Meta will kill small instances! Please read.
I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.
Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.
As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:
- Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won't care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
- When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won't care. They will use Threads because its faster.
This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.
Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That's not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.
My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.
I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.
We couldn't get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.
I'm hoping that ALL admins across the Fediverse will defederate from Meta. At least we get to have our own separate platform then.
They shouldn't just defederate from Meta, they should defederate from any other instances that federate with Meta. Like a firewall against late stage capitalism
But that is a double-edged sword. What if, for example, mastodon.social doesn't defederate with Meta, but you defederate mastodon.social? Now you've just cut yourself off from a huge portion of the fediverse. Admins should defederate from Meta if their community wants to do that, but defederating from other instances that didn't do that is going a bit too far, in my opinion.
A small price to pay for salvation from Meta.
I've already blocked mastodon.social.
Why?
Because the size of it, the sheer centralization around it, it creeps me out.
Why? If you have blocked meta shouldn't you already be exempt from seeing comments and posts by their users on other instances? Why is this punitive approach needed
Edit: (Alongside downvoting, an explanation might be better suited to change people's minds, I just eant to know the advantage of this approach since you are excluding yourself from many users and you would have already blocked meta in this scenario)
Yes, at least that's how it is explained in How the beehaw defederation affects us, Back then, beehaw.org defederated from lemmy.world.
Translated into the current context:
Conclusions:
Or what do you think, @[email protected]?
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: ![email protected], ![email protected], ![email protected]
You'd see comments and posts from their users on other instances that don't block Meta.
It's unclear how many users you would actually exclude, I think a lot of users who are on the fediverse right now don't want to have anything to do with Meta.
As the fediverse grows, there will be different bubbles with not much interaction between those, mainly because some instances won't be moderated while others will try to create discrimination free environments.
Just so I understand, blocking an instance:
Does:
It doesn't:
Is that right? I was under the impression that defederating would block them completely, as that is how it worked over at mastodon, if it doesn't that seems like a serious oversight.
That will just drive many Fedi-users to Meta.
Different instances will make different decisions and users will go to the instances that suit their preferences. That'a how it is supposed to work and the only way it hurts the Fediverse is if we get flooded with threads complaining that other people have different preference, dammit.
I feel like this will just hurt us more then help.
I don't see why this would hurt us. But even if it did, I would rather take the blow than associate with Big Tech again.
Meta willingly under-moderated across large swaths of east Asia and Africa, leading to unchecked rumors and tangible acts of genocide. Zuckerberg has compared himself to Augustus Caesar.
I think it’s acceptable to cut off a wildfire before it spreads.
I'm not asking you to trust them, I'm asking how defederating accomplishes anything? They got more users than the entire fediverse in a single day. We are not hurting them by cutting them off, we are merely making the fediverse seem more like a barren hostile place for a bunch of weirdo nerds.
The goal is not to hurt meta, but to keep meta from hurting the rest of the federated sites. Like not inviting a known their to the community barbecue because they are known to have stolen tons of food from other community meals. We aren't keeping them from creating their own dinner or anything by not federating, just keeping them away from ours.
Except in this analogy, Meta hasn't stolen food before. They run the largest bbq around, and have bought out previous corporate competitor bbqs, and now they're hosting a giant bbq one way or another, they're just suggesting you put a gate in the fence so that people can flow back and forth between the small community bbq and their large corporate one.
Is that going to make you nervous since they have such a cool giant bbq that people are inevitably going to want to go there? Yeah, but again, that's the case regardless of whether or not the gate goes in.
Shilling for Meta is a bad look.
They steal people's data and don't follow data privacy laws. They draw people in with unethical business practices, not fair competition like in your example.
People are not worried about people using Meta outside of the fediverse. In your analogy Meta is already easily accessible through the internet in general and people can feel free to use both without needing a special gate.
Meta is showing up to the neighborhood bbq to shoot the cook and buy the grill from the estate sale. There also going to call it supporting the grieving family.
FB is a known source for targeted misinfo campaigns. If I log into those services right now Im pretty much gaurenteed to have misinfo on my landing page.
why federate with that?
Your argument entirely boils down to "domain blocking is still buggy", when Threads doesn't even support ActivityPub yet.
Once it launches, just block their instance.
So we don't get a space at all?
-A Weirdo Nerd
Lemmy is run by a bunch of tankies and the entire fediverse is under-moderated.
Cutting off a ton of users and content from the fediverse is stupid and everyone in here just keeps coming up with vague generalities because they're scared of Meta rather than have actually thought through what will happen and be able to articulate any actual harms.
People have articulated all kinds of actual harms, including two possibilities in the OP, but frankly they're irrelevant.
We know what Meta's goals are, and we know they have absolutely no moral standards whatsoever. Exactly how they try to accomplish those goals doesn't matter. We shouldn't give them the opportunity to try anything.
We should be scared of Meta, and we should keep them as far away as possible. Anything else is reckless and stupid at best.
No, they didn't. The harm listed was that Meta will make a shinier platform that will syphon away users, that is happening regardless and is not a harm that is a result of federation, it's a harm that's a result of meta having more money to build a better platform.
There goal is to launch a twitter competitor with a lot of users and make money off advertising. Nothing about that conflicts with the fediverse.
Like I said, this thread is filled with a bunch of people shaking in their boots about the company who must not be named rather than actually providing sober rational assessment of what's likely to happen.
Yes, it is. Read this: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
They can do that without integrating with the fediverse. The reason they're going to integrate with the fediverse is to embrace, extend, and extinguish.
Yeah, I've read that, and it's not an example of a corporation killing a decentralized network through federation, it's just a normal example of a corporation killing a decentralized network by having more money to make a better app.
XMPP did not die because Google used that protocol, it died because people preferred using Google Talk over any of the XMPP apps. That would be the case regardless of whether Google used XMPP or not.
Yeah, you think they give a shit about the fediverse? They're using ActivityPub because it's easier for them. They're not going to want to EEE us, because there's not enough of us to matter to them.
It's not easier for them, and once there's enough people to matter then it's too late to kill it. The fediverse is growing, and they want to stop that before the fediverse is big enough to matter.
"Boo hoo tankies bad, but big corpo run by billionaires who spread misinformation and intentionally act to topple legitimate governments in favor of their fascist agenda are akshually good"
Arguing with people like you (corporate shill) is a waste of time, so I'd rather have fun instead.
The reactions you are seeing are based off of Metas history. We will see how it works out.
i have no reason to believe anything will be different going forward, the same person is in charge and they have already stated they have the same plans here that they did on thier other projects.
why pretend its going to be "different this time"?
I didn't mean to pretend that this will be any different. My hope is, that there will be some people who will see that there is an alternative to big tech and maybe drop Threads in favour of a real fediverse instance.
Real life is not speech and debate, and it isn't an ad hominem to look at Meta's past actions and to expect that they will continue in the same way.
We don't have to have a crystal ball and be able to detail exactly what will happen and when to know that this is bad news. Expecting random internet users to outthink a mega corp and send an accurate and verified copy of their plan is absurd, and it seems like a bad faith attempt at discussion.
why shouldn't people be scared of meta
Do people think socialists or communists are bothered by this term tankie? It's like called a white person cracker. It's not really the effect youre hoping for, I promise.
Growth at any cost is the mindset that not only ruins anything good for profit, it is also the exact issue we are facing now in real life with the right gaining traction in many liberal and multicultural democracies.
Because everyone is being let in, without a second thought on if they even should be there, we now have massive social issues with not at all integrated subcultures in Europe that embrace values diametrically opposed to our tolerant and pluralist societies, in turn empowering the right to ruin any progress made in an effort to throw out the brown people again.
The right question to ask is not "can we accept this new member to our society?", the right question is "should we accept this new member into our society based on their beliefs and values, based on if they can contribute anything to the existing society?"
