the most important point that seems to often get lost. This is primary a potential issue for Mastodon servers, not Lemmy/Kbin/etc.
It's still an issue for the Fediverse, and even the concept of free software, federated services as a whole.
I said before - right now, Fediverse has momentum due to Twitter and Reddit blowing up. Threads is already taking some of that momentum away both in news articles and taking in potential Twitter/Reddit refugees.
If they decide to fuck with Mastodon after people get used to Threads presence, they can leave the whole concept in pieces.
Threads is already taking some of that momentum away both in news articles and taking in potential Twitter/Reddit refugees.
In both cases, the only ones who are running away and using Threads are those who can not handle Twitter's entertaining hell scape and normies who used Reddit. Whom also, already had an Instagram account, dormant or not, or in less percentage made a new one for the first time. Threads remains unavailable in Europe because it's incredibly invasive on privacy any how.
Kbin has a microblogging feature and that puts them at immediate risk. And if their one dude or however many people are on their development team can put together something that combines both, do we really think that we won't wake up to meta's new community feature a month or 2 from now?
It's so bizarre to see people complaining about "kneejerk" reactions as if it's the user's fault and not Meta's.
Have you people just forgotten everything about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook?
You're goddamn right the reactions are kneejerk, that's the point.
After over a decade of abuse, controversy, and horrendous practices that have defaced the very idea of social media and caused actual, real damage throughout the world, people have rightfully identified Meta as a monster.
And when a monster is coming for you, the kneejerk reaction is turn around and run.
It's very telling that all the arguments for allowing them in are basically "well, we can survive it". Like, everyone seems to be on the same page, here: Meta is terrible and wants to monopolize everything. Yet rather than the sensible thing and just get away from them, people are arguing we should fuck around and find out?
100% agree.
The admin who wrote this post should have their admin powers removed. If that were even possible.
They clearly do not have Lemmy’s best interests in mind.
Jesus, anyone who disagrees with me doesn't care about Lemmy? I mean 1. The admin who posted this is literally the owner/hoster of the instance, who's doing this because he wants to support the platform. He spends his personal time and effort to make lemmy.world a thing and just because he isn't planning on doing what you want until he has more info, he should be removed?
Plus since when is one instance all of Lemmy? People can go elsewhere and leave lemmy.world to die if it's really that controversial of an opinion, but this has nothing necessary to do with the platform itself, any other instance can do what they want, and thread has nothing to do with the activityPub standard yet so beyond seeing their post, it can't effect it anymore
I came to the fediverse to be rid of big social media companies, not join them
Cool.
Was this considered? https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Google essentially destroyed Jabber this way.
I was there and Jabber at the time also looked promising and Google adding its GTalk was the push everyone thought Jabber needed and everyone was welcoming it.
Meta will join Fediverse only if it will be still a threat to them, once users will switch to it (let's be honest, majority of users on Fediverse aren't purists, and if metra will have some unique features they will switch) they will defederate and Fediverse will lose meta users as well as old users. Just exactly as it happened with Jabber. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Some people think we are stronger than Meta and their influence, which is nonsense, they can ddos all federation with legitimate trafic, let alone influence community.
A lot of people forget that they are master manipulators and have algorithms decide what is popular. Thay can easily choose what they want from fediverse and make it popular, which could lead to painting totally wrong picture of this community.
They can also exert influence on the communities directly by going after their mods and convincing them to move the community to a Threads instance and lock the non-Meta community up behind them.
This will be sold to the users as a way to simplify things, to keep everything from being too splintered, to make things more convenient by having everything in one place...ya know, centralization.
It literally just happened with one of Lemmy.worlds biggest communities: [email protected]. After "speaking with" the moderators of a different instance, the lemmy.world mods decided, with no apparent input from the users that I can see, to lock the community and force it over to a different instance. And instance that seems to want to set itself up as the "primary" place for Android discussion. A more locked down instance with a very different style of moderation which is effectively killing off the ability for users to post anything and deleting just about everything, which wasn't a problem here on lemmy.world.
So in effect, [email protected], as it was, has just been taken away from the community, all because of external pressure. And if that instance defederates from everything else? Then it was in effect lifted from the fediverse wholesale. Forced centralization by mods that want to go work for the bigger instance.
This will happen again with Threads, and it will happen a lot. Just you wait until the bribes start.
I think this might be somewhat the wrong lesson for Freddy.
The harm Google and Microsoft did to open protocols wasn't federating with them. The harm they did was snatching up devs from those projects and then later killing their support for those protocols. That is, they sucked up the brainpower maintaining these things and left them to rot.
It's important the realize this because whether or not every mastodon or lemmy instance says "screw meta" and defederates, the real damage happens when meta hires a bunch of Freddy devs to support their support of Freddy tech, puts them under aggressive non-competes, and ultimately abandons the effort.
The solution to this is figuring out how to pay our devs so they can refuse offers from meta. That or ditch capitalism, but that seems more daunting.
An address to @Ruud and the lemmy.world team:
I would like to start by expressing my sincere gratitude and appreciation for the hard work you've done with lemmy.world. But I am strongly opposed to federating with Threads. Please read this comment in full, as I believe it outlines our community's sentiment and reservations.
I think it might be helpful to use an analogy that I think will help express the feelings of many of those within our community regarding the problem with the "wait and see" approach.
What's to say Threads won't follow in their very well-established footprints under Meta as a company?
If I go to a friend's house and their child spits in my face every time, I don't want to go to my friend's house. I tell them this. The friend says, "Well this time just might be different, let's just wait and see!" Meanwhile, this kid spits in my face without fail, every chance they get. There is a very consistent and pervasive pattern of this.
Why should I believe this kid won't spit in my face all of a sudden, when they've taken every single chance they could repeatedly, knowing that it was wrong and not caring what repercussions would befall them? Do you really think this kid is going to refrain from spitting in my face this time?
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. -Albert Einstein.
Meta/FB have continually demonstrated their core business practices are unethical and that they will continue carrying them out without regard for laws or their users' well-being. There's no reason to wait and see. It's not logical to believe this time will be different.
Threads would bring such a large influx of hateful, racist, violent, bigoted political extremists to the fediverse. They will also do whatever they can to exploit users on this site for their own gain. Their modus operandi has been to exploit their users.
Instead of just conjecture and analogies, I will now provide factual information regarding Meta's practices as a company.
This really should be obvious by now.. but Meta mines and sells their user's information. Just look at the permissions you have to grant them for Threads... That alone should tell you there's no reason to "wait and see." Just look right now. They haven't changed...
FB users have to agree to all sorts of unethical things in the TOS, including giving Meta permission to run unethical experiments on their users without informed consent. Their first published research was where they manipulated users' feeds with positive or negative information, in order to see if it affected their mood. It did, and they successfully induced depression in many of their users!
Meta has played a very key role in spreading misinformation, perpetuating dangerous conspiracy theories, and radicalizing the alt right. This is present across nations, but it certainly contributed heavily to the climate of political extremism that led to a mass of insurrectionists to attempt to overthrow my duly elected government...
I will now turn to an article that surmises well the core practices of Meta as a company:
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Elevates disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories from the extremist fringes into the mainstream, fostering, among other effects, the resurgent anti-vaccination movement, broad-based questioning of basic public health measures in response to COVID-19, and the proliferation of the Big Lie of 2020—that the presidential election was stolen through voter fraud [16];
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Empowers bullies of every size, from cyber-bullying in schools, to dictators who use the platform to spread disinformation, censor their critics, perpetuate violence, and instigate genocide;
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Defrauds both advertisers and newsrooms, systematically and globally, with falsified video engagement and user activity statistics;
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Reflects an apparent political agenda espoused by a small core of corporate leaders, who actively impede or overrule the adoption of good governance;
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Brandishes its monopolistic power to preserve a social media landscape absent meaningful regulatory oversight, privacy protections, safety measures, or corporate citizenship; and
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Disrupts intellectual and civil discourse, at scale and by design.
I ask you now if you truly believe this is the sort of player you want on the Fediverse? Do you really want to federate lemmy.world with such a blatantly immoral and detrimental corporation?
I have really enjoyed my time here on Lemmy.world and have so greatly appreciated the hard work of you and your team. I have been donating to you to help with the costs of running this instance.
However, federating with Threads contradicts my philosophy and ethical principles, and I will be sadly canceling my donations and finding a new home should we federate with Threads in the future. I firmly believe that most users on lemmy.world share this sentiment. I hope this comment helped express the resistance and fears of our community.
Once again, I appreciate all the work you guys have done. But I respectfully and severely dissent on this issue.
This isn’t “our community’s” sentiment, you can see a number of different sentiments in this thread.
