- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- fediverse@lemmy.world
Server indexes of places for newcomers to join can be instrumental for Fediverse adoption. However, sudden rule changes can leave some admins feeling pressure to change policies in order to remain listed.
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Maybe I’m naive but I kinda don’t get it. People talk about defederating as if…what, all Meta IP addresses will be magically blocked from scraping your content? Any script kiddie can harvest Lemmy/Mastodon/whatever content.
Has Meta shown itself to be a bad actor? Yes. Should my email provider block all emails from Meta? Well…that’s a bit much I think? If Facebook email still existed, should my email provider block that?
My point is yes, Meta bad, but all Thread users also bad? I thought — and apparently I’m very wrong here — that the Federation paradigm was kinda like email. And the only email I want blocked is a domain where every single user is malicious, not a domain run by a malicious entity which has normal people as users, who aren’t necessarily very tech literate.
I don’t actually care, but I just find it a little confusing tbh.
I think most people simply just don’t know how federation works and they imagine that defederating blocks Facebook from accessing your content when in reality it’s the exact opposite; it places one way mirror between us from which only they can see thru. There’s also some great irony in the fact that they’re talking about genocide while advocating for using the nuclear option to block Facebook despite the massive number of innocent casualties it’ll cause.
EDIT: Turns out I was mistaken. Defederation indeed does stop the flow of data both ways.
Brother these things are in no way the same. One is a tech giant knowingly aiding and abbeting governments who are ethnically cleansing their country and another is not being able to see posts from a different instance. The only great irony is you calling them innocent casualties.
It’s a comparison. By definition they’re not the same thing but there are similarities; you’re doing something that affects 100% of the userbase because you have an issue with 2% of them.
This is like comparing requiring students in schools to wash their hands to genocide. The scale is the same but the impact is vastly different, and if you don’t want to wash hands (or be defederated) you can just move. Except for changing activitypub instances is even easier than changing schools and both are easier than leaving Palestine.
You should think of a better comparison cause this one sucks.
Also no. You’re doing something that affects 100% of users because the node these users use is malicious. The problem is the underlying structure not the people using said structure. Maybe this makes them stop using said structure.
Its like being upset that I dont answer unknown numbers. “Well only 10% are scammers so you’re affecting 100% of calls”
it places one way mirror between us from which only they can see thru
What do you mean by this? Even if Meta would collect data from defederated servers (I don’t think they would), it would be massively more complicated than if they were federated.
Federarting means there’s a two-way road between your instance and threads.net and traffic can flow both ways. When you defederate it stops the traffic flow from threads.net to you but the traffic from you to them is unchanged. Even if every single instance defederates them they can still see all the content that’s posted there. Nobody else just wont see any of theirs. Only your instance admins know your email, ip-address and so on but all your posts and messages are publicly available to anyone and you can’t stop them from accessing it.
It’s basically the same thing as blocking an user. You wont no longer see their messages but they will see yours.
EDIT: Turns out I was mistaken. Defederation indeed does stop the flow of data both ways.
When you defederate it stops the traffic flow from threads.net to you but the traffic from you to them is unchanged.
No, that is not how defederation works. One server defederates, traffic stops in both directions. It’s not comparable to user blocking.
posts and messages are publicly available to anyone
There’s a big difference between the posts being available publicly on the Web and them being sent to Threads via federation.
I hate to admit when I’ve been wrong but this seems to be one of those cases. I tried to use my lemmyNSFW account to view content on a instance that doesn’t federate with them and I indeed can’t see any. I stand corrected.
Good on you for admitting it - we’re all wrong sometimes :) take it as a learning opportunity
I dont care if they scrape my comments I just wouldnt want to see sneaky “promoted” posts aka ads and I enjoy the idea of boycotting facebook.
Ultimately the decision is for the instances owners and admins to make, not ours. I will just migrate to one that doesnt federate with facebook if I have to.
I just wouldnt want to see sneaky “promoted” posts aka ads
I don’t quite see how that would even work. Those posts would need to be coming from individual users rather than from Facebook itself and you can just block those users. Facebook can display ads in between posts on their own app but those wont be visible to people using other apps.
