Lemmy.world Should Defederate with Threads
I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of us are here to avoid another corporate takeover of our preferred platforms. It would seem to me to be a tad irresponsible to allow Facebook into our space with open arms, allowing them to hoover up our data. I would love to keep using Lemmy.world, but will happily change instances if need be, and I feel many share that sentiment.
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Well, right now Meta is pushing, not pulling. Meaning, Threads content can be displayed on Masto, but not the other way around.
IMHO, the bigger threat is having Threads content completely dominate other activity pub clients. Other clients / communities could get dependent on it. Then Meta is basically a drug dealer with leverage.
Data collection doesn’t bother me too much. I’m not going to install their client and all of the behavior trackers that come with it, and my activity pub content is already freely available to query on the internet. If they want it, they already have access to it. Everyone does.
Since lemmy can't pull from mastodon/threads, it seems like a complete non issue for now.
Correct. This is an issue for Masto, not Lemmy. It may never be an issue for Lemmy for all we know. Lemmy is focused on following activity pub communities not individual people.
It’ll affect Kbin.
No offense but Kbin users have a lot more to worry about than the threads issue, considering the amount of development and moderation problems that plague kbin to this day.
This thread isn't about kbin though. We don't need to clutch pearls about other services on fediverse when discussing what happens with Lemmy instances.
But we do need to look out for our peers.
Lemmy pull from mastodon if someone from mastodon mentions a user or community of lemmy instance
Interesting. It seems that Lemmy can see Mastodon users and send private messages to them. And I believe Mastodon users can create Lemmy posts, so potentially Threads users could do that too once Meta enables two-way communication.
It all depends on how the Meta teams implements ActivityPub and which parts of it.
I will be able to follow and see friends' posts and sports teams' posts through Mastodon without needing a Meta account nor install their shitty apps.
All I posted via fediverse is public already, traveling into some obscure instances, so I don't care if Meta uses or shares my public posts.
Honestly I like the ActivityPub idea. If ActivityPub becomes mainstream I am fleeing mainstream social media.
Or you could just create your own locked down, nerdy circlejerk instance for people like you.
That's my plan 😂
;)
How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)
This article is so misleading. XMPP died for the same reason all technology dies. No one used it. Even if Google hadn't ever used it, it would still be dead. I know this because Google Talk and ALL Google chat apps are dead. WhatsApp killed them all.
You are more correct than they are but are still wrong*. A lot of the interest in XMPP died after they started pursuing standardization and of course after Google close off their servers. It never had a ground swell before or after that either though. XMPP however, still exists to this day. And has become integrated into internet of things, protocols for communications between devices and as well as more comprehensive communication services such as SIP. They literally just had their 2023 Google summer of code complete a month or so ago?
But yeah XMPP is not dead. Unfortunately, it was a surpassed by a number of other services that offered more. Evolving faster than XMPP could while looking to become standardized. It only lost relevance to most. Not it's life. For what it's worth since 2000 or 2001, there's hardly been a day that I have not been logged in to an XMPP server. I'm logged into one right now.
In other words, Threads could help spreading the ActivityPub protocol more, not the other way around
God why are all crying about XMPP? If you want to make it more popular just start using it yourself. If you don't have anyone to speak with over there just speak with me (seriously DM me).
Also we have a lot of open source alternatives by now so XMPP is just one of many good options which means that the people will go whith what they feel comfortable with. Trust me, if XMPP would be the only decentralized, open source chat protocol around I'd be using it exclusively and many others would probably too.
So you're saying Facebook will lose interest in the feddiverse and leave it largely unscathed to go on to do what it has always done? Not sure why people are so doom and gloom about this. This seems like the best outcome you all would want.
There's barely anyone to siphon right now.
Damn, if only there were examples written down somewhere, perhaps online, where we could read theories based on past events about this potential situation.
Oh well i guess 🤷♂️
This, the real threat is the amount of content that federates out possibly hurting others servers' performance as their enterprise kit will scale better.
I like your perspective. More people need to realize that they are responsible for what they put out there.
How? Because this doesn't make an yota of sense to me.
Flipboard federated. Are you flooded with news from them?
Minds is also federated. I bet most people in this story had no idea and have never seen a single post from minds.
even if they are only "pushing", there will still need to be profile data exchanged with Threads in order to access it, if they have http signatures enabled (i.e. authorized fetch under mastodon)
This is what happened with Google and XMPP
They'd hoover up your data regardless lmao. Anything you post here is fair game. It's not the same as Instagram measuring how much you look at a post or your location.