Anyone who thinks federating with threads for the content is Naive, and should just join threads instead. Unfortunately it seems like Lemmy Worlds instance controller is naive as well based on this post. Looks like its time to instance hop again or self host. Shame too bc I liked what LW had the potential to be, but I'm vehemently disappointed with the instance owners attitude towards corporate coming in, which already has me looking elsewhere for a home. If LW doesn't defed, ill self host and defed with LW and any other meta connected instance. I cant believe so many of yall are so naive to meta and EEE. Those who dont learn from history are doomed to repeat. One only has to look at xmpp(rip) and google for evidence.
You can also see sentiments shared across other posts. The vast majority I've seen has been users here expressing concern and disinterest in federating with Threads. I'm going to go off of the cumulative discussions I've seen across posts rather than limit it to judging a userbase by comments in a single post.
I'm not saying that all users here share the exact same sentiments as I; rather the majority is opposed to federating with Threads. Maybe I'm wrong. But the outspoken majority I have seen is opposed.
You pretty much summed up everything I fail to articulate because i'm pretty stupid lol. Well put man.
This, all of this. Meta is the one company I really manage to completely shut out of my life, partially through use of extensions like Facebook Container and partially through simply never interacting with anything I see from them. I'm on places like Lemmy because I want nothing to do with these huge corporations, because they always bring nothing but corruption and exploitation.
Well said. Why should we expect anything less from a company like Meta
Any social media or advance size plays a role in promoting disinformation. Even small social media sites do.
There is an entire federated server full of nothing but communists
Any social media or advance size plays a role in promoting disinformation. Even small social media sites do.
Only one of my many criticisms. And the fact that misinformation happens on other social media sites is a strawman fallacy you have created. The problem does not lie in the existence of misinformation; it is all about Meta's response to it. They ignored, enabled, and perpetuated harmful misinformation and outright propaganda that led to deaths and radicalization of the masses. Don't obfuscate from Meta's aberrant practices with the shift in topic critism and whataboutism.
There is an entire federated server full of nothing but communists
Not a good thing, and a total red herring and more whataboutism.
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EEE is underestimated there. Google was not the sole destroyer of Usenet, but its acquisition of DejaNews and its deployment of Google Groups both did lots of damage. So did AOL joining in. Sure, Lemmy post-EEE will still exist in some form, just as some feeble remnants of Usenet are still alive. But we want to flourish rather than just survive, I would hope.
Most telling is the likely culture invasion. I just saw news reports that extremist trolls are already leaving Twitter for Threads. We don't need that here. Exploding Heads is already defederated over what sounded like a much milder version of Meta's toxicity. So I'd want parsecs of distance between us and Meta, or as close to that as we can get.
I agree that it is not an emergency needing immediate action if you prefer to take it slower. But, from a distance at least, it looks to me like lemmy.ml has done the right thing in assuring their users that they want nothing to do with Zuckerberg.
Yeah. The problem with EEE is they want to get rid of the competitor, not the software. Even if Lemmy survived the EEE, Lemmy World will not, and what left is a very fractured and small instance here and there.
People use fediverse stuff not because it's the new hip trend, but because they want to distance themselves with giant socmed company as much as possible. That statement above is so out of touch.
We kindly ask everyone to engage in civil discourse and remember that not everyone will share the same opinions, which is perfectly acceptable.
It's really actually not acceptable to ignore what a bad actor Facebook/Meta has been. Catch up on the news if you need to. Cambridge Analytica scandal, unwitting social experiments, and the insane amount of intrusive permissions required just to use threads etc. They've been anti-consumer in an almost dystopian way and failing to call that out is an immoral stance. There's really no polite way to say, "that's a hell no, fix your attitude, or I'm out." That people have characterized folks telling you this is a deal-breaker as "blackmail" is the absurd stance here. We're asking you to stay true to the anti-corporate "power to the people" spirit that created Lemmy in the first place and call out Meta for being an obviously bad actor in this space, as a bunch of Reddit refugees... You actually arguing against this and acting like "both sides are fine" about it is being completely tone-deaf and is 100% antithetical to the purpose of the fediverse.
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing." You've already committed to doing nothing during an important time with a "wait and see" attitude. Meta is still a face-eating leopard, a frog-stinging scorpion, or whatever analogy does it for ya. It's not a tough choice and there IS a right and wrong answer.
We are judging lemmy.world admins based on their decisions and inaction is also some kind of a decision. Facebook is a threat and they've decided to not treat it seriously.
The admins are asking what the threat is, and the only response so far has been “but they are evil”.
I'm mostly interested in seeing if the fundamental ideals behind Lemmy work well against bad actors in practice. At least for a bit, and if they don't, coming up with ideas that could make it better based on what we learn by letting them in for a minute.
"i want to be a toxic asshole to people with different understandings and values than me about the platform we all share" - you, pretty much,
you can still be civil and accept that people have differing opinions even when you have such strongly held beliefs. there may be a 'correct' answer but not everyone will immediately see that, and about already commiting to doing nothing, they literally cannot take any action on the matter yet because threads has no federation or defederation connections yet, and we have plenty of time to disuss it and come to a reasonable decision.
As always, appreciate the transparency!
Instance Blocking - Unlike Mastodon, Lemmy does not provide a feature for individual users to block an instance (yet).
This is the real problem.
The fact that there's even anything to consider is pretty concerning. This is a company that has actively performed research on whether they can intentionally give people eating disorders.
Just from a user safety point of view they have proven themselves to be entirely untrustworthy. And anyone even considering exposing their userbase to people like that is also entirely untrustworthy.
And anyone even considering exposing their userbase to people like that is also entirely untrustworthy.
What does "exposing" mean in this context? If you mean Meta will be able to track everyone's data then they can do that already. The Fediverse by its very nature is open and public and me or you could write a scraper to catalogue all of the comments and threads.
So Federating with Meta will not change this at all. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they're already working on some way to do this right now.
If you mean "exposing" in the sense of introducing Instagram users to the general population of the Fediverse, then I think you are too harsh on Instagram users. They are just normal people. My mother and my girlfriend both have Instagram accounts - they don't go around spreading hate or whatever on Facebook.
Meta absolutely is an evil company (just like every single other large company). But blocking off millions of people from using our open protocol just defeats the purpose of having it in the first place.
Up until now, nobody has given a concrete mechanism by which federation with Meta will "EEE" the Fediverse. I've been asking for a few weeks now on here/kbin/mastodon and have gotten nothing. Even the admins of this instance in this here post asked the same question.
Blocking Meta would be like blocking Gmail as an email server. You're just hamstringing your own email server - now it won't be able to communicate with large swathes of the population. It means the protocol will remain niche and eventually die out.
If we want to spread our global revolution of decentralized and open source social media we need to make it the standard. And blocking Meta will essentially cut us off from ever doing that.
Exposing means exposing in the same sense that you don't put kids in a room with someone that's committed sexual offences against kids before. You don't put users that meta wants to manipulate in a room with meta then claim yourself to be responsible people that care about your users.
Why the fuck is this hard to understand?
Your own article defeats your point.
They didn't do any research to find out if they could do so intentionally, but realised from research that it was happening unintentionally, but that they could use some tools to affect how severe it would be, and then used those tools to make it less bad
Like there's a link to the testimony transcript right there. Stop reading the fluff opinion and actually read the testimony.
Meta has done a lot of shady stuff, you don't need to make up bullshit.
Your own article defeats your point.
No it does not.
They didn’t do any research to find out if they could do so intentionally
Meta has done a lot of shady stuff, you don’t need to make up bullshit.
Alright Nick Clegg maybe eat my ass and stop pretending it doesn't say it right fucking there:
"Facebook knows that they are leading young users to anorexia content ... It's just like cigarettes. Teenagers don't have any self-regulation. We need to protect the kids,"
"What's super tragic is Facebook's own research says as these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed. It actually makes them use the app more.
"They end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more."
Jog the fuck on.
EDIT: Why is every fucking comment in your history defending Meta? Literally 100% of your comment history is PR. Come the fuck on.
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.
This here is the sticking point. With mastodon.world there's no particular urgency to look for an instance that will block Threads because in a pinch I can block the site myself. With lemmy.world this is not an option at this point and is a direct data point in my preparing to move instances (again: I moved from lemmy.ml to here).
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.
Uh ... all the XMPP clients survived. It's not like anybody snuck around into people's houses and deleted the XMPP apps when Google and Facebook decided to stop playing nicely.
The issue isn't "survival". The issue is "thriving". They can quite easily turn the Fediverse into an irrelevance again.
Uh … all the XMPP clients survived. It’s not like anybody snuck around into people’s houses and deleted the XMPP apps when Google and Facebook decided to stop playing nicely.