Facebook could just create fake users that post ads as content
Here’s one scenario.
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Facebook feeds its users content according to an algorithm.
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Facebook and lemmy users can interact with the same user content (liking, commenting).
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There are vastly more Facebook users than lemmy users.
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By dint of Facebook’s greater number of users, lemmy users will see the most popular content that is fed algorithmically to Facebook users.
Conclusion: lemmy users are being fed content by the Facebook algorithm (in this still, thankfully hypothetical, scenario).
Like imagine Facebook promotes some viral post and it gets a thousands of upvotes. Any lemmy user on a federated instance, sorting by upvotes/hot/etc, is going to see that post.
That’s the kind of top-down reach that is so alien to the fedi
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I just wouldnt want to see sneaky “promoted” posts aka ads
Nobody is forcing you to follow users/communities on Threads.
I like to browse by “all”. And nobody is forcing me to use an instance that federates with facebook either, like I said, I’ll migrate if I have to.
@qjkxbmwvz I think the main fear is Embrace Extend Extinguish.
It’s not about interacting with Threadworms, it’s about sleepwalking into a situation where Meta is changing the very nature of ActivityPub itself.
I’m actually curious about “Embrace Extend Extinguish”: What can they do? They “extend” the ActivityPub protocol in a proprietary way, ok. Doesn’t mean any other instance has to use that, no? Ok, that would mean if an instance doesn’t follow that extension, it can’t interact optimally with Threads, but how does it matter? To me it seems all that can be lost by that is the content/user base that Threads brings into the Fediverse and then we are at the same point as we would be if we defederated immediately. Maybe I’m missing something here?
I think this article, How to kill a decentralized network, gives one of the best explanations, because it uses a real world example of how it has happened in the past.
I guess it is impossible to say what would have happened if Google never used XMPP. To me it mostly looks like google joined XMPP and made it way bigger than it was before and eventually left it again, making it small again. But is it worse than before Google even joined?
Maybe, but can we say for sure?
Maybe the lesson is not “don’t let the big corporate players in”, but rather “make sure the development of the underlying protocol itself is done in an open way”. If Google/Meta adds proprietary extensions, just don’t add them to the main protocol. If they leave the protocol again or changed their implementation in a way that is largely incompatible with the open version, nothing is lost than what they brought in initially. Doesn’t that make sense?
I agree.
I think a good example is how Slack started off by having good IRC integration, then slowly added features which were incompatible with IRC, and finally terminated IRC integration.
So clearly, Slack killed IRC, right? (…of course they didn’t!)
I see the potential situation with Threads as similar.
the problem occurs when most of the content comes from Meta (they will likely have the vast majority of Fediverse users). especially if major communities exist on their instance. when meta decides to no longer support fedi integration, those in the fedi are forced to decide between staying with their communities by ditching the fedi and moving to threads or having many of their communities ripped away.
meta will do this at some point as a play to draw users to them, but we can decide if we want to be affected when that comes to pass.
The beauty is that people can do what they want with their own instance, and I can move and still be in lemmy/mastodon.
Is this the last migration?
I’m kinda against defederation or blocking anything at an instance level, unless the instance causes straight up legal issues or is literally created for the sole purpose of harassment
Well, I think Threads meets your litmus test requirements.
It is a certainty that Threads will heavily influence the future development of Activity Pub. This will inevitibly lead to the corporatization and enshittification of any service Threads can affect.
The only resistance we can offer against this is defederation and noncompliance with the will of the behemoth.
I understand your “what if” scenarios, but this is an existential crisis that needs to be resisted against with all instances working in concert. This is not a “what if” scenario. This is the actual iceberg and it is big enough to ruin the fediverse for all instances, no matter their affiliation with the garden.
So, we either unite to defend the independence of the fediverse, or we let a corporate giant take it by ovewhelming us with their “important updates for your security” until we are all assimilated.
