I’m pasting an old comment of mine from the official lemmy.world post discussing potential future federation with threads/meta:
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 the sentiment and reservations held by many within our community.
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 again 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-someone.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.
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The examples I listed were to demonstrate the fact that meta/FB is a bad actor, not that all are applicable to lemmy.
Also, the lemmy.world team admitted that lemmy lacks the moderation tools required for federation with threads.
This doesn’t pair well with the extremist content popular and promoted on threads. And I’m tired of hearing about the false solution people keep pretending exists in the form of personally blocking instances.
That may solve me not seeing the content, but what about my fellow users? What about people browsing without a profile/not signed in?
I care about more than myself. I care about the health of fellow human beings on this site, and I don’t want Threads to increase the amount of radicalization and extremism on this site. I don’t want more people to fall victim to radicalization. I have lost family to qanon/maga cults and I think we need to protect the integrity of the fediverse.
When players like threads/meta try to join in, I believe it is the responsibility of admins of the large instances to protect their users and refuse to federate with them. Period.
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Okay but, we all know that already. This discussion is about federating with Lemmy/Fedi.
Tell that to the astroturfers simping for FB/Threads…
And do you understand how you reinforce an argument with supporting evidence? I wanted to establish factual information supporting a clear history of the company’s bad practices. That was/is relevant to consideration of federating with a platform.
In fact, lemmy.world has already defederated with instances due to failure to moderate far-right extremism. So why would they federate with Threads when far-right extremism is already a systemic issue and they have admitted lemmy lacks the necessary moderation tools to manage Threads federation?
It seems obvious to me that is a bad idea and it would cultivate a more toxic user experience with more recruitment for radicalism/extremism.
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There’s no hypocrisy; you’re just stating a false equivalence. Not to mention totally ignoring the entire argument about radicalization on threads/inability to moderate it on lemmy.
And you keep stating that my points establishing character in regard to Meta/Threads are irrelevant, but you aren’t making a good argument as to why. You fixate on that as a strawman argument while ignoring my point that lack of moderation on threads will negatively affect fediverse communities with toxic/extremist content.
You’re arguing like a petulant middle schooler with ad hominem and strawman tactics. Get back to me if you can speak like a grown-up. Otherwise I’m not going to engage with you. (Before you “no u” me with another false equivalence, my remarks were not on the same personal attack level.)
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adam posted more details tonight :) can’t wait honestly. i love how pumped adam is about activitypub and interoperability!
Honestly? I don’t trust Meta, but I like that they’re implementing federation.
It will allow me to follow famous people or brands that only have a Threads account through the privacy of my Mastodon/Lemmy/whatever app, so I’m not forced to use Meta’s official apps, which are famously riddled with trackers and whatnot.
The fact that this is possible tells me that functionality will be phased out. No shot Meta would leave all that theoretical cash on the table.
Sure but then anyone whose ever interacted with you, outside of Meta, will be susceptible to Meta’s privacy issues even if they block you or are only on instances that block threads because their previous comments will be on your content. At least from my understanding, that’s how defederating and blocking goes. If I’m wrong, let me know but if not it’s going to get hard knowing who we can interact with in the fediverse if they’re also interacting with threads.
he’s not wrong. the migration of the queer community from twitter to threads is great plus i had a great time talking about doctor who over the weekend, it genuinely felt like twitter 2010 again. ive never had that much engagement from mastodon so if federation from threads to mastodon can keep that up, it will be a win win for all users.
if a mastodon instance was fine with hosting libsoftiktok it would swiftly be defederated for lack of moderation by a large amount of instances. No questions asked. No debate. Why is this any different? Do the rules somehow not apply when we’re dealing with facebook?
Mastodon does host Truth Social and Gab; they’re defederated because there’s a proven track record of harassment not just because “big company bad”.
Indeed. We don’t even need to talk about EEE or past genocide enabling behavior from facebook. The lack of moderation of threads is plenty reason to defederate. My sanity is valuable enough that I won’t see for myself, but it sure seems like “@libsoftiktokofficial” on threads is the “real deal”.
you mean the account that was created and last posted 22 weeks ago so they can immediately get their post taken down and go whine on twitter about the moderation?
yeah no moderation.
You got me to click the link. There is still plenty of transphobic statements on that account, and they’ve been up for 22+ weeks. I very much doubt that nobody has bothered to report those posts, so I’ll assume facebook is fine with a level of transphobia that is enough to make my day worse even by just skimming for 30 sec.
they were literally reported when the account came on initially which is WHY they went back to twitter.
any my threads timeline is literally the gayest and trans positive timeline of all my social accounts.
i mean people’s biggest complaint about insta and threads is the over moderation.
And I’m saying that there’s very obvious transphobic statements still visible on the most obvious account to check. If facebook doesn’t even bother properly clean up after libsoftiktok then I have no faith in their moderation of less overt transphobia from nobodies.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko lauds Threads’ entry into the decentralized social media space, saying the move will make Mastodon — the open source Twitter/X rival — “a far more attractive option.” Mastodon’s app, which is powered by the decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub, has gained more attention in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, a network that’s been since renamed X to reflect Musk’s ambitions to turn the microblogging platform into an everything app encompassing creators, payments, video, live audio, and shopping.
Those unhappy with Twitter’s changes have been scoping out other platforms, including Mastodon, an open source alternative, as well as challengers from other startups like Spill, Spoutible, Post, Bluesky, and others.