It's always the XMPP response... but is there any data out there that XMPP before Google/Facebook was better off than after it?
Because from my point of view XMPP stagnated, got adopted by Google and Facebook which technologically was a huge rise of course, but in practice changed very little for 99.99% of people, and the inverse happened when Google and Facebook left, which was irrelevant for 99.99% of people and XMPP continued to stagnate.I'd really love some comparison from popular XMPP server Traffic (or monthly active users) before, during and after the Google/Facebook era.
That’s my take on the whole thing. Google adopted a small OSS framework, used it with some of their apps and then as google does they killed their apps. They never did anything to the framework.
It feels like people on this site have this notion that without Google stepping in XMPP would have huge, widespread adoption. The reality is that the average person isn’t interested in federation or anything else remotely technical. They want an easy to use client that abstracts as much as possible, and those tend to be centralized and corporate.
The problem you're missing here is relative relevance. The entirety of the fediverse is ALREADY irrelevant compared to threads userbase. EEE just doesn't make sense.
Fediverse outside of threads is already incredibly insignificant and likely always will be. This is perfectly fine. This is probably the best for us.
The Fediverse has to exist for Threads to get around certain claims of being a monopoly in Europe. If the Fediverse at large rejects Threads, they can't point to Billy-Joe-Bob's Real Good-Like Fediverse Provider as "evidence" they're not monopolistic. The more of the Fediverse that interacts with Threads, the stronger their position as "not a monopoly" gets when arguing with European regulators.
They didn't pick ActivityPub because it's a great protocol, trust me.
The matter of "thriving" is exactly why I believe federating with Meta can be beneficial. We won't be able to prevent them from becoming the biggest instance, they accomplished it the very moment they opened Threads, regardless of federation. But if Threads user can see Fediverse posts and the experience they have, they might decide they'll be better off dropping Meta and jumping ship.
The reason why Threads immediately became so big is because everyone in Instagram was one click away from making a Threads account, and federation means they will also be pretty much one click away from making a Mastodon account too.
But if we stay cowering by a corner, closed off to the biggest userbase, is that really gonna make us thrive?
Very good, rational response.
This is a balanced post, and it is very much appreciated. That being said, I am new to the Fediverse, and I finally found a viable replacement for Reddit that is less toxic (at the moment at least,) and where I can socialize. I only use Telegram and Lemmy now. This is all I have. I don't have friends in the real world. I appreciate your strategy, but you should think of how this influx of toxicity would affect people like me who have difficulties socializing and making new physical friends and maintaining those friendships.
This creates a dilemma where we must either defederate, disappointing those who desire interaction with Threads
Who are these people? 🤔
Users should have the option to block entire instances on their own.
This solves the problem and many others.
There's one but it was too technical and involved multiple steps that made lose intrest.
I'm not usually one who wants to be babied on the internet and have things blocked for me.
I'd much rather have control over what gets blocked. We need a user-level domain blocking tool like Mastodon.
With a tool like that I could take a wait-and-see approach and only block when I have a reason to and not because "Meta icky".
Zactly right.
Me. While I think lemmy should enable users to block instances on their own, I would rather view threads content if there's no choice.
Thank you for this post.
My biggest worry is not privacy, I know lemmy doesn't store any personal info and whatever you post in public can be used by anyone (if you don't like it, you'd better off not posting at all on public forums).
Big corporate controlled platforms are well known for botting/astroturfing/vote manipulation/propaganda on top of a huge amount of shitposting, they are dozens of millions, that could very easily overwhelm lemmy and kill it on a whim, from a content perspective, this is what worries me the most.
I will trust you anyway to keep an eye on them and react quickly if necessary, like you proved you're capable of with the hacking situation.
I understand your open policy, that's a good approach in general, but I hope lemmy devs will consider adding a function to allow users to block instances, because I really don't want to see facebook shit here.
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
I don't have much of an opinion to add other than I wouldn't trust Meta even slightly -- but I do want to say that I appreciate this openness and thoughtfulness from the lemmy.world/mastodon.world admins.
Thanks for posting your thoughts; they seem completely reasonable to me. However, my personal choice if the decision was in my hands would be to take the same wait-and-see approach, but with the default switched: I would start defederating with Threads until we see how it seems to go with instances who don't.
If there was a guy standing in my driveway who I didn't know, I'd probably keep an eye on him a bit, but wouldn't worry much unless he started doing something threatening. But if the guy was the same one who beat the family next door to death, I'm calling the cops and making sure the doors are locked. Meta gets no benefit of a doubt me; we don't need their interaction and it's hard to believe much good can come from it.
I don't fault you for your opinion though; it's a grey area and I'm at a different spot than you in it.
The “guy standing in the driveway” just outed a woman to authorities for trying to get an abortion.
We already know he is a bad actor.
“Wait and see” is bullshit.
Facebook/Meta is THE largest social network and one of the oldest active ones.
We’ve seen it all.
There’s no reason to wait.
Defederate.
I’m deleting my .world accounts now and moving to .ml.
I would prefer lemmy.world defederate from Threads and any other major social media giant's attempt at federation. My reasons for doing so have been covered really well in other comments in this post.
I just want to remind everyone this is a direct quote from Zuckerberg regarding people handing over their data to Facebook: "They trust me. Dumb fucks."
do you have a source on where that quote is from? because thats an amazing quote and im sure there are other gems from whatever it is. i also wanna make sure its real lol
It's a quote taken from the earlier days of Facebook, he's actually admitted to saying it' true, but says that at that time he was dumb and that he regrets making the IM's
ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard ZUCK: just ask ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one? ZUCK: people just submitted it ZUCK: i don’t know why ZUCK: they “trust me” ZUCK: dumb fucksthere's a few pages talking about it but this goes into pretty nice detail
A lot of people in the comments are missing the point that there's nothing to defederate from yet. Adding "threads.net" to the defederation list is pointless because:
A) Threads isn't using ActiviyPub yet, and we don't know if they ever will.
B) We don't know if that's gonna be the actual domain they would use on ActivityPub.
IMO the whole thing stinks of vaporware. I think Threads is gonna flop and fall into oblivion, but if the future proves me wrong they can certainly block them when that times comes.
Adding threads.net to the defederation list right now only serves to publicly make the statement "We don't like Meta" and serves no technical purpose whatsoever.
serves to publicly make the statement “We don’t like Meta”
That's good enough for a lot of us, who have seen how they operate for the last decade and expect nothing different from their latest venture. And if enough instances make that public statement, it may serve as a deterrent to Meta to invest in this space, which would be the best outcome.
I agree. If the majority of instances decide to defederate, it will send a message that it isn't worth it to join the Fediverse if it is a hostile place to Meta.
If they do federate and can't use the majority of Lemmy's content to their advantage in any way then it at least would (hopefully) deter them from adding a communities feature to their platform, kind of like how kbin has both.
Coming to this 3h late but w/e
What are the conditions that will trigger defederation? It was mentioned via the "wait and see" approach. What is the See? What does Meta have to display, that they haven't already, to cause the needle to sway over to defederation.
The concern that I see is that if instances federate with it, their posts and interactions will become reliant on Threads users, due to sheer volume. This means Meta can then threaten to defederate with that Instance, and just to stay afloat that Instance will have to comply - or be left on the losing end of the "blame game" - Meta will say the Instance owner was the problem as its users cry in outrage for losing c/boomersdidnothingwrong.
By defederating early, it prevents instances becoming reliant on Meta users to comment and share. While they can see our content it basically becomes the new "reddit post of Twitter screenshot about reddit"
Another significant issue is that Facebook was widely panned in the Analytica scandal, and it's users targeted to sway votes. I came here to escape ads and look at memes not "vote for X" bullshit
What does Meta have to display, that they [haven't?] already, to cause the needle to sway over to defederation
Right now it's not even possible to federate Threads and Lemmy... waiting for that seems like a pretty good first step?
It's totally worth discussing this issue now, but when it comes to action... that would be premature (at least for Lemmy instances. Mastodon is a different story).
By defederating early, it prevents instances becoming reliant on Meta users to comment and share.
It’s up to instance owners to decide if that’s a legitimate risk for them.
What does Meta have to display, that they haven’t already, to cause the needle to sway over to defederation.
Actually abusing their power or otherwise negatively affecting lemmy.world in any of the ways you’ve mentioned.
Thank you for the actual sane and level headed response
so much FUD circling lately
Best way by far would be to implement user-side blocking for specific instances. I personally don't want to see the corporate cesspool that Threads will be. But others might. And the fediverse as a whole will profit from more users and more mainstream engagement.