And to return to the matter at hand, this is what the fediverse is supposed to be. A bunch of communities and little realms, each with their own rules and interests but united in their belief that self determination and democratic structures make for a better and more fair internet. And then we have the meta intruder we are about to welcome with open arms, without any rules or expectations of him to adopt our values and culture, so they bring their own, corporate, centralized culture and use their money to brute force that culture into every place of importance.
It is not racist or intolerant of societies to expect newcomers to assimilate, and ignoring that fact brought us a re emerging right.
And it is not fearmongering or small minded to be extremely sceptical of Facebook trying to establish themselves in the fediverse, they are literally the OG data and privacy violating corporation, they invented echo chambers and connecting extremists. There is zero value to the fediverse in welcoming meta. The only one who wins if that happens is meta.
Exactly. Facebook is a known bad actor. There is absolutely no reason to believe their intentions are anything but evil. Pretending Threads is just another instance is both naive and dangerous. It is a cancer. If allowed to federate, it will metastacize.
Facebook is not evil, advertising is.
The people at Facebook aren't sitting there plotting to make the world worse, they're just sitting there figuring out how to make the numbers go up and since they're an advertising driven business, that means engagement metrics, which leads to the vast majority of their resultant evil. The advertising / engagement driven business model is what is actually evil and what could actually be addressed by legislators.
Well said.
How is that any different from what we have now?
Threads has launched, but has federation disabled. So right now Threads is a standalone system, and it and the Fediverse cannot intercommunicate.
If Threads later adds in federation but all the of the Fediverse blocks them, we're in exactly the situation that exists right this minute. And that doesn't seem to be hurting the Fediverse at all.
Do you really want the Instagram crowd to interact with us...?
I've been on Instagram for 3 years trying to build up an art profile, sharing my artwork. I think it's not Us vs Them, all sorts of people are spread out everywhere online.
I'm happy to be here on the fediverse with my fediverse accounts, not threads. I'm extremely despondent about threads existing.
No reason to be despondent until they actually make the leap to the fediverse and we discuss what the plan is to federate. Threads will not automatically federated with everyone. We will have a long time to look at what threads is and what kind of content they will bring
At least there would be people and content to interact with.
Based on your posts so far my friend, its becoming clearer why you think there's no one to interact with.
Lol, ironically my comments in this thread going against the hive mind have gotten more interaction than any others
If I was interested in those people and their content I could go there. I'm here because I absolutely do not want to see any of it.
I assume you only subscribed to text based subreddits then? Never once clicked on an image or gif that came from IG / Tiktok /etc.?
My god stop being such a gatekeeping judgemental douche. Tons of reddit content was on subs like r/aww and /r/animalsbeingderps that was exactly as trite as the stuff posted on IG, if it wasn't directly copied from it.
I am on TikTok and was on Reddit. I like my FYP on TikTok. I go on Instagram to see what old friends are up to and the suggested content is awful and mean spirited. Same with Facebook. I don't want that crap here
I am finding plenty of content to interact with here. It just might not be my first choice, but I'm getting along fine. It's still early
quality != quantity
Yeah, I personally don't want that. I want to be able to log in to mastodon or lemmy without needing a facebook account and be able to interact with my less tech savvy friends and family, as well as get news from journalists/bands/sports teams/etc.
How exactly will it hurt us to not be usurped by an evil megacorp?
How will not federating with them prevent that?
If we federate with Meta, we will be immediately drowned out by the huge user numbers of the Meta properties. They already have more users on day one than the entire fediverse.
I mean, if they actually subscribe to threads and discussions across instances, and isn't that kind of the point of a social network? For users to use it? Also odd that half the arguments against it are that it will kill the fediverse and half of the arguments are that it will provide too many users to the fediverse.
I don't think so; it won't hurt 'us' anymore than we were hurt yesterday, when Threads hadn't launched yet.
I feel different
Why would that hurt us? Sorry, I'm pretty new to all this...
Please: Everyone read this piece about how "Embrace, extend and destroy" can destroy a federated network. It happened before and they certainly will try to do it with the fediverse.
Big corpos don't want to take it over, they want it gone.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Damn, that's a terrifying vision of the future. I was on the fence with defederating, but we probably should.
Your comment should be top.
Absolutely. We'd have to be nuts to think they're not trying to take it over and ruin it.
I don't think XMPP comparison is correct.
First, in my personal (subjective!) opinion, XMPP died because of entirely different primary reason: it, by design, had trouble working on mobile devices. Keeping the connection was either battery-expensive or outright impossible, and using OS native push notifications had significant barriers.
As for Google Talk - it just came and went. Because they never had proper MUCs (multi user conferences, think communities), in my own (again, personal, thus subjective - not objective!) experience it was quite the opposite to how the article paints it. Whoever participated in chatrooms I've been in, and had used a Google account, hated Google's decision and moved to XMPP. I'm no fond of Google, but their impact on XMPP was not strictly negative - they contributed some useful XEPs and useful free software libraries after all. Although, of course, for those who used XMPP primarily as a classic messenger system (like MSN, AIM or ICQ) for private 1:1 chats things surely looked differently.
Now, why I think the comparison is not correct. I think Threads' situation is different because of fundamental differences in how those systems operate. And not in favor of Threads/Meta. If Threads would be Lemmy or XMPP MUC-like system (that is, having communities/groups hosted on particular servers), then it would be a complicated story, where Fediverse could even theoretically score a net win. But as I get it, Threads is Mastodon/Twitter-like thing, and their users' content will stay with Meta, entirely at Meta's discretion whenever they let other systems access it, and when they pull the plug. Given that Meta is also not likely to contribute to FLOSS Fediverse projects, their Fediverse presence is of questionable benefits to say the least.
deleted by creator
For those who don't know, the strategy is called Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. The phase comes from Microsoft who used this to (try to) crush competing document editors, Java implementations, browsers, and operating systems. Other big tech companies employ similar strategies.
Facebook coming to the Fediverse is the Embrace phase of this process and that makes Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, Misskey, and Akkoma the competitors.
I think the issue being missed here is that Meta will ultimately aim to suck all users into themselves, and then once they feel they've done enough of that, they will go completely closed, even potentially forking the protocol itself. If any legal attempt to stop this is made they will bog it down with hordes of lawyers for decades.
Their goal is not to help fediverse, it is recognising fediverse to be a threat and aiming to absorb it. Literally no different to how reddit slowly absorbed all internet forums into itself, killing the distributed internet.
Fediverse is attempting to bring back that distributed internet and they're trying to find ways to kill it. All corporations seek monopoly, it's how capitalism works.
If I wanted to see content from my racist Trumper uncle, I would just create a Facebook account. Keep Threads far away from the rest of the Fediverse. We don't need to compete with them. Who cares if they're way bigger with way more content if 99% of that content is garbage?
Counterpoint: beans.
Serious note: I think the point of decentralized networks like this is that each instance will have to choose to federate with Threads or any other future corporate social media. If that sounds dangerous, welcome to the freedom of choice baybee! It sucks that the truth is that as long as we want this to be a free space where people can choose what and where they see content, that means some will choose to work with the big-easy-techgiant rather than take a harder approach because 99% of people aren't that invested.
tbh, as a small instance, i might be defederating meta. im not a fan of the person that has everything through theft and scam.
Is /r/conservative leaking into lemmy?
no on cares that you care about no one caring but hey thats the internet isin't it
Why are you even here in the fediverse community if you don't care about federation?
Regardless of what anyone thinks about politics, nothing good will come by letting them in. I hope all current instances defederate, I know mine will.
Will lemmy.world defederate?
Is there a way to block threads content?