Ngl, this screams “think of the children.”
Every time something like this gets posted, there are always Lemmy users crying to defederate their Lemmy instances.
But remember, the current concern is with Mastodon, NOT Lemmy. Lemmy can’t actually view the post types that Masto and Threads make. Wendy’s can post all the Threads ads they want - we’re not going to see them here. We can’t. That hasn’t been built.
Try it. Go view someone’s Mastodon account in Lemmy. You don’t see their posts.
@Ghostalmedia @deadsuperhero I think the fact that I was able to see and reply to this comment of yours from Mastodon proves this idea false, if you check the Post history of this account you will also find that content posted in Lemmy is visible.
They absolutely do interact, lemmy is way more Mastodon friendly than most people give it credit for, considering the fact that communities/groups, automatically boost every post and comment for visibility.
So people on Lemmy being concerned about poorly moderated or cesspool microblog instances is indeed a valid concern.
You will in fact see their posts if they reply to Lemmy comments. They’ll then appear as comments in Lemmy. I believe Mastodon users can also post to communities by using hashtags, though I’m not 100% clear on that.
Sean, I think your article is missing the most important section: alternatives to Fedi Garden.
Can you at least list a few at the end of the article?
Seems like a way of bullying community leaders into running their instances how Fedi Garden feels is appropriate. Which is intrinsically against the nature of the Fediverse, in that instances are meant to have their own autonomy.
Fedi Garden’s position in this space is to be a directory, not a dictator. This feels like an overstep.
The nature of federation is that you can make your own instance with your own rules independent of a single walled garden and still participate with the other members. Create your own index if you don’t like this one.
And that is exactly what Fedi Garden is going against here. This is not letting each instance to decide who they want to federate with and who not. They’re telling instances to defederate threads.net or else… That’s forcing their values onto others and bullying them to do as they say. That is dictatorial.
They only list instances that share their principles. The only “forcing” being attempted here is the two of you insisting they need to list instances they don’t want to list. The point of federation is that you can start your own list if you don’t like their policies.
Sure, but Fedi Garden is seen as the de facto “primary” hub for this sort of information. There’s a certain power dynamic at play in this sort of situation that is being weaponized.
It’s like if LemmyWorld decided “We’re exclusively a furry community now”, after being the “main” Lemmy instance. Sure, they’d be within their right to do so, but it does a disservice to the Fediverse at large when things that can be seen as critical parts of the Fediverse’s social infrastructure are suddenly slanted in any one particular way.
If it helps bring perspective. I’ve never even heard of Fedi Garden before this post. I did a lot of puzzling over choosing instances for Lemmy and Mastodon when I first joined and never saw a link to them. I’m not sure why they’d even be seen as a trusted list for a new users, since at joining the user also doesn’t know anything about them or their values, reliability, or reputation.
Plus, once you’re in the Fediverse you then learn you can just change instances. Once someone points out that [other instance] can talk to Threads users the individual can just switch or stay depending on their preferences.
Fedi.garden also has their own autonomy. They have the right to make whatever rules for their website they want. If you don’t like how they run their list, then don’t use it. Make your own. If people like yours better, they’ll use it instead.
It’s funny to me how many big flare-ups and popular issues have been about defederating or controlling other instances but we’ve not really had a single popular event where users work on anything together to benefit community.
Individuals have made tools but there’s not been calls to action and mass cooperation events for anything beside silencing unpopular groups. No community design discussions devising and implementing tools or features, no group efforts to catalog or document or display useful data…
I don’t know if it’s just that people here haven’t considered the possibility of doing something positive or that outrage about others is just so much more compelling
imo it doesn’t matter for Lemmy right now one way or another, and maybe not ever. Being federated with Threads doesn’t do anything yet. Defederate or not, the only change (from my understanding) is about making a statement, or standing with other microblog platform instances that made a choice.
On mastodon however, I’ll likely either use a federated instance or run two accounts. It’s very likely that some person I want to follow will be on Threads, and until people can convince them otherwise ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What’s nice though is that if Threads is on activitypub, you won’t need to log in to see the content. It’s only if you want to engage with the content, and that can be done from a second Mastodon account.