User-side blocking would combat the content-fragmentation problem and ads. Privacy is not really an issue (as already said: anyone can scrape your shit from anywhere anytime. If you don't want your personal data on the internet, then dont put it there)
It also keeps the power to the people. Moderation by people in charge of instances is really important ofc. But the last thing I would want is for them to become people dictating user behavior (as it is with some Reddit moderators and subs). Thankfully that's not the case here, but if we could keep as many decisions as possible to the users, that would be great.
So many excellent comments against Federation, but in case my two cents contributes...
I remember when Facebook released the Messenger App. I think it was around the time they swallowed Instagram. Before that, messaging was all part of the same platform. With that transition, some (more extreme) privacy settings left the walls of the app and started crawling into everything our phones experienced. I didn't want to play that, so I held off as long as I could.
But eventually I couldn't text my friends the same way they could text each other. I wanted that feature, but I didn't want to feed my data into it. Eventually, I relented. I mean, shared payments and location sharing... Things I now take for granted.
But I could never take that data back. The data that fed Cambridge Analytica. The data that feeds politicians and special interests, with UI designed around the mind by psychological experts, and alorithms that optimize engagement regardless of the path to get there.
I don't want the Fediverse to be swallowed too. They ARE going to build walls that drive profits. They're incapable of doing anything else. It's their entire business model!
Please defederate while we watch to see. It's the safer default.
It shouldn’t even be a consideration.
We know exactly what Facebook/Meta/Threads is all about.
They’re a well-established company and there is absolutely no reason to ruin Lemmy by associating with them.
Disgusting company.
It’s absurd this is even a topic of discussion on Lemmy.
I think this is a reasonable response. I don’t want an admin that makes sudden, drastic changes without careful consideration, no matter the pressure from some members.
Don’t like it? Join another instance. That’s the magic of the fediverse.
Thanks for explaining your reasoning. I'm of the opinion that it's better to defederate, mainly for the reasons your post already covers, but I'd stress the quality of content is/will be Lemmy's biggest asset. I think many users (myself included) are on Lemmy to get away from the existing social media experience. Lemmy/fediverse is refreshing because it isn't governed by a mandate to grow quarterly profits at its users' expense; it feels like the internet in the late 90s and early 00s where people made content because it interested them rather than trying to garner views or promoting the most polarizing/inciting content (or even just downright trolling). I hope the admins can see what the risks are and take proactive steps in the interest of the community.
I'm here because I wanted something far from Meta given their track record over the decades of being a privacy nightmare with their data collection and their apps and influence of the population their algorithms have had. They don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
To me whatever tech it is doesn't really matter. It could an old school message board. If Facebook isn't there I'd choose it over Facebook, since the tech itself isn't what makes something good. It's the organization behind it, and their long term plans for it and what they plan to do with the extra data collected from users beyond just public comments.
So it's personally why I have red flags for instances that plan to join with Meta, since I don't view something being fediverse to mean automatically safe and uncorruptable. These instances aren't even built with privacy in mind with ip logs available to admins. So that's even more of a reason why I don't want to associate with Meta instances. That instantly makes me highly skeptical of the ethics of the individuals running the instance, and the NDAs meta has had people they met sign adds to the suspicion.
I don't view fediverse as this magic armor that would protect users in instances that choose to federate with meta. It's something I see people have to be just as deliberate in when it comes to making a meta account or not.
Facebook wants to join the Fediverse, so that they can use us. There is no other reason. It's crazy to think that Facebook and the Fediverse can both work together in harmony and that Facebook will somehow contribute and help us.
If I had a say, I would vote to defederate from Threads. In the past, I would tend to lurk around social media sites instead of contributing all that much. I never really posted to Reddit, but my recent experience seeing how large corporations can ruin a good thing in pursuit of profits has caused me to loose trust in these kinds of entities. I do not trust Zuckerberg. I do not trust Meta. If there is no defedration, my plan would be to migrate to an instance that blocks Threads.
Yes of course! But what about MONEY!
MONEY! Is very importent. The proprietors of Lemmy stand to make quite a bit of MONEY! If they play ball with Meta.
MONEY!
I've been ok with staying federated SOLEY due to the user base and content, I'd love to have way more content on the fediverse and have more big names on the platform, and federation will allow that.
Plus thread isn't going to federate with Lemmy, it's mainly Mastodon and platforms like that. It has really nothing to do with Lemmy yet
Thanks for highlighting the real issues.
People that keep mindlessly talking about EEE are doing more disservice than Meta itself.
Most people don't have a clear grasp of the technical concepts, keep talking about defederating something that doesn't exist yet, keep copy-pasting the same things over and over, and this slows the conversation about the fediverse philosophy, the real problems and the possible solutions.
The fediverse is it's in infancy, this could be a great chance to find some of its underlying issues and make it more resilient and healthy.
I despise seeing it wasted with mindless or disonformed copy-paste.
Ironically, even that's exactly the kind of behavior people here hate in Meta's platforms, but they keep perpetuating it here themselves.
People are jumping on the EEE bandwagon because it's spooky, but they're forgetting that as cool as the Fediverse is, places like Mastadon and Lemmy aren't Meta's primary competitor, Twitter is.
From my limited experience developing platforms, I'd guess that the only reason they're associated with the Fediverse at all is because ActivityPub was the fastest way to minimum viable product, and using an already available open standard means a lot less litigation from the elongated muskrat. It's not some long con, it was just the path of least resistance.
I have my own theory as to why - the Digital Markets Act in the EU: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en
Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:
- allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
- allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
- provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
- allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform
The interoperability is the big one. Since Threads isn't currently connected to the wider fediverse, that's probably one reason why they're not in the EU yet - because it's currently in violation of the Digital Markets Act. This also means that fears of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" are likely overblown. Extending ActivityPub without working in tandem with the standards authorities to ensure interoperability means that they'd be (once again) in violation of the DMA.
I'm not saying Facebook is innocent. People actively say Facebook is malicious (not without cause, mind), but really - like all corporations - Facebook is self-serving. Facebook will always do the thing that is in their own best interest; they're sociopathic but not evil for evils' sake. And the DMA gives clear evidence that EEE is not in Facebook's best interest.
Let me quickly quote selected sections of the act itself:
The ability of end users to acquire content, subscriptions, features or other items outside the core platform services of the gatekeeper should not be undermined or restricted. In particular, a situation should be avoided whereby gatekeepers restrict end users from access to, and use of, such services via a software application running on their core platform service. For example, subscribers to online content purchased outside a software application, software application store or virtual assistant should not be prevented from accessing such online content on a software application on the core platform service of the gatekeeper simply because it was purchased outside such software application, software application store or virtual assistant.
...
The lack of interoperability allows gatekeepers that provide number-independent interpersonal communications services to benefit from strong network effects, which contributes to the weakening of contestability. Furthermore, regardless of whether end users ‘multi-home’, gatekeepers often provide number-independent interpersonal communications services as part of their platform ecosystem, and this further exacerbates entry barriers for alternative providers of such services and increases costs for end users to switch. Without prejudice to Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council (14) and, in particular, the conditions and procedures laid down in Article 61 thereof, gatekeepers should therefore ensure, free of charge and upon request, interoperability with certain basic functionalities of their number-independent interpersonal communications services that they provide to their own end users, to third-party providers of such services.
Gatekeepers should ensure interoperability for third-party providers of number-independent interpersonal communications services that offer or intend to offer their number-independent interpersonal communications services to end users and business users in the Union. To facilitate the practical implementation of such interoperability, the gatekeeper concerned should be required to publish a reference offer laying down the technical details and general terms and conditions of interoperability with its number-independent interpersonal communications services. It should be possible for the Commission, if applicable, to consult the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, in order to determine whether the technical details and the general terms and conditions published in the reference offer that the gatekeeper intends to implement or has implemented ensures compliance with this obligation.
Simply:
-
Content should not be restricted to just your site
-
You need to allow third-party apps
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You must publish your API publicly
Failure to comply causes:
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Initial fine of up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover (or up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements)
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Daily fine of up to 5% of the average daily turnover
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Systemic infringements can cause the EU to break up the company entirely
The law has teeth. It started to take effect in May, but there's a period of time before compliance is expected (likely we won't see much compliance until 2024). The route of least resistance for Facebook is to adopt ActivityPub and allow third-party ActivityPub apps like Fedilab to interface with Threads. They can't make changes to the protocol because then they won't be compliant with the Digital Markets Act. I wouldn't be surprised if Instagram and maybe even Facebook itself start to federate as well.
activitypub was the fastest way to a minimum viable product
This really makes zero sense, considering that they launched without activitypub support and are only planning on adding it later.
Thanks for commenting on the issue, I appreciate the communication and it seems the community feels the same.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] can you let us know if you or any admins of lemmy.world took a meeting with meta or representatives of meta?