I run my own instance here at twisti.ca and have the full intention of defederating
nice to hear that.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
How many things will we let them ruin before we finally learn that corporations cannot be trusted?
Practically speaking? Everything.
Agreed, you cannot trust something that has the same ultimate goal as cancer. Endless infinite growth.
One thing I don't understand is why would meta even federate with anyone outside of their own instances anyway?
Makes no sense to ever open up to allow any other instances in. Not like they are crying for users.
The fediverse just makes sense in their own bubble. Turn Facebook, Instagram, and their other apps into the fediverse and federate them all together.
I don't expect them to ever open up to the actual fediverse. Same with BlueSky. I feel like all of these companies will USE the fediverse but in a closed bubble.
@peppy
We have to stick to our guns and keep supporting the small instances.
Admins needs to strike first and defederate from Meta before they do.
#fediverse #mastodon #lemmy
What good does that do the small instances? And how does that harm Meta?
All that happens is:
That's more a loss for us.
Ya pretty much double-edge sword
On one hand, Instagram users can bring a ton of content, which "should" be good for the overall website
On the other, it's Meta lol
If I wanted all of the Instagram content I would be on Instagram. I don't want all of that content cluttering up another space and overwhelming another space.
The difference is here you can manage your own feed and pick and choose. Many folks don't want metas apps on their device but wouldn't mind some of the content. Folks that don't want it don't have to sub but those that do can benefit second hand.
I don't want Instagram content here! If I wanted Instagram-TikTok-type content I'd be there not here. I hope that crap stays away.
And yes, it's Meta lol
Nobody wants Meta's manipulated content. Let's not forget why we call them Meta.
I don't really see how it'd be a loss. The fediverse has existed for a long time alongside big centralized social media, and Threads ostensibly having ActivityPub support doesn't really change that.
The loss of potential growth opportunity... And all the potential negative effects happen anyway, no matter if you federate or not.
How about you do that once Meta does anything other than run their own instance and help to popularize the concept of the fediverse?
That's the "Embrace" step
We should be warry of anything big tech embraces. For example, Facebook reportedly uses servers running Linux. For that reason, we should all stop using Linux. Since Facebook has both an ios and an android app, we basically have to stop using our phones. We should shoot ourselves in the foot if there's a chance we might get to bleed on them /s
Nice sarcasm, very helpful for discussion. Anyhow, this has applied to Linux as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
To risk being serious here for a second- when Google+ launched, I remember being super bumbed out about how empty it felt and the fact that my friends couldn't be on it yet because it was invite only. All the way back then, I had the idea that it would be really cool if there was a way for different social media websites to talk to each other directly instead of just users sharing links, so I could kind of take my friend group with me to Google+ even though they were still on Facebook. At the time I didn't recognize either of them as really evil, I just though Google+ had a better interface. So all the way back then, 10+ years ago, I personally felt the lock in that established social networks had was way too strong for even well funded newcomers to overcome, and if there was some kind of standard for them to communicate with eachother, it would allow for a lot more innovation.
Today, not only is my vague idea a reality in the form of ActivityPub, the largest social media company in the world is actually embracing that open standard and funneling it's users towards it. In the future, other huge corporate backed social media companies might feel pressured to build around it as well. We might be heading towards the commodification of social media, where you give put your social handle like an email address, and anyone who wants to follow you can do so from Kbin, Mastodon, Peertube, Threads, Tumblr, etc...
Today, I really do think of Meta and Mark Zuckerberg as genuinely evil. But I don't look with suspicion on everything they do just because of that. For example, they typically do pay some amount of taxes. While I am suspicious that they aren't paying enough, I don't think theirs something inherently tainted about the money they pay with. That's how I think about threads. It's not currently federated. If I was suspicious of anything, it would be that being federated was a bold claim that brought a lot of attention to them, and that they might stall and even back out of ever doing it. That's the play if you're evil. If they actually federate, I view it as the fediverse has created such a great value proposition that supporting it enhances the value of Threads. Just because they are evil, it doesn't mean everything they do is wrong and the opposite is right. Them being evil means they don't do right reliably.
I think we need to accept the fact that we live in a world with Big Companies and think about how they can be better than they were before. Right now, I think Meta is actually making a socially good decision to support ActivityPub. And it might also be good for them. But just because it's good for them, it doesn't mean it's bad for us. If we can find a way to structure incentives so big company's interests end up aligning with ours, we'll be in a much better place. Better than just saying anything Meta does is automatically wrong and nothing will be good until they are totally gone.
Currently Reddit has significantly more users than Lemmy. Has that stopped people from signing up to Lemmy? Twitter has has significantly more users than Mastodon since forever. Has that stopped people from signing up for Mastodon? Has it killed Mastodon?
The common error I see in all the "Threads will kill the Fediverse" mania is that it assumes the same people who sign up for Threads would have otherwise signed up for Mastodon/Lemmy/Kdin/etc. 99.9% of them probably never would have. They want something that's easy and just works; and they're willing to let a company profit off their data to have it.
I don’t think those are good comparisons. The point he is trying to make is that when a user joins Lemmy and sees a two gaming subs, one on Lemmy.world and the other on a meta instance with more subscribers, that user will join the meta sub.
I do not want to see only corporations holding the keys to the majority of communities and if they are allowed in that will be their goal. Meta doesn’t give a shit if the 3dprinting sub has quality content, only that it is profitable for them. Corporations will choose profit over the users every time.
People will say “well if it gets bad or they start becoming bad actors then we can drop them” but that will just set us back to where we are right now. I would rather see us grow slow without corporations than fast with them.
The problem is that this doesn't change the outcome.
To use your example, if we federate people will join the meta instance, if we don't federate people won't even know the lemmy.world instance exists, and even if they do they would still join the meta one if it's bigger.
I totally agree with the sentiment, but I yet have to understand how not federating can change the outcome
The only way smaller instances can thrive and make a strong federation is by making the average person start to care more about privacy.
But you can't do that if you can't reach them in the first place
Sorta seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of situation.
That's not what's going to happen. I really don't understand why people on Lemmy are so fussed about this, Meta are not building a lemmy instance, they are building a twitter clone. While yes you can access Threads content through Lemmy that doesn't mean it's going to affect the Lemmy ecosystem. Mastodon is going to be way more affected than Lemmy ever will be.
Just because they are on the Fediverse doesn't mean it will make sense to use their services through all other Fediverse platforms and vice versa. Following an entire Lemmy "sub" on threads will be a shitty experience and Threads doesn't have creation of subs as an option, the only viable equivalent features are user posts.
It's about threads becoming the fediverse by virtue of their size and resources, and then making changes to the protocols which ultimately lock out the actual fediverse. It will be 'fediverse, by Meta' where everything is hosted and run by meta.
And how do you think defederating them will affect that at all?
They can just use their influence and say “here, W3C, add this and that to the protocol”.
How will a small mastodon server with a few thousand users stop that? Defederating them is useless.
Not totally sure, but I don't think that negotiating with Threads on anything at any point is a winning strategy. They'll win every time. Kind of a 'give them an inch they take a mile' situation in my head.
At least by staying separate the user base will have to make a conscious decision about where they want to spend time instead of letting Meta dictate that for them in the future.
It is harmful either way. Not a great situation for fediverse. I wouldn't say defed is useless, it clearly does something. Effective? Not sure.
Federating with them isn't "negotiating" in any way.
Any fear of Threads controlling the protocol is out of our hands, because the protocol isn't in the hands of the Mastodon devs, it's in the hands of W3C. So no matter what Mastodon instances do, it won't affect Threads and W3C.
I think that by not federating with them, we're TAKING AWAY the option for people to make a decision, and forcing the worst possible choice on them. Imagine I want to follow a guy that is really popular on Threads. If Mastodon federates with them, I can decide to make an account on Mastodon and follow the guy from the safety of a network that it not governed by algorithms that promote hate, or I can decide to make a Threads account and follow them there. It's my choice.