It’s very likely that some person I want to follow will be on Threads, and until people can convince them otherwise
You realize that it makes it a lot more difficult to convince people to come to the rest of the Fediverse instead of using Threads if people are following them and federating with Threads?
This is exactly how Zuckerberg wants you to think.
This is exactly how Zuckerberg wants you to think.
These conversations we’re having are all speculative, and we won’t know how things play out till we get there. Trying to predict the behaviour of large groups of people is… difficult
What I predict is that defederation will play right into their selling point. We’re going up against a behemoth of evil with enough money to bankroll creators into joining and promoting their platform. Defederating (when the majority of people don’t understand what that means) will end up with people joining Threads.
Threads has a very high (artificially inflated) user count, it’s by a company everyone already knows, and all instagram users already have an account. The strongest selling point we can have is “Join Mastodon, you can see all the same stuff but it’s run by a non-profit instead of Facebook” That doesn’t work if the selling point is “Join Mastodon to see different content”.
For what it’s worth, I’m actively using Mastodon and trying to inform any friends / family that are jumping ship to shift to Mastodon. Best case scenario, Mastodon takes off properly, Threads becomes a failed project by Meta, and we can nail this shut for good.
But you’re giving Meta the same selling point, right? Join Threads and see all the same content. There’s no point in going elsewhere then. It kinda goes both ways.
You’re right that we don’t know what will happen. So it could just as well be that Threads would swallow the whole Fediverse and then if Threads blocks an instance, it’s like a death sentence for that instance. That’s the whole embrace, extend, extinguish.
But you’re giving Meta the same selling point, right? Join Threads and see all the same content. There’s no point in going elsewhere then. It kinda goes both ways.
Somewhat yes
- I think Threads doesn’t need that selling point because of the other advantages that it has
- I find that when X defederates with Y, and people want to see all the content, all else being equal they will pick Y. Usually that means that Y = “We are happy to have X, but they chose to leave”
We saw a bit of that last July for how some people picked Lemmy instances
The best place to go is Z, which federates with both.
Is this really a problem for Lemmy though? Threads content isn’t going to show up here because threads doesn’t have communities, and Lemmy doesn’t allow you to follow people.
Part of the concern is deceptive/astroturfed content developed as advertising showing up in Lemmy communities. While those same actors could theoretically be based on lemm.ee, that’s a lot more work than simply scaling up operations when you’re doing it on Threads anyway.
Yes, my point remains. Even if a Lemmy instance is federated with masto or threads, the content does not appear here on Lemmy right now. It’s physically impossible. Lemmy literally has no code written to support self posts and to follow users.
For example, here is NPR’s masto account viewed through Lemmy.world. You get their name, avatar, banner, and bio….but zero content.
https://lemmy.world/u/NPR@mstdn.social
Until lemmy decides to copy Reddit’s user pages, this isn’t a problem. Federate, defederate - makes now difference for lemmy right now.
I feel like this would be spotted and stamped out immediately. Everyone’s eyes are on Threads right now; astroturfed content might sneak in on Mastodon, where regular Threads content will be mixed in with the hypothetical astroturfed content, but here on Lemmy there will be little to no Threads presence due to lack of interoperability, so every single Threads account that shows up will be noticed. It’s already super visible when Mastodon users show up due to the weird formatting issues that happen due to the lack of support.
I just don’t see an astroturf campaign as being viable unless Threads implements community functionality, which seems pretty far out when they’re only now implementing basic federation with Mastodon.
It’s not that crazy, the Threads devs are already looking at specific FEPs for things like quote posting. If they really wanted to, they could implement Lemmy-compatible community groups.
Threads can still participate via comments on Lemmy. I believe they can also post to communities via hashtags?
And what kinds of trouble do you expect Threads users to create by participating in our communities?
Well, for one thing, Threads is already full of ads. And I don’t mean Threads ads, I mean users posting ads, like ads for their own products or services or for their audience, trying to be an influencer and all that.