@[email protected] runs the 6th largest mastodon instance, and fosstodon instance admins (a smaller mastodon instance), were invited to an "off the record" meeting with Meta. The fosstodon admin, Kev, declined the meeting and notified their community about the correspondence going as far as to share screenshots.
In the correspondence, the meta rep said they were reaching out to mastodon admins, so if fosstodon got an invite, logic would figure they'd invite the admin(s) of a larger instance whom also happen to admin the largest lemmy instance in the world (lemmy.world)
I would love if the same level of transparency could occur here on lemmy.world
Were you folks invited, did you take it? I would really appreciate knowing if the people who run this instance have any relationships, formal or otherwise, with meta. A lot of lemmy users are here on the fediverse to escape the reach of companies like Meta when it comes to their social media.
Obviously no one is obligated to defederate from meta/threads when the time comes. But I would like to be informed.
I think it's important to know. I personally would like to know, I would like to make informed decisions on which instance is my home on lemmy - but without all of the info, our decisions aren't fully informed, so I have low confidence making any decision at this point.
Finally, I've posed similar questions before and have been accused by other users of wanting to attack lemmy admins if they did take a meeting, or for any reason at all. That could not be further from the truth. Online harassment is harassment, and is illegal in many jurisdictions. I don't wish any harm or ill towards anyone, including those who have different values or opinions than mine. Finally, I've always been cordial in my submissions on lemmy, I don't know what would make anyone think I'd start behaving differently now.
I think these questions are important, and I intend to continue asking them until we have an answer, so that I can make a decision with confidence that I had sufficient information to do so.
I hope that seems as reasonable as I feel it is, though I could be wrong, please feel free to respond with your thoughts. I appreciate the discourse.
Thanks yall.
I'd prefer to nuke Threads from orbit; the very least we can do is defederate them.
I do not wish to have any sort of connection with Threads / Meta. Absolutely note. Defederate.
But do you have any argument? I'm currently really neutral, but as described in this post, I don't see how they could do EEE since users on Lemmy are… well, on Lemmy. And they don't want to move there. And in the EU, Threads could lead to even more Fediverse users since the official app is not available there but Mastodon and Lemmy are. And again, even with defederating, they see all our content, we just can't benefit from their additional content that goes away from twitter.
Your last sentence is what I learned from this post and what changed my mind. Fragmenting lemmy content doesn't seem smart if we want adoption/engagement
Do you have an argument?
I came here because I don’t want corporate social media. To come to a place that was specifically created to be outside the social media tech giant sphere of influence, and advocate for it to become part of that sphere of influence, is completely baffling to me.
Why does anyone want to federate? For Threads content? Go to Threads, its all there! Why does it all need to come here?
An explanation as to why you feel that way might be useful.
Where the original post mentions that meta could include ads as posts so you cannot block them is an option for them, and knowing that meta they will do this and more.
And as a user above me wrote, this company is known for lying, abusing privacy of its users, monetizing everything, and they are not going to change. For me it's not even an option working with them or being connected to them in any way, just as if Google was doing this I would feel the same.
I think it's important to defederate from threads as soon as humanly possible, their presence here will only bring us problems in the future, as has been shown by what happens when Big companies enter federated Spaces in the past (many people have already brought up Embrace Extend Extinguish already). Also like I've said before Meta has a really bad track record when it comes to their privacy and ethics policies, might not be in our best interest to welcome them into this family.
Ribbit
Did meta went through their chat history and then contacted the authorities?
Did you read the post? Blocking an instance isn't going to prevent what you post from being accessible. Also, companies in the US are legally required to abide by subpoenas for the most part. The issue with the abortion case had much more to do with the failures of states and the US than with Meta itself. I don't use Facebook or Instagram, but I don't think making a decision for the entire community to block others because someone is offended is the right approach. I'd much rather see the option for users to decide what they see and don't see... that way you pick for yourself.
What a braindead take. Meta got subpoenaed to share the information because they declined to rat them out by default. I'm sure we'll see the fiber of your moral character when you get subpoenaed with consequences if you fail.
I'm here for Lemmy, not Facebook/Instagram/Threads. If that community integrates with this one, I will move to an instance that doesn't. It's not about ads or EEE or privacy for me, it's about belonging to a social media platform that isn't toxic. FB and Twitter are. Integration with these or other communities like them are harmful to this one.
I advise against even CONSIDERING a cooperation with META. That alone will make users think you are in it for the gains, that you can be baught. There is no value that META can bring to the Fediverse. And I hope in the future outgoing defederation will be possible too, like blocking certain instances from accessing our activity via the pub. But this request comes from Fediverse, and META will request other things from ActivityPub. They will seem to contribute while muddying the waters. They are a huge monster coming our way and we'd better start raising the walls.
I keep seeing this argument about "but threads content!"
Who gives a shit about threads content? I didn't join Lemmy to read god damn threads content, if I want the god damn threads content ILL MAKE A FUCKING THREADS ACCOUNT. If I want to interact with those fuckheads...ILL MAKE A FUCKING THREADS ACCOUNT
This is seriously the dumbest thing brought up in favor of letting Meta in. Do you still see Facebook reposts on Reddit without a Facebook account and connecting reddit to Facebook? Yes? Then what do we care if we won't have a direct feed, because if it's worth a shit it'll be reposted everywhere.
Defederate and let those idiots who want threads TO MAKE A THREADS ACCOUNT. It's "free and so simple!"
This is exactly what Facebook wants. They want to make users addicted to their content, then at some point they will make the app incompatible with ActivityPub protocol. Fediverse users will have to create a Threads account to follow some of their favorite celebrities and Fediverse content creators will have to do it in order to stay relevant. Most of those people will not want to use both platforms, so they will stop using the Fediverse.
This is a very level-headed and sincere explanation, and I love it. I support it 100%.
While supporting people's neutrality in moderation team, I gotta say that the best way to settle this would be giving users the choice of their own. Most people here are the ones who came from oppressed platforms that silence their users and they wanted to have a choice.
It could be solved like how lemm.ee did this, by giving poll to their users.
Federating threads would again make some of people to do the same mistake. It will be easy for them to fall in, for convenient posting and reach to Fediverse, most of them wouln't even know how this works, they would only tap the screen and accept that it just WORKS.
Instead we shouldn't give even a possibility for convenience to them, they should search for the REAL freedom platforms and know their existence.
People will come here sooner or later, but we shouldn't give them opportunity to not to.
Most people here are the ones who came from oppressed platforms that silence their users and they wanted to have a choice.
The only real way to do this is to create a user-level domain blocking tool. Then all users will really be able to choose for themselves.
Polls such as this can be manipulated. Print on my conspiracy hat, what if meta had created 20000 accounts in car there is a poll?
For them, perhaps they see federating as worth potentially millions of dollars of profit.
Very thoughtful and measured response admin. Thank you for this. Given how you follow topics and people on Mastodon, I cannot come to a reason why Threads will be bad for fed.
I see it as a win, not because of meta and people using it, but because it'll introduce more people to federated services. If Threads takes off and Twitter continues to circle the drain, I can envision the National Weather Service (NWS) and weather spotters transitioning over. There is literally no chance of that happening now, but Threads might be what overcomes that inertia.
I was pretty close to filtering Threads from my feed because the topic had been beaten to death with some patently immature and paranoid discussions, I'm glad I didn't.
It's great to see you address this and display good understanding of all the facets and why they are or aren't a problem.
In particular, I appreciate that you recognize the issues with moderation and content monopolization that would most likely occur as a result of hundreds of millions of Threads users flooding the ecosystem.
This is a little corner of the internet that people have flocked to for very specific reasons, either to specifically escape corporate control or to seek an environment that is less toxic than the alternative. This is a nascent community that is taking shape, slowly. Connecting it to one of the largest, loudest and most toxic social media actors at this crucial stage of building the identity of Lemmy sounds a lot like playing with fire.
I think why many people feel so strongly about this matter is that we are dealing with a known quantity. From a corporate perspective, we know what Meta stands for and how they do business. We know they monetize outrage and seek to trap their users in parasitic feedback loops to drive engagement. We know they have no moral or legal scruples.
The same can be said about userbase. This isn't an unknown group of people with an unfamiliar culture that - who knows, maybe they're kind and nice? These are people from Facebook and Instagram, probably supplemented by plenty from Twitter too with how that platform is doing. We already know the culture on those platforms, it's been shaped by the outrage centric monetization and (lack of) moderation.
It's possible that not many of them will find their way over here, but in my brief time here I have already seen interactions with Mastodon users, both in comments and as posts on the All feed. Now imagine a platform with a thousand times more users than Mastodon. Yes, perhaps the tiger won't find its way in, but why leave the front door open and just pray it's docile?