But if Mastodon instances do NOT federate with Threads, the only way for me to follow that popular guy is by creating a Threads account and using the Threads app. By not federating, Mastodon removed my ability to choose and forced the worst possible option on me.
We should want MORE people using Mastodon, not fewer people. Let them follow Threads profiles from the safety of Mastodon.
Allowing their platform access to the fediverse is giving them something they want in exchange for access to a larger user base for us. It's a form of trade or negotiation, however you want to look at it it's a choice to exchange something of value.
You're looking short term. The issue here is that Meta is going to be able to destroy the fediverse later, not right away.
People have been repeating these fearmongering ideas, but with nothing concrete.
How is Threads going to destroy the fediverse if we make it easier for people to choose to come to Mastodon?
And how do you think that pushing people towards Threads is going to save the Fediverse?
And, like I said, if the entire protocol that the fediverse runs on is independent of Mastodon, how can Mastodon even stop it?
Did you read the EEE article someone shared?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=EEE+threads+meta+fediverse+embrace+extend+extinguish
Yep, their plan will be to take over the majority of the network, then start adding their own proprietary features and not adding features that the open source devs add, thereby taking control of the software.
EXACTLY! It only benefits us because it hugely increases the exposure of the fediverse to the outside world so people who ARE interested can merely jump over. It makes the fediverse more interesting for people like me who can "live" here and access the content I want.
two things:
have you considered that if this happens, once the fediverse's exposure grows it will be thanks to Meta's entrance, then the people that join the fediverse will do so by Meta's means (in this case, Threads. But they can make some more after)? Making them the standard way to access the protocol, gradually making other communities less and less relevant.
I'm not trying to be rude by any means, but honestly, if the content you enjoy is on their platforms, just go there and enjoy it. You can be both there and here.
The exposure is still greater than the zero that currently exists. If only 1% see the stuff from the smaller instances and figure out what's up, they'll jump. That's better than the current near 0. There's not really a scenario where it reduces the activity here any further, only improves it.
Everyone is talking about defederating because of XMPP and EEE. But the very fact that we know about EEE means that it's much less likely to succeed.
Zuck is seeing the metaverse crash and burn and he knows he needs to create the next hot new thing before even the boomers left on facebook get bored with it. Twitter crashing and burning is a perfect business opportunity, but he can't just copy Twitter - it has to be "Twitter, but better". Hence the fediverse.
From Meta's standpoint, they don't need the Fediverse. Meta operates at a vastly different scale. Mastodon took 7 years to reach ~10M users - Threads did that in a day or two. My guess is that Zuck is riding on the Fediverse buzzword. I'm sure whatever integration he builds in future will be limited.
TL;DR below:
Meta WILL fuck up everything they touch with an aggressive amount of ads. I do not want this future.
One of the things that I feel isn't being thought about much, is that it isn't just Meta's ideology and policies that will harm smaller instances and the fediverse itself; but the volume of data that their userbase will generate.
For smaller instances like mine running on six vcores, 4GB of memory, 512GB storage and a 120Mbps network...I feel like all it would take is a handful of users federating with them and the data flow alone would destroy our resources at the network if not disk level.
No, I don't plan on allowing my instance to see or interact with theirs; but the point applies to all small instances and part time hobby servers. We don't have the means to take on the data they could throw out into the federated network.
If that’s the case, then how will it be possible for the fediverse to scale up at all? If the goal is to replace Reddit and the like, then the goal is having millions of users regardless of if they are all coming from meta or from a whole ton of small instances.
I have some headroom for growth set aside. Since my instance is virtualized, its not too hard to scale it a bit. But there are hard limits due to other projects on the host.
For a lot of smaller instances that are currently running on cheaper VPS instances, they most likely have an upper limit to what their willing to pay for scaling up as growth happens. The only way to balance that is getting tooling in place to purge older data, but that isn't really a good idea either.
Really though, any web platform that hits the public eye is going to face these issues over time. But allowing a large company to federate with a smaller instance will accelerate the issues. You also need to keep in mind that you don't have all the control of these instances, as your users will cause you to federate with more and more content. Sure, you can purge and defederate, but that is a cat and mouse game.
Also, I cannot speak for the goals of others; but lemmon bar isn't run with the goal of replacing reddit. It is meant to be a point of access to the fediverse. No more, no less.
Everyone is really scrambling now as if they really thought up to now that the Fediverse was immune to corpo bullshit
I'm totally willing to discuss my thoughts since it seems I'm in the minority on this threads mania-
Once Threads launches it'll obviously have a lot more users than the whole fediverse combined, maybe even 90% of all users. Now let's say some instances with barely 1-2% users and small content feed defederate from it. Do people think a new user who does not care about things like open source or privacy will join the niche instance? No, people will go where the content is. Big social media giants will jump on fediverse bandwagon and instances who dont fetch their data will become extremely niche communtites (some might like that but it's not good for overall fediverse health).
Instead let's say we keep federated with threads, and make posts like how YSK: other instances don't track your data, other instances are free from corpo greed, other instances are run by normal people etc etc and make users aware and let them naturally migrate. Ideally, meta will bring the eyeballs which we can help to make fediverse as a whole grow.
imo it's naive to think that us 100k users defederating will put even a dent on threads. Insta tik-tok people will join the new trendy social media and generate content. The only solution is to make people constantly aware that better alternatives to view the same content exist.
The potential problem is not us making a dent on Threads, I couldn't care less if people want to use it. The potential problem is that they do the EEE (link1, link2) on the Fediverse. It's not us trying to steal users from them, or preventing people from joining them, it's about preventing them from becoming the standard way for people to access the Fediverse, thus giving them control over the protocol's direction and giving them the possibility to, once they are the de facto standard, defederate and kill the rest of small communities.
That, and personally, I wouldn't like Meta meddling with the protocol, simply because there is no beneficial outcome for them other than gaining control of it, which would be horrible.
Let's say all of mastodon instances not federating Threads. What stopping Meta to do EEE on ActivityPub? That protocol is not owned by mastodon creator or other devs. It's handled by W3C afaik
Nothing is, other than the users themselves by not federating with them.
users won't want to use an instance that can't view content from threads (since that where's most content would be), but they'll be much more open to joining an open source instance that federated and views stuff from there as well.
I wouldn't want to use an instance that shows me Meta content, even if that's where the majority of content is, and I don't think I'm alone in that.
I am here because I value quality over quantity.
This is the question I want a proper answer to. Anyone?
The content I want to have will never be on a meta server. And even if, I will not federate with them and not use them.
For the exact same reasons I also don't use Facebook.
I will continue to use Mastodon and Lemmy.
Doing my part!
yeah, i really, well and truly do not wish to be linked with meta on fediverse. it's obvious the damage it will do either way. may as well stay as we are and avoid the termoil which meta will bring us should they decide to federate.
I don't think this will matter at all. The first instance that brands itself as "we only federate with instances that exclude all relationships with Meta," is the instance I will be in and all the people who I want to hang around will be there also. Federating with Meta will be like holding a flashing neon sign that says "stay away from me."
I don't want anything to do with Reddit anymore and I haven't had anything to do with Twitter or Facebook for more than 10 years - and all for similar reasons. Huge groups of people brought together by money are fucking poison.
I don't think this looks very good, but if we want a fighting chance, we can definitely do two things:
We need to make using other instances of Lemmy and kbin extremely easy. Seamless. Two taps on your phone simple. Sign up with Google. All that jazz. Then the most basic user will have an easier time choosing a non-Threads instance.
We need to, ironically I guess, advertise our LACK of advertisements. No matter how they do it, I'd bet anything Treads will integrate ads somehow, so this is a way we can quickly stand out.