Yeah so many people misunderstand data on ActivityPub.
So you post on social media because you want te be publicly discovered? Yes
Then why are you whining because your public posts were publicly discovered?
If that were the only argument I might consider your point, but there's also the point of troll farms. You can easily identify a third party troll farm fedi instance, but Zuckerberg will keep them anonymous as long as they keep paying him. Are you not aware of the amount of shills and trolls we got on reddit advocating for:
I'm not fucking kidding, if you paid ANY attention to what happened to Reddit in the years after Spez took control, you'd realize that amplifying voices funded by corporate or foreign government money is bad for fucking everyone.
Facebook has shown, time after time, that they don't give a shit about actual free speech, democracy, human rights or even complying with the law.
Why do you keep treating them as if they were only a social network? Have you been living under a fucking rock?
If you like corporate social networks so much, go back to reddit.
I still prefer blocking it myself and having the control myself.
Well on Lemmy it's fake control considering this system wasn't really designed to safeguard against malicious actors but rather to stop snowflakes from being offended.
Also the instance blocking feature doesn't even block users, which you and everyone else suggesting people use it would know if you even read the changelog for 0.19 and saw this little qualifier right here:
If you want real control yourself what you need is your own Lemmy instance, or to co-operate a Lemmy instance with somebody else.
Exactly, this whole whiney demand to defed threads is dumb.
because only argument is about data ._.
I was surprised to see lemmy.world didn’t defederate. I hope it does. And, I hope a mod weighs in on the planned direction for the instance.
There is no real need right now. Lemmy is focused on following communities, not individuals. This is more of an issue for Mastodon than Lemmy.
It might never be an issue for Lemmy. Threads would need to start organizing people around communities, or Lemmy would need to encourage people to follow individuals (something Reddit promoted and no one cared about)
That's actually an argument for defederating atm. Because Lemmy can't pull Threads content, but Threads can without making that fact public.
Not sure what you mean. They can already pull any public data on lemmy, as can anyone else.
They weighed in months ago back when it was announced and said they were taking a wait and see approach, where if it did cause problems they would defederate, but didn’t want to preemptively do so. Many other instances did defederate already though.
Whichever way instances decide to go there's a few things people should remember:
Federation can also be reverted at any times if they misbehave. Why should we block them in advance?
Track record.
Historical precedent and #2/#3 on my list above make the case for erring on the side of caution. That and we've got far more to lose than to gain.
The Facebook hatred is understandable and justified, but defederating with Threads is a misguided idea:
Buddy i am here to avoid the lizardman and dont want him anywhere near me. Free software always has been an alternative to corprates and never a replacement. In the name of evangalic fediverse we should not give up our freedom. And above all this whill become like the trade agreement between Hati and the US.
As far as free software goes, how does running free software on your own server that you allow others to communicate with using established standard protocols violate your freedom? Not saying you shouldn’t be able to be selective about federation, but why would Facebook specifically being one of the peers violate your freedom?
I know that facebook will not rip you off your freedom just as windows wont stop you from removing or uing your computer. None the the less they will have significamt impact on the fediverse for good or bad and their influence might affect in someway we cannot predict.
I mean, the last point is weird. They'd never say that, and do not care about the illusion of being open.
Point 1 is true.
Point 2, what makes you think federation will make millions of users want to move away, or even know folk are on another service. They'll probably censor the word lemmy and every lemmy address to avoid folk advertising away. The fediverse will just be filled with nonsense data and they'll pull the stuff that helps their platforms and keeps people hooked on the teet. Without that data, they may not be at critical mass to sustain Threads and it might eventually die. With that and Twitter going to pot, avoiding federation actually helps Mastodon as it provides a distinguishable separate entity that has reached critical mass and has significant good will with the user base that motivates them to keep sharing content.
They'll try to dominate the way the protocols evolve. Try to push more and more crap into it because they're too big to ignore. Insert becoming ad, bot, corporate friendlier stuff. Fediverse doesn't need meta. It's nice and cosy and rather friendly here, I'ld like it to stay that way. It's like Google dominates some "open source" and pushes browsers towards more and more DRM friendly etc. We don't need that.
