1. Meta/Facebook has a horrific track record on human rights:
- https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/ethiopia-facebook-algorithms-contributed-human-rights-abuses-against-tigrayans
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-so...
Meta just announced that they are trying to integrate Threads with ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.). We need to defederate them if we want to avoid them pushing their crap into fediverse.
If you're a server admin, please defederate Meta's domain "threads.net"
If you don't run your own server, please ask your server admin to defederate "threads.net".
By all means, fuck Meta to the moon and back, but for goodness' sake, users on federated servers can choose to block the domain with the same result, not to mention that admins can simply restrict it (see social.coop/@eloquence/1115888β¦). It just isn't so black and white as people are making it seem.
Federation with a bigger platform is realistically the only way for Fedi to become mainstream, and at the moment Meta seems at least to be trying to be communicative. And with their quite unvaluable userbase they really don't have enough leverage against the privacy-concious Fediverse to turn AP into MetaPub. For now.
I'm just saying that even on federated instances the users can choose to block Threads, and that that gives the same result for them. There's no need to force the hand of the user; there are more than enough corpo-critical people on Fedi for it not to be taken over by Meta.
Edit: And I understand that allowing interaction with Meta is very risky business. Which is why I like the approach of instances like social.coop which restrict interaction from Threads but still give the user a choice.
No, that's just Lemmy. On Masto it blocks all interactions from users (including prohibiting them from following you and therefore fetching your posts).
Fair. But I'm on lemmy for discussion. I don't want threads' bobbleheaded userbase fucking up every discussion thread on lemmy. So I will stay on instances that have de-federated that shithole and urge other instances to do the same.
But they won't. Seeing how little even the relatively federation-conscious Mastodonians interact with Lemmy, from Threads it will be close to zero (especially since the devs are very "careful" with federation and probably won't display article-formatted posts anytime soon).
I'm not comfortable with assuming the dregs of Facebook will leave Lemmy alone. I'll stick to instances that have defederated and I'll actively block instances that don't.
I'm not out here trying to stop you from being on federated instances or anyone else. But I will not personally support instances that allow that monster into the ecosystem.
You know that if you actively blocked the instances that are federated with Threads you wouldn't have seen this post, right (lemmy.world/instances)? I'm also only active on instances that block Threads, but blocking those who don't is an excessive measure.
That's not how federation works. If you're on an instance that doesn't allow Threads, you won't see them at all, even when viewing posts coming from other instances.
We are on lemmy. So they are right in this context. I really couldn't give a crap about anything like Twitter because I hate everything about that type of medium.
The thing is, you don't really see anything from the Microblogging Fediverse around here at all, do you, so why would you from Threads? And Meta will only explicitly collect your data if you follow one of their accounts, which is impossible from Lemmy. So in a Lemmy context it is quite irrelevant.
It's a similar situation as with the unions. We can all manage to have a pay rise by ourselves. Or, we unionize and ask together for the pay rise.
Defederating the instance is like unionizing. We all go forward instead of individually to have weight. This weight is in form of killing asap the federating attempt, as threads.net users will have nothing to see in the Fediverse. If you let each user manage the situation, threads.net can do whatever they want. There is no individual responsibility in this case. We have to play collectively.
We need to play collectively because the Fediverse isn't one monolithic network, unlike Meta. It's a federated network. It's each instance and Meta. This is why unionizing is important. It's the Fediverse and Meta. This is the magic of activity pub. You can let others use the protocol but say no to the interaction with them.
The second aspect is that Meta is relying on βcognitive capitalismβ. Meta will use free cognitive time from the Fediverse to capitalize. This has huge implication on mental health and all kind of minorities relying on the Fediverse for various reasons. We can say all together no to this, what isn't possible individually. I recommend the book "The Soul at Work From Alienation to Autonomy" by Franco "Bifo" Berardi. It's a good book to understand the issue with Meta and others.
But I don't want the fediverse to become mainstream!!
I know, I know, most people think it's the best thing.
But I selfishly prefer the fediverse to be as it is now. Actually, as it was a couple of months ago. Lemmy is already being filled with rage-baiting bullshit, which is one of the reasons I decided to leave reddit.
I am 100% with you. Becoming mainstream is what ruins most good communities that end up ruined. Hell, even Facebook was a 1000x better before they opened it to non-college users.
So then we shall propose to let them in at our own terms ?
That's quite reasonable to me, and less radical in my humble opinion.
But I also see how one may arrive at such a conclusion, as all parties may not be as welling to accept such terms and conditions, or even be able to make such terms and conditions enforceable.
One instance may accept favours from meta, and then it spreads out uncontrollably... And then ... Its gets more complex.
Perhaps the safest option is to limit their present shares to a maximum of 40% in our servers. That is, they cannot be allowed to have more than a set amount of API exposure to the feeds - and they must allow us to reciprocate, like wise, by being able to have access to theirs by more than 40%. The value of assets can surely be established and estimated par costs of maintenance and OA, etc...