On another note, users will want to go where the content lives. Of course, that makes this much more difficult. We all know Threads will be big, almost immediately. So, should we defederate with Threads like many of us are planning? This will keep us "safe" but we'll lose all the new content. Or should we instead remain federated to keep seeing the content? Of course this doesn't stop Threads from defederating from us themselves, so I truly don't know the answer.
No matter what, I think we need to stand out to average social media users in a big way. I think my two points above are just a start, though. We need to offer more.
I don't have high hopes, but I'm planning to fight like hell for our little paradise in any way I can.
Imo the fediverse should not try to compete with the big commercial networks on their terms. It will be much healthier when it grows slow and steady with people who want to be here because it is the fediverse. A place of freedom and lack of controlling evil players who will use your data to control your behavior (to get more ad revenue or worse, to make you act against your best interests, such as happened on facebook with Cambridge Analytica).
We're not gonna win from big dollars and vested interests. Let's not play their game. Let them play their game and let us be a safe haven for anyone who is done with being a pawn in that game.
The fediverse is already a really nice place to be. You don't need 100s of millions of users to have the network effect that creates a successful platform. We've already reached that critical mass.
Threads already has over 30 million daily active users and growing fast - I'm tipping it will be over a billion in a year or two.
The fediverse has 2 million monthly active users. Sorry, but we've already lost the content battle. Like it or not, Threads is king king and Lemmy/Mastodon are ants.
Regarding "two taps and you're signed up"... that's just never going to happen. If anything, it probably needs to be a bit harder to sign up. We don't want people using throwaway accounts.
I see your panic and raise you a "what's the solution?"
Keep it separate, mass de-federate. The biggest lemmy instance has to make a stance.
Defederate the big corps immediately.
I think the solution is for each instance to decide whether to federate with Threads or not.
The only way an attempt to coopt the Fediverse wouldn't happen world be if the project failed. If this system is going to work, major players will want to participate, and they'll want to accrue power and dominate over the system. Creating tools to establish boundaries and checks is fundamentally the point, so I think we should all strive to understand and contribute to the development and administration of institutions we like. And if we do that, and also compel our governments to impose regulations on big tech they WILL come up against limits to their power.
check this out
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/
He made it very clear.
Defederate from any instance that federated with meta.
People forget. They go for convenience. That is how we ended up in our present state. Facebook led efforts against net neutrality too in some countries. But how many know/remember that? Amongst all other things they did.
People go where the people they care about are. Path dependency is king.
They’ll probably get mad that people can take their ball and go home by going to another instance without ads and signing away access to all of their personal data but get the same content. If they defederate, to me that’s the trash taking itself out.
I'm more concerned of them integrating new features and bullying everyone else into following to integrate them or else.
I don't exactly understand how this is going to kill small instances? I just stared with the Fediverse stuff so I might have understood it wrong:
Point 1: "Meta will unethically defederate from instances..." I'm assuming that means they'll block access to those instances for anyone that has an account on the Meta instance? I don't really see the problem with that. This won't affect small instances at all because people who want to view other instances will have an account somewhere else and people using the meta instance probably wouldn't have heard of the fediverse in the first place if it wasn't for meta. Its a win basically since they'll get introduced to the fediverse concept which is a step in the right direction. And small instances will stay as they are which is unaffected.
Point 2: If I understood it correctly they can only slow down access to other instances if one uses an account created on the meta instance? So same argument as in point 1.
I guess this will already have been said, but nonetheless:
I like the feeling of community as it is right now in the Fediverse very much.
Most of me hopes that it will not successfully federate with Meta, ever; or if it "must", in a way that will be mostly irrelevant to me (communities I wouldn't subscribe to in the first place, anyway).
I don't see how that, in turn, would give Meta any control over the parts of the Fediverse that I care about. If they want to join and contribute in good faith, fine. If not, also fine. Why should it change anything for Fediverse "centered" communities?
I never cared about size or majority, but about quality of content and discourse. And I find that in those points, the current Fediverse much outshines anything else I've seen (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, ...) in the last decade or so.
That was my first thought too, until I found this:
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Blog post explainer
Wikipedia page
From my (admittedly, deliberately naive and provocative) perspective, what is the (possible) "added value" of Threads' ad-infested feed over the community experience straight on Lemmy?
I share your priorities, but I don't think you understand the depth and breath of how they can ruin this for us... The only guarantee is that, at some point (maybe tomorrow, maybe in 5 years), they'll ask "how can we extract value from this investment?". That's what a corporation is, it can't help it anymore than fire can choose how hot to burn
But even before then, we have misaligned goals. At best, their priority is to generate an endless stream of advertiser friendly content, extract information about users, and grow endlessly. At worst, they want to use us to help kill Twitter while ensuring federation of individuals does not become a viable model for social media
This is an excellent line.
How would they ensure this latter thing?
In my current understanding, it's readily possible today (on Lemmy and related software), what could Meta do to keep this from continuing to work?
Convince the population at large it doesn't work, or even that it's dangerous.
Like community run utilities, universal healthcare, or any number of things that so obviously work better without a profit motive
Make the populace at large see the fediverse as a failed experiment, a hive of criminal activity, or a bunch of tiny toxic echo chambers
Hell, they could even push legislation that makes running social media out in the open impossible for individuals
As for the first points, yes, that may happen, but is it a problem for users who already are part of a 'better' experience here than on the for-profit platforms?
I, for one, find much better discourse here than anywhere on reddit, let alone Meta or Twitter.
Also exemplified by me engaging much more here than ever on the others. I do prefer quality over quantity - everyone is invited to join the table, but I don't see much benefit in luring people there who would ultimately only dilute or be disruptive - ie, not really into the thing that's happening here.
For the last point, well, legislators can certainly try. While telling people it's all for their benefit and upholding freedom and democracy and equal opportunity and whatnot. And even keep a straight face.
By convincing people at large that social media run by individuals or groups isn't viable.
Personally, I'd do it by attacking the credibility of the admins. Sow doubt. "they only run servers so they can steal your data", "look at this guy! He pretends he cares about free speech, but he's abusing his power to censor and radicalize people!" "The only reason you'd use these private instances is if you have something to hide. That place is for criminals"
They might even be able to get legislation passed to make it legally risky to run the servers in the US if they control the narrative
Only early adopters, technical people, and the privacy minded care about how this actually works, and we've been telling our friends and family how bad Facebook is for years (for good reason). At first they didn't care, but now I get push back
Next, make it unreliable. If it goes down frequently, gets flooded by bots, or just starts to suck in general, most of the people here now will leave, no matter how important federated social networks are. Maybe they'll go to servers that bend over backwards to become offshoots of threads, maybe they'll look for Reddit clones elsewhere, personally I'd start up a private federation for friends and family if this goes south
Regardless, this place will become an empty mall - if it's not a healthy form of social media I'm not going to spend much time here, and I'm extremely passionate about it
And the last option is just ads and incentives. Make it tempting and play to fomo.
They'll probably do all of this to some degree, especially if we explode in numbers and present actual competition.
We're ready to handle it, but we also need to make sure the battle lines are as far away as possible
I think you are wildly overestimating the stickiness of the fediverse. The sorts of people who will prefer Threads are going to prefer Threads whether or not it's federated. On the other hand, the sorts of people who prefer the fediverse will never switch to Threads even if it becomes the smoothest experience ever. But the latter cohort is likely much, much smaller than the former.
"unethically defedrate"? I think you may have misunderstood how federation works, since "defederate" is just another word for "ban yourself from seeing that instance's content", if Threads defederate from a small Mastodon instance, for example, that Mastodon instance can still see all the content on Threads, but the Threads user won't be able to see anything posted by that Mastodon instance.