And absolutely irrelevant in terms of impact. We have at best a few hundred MAU on a good month. Facebook/Google/TikTok are controlling billions of people.
If we truly believe in the superiority of the Fediverse and that it is possible to have an alternative social media for everyone, we need to go and fight Big Tech. Defederating on the grounds of "I like it the way it is" is coward, selfish and completely lacking ambition.
Fight them by...doing exactly what they want?
Do they want us to let them federate so that their users can use Threads as a stepping stone out of the walled gardens?
Why would that happen?
People who used Google Talk didn't use it as a stepping stone to XMPP. They stayed on Google Talk.
Google was not charging people to talk on their network, and they didn't make it harder to reach someone once they got it. So there was no reason for people to jump out. Facebook, on the other hand...
When the internet was in its infancy, companies and small businesses first established their online presence by getting a aol.com or hotmail.com. Running your own email or website was still expensive and not something easy to do. Today, having "your own" social media and being in control of your brand is almost as easy as having your website and your domain. I am not saying that everyone will jump out of Threads, but if Threads ever gets successful enough to replace Twitter and if we don't shut them out of the Fediverse before it happens, at least there will be an opportunity for small businesses/media orgs/influencers that want to keep reaching their audiences (like they do today on Twitter/Facebook/Youtube/etc) and also want to take control of their own presence.
That's not dependent on federating at all. Meta is a member of W3C, they can be a part of developing and evolving ActivityPub at any point without actively running a service with it.
yes, very misguided. I always loved the idea of browsing "All" and see all top brands with millions of engagement promoting their products
I thought users could block instances now?
So yes but not exactly. It's not as effective as you would think that an instance block would be if it doesn't block the users. That's not even addressing the fact that Lemmy's blocking isn't even really blocking it's more along the lines of muting, it's just named blocking.
that's irrelevant. Nothing prevents the influencers to promote their products as they do in all the popular platforms. You're thinking only in terms of ads as coming from an ad server but this is not necessarily the case.
I never typed the word "ad". I specifically said post of top brands. How can this be achieved in ActivityPub? Easy. When you are using lets say Threads, their proprietary system treats differently ads and normal posts. However, anything their system is pushing on the federated network (ActivityPub) is disguised as a normal post. A post that is having millions of engagement will be visible in "All".
You act like you're new to internet. What prevents them is that their audience is not here and companies are not paying them for that. However companies will pay them to promote their products in Threads. With the current numbers, Threads has the potential to dominate the "All" page.
Doesn't defederating just mean they can see our content but won't see theirs? At least it was like this few months before. Now if this is true we would lock ourselves out of the discussion while they could still do anything they wan't with our content.
am get off old place without federation
when were you supposed to be responsible for others independent actions
That's the thing: actions from other users and from the key players are not "independent". It is a social network, actions and reactions depend on the context and the relationships of everyone involved.
Unless threads implements the full activitypub spec then everyone should be defederated from meta. There is a fine line for meta to walk to not harm the fediverse. Lemmy World is one of the few instances that can handle it. But meta should not be allowed to be a guiding voice in the direction of the fediverse at all
+1, with an additional condition: when Meta inevitably tries to co-opt the activitypub spec and modify it in incompatible ways that only benefit themselves they need to be defederated immediately.
They can try to push ActivityPub development within the W3C without actually using it btw.
I'm actually really trying to play devils advocate... But I'm struggling.
I came to get away from the main stream socials.
I came to minimise my farmed data footprint.
I came to find other like minded people.
These principals alone are shared by quite a few I guess.
If we end up hooked up to the machine we were trying to escape from then coming here was near pointless.
Seems like everyone who is "for" letting threads stay can be summed up by "why would I want to intentionally separate this from a corporate entity when they'll just get my data anyway" Like that's a fucking valid argument.
Oppose corpos at all fronts, it doesn't matter if they'll get you anyway. If that's your take, then if your country ever gets invaded, I expect you to bend over and invite the enemy inside.
Noe consider how the number will increase AFTER they start federating!
Someone who disagrees with you is not a bootlicker.
Meta is a garbage company. Meta has done terrible things historically. At the moment we don't know how Threads will affect the rest of the Fediverse. I'm ok with giving Meta a short leash. If you disagree, join an instance that has already blocked them. That's how this works.
I fully expect, once rolled out, I'll block Threads, but that is MY choice to make.