But it’s not necessarily the users that will be problematic. It’s more that by federating with Meta, you’re giving value to Zuckerberg. And I don’t want to do that.
I cannot see anything bad here. Blocking an actively malicious actor should be the norm.
A community index of servers added a new rule recently, that requires every participant to defederate from Threads.
Meta: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/, https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1320040111, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039
Instance admins: Let’s give them a chance guyyyyss!!
Those of you who think the problem is data scraping or whatever are totally missing the point. All profit-motivated social media platforms engage in promoting hate content for engagement, and in doing so have deadly real world consequences. The Fediverse is one of the few online spaces where people can just be themselves naturally without being manipulated by algorithms. Given their history, there’s no reason to assume Threads won’t be any better about handling their own community, and anything that happens with them will affect the rest of us.
You think lemmy doesn’t have algorithms?
Verifiable algorithms. Algorithms meant to make using the platform enjoyable, rather than meant to entrap users for profit.
That’s the same thing with a different label.
Maybe I’m just being naive, but this seems like an argument in favor of federating with Threads. One of the reasons Facebook and Instagram are so effective at driving engagement is that users have basically no ability to curate, sort, or filter the content that they see, especially since third-party clients are banned. You can’t even view most things without logging in.
The implementation of ActivityPub in Threads is a strange departure in this context - (federated) Mastodon users can view all of the content Threads has to offer without subjecting themselves to Meta’s arguably predatory curation algorithms. It almost seems like an escape for people who want to use a Meta-sized platform without Meta getting its grubby little fingers all over your mental wellbeing.
If people are worried that Threads will affect likes and comments (and therefore like/comment-based sorting algorithms) on other instances, it should always be possible to exclude Threads’s contribution to those metrics, no?
f people are worried that Threads will affect likes and comments (and therefore like/comment-based sorting algorithms) on other instances, it should always be possible to exclude Threads’s contribution to those metrics, no?
That’s one of the effects of defederating. And you are still ignoring the overall point of the comment 2 layers up from your reply.
Really I think you are losing the forest for the trees. Meta/Facebook/Zuck is a known quantity. They will corrupt and exploit any environment they are a part of via any means they can. We don’t need to be able to predict every last detail of how they will do so to know it is true. They have a track record of being awful, anti-consumer corporate citizens. WHY would we want to try to invite them in and try to contain them? Can we make the fediverse invisible to them? Of course we can’t, but why would we cooperate in any way?
Folks who don’t think this is a problem can use an instance that federates with them, just as I’ve chosen ( and will always choose) an instance that does not.
There is no reasonable argument for trying to be a good neighbor to Meta, because you can always, always be sure that Meta has no concern for being a good neighbor to you.
They will corrupt and exploit any environment they are a part of via any means they can.
Right, unless they can’t, though. Ideally the Fediverse should be resistant to this kind of influence without resorting to defederation. I’m also concerned that defederating from Threads will make more Threads users than Mastodon users.
We don’t need to be able to predict every last detail of how they will do so to know it is true.
I mean, some idea of what they might do would be nice.
They have a track record of being awful, anti-consumer corporate citizens. WHY would we want to try to invite them in and try to contain them?
I couldn’t care less about Meta itself. My interest begins and ends with Threads users. There are a ton of people that would never give the Fediverse a try for one silly reason or another—predominantly, I would argue, the fear of the unknown—and this seems like it could be an opportunity to overcome that obstacle if leveraged correctly. The prospect of everyone and our parents using social media that is not completely beholden to Meta is exciting to me.
Again, maybe I’m wrong, but this whole thing is basically an experiment, isn’t it? I’d like to see what happens before reaching any conclusions.
I’m also concerned that defederating from Threads will make more Threads users than Mastodon users.
Already done, and by an order of magnitude at least. (probably many orders, I don’t have the numbers at hand)
I mean, some idea of what they might do would be nice.