Also, any instance can and should be able to federate and defederate any other instance for any or even no reason, that's the entire point.
I think threads being able to make content that's a threat to them invisible to their users by "unethically defederating" is exactly what the op is talking about. What they were likely referring to is this: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Doesn't matter that users from other instances can still see threads content. It's about threads accumulating the majority of users due to better infrastructure and then silencing smaller instances they deem a threat to them by defederating. It's only been a few hours and they've crossed 30 million users.
Niche forums on the same topics still exist on the Internet, even ones with only 10 people posting regularly.
The current trend of the Internet seems more about decentralization to like minded groups instead of everybody being in the same place.
Also, Threads is feeding off Instagram's existing users, they didn't exactly start from zero.
I don't think extreme moderation is necessary, as I believe that most people are good and willing to be nice and helpful and can be reasoned with. However, if it is clear that someone is so consumed by hatred that they can't, then these people needs to be kicked out, otherwise they will just spread their misery to everyone else.
People who seek the same things will naturally group together, the Fediverse really isn't different than the independent forums of the early internet, except that we can use one account to access them all now, so scaling would be more on the addition of more instances. There will be good ones, there will be bad ones, but that's humanity.
Open source is about letting everybody use what you make, even those that you don't like, Facebook has the right to the ActivitHub protocol like everybody else, but so far they are doing a pretty bad job at their first attempt. I think the only way for Facebook et. al to survive is if they fire Zuck and bring in their equivalent of Nadella.
Ehh want it becomes a problem we will make blocking them possible.
To be perfectly honest I think the one way defederation block is kind of silly.
I think meta will dominate the space that federates with it. Hopefully none of my instances will do that... And I will be unaffected.
What is the motivation for this post? Did Meta announce they will be making an instance or is the OP just thinking ahead?
Is there a list of instances that have defederated (or announced they will) from Threads?
Compared to Meta, all other instances are small.
I agree. Ultimately, I think there is a real chance that there ends up being 2 major fediverses. One that is federated with Meta, and one that is not.
I think that those joined to meta will ultimately become like the losers table in a school cafeteria. They can hear all of the conversations, but nobody will engage them. I’d rather be in the not-federated camp.
Luckily, they can't force federated access to be slow. Once you federate with them, their content is copied to your instance. It's not necessary for every fediverse user to contact Threads, it'll just be served from each user's home instance
Where's that Fediverse's anti-Meta treaty again? Should update em clauses by now.
Everything is gonna be alright.
A wise king never seeks out war. But he must always be ready for it.
Meta or any other corporation with interest in social media sphere (to be read: wanting to make profit on the back of the users) will, sooner or later, kill the fediverse if allowed to enter.
Why?
Simple because the reason for a corporation to exist is to make profit and that profit has to grow each year - so there is all the incentive in the world to milk everything from the user until they can then move on to the next "thing".
What a huge piece of FUD this is. Threads is already way larger then the Fediverse is. They don't need to come here and try and take users. You are afraid that Meta will hoard the content and users from the Fediverse but they are already doing that. Threads doesn't connect now so it's all there's. Why would they connect to just disconnect later? Why is the answer to being afraid of getting disconnected in the future to never connect? This makes no sense. It's complete fear mongering.
Exactly, they don't need to, yet they plan to. What do you think their goal is?
There goal is to not look like a monopoly to the government and have to deal with anti-trust issues. This lets them hide behind them being "open" and not forcing people to use Meta apps to access the network.
I really hope that's the case, but honestly don't think so
@SUPERcrazy3530 @peppy Completely agree. If they disconnect later we are just back where we are now - so literally no loss. Only win by connecting
I mean, we can all defederate. You're TELLING us to defederate. What makes ours ethical and their unethical??
They cannot make our instances slower. Your browser / the server doesn't make any requests to threads when you load a page on your instance. They could send notifications less frequently, but so what.
This post feels like fearmongering...
Why would Meta care about small instances? I feel like Meta would only see the big instances as pontential threat.
Honestly, this could actually be an opportunity for fediverse. I don't want Meta to harvest my data, so I would never make an account there. However I am interested in content/people from Meta and I can follow that from fediverse. I believe there is large group of people who think the same way and they may join fediverse if they haven't already done that.
They can do that without Threads though. Everything you upvote, downvote, and comment on is public record. Plus the way federated content works is the host server isn't accessed unless you actively try to go there, everything else is reposted in your local instance. So they're not going to get data from Threads that way.
If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: they don't care about the Fediverse one way or another. This is just a way to kill Twitter, and they're doing it through a loose alliance of sorts.
That's exactly what I meant, they don't need Threads, it's all public (except possibly email addresses?) , but @[email protected] commented to me and said it doesn't work that way, so now I'm secend guessing myself.
Either way, they can scoop all that post data up anyway, to me the data is almost becoming a red herring. IMHO, Facebook's history of being a platform of hate-fueled content, violence, trolling, social manipulation, etc. is of greater concern.
I'm also wary of the day that Facebook is the driving force of the Fediverse due to it's sheer size. All those users come along with a great deal of inertia, and Facebook could end up being the mega-Corp who decides all the protocol standards forcing others to keep up with their "contributions" or get left behind.
Your posts are only public if you set your profile to public. Otherwise, they're private. But even if they're public, I'm pretty sure an instance can make them almost private (as in: you can only see the data if you're federating with them).
I agree that most of the instances don't make things private at the moment (I think), but at least they can protect your information if they want to.
But anyway, federating or not, Meta and other companies are already tracking everyone one way or another.
Small correction, I don't want them to harvest data that is connected to me as a person. With Meta I have to give out many personal info that they don't actually need for their service to function. It's just a way for making more money.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only personal info on Fediverse I have to give is my email.
That’s not hot activityPub federation works
Better explained here: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
But... what kind of Camel milk do you like?
I would imagine that the kind of people willing to use Threads were already not going to sign up for a "small instance", and a lot of admins of various sized instances have already agreed to defederate regardless https://fedipact.online/
Why does that site have to look like a Geocities site that some 12 year old girl made..?
are you peppy from osu! ?
Could Threads essentially cause a kinda DDOS attack onto other instances or bloating other instances with data?
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA....oh that's rich. Do you actually believe this?
Who do you believe are the best engineers in the world and where do they work?
Eh. They have really good engineers. They just work for a POS company that does some bullshit
Good engineers and best in the world are not equal.
I, personally, do not want to be defederated from Threads. I want to follow some of the key news orgs and political figures who haven’t made the move over to Mastodon. For me, it can be the best of both worlds. I can get the content I want and maintain the level of privacy that I want.
Honest question: What makes you think Meta will be putting that content there for you if they can't profit from you?
I am trying to figure out how this will do anything but make a "threads" and a "rest of the fediverse" setup, just like we have now. Nothing will change, and this will be for the best. Meta will make a shitty version of fediverse to rival their own shitty facebook, and the rest of us will be happier for it.
If you don't federate with them, people will simply just go there instead of here because a larger user base.
i honestly prefer that. People can use two services and the fediverse won't centralize. Win-Win. Don't you think?
The common pattern when onboarding into the Fediverse is:
"I just left [poorly moderated place with too many people] because of [reason only tangentially relates to the denizens]".
"This place is a breath of fresh air! It feels like [the Internet at some previous reference time for the user that predated them being in spaces with too many people]."
"Everyone should experience this! We need to get [the people who made the previous location a hell hole] here!"
I don't care about the culture of this place. I just want everyone using decentralised platforms so we have more choice. You cannot live without certain platforms like Facebook because everyone you know uses it. If Facebook was on the fediverse you wouldn't have that problem.
The fediverse not dying has yet to be proven.