Meta doesnt need a short leash, it needs put down.
if you disagree go to threads
I'm not part of the fediverse to still have to maintain 20 accounts. In the end I want one account, ideally from somewhere like Mastodon, to rule them all. And your circlejerk throws a wrench into it for absolutely no reason other than aluminum foil bullshit.
If that's what you were hoping for you should join Nostr, there they don't have defederation.
Here though we do, and we use it because that's the whole point of it, to block servers that are harmful or push unsavory content. Those who block servers are not opinionated snowflakes who have invalid opinions either.
Look the thing is that the user freedom aspect of the fediverse is not that you're in full control of your account, or that you're able to have unrestricted access to federation, it's that there's more than one place to sign up at. It's not like Reddit where when you get banned it's game over unless you want to spend time messing with Tor and setting up brand new emails to make a new account. There are other servers where you can sign up to if your current server bans you or defederates the instance where your communities are on.
The thing is the federation aspect is grossly misunderstood and was misrepresented in the beginning to get people to join. It is not an open and unrestricted Network, that means that there are instances that will not be up to the standards of others, for those instances they get defederated. If you still want to interact with them you need an account on them that's just the way it is and the way it always has been, and it isn't going to change anytime soon. The sooner you make peace with that the better your time will be here, and if you can't make peace with it or you hate it I would suggest moving to a more open protocol like Nostr, and getting situated there.
These open protocols do have their own drawbacks, though if having one account and never having to worry about defederation is so important you I would definitely suggest looking into that, fediverse and ActivityPub might just not be for you.
I think you did not get what I was saying. If an instance is blocking another one for illegal content or whatnot then of course do that for e everyonem threads is neither illegal nor have they represented any kind of threat to Lemmy or Mastodon or any other part of the fediverse but Lemmy acts as if Meta is going to destroy every single fediverse thing with non-existent tools and strategies in 0.2s after they start federating both ways.
I already see myself setting up my own instances so I can rest in peace from the bullshit that's repeated on here. Might implement my own regex filter just to block out this bullshit.
Edit: just scrolled 3 other posts preemptively hating for nonsense. Im just gonna leave this shithole altogether. Bye guys!
Just to be clear if you do engage in trolling or bad behavior they may block your insurances as well. Not necessarily saying that you will but I know that some have tried. Yes there are tools that let you bypass the federation or you can just get new domains but that's called circumvention and could be considered a cyber attack.
Great, if ActivityPub isn't working out for you and you can't stand defederation then there's the door.
Threads is part of the Fediverse now. Literally all it would be is joining an instance that you agree with.
People don't get that with money they can do whatever they want. Want to do something illegal, just do it because you have unlimited funds to pay your legal team to clean up the mess afterwards. We are absolutely powerless against something that can litigate you to death. Defederating is the only power we have. There is no way to react to anything that happens. There are no consequences for their actions. They don't even answer to any governments.
When it comes to Corporates it very much is like the Nazi Bar allegory: you let one Nazi stay because he's beheaving rasonably and not being nasty, and sooner or later the place is going to be full of his friends and turned into a Nazi Bar.
It's the same dynamic only with corporate logos, advertising, hypercommercialism and eventual enshitiffication instead of swasticas, racist messaging and violence.
Certainly in my eperience of it since the 90s, the Internet changed very much this from its early days and spirit as commercial interests from their original foothold almost entirelly subverted it to serve their interests.
On one hand: great, federated tech is catching on.
On the other hand: fuck these clowns, they're not participating in good faith. If Meta wants to join the fediverse they need to interoperate fully with other instances instead of using activitypub to poach fediverse users.
I'm 100% convinced Meta is pulling a classic embrace, extend, extinguish move here.
Last thing they need is our users. Threads is already bigger.
Honestly, I think they see the idea of the Fediverae a threat, and want to embrace, extend, extinguish.
There's no way they see it as a threat. They have millions more users. They're just not as engaged or active perhaps as we are. But by the same token most of us are very against meta and other companies like them. There is no reasonable or logical way in which they could extend, embrace or extinguish it. Though I would be very interested to see you try to explain how. And it's especially funny to see all the people being manipulated. Who have no idea what really went on trying to claim that Google embraced extended and extinguished XMPP. The XMPP work group just finished up their 2023 Google Summer of code for Christ's sake. Google didn't kill them and they're not dead.
So why they are expending dev time to partially integrate with activepub? What they earn? Cause this would not make them a dime, not in short term, and even less in long term.