Still, I appreciate the transparent communication once again, and it seems these are issues you are aware of, so I trust that you'll make a good decision when the time comes.
This is a little corner of the internet that people have flocked to for very specific reasons
I think this sentence may be pivotal to understanding the arguments opposing or favouring federation with a Meta (or other large corporate) service.
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Some people see the fediverse as consisting primarily of communities with a certain shared set of values. And for those people taking a moral stance against those parties (such as Meta) antithetical to those principles assumes primacy. By implication however (in my opinion), this limits the reach of the fediverse because, let's face it, 95% (random number but probably not too far off) of people in the wider world don't care about this stand. The fediverse's current userbase however has a much higher proportion of people who do care.
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Other people see the fediverse as having the potential of being a widespread alternative to mainstream services such as reddit, twitter, youtube etc. They may share some of the same concerns about the dangers of centralised control (or else they wouldn't be here), but believe that the decentralised nature of the fediverse model is resilient enough to both accommodate corporate players while not being dependent on, or endangered by them.
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- Facebook is completely driven by ad revenue. There is nothing stopping them from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores, which would ensure that their ads end up on the "all" page of federated servers.
- Threads already has more users than all Lemmy instances combined. Even if their algorithms don't apply to the rest of the fediverse directly, they can still completely dictate what the "all" page will look like for all instances by simply controlling what their own users see and vote on.
- In general, Facebook has shown countless times that they don't have their users best interests in mind. They view users as something to exploit for revenue.
Facebook is completely driven by ad revenue. There is nothing stopping them from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores, which would ensure that their ads end up on the “all” page of federated servers.
If that's the case, could they not also do the same thing with inflammatory content in order to "drive engagement"?
Take your time and don't stress yourself.
I'm not a Lemmy.world user, but this a top-notch response.
Has meta shown itself to be a responsible force, or a profit-driven corporation that has lied to users in the past and values profit above all else?
If we judge them by their past and present actions, we should not federated with them.
I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful response. Measured approaches are always best when you have time and resources to appropriately react down the road as you mentioned.
With that being said I have no interest in dealing with Meta, Twitter, or any similar company. Their leadership and shareholders only care about one thing - maximizing profits. If I want to interact with their products then I will go out of my way to sign up and use their services…simple as that. They’re not here on the Fediverse out of curiousity or the goodness of their hearts to stand up a lasting community.
I expect some (maybe a lot of downvotes) but I don’t trust Meta in the slightest.
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.
Regardless if we know the method in which they will attempt it, we know what they are and what their ultimate goal is. Just because you can't see the fangs doesn't mean you invite the menacing stranger in black into your home in the middle of the night.
Also, "Lemmy will survive" is a bit like saying "technically the earth will survive after climate change". We're not just interested in continued existence, but in the manner that existence takes. If Meta is allowed to set-up shop in the fediverse, they will come to define it, and new users will see it as the fediverse. By the time Lemmy.world defederates, it will be like cutting off its own arm and no one will want to leave Threads anyway.
Basically, let the fediverse grow without this snake in the garden. Let it form its own identity without Meta so it can serve as the counterpoint to it and refuge from it.
I'm not interested in the vast majority of Instagram content but that doesn't mean that an IG-based platform should be blocked because the vast majority of content is also inoffensive. The outlook that I could follow accounts from TV shows and comedians I like without logging into a dedicated service is exciting. Given that I'm pondering to move from another Mastodon instance to calckey.world, it's refreshing that the admin team does not cave to baseless hysteria (it's baseless because Threads doesn't federate with anything, yet, therefore any judgement of the effect on the Fediverse is not based on facts, especially when it comes from people like EU citizens for whom Threads isn't even available).
Additionally, the inability of individuals to block an instance means we have to do what is best for the community.
You could just file a feature request for Lemmy. 🤷 Chances are, given the influx of developers, that user-level instance blocking will be implemented before Threads adopts ActivityPub.
I fully expect Threads to be vaporware, just like the Metaverse. The only way I see it replacing Twitter is if they're more aggressive with forcing Instagram users onto the service, which they might do, but more likely it's just going to be a flash in the pan.
Twitter will hold on for a while longer yet.
I wouldn't even think IG users need anything else. What does Twitter or Threads have that IG doesn't? I mean, even audioshows are more likely to have IG than Twitter these days, so it's not like it's images first anyway.
But who knows, maybe it's not only bots doing all the engagement on Threads.
The thing for me is, twitter and facebook (which by default includes instagram and threads) have very different purposes for me.
Facebook for me has always just been close friends and famliy. Its personal photos shared with those close to me, its commenting on cat photos and peoples weddings. Its more of a private thing. (its one I don't use much but it is a way to keep in touch with the ongoings of close friends who maybe live further away etc)
Twitter, is where I discuss with like-minded (and the opposite) people anything from cycling to politics, from darts to the situation in gaza, its where i talk about doping in sport, or Liverpool FC. Or where (prior to the blue check fiasco) would check reliable journalists and writers i followed for opinions and news.
Twitter and Facebook+ serve very different purposes, and have very different groups of people i interact with on the two platforms.
My facebook profile is private, and restricted and contains personal stuff. Twitter is public, unrestricted and contains all sorts of bollocks.
Threads makes no sense to me, because, I don't particularly want those two worlds to cross. And because of this, to a degree I don't think threads will be particularly successful and will end up just kinda blended into instagram in some way
Honestly, I would much rather they stick around and replace twitter, but leave us tf alone. Unless Musk attempts to sell twitter in the near future, I can't see it lasting in the state its in. Like even with the culture its breeding aside, the unpaid bills, server issues, paywalling of features, and the introduction of limitations might be enough to drive people away. A lot of what has killed reddit alts in the past often comes down to the reliability of the site. If your service is constantly crashing, is super slow, or you have to implement limits to save on resources, people are going to bail if they can't do what they want when they want to.
disappointing those who desire interaction with Threads
Maybe those rare few (deranged) people should just go create a Threads account? This is a very unconvincing attempt at appearing "objective".
Yeah most of us here are specifically trying to avoid corporations.
Hi, I'm new. Been hanging out for a few days and I like what this instance, this piece of software (Lemmy) and what the fediverse does, for a multitude of reasons. I'll admit I'm new to the federation stuff, so my knowledge is limited, but I deeply wish for the fediverse to gain a massive foothold and become the norm for how to do social media stuff in the future.
Before I share a thought, I figured I should say that the transparency is super appreciated, and I support the current stance regardless. That said...
On the topic of EEE:
It's been bothering me lately that the discussion of whether or not Meta will engange in EEE-type tactics is centered around whether or not they will try to squeeze out Lemmy or Mastodon. Isn't that a bit of a pointless discussion? The problem, and the reason why Meta federating with these open communities is so scary, is that if we allow them to become the biggest provider in the space alongside all the various instances that are running either Lemmy or Mastodon, is that they'll start dictating the future of AcitivityPub itself. Whether or not Meta will try to embrace and strangle Mastodon is sort of besides the point, the fear is that they'll do to ActivityPub what Google did to XMPP and probably many other companies have done to many other fun standards and technologies.
The reason I personally think we shouldn't federate, under any circumstances, is for exactly that reason. Sure, we'll (or I guess Mastodon-users) will only see a rise on content and people to engage with which is good and allows us to take part without being the person who refuses to use socks in the room, but it sort of also devalues Lemmy and Mastodon (moreso Mastodon) by making the "default choice" Threads, doesn't it? That gives Meta insane leverage over the protocol itself, and should they wish to, they absolutely could position themselves to dictate the future of ActivityPub. Even worse, they could build ontop of ActivityPub and choke our spaces out, just like they did with XMPP.
Why is this never discussed? I didn't see any thoughts on this in Rochko's post on the matter either, and I have to admit I feel slightly uncomfortable at the thought that this particular part of the discussion is sidestepped. It doesn't matter if they fork Lemmy or Mastodon, or any other client-software built on top of ActivityPub for that matter, what worries me (and maybe others) is by devaluing our own "platforms" we automatically crown Meta the king of the protocol, because they become said default choice and hold massive leverage over content.
This is probably the exact issue a lot of Reddit-users looking for new spaces are feeling right now; the content is sort of locked to that other place with no way to actively "force" (nor should they have, just to have that said) content to happen here. If we open the doors, federate, and Meta decides to make their interpretation of AP in such a way that Lemmy or Mastodon devs really can't effectively share that content both ways, it likely will end up killing them (and AP to a degree) in the future once that link is dead or dying, and users will end up leaving to follow the content they want. That drain is gonna leave a lot of instances barren. At the same time, in the here and now, by using "we're federated with Threads!" as a selling point effectively kills our current momentum too, because why not just register with Threads then? It's the bigger platform, all the users are there and it's company-ran and so safe to stay for a while. So that initial surge and following smaller surges just won't happen, because Meta sucked the wind out of our sales.