Everyone on here keeps acting like they're in a position of power and the fediverse is destined for success, but here's the thing, it still sucks compared to the content that's on Reddit and FB/IG, because there's still a tiny fraction the number of users. The fediverse is only going to be the great place to have a conversation about stuff if people use it, and everyone rushing to cut off a massive source of funding / users / content while the fediverse is still trying to compete against Reddit et al seems like a huge mistake.
The fediverse will grow on it's features and focus on transparency.
Growth by corporate funding, users and funding will make the entire thing centralized and it dies anyway.
Nobody will use lemmy.world if the "Threads app does the same thing but faster".
Majority of the people unfortunately don't care about privacy and transparency.
But at least we could interact with threads users from the safety of mastodon
Yeah there is more content on Reddit or FB/IG, but that doesn't mean, that the content there is useful to users in the fediverse.
I think a great many users came to the Fediverse because they were not happy with their experience on FB, Reddit et al and were looking for something that is not that. Why should those users then be expected to recreate that model, or allow that content into this community? People here have already left those massive communities, and connections, and you speak like they lament that choice.
I just don't like being tracked, unwelcome UI changes, censorship, etc. The content on Instagram and Reddit are fine.
Nobody wants to use two services.
Imagine what the fediverse will be like when 90 year old daisy gets on it.
Grandma is about to learn about vore in church.
I just spit my coffee but... thank you xD
I think I laughed so hard I damaged my spleen. Thank you.
Imagine those old conservatives shock when lemmygrad contents show up on their federated feed.
If an instance does off because Meta won't defederates from it, then it probably would have died off anyway.
Why would the most active lemmings stay on meta owned and controlled instances?
Because meta will have the most users and will prioritize their own content.
Users go where there’s content. What content does meta produce? I see them faltering both in social media and in the meta verse. Now they’re trying with Twitter. Is there a vision somewhere? Cos I can’t see it.
Meta and Reddit provided a platform for people to post on.. not content though. Hope people can learn to live without them because it's cancer
I mean Facebook seems in decline. Reddit, well many people migrated here, me included. I dunno if we are the content creators but I hope so. I hope spez finds himself with a bunch of ashes.
What is Signal?
It's a Free, Open-Source instant messaging app, the likes of Telegram and WhatsApp, which offers encrypted messaging and most functionality that WhatsApp also offers. It failed to take off as well as we'd hoped since most people resort to iMessage or WhatsApp instead, both owned and controlled by Apple and Zuck respectively.
Can I still use Signal?
Signal is an encrypted messaging app that got popular during the whole Whatsapp privacy fiasco few years ago.
the secure messaging app that whatsapp is based on. ad-free, facebook-free and encrypted. all the pleasure, none of the pain
I get all the hate for meta and zuck, and I agree that they would only do so for their own commercial benefit, but I don’t think we should defederate without seeing what federating means. Everyone here is instinctively panicking and running around like headless chickens without seeing what it would actually entail.
Threads is like mastodon. If federating with threads only means that threads users can participate in lemmy, I see that as an advantage for us.
If we were a mastodon instance, this conversation would be very different.
Meta or any other big player that looks to ride on the fediverse space ultimately gets nothing that's not already available publicly, and can't push their ads or data-scraping apps on the users of the fedi. In effect they'll either play nice and maybe a few people interact between them, or they don't and things continue as they are today. There have been a couple posts out there of the history with Google/XMPP and now the statement by Mastodon. Private hosting of open protocols has always been a threat to the big players. In the end with the Google affair, XMPP still exists, I used to use it for my household chat, but found other options like RocketChat and now NextCloud Talk more to my taste and easier to maintain. Meta can't kill the ActivityPub system, only the users walking away from it can do that, or, I guess ISPs if they did some sort of shady blocking en-masse but that's another matter all together.
I have no use for Meta in any of their forms, and would certainly push others to use the OG version of things that doesn't scrape all their data to sell them the latest bullshit they don't need, but there's little reason to fear them either.
The instances defederating Meta will shrink and collapse into their own seperate Defediverse. The debate shows the risk of so many hobbyist instances and admins powertripping their view who the users are allowed to talk to, that a corporation is perhaps more reliable. It hurts the users, hampers communication channels and people will flock more to the Mainfediverse further accelerating more power to fewer instances.
If you were looking for a network seperated from the outside general world, you perhaps should have joined a closed instance, network and forum. It goes against all what the Fediverse tries to be, a multi-purpose communication tool across communities, corporations and cultures with the possibility to create seperated and shielded communities.
The current fediverse is like a small mall or downtown with local shops and unique things to do. Meta is like Walmart coming in and overwhelming the existing businesses and running them out of business through unethical practices.
It isn't like people won't be allowed in the fediverse if they also use threads. The desire is to avoid threads using the fediverse to drive everything's else out.
The fediblockers are only driving themselves out. Your analogy is wrong, they cannot run Mastodon out of business. Should Meta decide to be feature incompatible and itself defederating a significant portion will leave. The fediverse itself is so alive, because of the rotten smell of Twitter, reddit and Facebook. Meta will fail with Threads, if they try to extinguish others.
nobody is trying to run anything out of business, that'd be foolish. The goal is preventing them from ruining every other community once they inevitably gain control of it all
Love the dialogue here but you always have to follow the money trail. The best way to keep what we love is to bankroll our instances to keep them running and scalable to additional users without ads. Remember, if you aren't paying for the product then you become the product. Meta has nothing without selling ads or monetizing user data. That's their business model. As long as we chip in we can always maintain our independence. I'm fine with never seeing or interacting with content from Threads.
Meta is already a multi-billion dollar company that is built like an unstoppable content monetization and tax avoidance machine. If they wanted to, they could probably float an unprofitable Threads dot net until the heat death of the universe. Threads doesn't need to be profitable for it to succeed, it just needs to crush Twitter, BlueSky, TikTok, Reddit, Tumblr, and the Fediverse under foot. That's it... that's the win condition they're going for, not profitability. This is David verses Goliath moment and, in the real world of monopolistic capitalism, Goliath usually wins.
If they defederate from other instances, they just means Threads users won't see those instances. Those instances will still see Threads content, if they want. The content is also shared across instances this way, so their servers largely don't matter. Whenever Lemmy.World or Yiffit.net is down or having problems, I just bop over to Kbin and it's like those other two instances never actually dropped out since I can still see and interact with their posts.
I don't see how in any way shape or form Threads can or will fuck up the entire fediverse when even if they have a majority of the users, their content gets spread around the whole network and doesn't stay on shit they control.
And if you're worried about their app collecting data: then don't fucking use it. Unless you think their app, on someone else's phone, will collect YOUR data somehow, this is a completely bullshit argument.
Honestly, I don’t see how this is a threat to “small” instances. Why would Meta target defederation with some dude’s 5 user instance that barely registers on anyone’s radar?
The moment that you/a person on your instance engage with threads, it'll likely use up your storage quota at an unprecedented rate.
You're not gonna be downloading the entirety of threads when you interact with them. I don't see how interacting with threads would fill up your storage any faster than interacting with another instance.
What does upping the storage quota mean?
When smaller instances thrive and attract a dedicated user base, they can challenge the dominance of larger platforms like Meta. This poses a threat to Meta's business model, which relies on maintaining a large user base and monetizing user data and engagement.
Elon suspended accounts of Journalists. Do you not see that the lizard king can do the same with small instances. And this will happen silently and the users on Threads will be unaware.
Why would Meta target small instances, though, instead of larger, more popular ones? And how does it matter if Meta blocks small instances or if small instances block Meta? The result is the same.
If we were to take parallel with how big email providers handle federation, there is a good chance that meta will make it a lot harder for smaller instances to federate in the name of combating spam later down the line (throttling activitypub traffics, requiring certain nonstandard antispam technological measures to be added in their instance, etc).