Easy. Because Twitter is their biggest closest thing to a competitor. And right now under the shepherding of the petty little man child is floundering. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. But they sure can be useful.
Threads launched to the audacious soft squishy thud of a freshly fallen turd. Millions of potential users who don't give a shit about it. On the other hand. Feddiverse users though fewer are wildly, passionate and engaged. So much so that people on a largely disconnected feddiverse system are losing their ever-loving minds about meta even coming anywhere near them.
Right now, realistically we're nothing to reddit or Twitter. I love the feddiverse. I'm a jabber/XMPP advocate since the 1990s. But let's be honest, we're still a pretty small group compared to social media over all. Meta however thinks it's worth while to form a coalition to topple the twit. That it's worth while to them to tolerate to some extent a den of lefties, Marxist, and even murderous leninists that couldn't be more anti them. I'm with them as long as it takes to topple musk. And then we're coming for their user base. To Free them from their algorithms and pro-corporitist censorship. Coalitions go both ways.
Is it? After the initial account register, it looked like it was running out of steam. I'd be surprised it lasted long without something new.
Mastodon was immediately dwarfed from the very first day Threads was launched. Total Fediverse MAU has been hovering a but under 2 million, Threads first day user signups totaled more then 30 million. Threads’ growth has leveled off now but it’s still orders of magnitude more massive.
Threads users didn't sign up, it used their Instagram account. Even if they used it once, they click across, and boom, account there and they cannot delete that Threads account after. An initial day registration does not mean a MAU. It's like saying MySpace is huge now because everyone had an account...
Edit: Usage plumetted massively- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/14/threads-app-slump-daily-active-users-twitter-competition
Threads’ daily app downloads have universally been in the range of 350k-700k for the past month. Mastodon’s MAU for the same time period has been 1.1 million.
More people downloaded the threads mobile app in the past three days then have interacted with Mastodon in any capacity for the past month.
Edit: Even your cited source pegs Threads’ lowest recorded daily active users at nearly half Mastodon’s monthly active users, and that was from before the app was made available in India and the EU
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/04/threads-downloads-return-to-growth-as-x-adds-walmart-to-its-advertiser-exodus/amp/
Hate to break it to you, but the fediverse is public. Most instances don't even require an account for read-only access. If Facebook wants your data they don't need to federate to get it.
Given that we've watched communities like Reddit become more closed, I would rather Lemmy not do the same. The best thing an instance can do is keep them on a very tight leash, and kick out at the first sign of a rule being broken.
What Lemmy needs, above anything, is engagement. Be open to the users from Threads, instead of punishing them because you hate Meta. Many people joined Lemmy because the idea of the fediverse meant freedom to choose, and while instances are free to allow/deny who they want, it shouldn't be a detriment to users that want to experience Lemmy.
That's not how EEE works at all. Facebook will embrace Lemmy, extend/improve Lemmy, and then extinguish/disadvantage the native Lemmy community, until the Lemmy server serves so little of a purpose it is shut down.
How? The unhinged ranting that threads will federate with mastodon, not Lemmy. And the frothy incoherent rage that Lemmy needs to defederate from something that doesn't currently exist and will not impact them significantly in any way once they do exist. Makes me think none of you have actually thought this through in a rational manner.
Ahmm, lemmy.world is already federated with mastodon as well, fediverse is one network of federated instances, it is not one for mastodon and another for lemmy. You can interact with mastodon post already from here
Yes. And you'd struggle to find where someone did that. It's so awkward and uncommon it's truly a non issue.
Defederating Threads doesn't make us a closed community. All that's going to happen is we'll basically end up on Threads without actually being on Threads. People will either migrate there or to an instance that doesn't have Meta/Facebook everywhere.
Except that Threads is not going to engage mutually so this argument is moot. If we federate with Threads but they do not federate with us, what exactly to we have to gain from this besides Meta's rage algorithms?
Great how everyone saw one post from Mosseri a week ago and decided to just ignore all following posts. The one-sided federation atm is TEMPORARY. They will fully federate in the upcoming months.
Then we shouldn't even be considering our federation until they are willing to properly join the community.
lemmy isnt for profit company
Theyre free to join an instance that isn't owned by meta
Same. Defederate - or rate limit - them if the load should become an issue.