You can look at their entire history for that. And somewhere in this very discussion some other person has given a very plausible overview of their potential EEE approach. I’ll add a link to that comment later when I have time to find it again.
But, I’m starting to realize that no amount of evidence is sufficient for folks who want to federate with Meta, and at the end of the day my freedom ends where yours begins, so although I will continue to advocate for defederation and flee any instance that does not make that choice, I very sincerely encourage you to do you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_controversies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_involving_Meta_Platforms
Here’s a couple recent individual ones:
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/26/meta-gaza-censorship-warren-sanders/
The prospect of everyone and our parents using social media that is not completely beholden to Meta is exciting to me.
I firmly believe that hoping Meta isn’t going to be the worst possible company they can this time is not the way to achieve that, and is in fact actively working against that future possibility.
I’ve been alive, adult, and working in IT for the entirety of the existence of Facebook, so I’ve had a long time to see everything I needed to see about them.
But, I’m starting to realize that no amount of evidence is sufficient for folks who want to federate with Meta
This is an incorrect assumption, because
And somewhere in this very discussion some other person has given a very plausible overview of their potential EEE approach. I’ll add a link to that comment later when I have time to find it again.
I would be very interested to read this! There are definitely limits to my optimism here. I think Meta is a horrible company and I don’t expect them to act in the best interests of the Fediverse; I’m just not yet convinced that them giving up what is essentially free and ad-free API access to one of their platforms cannot be used to our advantage. Threads federation could absolutely be catastrophic, but it’s also possible that it’s a good opportunity; that’s all I’m saying.
for real. im new to lemmy but places like hexbear seem really good for trans stuff. i hate how so many trans places are dependent upon facebook or reddit to exist. facebook itself is problematic because those fuckers already assisted a genocide in myanmar, whats to stop them from helping to massacre trans people here?
Hexbear is definitely a good place for trans stuff, its just a shame about all of the authoritarians.
youre starting to really sell me on it
There is a spectre haunting Lemmy
hexbear seem really good for trans stuff.
HB and blahj are the two explicitly pro-trans instances. Hexbear is strongly oriented towards communism but I would strongly suggest them over blahj just because of their abysmal handling of c/196’s noncery. They just don’t have as strong of a track record as hexbear.
hexbear seems way more active in the trans spaces at least. its also nice seeing everyones pronouns and being able to guess what variant of transness someone is talking about when theyre describing their experiences.
im on lemmy cause i saw advice saying that you could access pretty much all the lgbt spots on the fediverse from here, which seems true. ive already seen a bunch of transphobic bullshit on this site and on blahaj so maybe ill just swap to hexbear, idk
Yeah you should make the jump if not seeing transphobia is your goal. lemmyML is a great omni-instance but as a result you’re going to be exposed to a lot of right-wing bullshit. And really, transphobia on blahj? That’s extremely disappointing but not all that surprising.
yeah one of the top trans posts the other day was filled with transphobes and people debating the merits of transphobia. i think blahaj doesnt have very active modding?
We aggressively remove transphobic/transmisic posts/comments on lemmy.ml. Please report any that you see. But understand that we don’t control the content of other Lemmy instances, so when you select “All” instead of “Subscribed” or “Local,” it’s the wild west.
i guess the question is more of bans and not just removals. for instance this guy https://lemmy.ml/comment/9833425 seems to regularly go on to write misogynistic and queerphobic screeds, but seems to not have been banned because he is a moderator and has been here for 4 years?
common Fedi Garden W
The entire point of the Fedi-verse is so that one person or small group of people can’t ruin the entire platform for everyone else. Anyone who tells you how to moderate your content, backed up by a threat can screw off.
Why doesn’t fedi.garden mention lemmy instances?
The guy who runs the growyourownservices network despite seeming very professional is extremely emotionally biased and hates Lemmy as a software (and seemingly any instances that will choose to run that software, regardless of their affiliation towards the developers).
So he basically refuses to acknowledge the existence of Lemmy and by extension a large portion of the threaded fediverse, and when he does acknowledge it he’s talking shit about it.
That guy is such a tankie