Just thinking out loud. I still think the position held in OP is good, and at this point I agree, but I wish the talk around EEE was about AP, not the softwares we're using to have this little panic attack on. Meta, if of ill-intent, has likely not set their sights at Mastodon and Lemmy, they're looking to embrace, extend and extinguish ActivityPub.
In terms of the issue of losing content if meta is allowed to control that much content, that is one reason why I support preemptive defederation. You can't lose something you never had.
Lemmy will survive.> wouldn't it be better to take care of it, not just "survive" ?
"My dad beat me a lot when I was a kid but I didn't die!"
good argument but no thanks.i joined lemmy for avoid at alls cost main place controled by corpo. yhea sure at first they are doing nothing. but later?
On the topic of not needing to be federated to scrape data: yes, posts are public, but (at the moment…) a part of privacy comes from simply not being examined closely. Meta announcing their introduction into the Fediverse immediately shines a light on it in its entirety in a way that would dwarf disgruntled Redditors signing up.
Not allowing them to make that claim by denying them outright would be preferable, if the decision is to not federate.
I personaly want to block Meta for good, don't want bots and ads posting things, don't want paid shills promoting propagonda, and never want my data collected and sold. mega corporates enriching themselves while controlling, spying, interferring and shaping our society without permissions.
Something to consider: I’m not even sure Threads will actually implement ActivityPub.
I think it’s been an amazing talking point for them this week, to differentiate themselves from Twitter for shareholders in a way that sounds like it can justify their growth ambitions beyond Twitter’s. Every other differentiator (our moderation will be better, our community will be friendlier, our UX will be better…) is subjective. A “we’ll do just like X but better” strategy is not a very compelling long-term growth strategy, particularly when Twitter is the model, and Twitter tried so hard and failed so hard to exit for many years before Musk even expressed interest.
But if your killer growth feature is that you mean to tap into that “something-verse” that shareholders have a weak understanding of (surely if it ends in “-verse”, it’s gotta be massive! Particularly if the press has been describing it with dramatic words as the only credible alternative to Twitter so far), then it does sound like it could grow further than Twitter could have.
The reason I’m not buying it, is that the integration between a massive social media service like Threads and the small ActivityPub servers of various versions everywhere would probably be a massive technical and human headache, that Meta can’t completely control. And that is not in their wheelhouse. But something that is in their wheelhouse more than in Twitter’s, is to successfully monetize various forms of closed social media. But the only way that vision can be sufficient as a financial strategy, is if they first prove that they can in fact pull that off. And I actually think they totally can pull it off.
So with that, I don’t think it’s impossible that once Meta has grown Threads sufficiently, and then that they run successful ads on it, that they might announce that they’re dropping the ActivityPub plan altogether before it’s even released. Their stock might take a dip that day, but I could imagine that the hope is that by then they will have proven that their service doesn’t need it after all, in which case it should be a small dip. And before that, the stock will have increased a lot based on the fediverse promise.
I’m not saying that Meta is not going to actively invest in it and try it; in fact, they legally have to, now that they announced it, since it’s a public company, or else it would be fraud. But my guess is they might be counting on other upsides to work out well enough that they don’t need to deliver it in the end after all.
We’ll see…
There's a lot of more convincing arguments than I could make about this matter made by other users in this thread so I'll just say that I don't want to be anywhere near anything even vaguely related to meta. It is a cancer and should be denied and boycotted at every opportunity.
If this instance doesn't defederate I will just switch to one that will. Neutrality towards them might as well be complicity because they will abuse it.
Defederating from Threads in a preemptive fashion is nothing more than reactionary nonsense based on bad history. It literally makes no sense. Who the fuck cares what Meta does? All of the "consequences" I've read so far come across like bad fanfic at best. The analogies to Microsoft are false equivalencies.
I'll make it simple: I'll leave if lemmy.world defederates things preemptively. People need to understand that this idea has been around forever and has worked forever. Looking a gift horse like Threads choosing to join up (if it actually does federate - I highly doubt it) in the mouth is absolutely insane.
Why are the doomers not talking about how best to steal users from Threads instead of just assuming this entire thing collapses the second a company with capital joins? How can this be considered a sustainable (again, looong-ago proven) system if a single company can pop in and ruin it?
How can this be considered a sustainable (again, looong-ago proven) system if a single company can pop in and ruin it?
Because Fediverse is too small at the moment. That's why Facebook needs to destroy it now. Before it becomes too big.
No kidding. The whole point of the fediverse is that anyone is free to federate or defederate as they please. If you want defederation then just join an instance that allows for that, instead of kicking up a fuss over other instances exercising their right to federate.
Thank you for a well reasoned post. I'm not a fan of the Zuck, but understand the implications a lot better thanks to what you wrote. Whatever is decided, I stand with you.
I know my input doesn't help the conversation but I just don't see how Threads could harm the fediverse through Triple-E. The ActivityPub protocol is already set in stone, the fediverse already has a few million users collectively, the software is independently developed and established. You can argue that they can update the protocol and do it that way but that falls flat as it would require consumers.
Threads already is up to 100 million users. The only thing they gain is more content. But that probably wouldn't matter since engagement over there is already high. They can't gain credentials because the protocol doesn't allow it and any content scraping they can do now without an account.
Now, keep in mind I understand what Meta is and what it does/has done. But, I just don't see how the company could directly harm the rest of the fediverse, especially when removing them is as easy as defederating. The only thing I could see as a potential problem is Spam/Content ads. But every social network has those and is handled through detection and moderation.
I think the interesting part is that the Threads display layout is already built with federated content in mind. They will most likely go through with this even if it's not with the current fediverse. They might just create their own if they can't connect with the current one which sort of defeats the purpose of connected federated social networks. Or maybe yet, adopt AT Protocol and just connect with Dorsey's BlueSky.
Either way, I don't have much of a dog in this fight. But I do like the calmer and more level headed approach some of the major instances are taking.
Finally a sane, and non impulsive post about this.
Can someone explain to me why/how a Lemmy instance would federate with Threads anyway? I get it with Mastodon - they are both Twitter like apps, it makes sense. You could theoretically follow a Threads account and just have their posts appear in your Mastodon feed. I don't quite understand how that would even work here.
Threads -> Lemmy doesn't make sense, no.
But consider a service that looked more like Kbin, which merges "microblogging" (like Twitter) and "link aggregation" (like Lemmy/Reddit) under the same account, but puts those in different parts of their UI. Facebook could (and really, strategically, should! If they're after Twitter's lunch, why not Reddit's as well?) be working on a similar thing. All current users of Threads could one day wake up and find a new "Communities" tab in their app.
So right now, the Federation discussion seems moot with regards to Lemmy, but it's really a longer term issue.
That makes sense - thanks!
I am new to Lemmy and Fediverse in general. Hypothetically, if Threads and a Lemmy instance is federated, how will users from either environment see the content, since the posts operate on different principles?
I understand Mastodon instances and Threads can potentially blend content. However, Lemmy operates in parent post with hierarchical comments which is different than Mastodon.
Are there Mastodon and Lemmy instances blending content? Or perhaps this impacts Kbin more since it supports both post publication types.
Thanks. Any clarification helps.
I saw a comment today from someone specifically mentioning that they were posting from mastodon. I haven't used it so I don't know how mastodon users see it on their end, but it's definitely happening.
This is a reply from Mastodon.
I can't speak exactly to your question but kbin has features like mastodon/Twitter and features like Lemmy/reddit. So there's no reason to think mta couldn't implement communities like Lemmy has and push people and content over that way.
Thank you for the calm and well thought out post on this. I was getting tired of the knee jerk reaction posts that had little substance to back up the assertions.
Moderation
Beehaw: Well well well, how the turn tables.
For me it's more of a personal preference.
I like that the smaller community vibe we have going on. Federation with meta and a sudden influx of content, good or bad, might not be the experience I want.
I think it's fine to play it by ear, and an obligatory "that's the beauty of the fediverse" (:
I didn’t realize that defederation only breaks the link in one direction. I don’t like the idea of my posts being exported to Threads where they’ll have an entirely different discussion on them.
This is why I don't comment on any community I'm currently subscribed to but is hosted on beehaw. There's no point.
Good response, glad to see it's being so carefully considered, however..
Lemmy does collect personal data. This instance requires an email address, which is personal data. I appreciate that this isn't federated or available to meta in any way, but it can't be said that Lemmy didn't collect it.