Rochko has been largely positive about having the tech giant embrace ActivityPub and decentralized social media, having earlier said, “The fact that large platforms are adopting ActivityPub is not only validation of the movement towards decentralized social media, but a path forward for people locked into these platforms to switch to better providers.”
As the integration goes live, Rochko touted the move as “exciting,” and “huge for Mastodon,” saying in a post on the platform that it’s a “step towards the interoperable social web that we’ve been advocating for.”
In addition, he points out that having access to all Threads users from a Mastodon account makes the app more attractive, considering its other perks.
That same argument is being made by the Mastodon third-party client, Mammoth, backed by Mozilla, which believes that its app will offer a competitive user interface that will be more approachable for newcomers to decentralized social media, and a viable alternative to Threads, including for those users who don’t want to create an account with Meta.
The original article contains 686 words, the summary contains 285 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is an old article but: https://wedistribute.org/2023/08/threads-new-terms-affects-the-fediverse/
I can’t find any current stats on threads, but it had a severe cliff drop not long after it launched. Meta’s Twitter rival Threads sees steep drop in daily users by 80 per cent, report says
Short sighted mistake. Terrible Idea.
Adopt, Extend, Destroy. That’s the game plan. It’s worked so many times in the past.
They don’t need to do that when the fedi is a thousandth of the size of their social networks lol. It’s hilarious that you think they need our user base.
They don’t care about the user base we have today. They want to eliminate the potential user base we may have in a decade.
You can’t really Embrace, Extend, Extinguish an open standard. Anybody can continue to use the unextended version and that’s exactly what would happen if Meta tried it. They can’t force servers to update or implement meta-specific features
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No it doesn’t because you can’t extinguish a publically available standard when anybody can write their own software. XMPP is the horror story used to warn about EEE, but it still exists. The fediverse is a small network right now. If Meta tried to EEE it, server admins who don’t want to participate in a Meta-controlled network would not implement Meta’s extensions. The network would splinter into a Meta-fediverse and the actual fediverse, which would be smaller than it is now but still exist as a free and open network that could continue to grow.
They can’t turn off our servers, or force us to implement their tech, or stop us from implementing freedom/privacy preserving features.
EDIT: The reason EEE did so much damage to XMPP was because most users weren’t aware of it. XMPP got so big because non-tech savvy users didn’t even know they were using it. So when Google starting phasing it out users didn’t even realize it, they only maybe realized they couldn’t talk to one or two people now. But the fediverse has always been an explicit alternative to corporate social media and advertised that it is built on open standards that are not controlled by corporations. Its one of the key factors in a lot of the userbase’s decision to be here. If a split were to happen, that would leave the remaining open fediverse still large enough to sustain itself (even if its smaller than it is at this moment).
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It only works if people stop using Mastodon once Threads stops federating. ActivityPub is dead they will say.
Yeah and I’m not going to stop using my instance I love it to much, Maybe I will boot up my own personal one if anything. Just glad more people will hopefully understand and can use the Fediverse
When the big corporations leave people just need to reist the “oh the user numbers are so small now, the Fediverse must be outdated” fallacy. Just like XMPP. Still works great, we just need people to use it instead of the silos which are popular now.
People need to reject the idea that “bigger number = better service”. The big players like that line of thinking because it cements their role of dominance and discourages competition. The fediverse will never be as big as Meta and it’s all the better for it. IDK about others but I prefer a small, active userbase with interests similar to my own over an ocean of crap
I was considering starting a mastadon account but I guess I’ll pass. Gonna be interesting to see how this changes the fediverse.
Thing about the Fediverse is that software is just software; what you should care about is the instances. There are a whole bunch of Mastodon instances that have already defederated long ago. A few big ones include mas.to, mstdn.social and troet.cafe; you can find the rest https://fedipact.veganism.social/.
Most of the people preemptively defederating from Threads don’t understand how ActivityPub works.
I hope the instances I’m on stay federated. It’ll be nice having communications with people I’m interested in again, without having to use Meta’s trackers to do so.
I think we can * actually give facebook the bad end of the bargin IF and ONLY IF we have a data protections.
You know how powerful copy-left was for open source? I think we can do the same for Lemmy servers. We can have users agree (formally) that the data on a particular server cannot be used for training llvm’s advertisements, marketing profiles, etc, and make it legally binding.
Even if we don’t federate with them, Meta can still harvest the data so we should add these protections regardless. Maybe there is already something like this and I’m just unaware of it.
If we do add these protections and we ensure that Lemmy.world stays the biggest instance.
What does lemmy.world being the biggest have to do with any of this?
As opposed to a facebook-controlled server being the top search result for Lemmy.
I see why that’s confusing so I edited my comment just now
I think this is the wrong take. If we want Lemmy to be truly community-controlled, we need many small servers, as opposed to the current situation of one server controlling half the userbase. Also, which server is Facebook-controlled? Lemmy.world is in the minority by federating with Threads.
I wouldn’t mind followers-only federation of Threads. My issue would be that the flow of posts from there (if it reaches the federated timeline anyway) would be a burden for moderation.
As long as they keep their shitty ads on their side i’m fine with it.
My wish is that we could maybe turn this against facebook(mEtA) and actually get threads users to use other instances. Maybe its possible idk i hope so.