Whether or not the intention is malicious, it'll effectively discourage people to "spread out" and run their own instances for their community, and fediverse citizens will slowly but surely migrate to the big operators because of less hassle and that's where everyone hang out.
I mean, isn’t that good? Small instances thrive because they run faster without the overload of a bunch of users. I don’t want every asshole from Instagram on the instance I’m on.
I really don't understand this logic... There is literally absolute no advantage by not federating with Meta.
Why would users prefer the free Fediverse MORE if it's not federated with the "big and good" Metaverse? If anything it just drives them away into Metas arms, because the non-Meta instances are small and all the stuff is on Meta anyway.
Defederating is just the worst case result, but instantly from the beginning... How does that do any good???
thats what ive been saying, atleast use em for a while to get some of the user base to switch over.
https://lemmy.world/comment/891372
Both those things literally happen with 100% certainty and instantly when you defederate...
Meta is not going to go away or fail somehow just because everyone defederates from them!
Most people in this thread have a vastly overestimated opinion of how large the fediverse is, how relevant it is to social media overall, and how much any other social media company actually cares about what's going on here. If every server defederates from Meta, Meta will just shrug and go on with its day, and continue siphoning users off anyway. Probably even faster than before, because there will be no way for fediverse users to see the Threads stuff they want to see. They'll have to explicitly re-home over there. And what are the chances they'll stick around on the fediverse after that?
Exactly!
If people want both things they can easily access both things without needing them to be connected.
While the effects you list don't seem entirely implausible, you're stating these hypothetical situations as if they are already fact and we have evidence to indicate that. I agree with @substill in that I don't see Threads being a threat to small communities.
Well, that hasn't been my experience so far, and they are not even federating yet :-D
This is much a better argument than the XMPP comparison.
Thanks for the post!
Can small instances handle the traffic that Threads will be generating? I imagine small instances may get overwhelmed by bandwidth / cpu constraints, due to not having the budget that Meta has. Smaller instances that get bogged down might find people migrating to Threads simply because it will be able to handle the load.
Then let's warn people against using anything Meta and by doing so drive people away from it.
@peppy my instance has been getting dos for a couple months now.
Sorry but I think what will most likely happen is people who tire of farcebook's censorship, once they realize there are alternatives they will jump and the traffic will be spread around. Some smaller sites may not handle it but they can become niche sites.
I seriously don't understand this mindset! If meta manages to make a better product it will definitely have more users, it's just how everything works!
Users will have the option to pick between convince of meta or freedom of smaller instances. Who are we to decide for everyone?
Apt username, Problematic Consumer.
Meta is cancer. You don't let cancer grow and see if it ends up maybe causing issues or killing you. You cut every trace of it out as soon as it's detected.
Meta has never done anything to show it is a corporation that acts in good faith. In fact it has proven time and time again it is actively acting in bad faith, against people, community, and privacy interests in order to drive profit with no regard for anything else.
Kill the cancer before it kills you.
I understand your view but no, not everyone here cares about fediverse, honestly this technicalities should be abstracted for the end user. Not everyone is a nerd or have time or passion to care about fediverse, should we abandon them just because we dont like meta? No we should create a platform just as fun and easy to use as centralized platforms with better privacy and no ads.
If we keep doing this very few people will use fediverse just like what happend to matrix and others
A free, open-source, privacy-conscious, human-moderated platform with great usability and easily accessible sounds beautiful. Also, sounds decades away and probably utopic, given the amount of time and resources needed to make all that possible. And when you start focusing on just getting funding to keep growing, well, you end up being Meta.
I really really hope I'm proven wrong as soon as possible
Ding! Online community infrastructure is like leftism. If you don’t do something about accessibility for the masses, all you’re left with is a sad circle-jerk.
Meta and other big for profit players in social media have a bad history. Privacy, ads, profits at all cost. The people concerned about this early on are basing it off the previous behaviors of these companies.
I feel like it's a good and early immune response.
If it's not technically possible for them to show me ads, see my ip, private messages etc how is this harmful?
I'm thinking in terms of the future.They'll have profit incentives to find ways acquire whatever data they can profit from. While they may not be able to do certain things now, companies like this chip away bit by bit in the long term.
With their incentives, resources, and prior behavior, I'm not certain what they can add would be worth whatever the positive result of their profit making activity.
Edits: spelling.
For real, freaking out about defederating so early is going to become a real problem if we do it every time someone new moves in.
Also do people really want Twitter to remain the only mainstream option for microblogging? Mastodon is great, but more competitors is only a good thing.
"Someone new" moving in is very different from "monopolistic mega corporation who have intentionally acted to harm users, invade privacy and spread misinformation" moving in.
Big corporations staying out of the Fediverse is the best outcome.
Not everyone just accepts “how everything works”. If you don’t understand yet that not everyone here is a liberal capitalist (or a specter of a tankie), buckle up buttercup!
That is called competition. If you cant compete then you deserve to die.
Honestly, I still have more hope for Signal compared to Lemmy/fediverse. As much as I like it here, Signal is just so much more user-friendly and explainable. I am also slowly making people around me set it up.
Sure, but Signal is more of just a replacement for WhatsApp and the likes. It can't be compared to this type of platform really.
No, I also wouldn't compare them if the post and the comment above did not mention Signal. Anyway, I can still make the point that worse ease of use is more difficult to sell.
This is just a replacement for Reddit.
Signal : Whatsapp is the same as Fediverse : Reddit, they can very easily be compared
Are you talking about Signal the private messaging service? I'm waaay out of the loop. Would appreciate a TL;DR or a ELI5.
Yes, they mean that one.
Comparing Signal to the fediverse is pretty silly. That's like comparing fire to water. Signal is all about private messaging and the fediverse is all about public messaging.
Were you previously messaging everyone you know through reddit?
Do you understand how a comparative analogy works?
They absolutely have limits. For example Threads isn't in the EU yet, because of strict controls that severely limit what Meta can do.
Small instances are already undesirable to the general public and always will be.
No they can't. The EU will only allow them to "ethically" defederate.
If Threads is slow, people will switch to another service that is fast.
If they ask their best engineers to do something evil, most of them will quit. Why work for an evil corp when you can work almost anywhere you want?
Also they don't have the best in the world - those already left (or refused to work there in the first place).
At least on iOS, that type of cross app tracking doesn't work anymore (unless the user opts into it, which nobody ever does). Apple's change to how tracking works is costing Meta billions of dollars... and protecting the privacy of about a billion people. Yay Apple.
But more to the point, people who are worried about privacy will only install Threads if it's the only way to reach thier friends/family. Since Threads will be federated, they won't ahve that reason.
I have Facebook and Facebook Messenger on my phone and once Threads is federated I will be enouraging all my friends to sign up for Threads, so I can reach them. If my Mastodon instance defederates Threads, I'll be leaving that instance (Lemmy, on the other hand, I might not care so much).
Better in what way? One of my metrics is being able to contact people who will not sign up for Mastodon.
I love the fediverse specifically because it allows me to reach people on other instances. Defederating should be limited to harmful content (and I don't see any evidence of harm in Thread).
Even I won't use Signal. Talk to me when I can install it on both my phones, instead of just one of them (using the same account on both phones).
Finishing on a more positive note - Threads is going to be full of ads. I think a lot of people won't be OK with that... and if threads is federated, then people will sign up for small instances like this one. I think we'll be fine.
Same reason Microsoft engineers stuck around despite antitrust, anticompetitive behaviors, EEE attacks. Same reason people are still working at any evil company.
Also, I'm sure a large portion of their engineers are on a work visa, so they really can't just up and leave.
If someone is one of the best engineers at facebook, they can get a work visa somewhere else.
They can change find new employees