Which instances don't collect your email address?
No idea sorry, I'm just talking about this one.
Finally, a thought out response. If Threads federate with Mastodon or Lemmy (unlikely, different type of platform), I'd say the advantage is on the open source side, since it offers an ads-free experience. If Meta pushes ads on the Fediverse, of course, defederate.
I think people are very much devaluing the pitch of "would you like to do your Threads browsing, but only see the people you actually follow and not get an ad every other post?" Now, presumably Meta will do everything they can to prevent that sort of emigration, but the fuckery that would entail is a much more concrete reason to defederate.
My main question is: What is Meta's goal with federation?
Been trying to figure this out for a while. To get our users/content? The entire fediverse is tiny compared to Threads. EEE? Entirely possible, and others have pointed out how they'd do it, but they haven't federated yet and it feels like it'd be near pointless given the content disparity, though an evil corp will always try to monopolize. To get around EU gatekeeping laws? Possible, and would explain why they haven't launched in europe yet.
How will Meta handle moderation on such a large scale? Probably the same way they moderate their current billions of users... Algorithms, misinformation labels, faceless fact-checkers, and "content hidden".
From the Wikipedia (Threads):
"Threads users are also expected to be able to limit replies to a post, which means that it would not be shared with any federating service, and will only remain within Threads itself.[20]"
A one-way data/content vacuum.
But, but, EEE and that blog from a dude talking about XMPP... Also, Enshitify.
There's a lot of people here making demands on the behalf of others. I mostly don't care if Threads is defederated or not, there are pros and cons, but I REALLY don't like this self righteous imposing arguments I see here, and while I love the idea of the fediverse its clear that humans will keep being tribal, and there's no solution for that.
I completely agree!
Even if Meta forks Lemmy and gets rid of the original software, Lemmy will survive.
I like the sound of this and your strong inclination to block Threads, within the limits of the software.
Many (most) of us Lemmerians :-) recognize that Threads (via Meta/Facebook) represents the locusts of the tech world. As such, we have been given ample time to form a defense. If the software is limited in some way to deflect a full on assault, there may be enough time to remedy that in the coming months...
Yeah for real. It seems like we have plenty of time before this is happening to wait and see what our options will be.
Said it before and I’ll say it again. All this blabla stuff I don’t care about:
IF ZUCK HAS A PART IN THIS, I AM OUT. OUT OUT FUCKITY OUT.
Then just leave, geez. The beauty of the fediverse is that anyone can federate or defederate as they please. Stop making a fuss over the admins of a single instance exercising their right to federate with other instances of their own choosing.
I want to stay federated with threads and oppose defederation. Just putting it out there.
Let's take this discussion to Threads! You can trust us.
While I think that we should rightly be very wary of Threads/Meta, I do also think that it is still too early to judge. It's hard to accurately predict what will happen in the future given the relative youth of Lemmy and the Fediverse. (Admittedly, I'm also relatively new to the Fediverse, so what do I know?) Given Meta's track record, we should be very aware of the possible red flags and make plans for possible future malicious actions, but for now I'm okay with waiting and watching.
No, sorry.
We know exactly what Zuckerbag is all about.
Not a chance.
I’ll hop right the fuck off Lemmy in a heartbeat.
Don't hop off of Lemmy, switch to an instance that doesn't federated with threads. That's the beauty of decentralization.
Facebook is entirely supported by ad revenue, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they put ads as posts and had fake engagement on them on threads. I don't want to see of that seeping out here.
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.
Meta generally does a pretty good job at moderation though, so I don't feel like that's such a big issue? If anything it's a benefit, because if Threads were to federate Meta's moderation team would to start vetting posts on LemmyWorld and if there isn't already hopefully soon we will have a way for moderator decisions to be shared with moderators from other instances.
Many hands make light work, and Threads adds a lot of hands.
Ads - It’s possible if Meta presents them as posts.
That would be illegal. Ads must be clearly labeled and Meta is generally a company that follows the law.
Promoting Posts - It’s possible with millions of users upvoting a post for it to trend.
Um... if millions of users upvote a post, surely it should 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.
Again, that would be illegal. Microsoft's EEE tactic almost bankrupted the company and it was a sympathetic president who let them get away with just a slap on the wrist. Even though they got off lightly, they still had to avoid the "Extinguish" step of EEE and eventually they even walked back on "Extend"... leaving just the Embrace component, which is quite positive. Meta's not going to touch EEE with a ten foot pole.
I agree, Threads probably won't federate with Lemmy, but if they did I'd welcome it personally. I think it would be a net win.
where can I read more on consequences of EEE for Microsoft? My optics were that everyone big enough will do it if they can and I've only heard of a few cases which concerned massively adopted standards but isn't EEE happening all the time in more niche fields?
The Federal Trade Commission began an inquiry in 1990 over whether Microsoft was abusing its monopoly in the PC operating system market.
[... nine years of investigations and lawsuits ...]
Judge Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, holding that Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including applications from Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Software, RealNetworks, Linux, and others. On April 3, 2000, Jackson issued his conclusions of law, holding that Microsoft had committed monopolization, attempted monopolization, and tying in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.[2]
[... another half a year of lawsuits ...]
On June 7, 2000, the District Court ordered a breakup of Microsoft as its remedy.[18] According to that judgment, Microsoft would have to be split into two separate units, one to produce the operating system and one to produce other software components.>
[... another two years of lawsuits ... eventually Microsoft made the following statement to their investors ...]
Lawsuits brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, 18 states, and the District of Columbia in two separate actions were resolved through a Consent Decree that took effect in 2001 and a Final Judgment entered in 2002. These proceedings imposed various constraints on our Windows operating system businesses. These constraints include limits on certain contracting practices, mandated disclosure of certain software program interfaces and protocols, and rights for computer manufacturers to limit the visibility of certain Windows features in new PCs. We believe we are in full compliance with these rules. However, if we fail to comply with them, additional restrictions could be imposed on us that would adversely affect our business.
Keep in mind that when all of that started, Microsoft had only 50 million customers. Meta has billions of customers. There is no way Meta could breach antitrust law and get away with it.
There are business practices a small company can do that a large one cannot. Meta is as large as companies get.
Kudos for being rationale thinking for this.
I'll move to a different instance the day Lemmy.World federates with Threads. I came here to avoid corporate influence over my social media, especially from Facebook.
Moving to another instance that doesn't federate with a corporation won't necessarily save you from corporate influence if your new home instance federates with another instance that does. I don't think that you can truly escape it. It seems like the admins here are listening and considering what to do.
It could be fake, but I thought that Reddit was already caught spreading or promoting bad press about Lemmy on Lemmy. If true, the influence is already here.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I don't know how to properly solve this without breaking something else.
Move today, don't waste server resources.
Why be an asshole?
Thanks for posting your thoughts. I agree the wait and see is a decent approach. Hopefully by the time they add federation (which will affect Lemmy as if they can talk to Masto they can talk to this server without defed), Lemmy will already have some of better features about user level instance defed and outgoing defed options.
My main complaints with Meta is that people have already started using our word (Threadiverse) to describe the Threads community.
A very reasonable response, well said.
I just left Facebook. And am considering leaving it all behind. Still, do what is best for Lemmy.
Just leave it all behind, social media isn't worth it.
✅
If Lemmy hitches its wagon to Threads, I am fucking OUT.
Blow me.
I appreciate this approach and agree that it’s unlikely that Meta will even want to federate with Lemmy. They’re trying to pursue a short form blogging format.
They’re unlikely to even want Lemmy content on their servers. Nonetheless, I agree with a “wait and see” approach.
Let's defederate
If Lemmy.world federates with Meta/Threads, I will delete my accounts and ditch Lemmy altogether.
It’s shameful that this is even up for discussion.
What an embarrassment.
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.
this is troubling language, and so obtuse that one couldn't be blamed for wondering if someone is being deceitful. meta's business practices are antithetical to everything the fediverse has come to represent. "those who want threads" vs. "those who don't want threads" is not the question, and that should be obvious to everyone. the question is: to associate with unethical institutions or not? and let's not hide behind "democracy". you don't legalize murder because enough people want you to. and you shouldn't "pull a Reddit" and abandon and disenfranchise your userbase. in that case, who even needs to worry about EEE? what do you call it when you do it to yourself? sellout, lick boots, and capitalize? give me a break.
this is troubling language, and so obtuse that one couldn't be blamed for wondering if someone is being deceitful.
"I'm not calling you deceitful, but I think you are deceitful". No this is troubling language.
Any negativity on my part was disappointment that the admins took so long to express their position, leading me to believe that I had left reddit for nothing, that lemmy was going to get trashed by threads and the admins were going to wait and see like the mythical boiling frog.