Meta should be fully jetisoned from the entire federation. If people want threads, join threads. edit: If people want their sports and brand posts then aggregate using RSS for corporate and non-corp social media. The whole purpose of the fediverse was to be NOT linked to tech bro empires.
Seconded. Fuck Meta.
Why does it seem like everyone with this position is unaware that data here is already available publicly?
Please expand on how you believe blocking threads improves your privacy.
Why can’t it be as simple as fuck Facebook! I don’t want a multi billion dollar corporation playing in my sandbox.
Hard agree. Fuck da Zuk.
There sure are a lot of accounts here NOT from .world throwing in their opinions
This is ![email protected] not ![email protected]
It's a thread specifically about .world
There should be an option to make posts instance-local for such things.
Lemmy.one had a user only meta community for this purpose.
Id love for an official members only lemmy.world poll
All dozens of us responding to it would vote yes to defed
everyone's opinion is valid, especially mine
Some instances have a vote and point discussion here.
If the majority of us are truly here specifically to enjoy the freedom of choice, then it would follow that peering with Facebook wouldn't be a major risk for active users here, and possibly an opportunity to reach a less savvy audience.
Lemmy and mastodon are platforms good for connecting broadly. There could even be a separate instance that is a subsidiary division of a major player.
And as far as hoovering up our data, we're already out here putting it out there. Don't put sensitive data on here and don't sign up for an instance owned by surveillance-capitalists.
If this functions to poll users broadly, then count another one for NOT federating. I came to Lemmy to not have my feed dominated by a tsunami of corporate junk curated by one of the worst influences in modern society. And if the counter argument is that I can block their content, then you can go join threads. I have no desire to be on a service where the majority of other users are constanly being fed crap from Meta and then interacting here, even if I can't see the initial influence. I can go elsewhere, sure, and will if they federate, but I like it so far and would rather not. But consider, at least, the kind of thing .world will become if the only people here are people who think, "Hey, maybe Zuck's new project won't be so bad!"
I agree that we should defederate. I like it here, but I'll definitely change instances if Lemmy.world decides to federate with threads (or any similar platform) and isn't very cautious about it. No hurt feelings of course, if I'm not part of the majority here, but from the responses I've seen so far it seems like most people here agree.
I do respect one thing, and it's that everyone I've encountered in this discussion is interested in keeping the fediverse alive and well. ╰( ^‿^)╯
Imagine blocking hexbear and allowing Facebook.
Fuck lemmy world
hexbear needed to be blocked
Imagine going out of your instance to a community on one you hate just to post hate about it. What happened to blocking and moving on
Imagine thinking a few hundred people you disagree with is worse than a mega-corp manipulating information for profits.
I can see it playing out fine either way, although it's certainly more turbulent federating if we are to see their content and it washes out the other communities (which to my understanding is unlikely since it's user based content like Mastodon). As others said, they already have our data, too.
Instead, I just wish the more... extreme communities didn't defederate already. I'd love to see Meta users react to Hexbear or Exploding Heads in an unfiltered, unadulterated way (or those much much worse instances that everyone defederates from). Instead they get us relatively tame, generally nerdy Lemmy users. I didn't even know what a Tankie was back in the before times!
Huh. Well, wouldn't know. Kind of the point of defederating, I guess, you just stop thinking about them.
Defederating and deplatforming works lmao.
I must have joined after they left, what was it? I'm just familiar with hexbear.
We went to Nostr. Probably else where too, now. I haven't been on Nostr in a long while so, yeah.
Not federating it seems like a weird choice. Can't each user block Threads themselves if they want? Isn't that the point of the fediverse? User control?
Is threads federating with Lemmy??? I thought it was federating with mastodon (and mastodon-like).
Once you implement ActivityPub, you federate with everything that uses ActivityPub. Your server might simply not see every other server yet, but you're on the same network. With the current implementation, Lemmy will never display a Threads post and Threads will never display a Lemmy thread/comment. But they might send data to each other.
That makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
Doesn't this mean defederation is kinda pointless though, since meta could just stealth-add an activitypub server that did nothing but record all data?
They could, just as the alt-right troll instances did the exact same thing with ActivityPub proxy and ActivityPub-troll the difference though is that if we federate we hand them that data on a silver platter and invite them in. If they scrape or circumvent they're getting it underhanded.
It's the difference between being invited in, or walking in uninvited or worse, after being told no.
I guess, but honestly I don't really see it mattering, it's lip service; if we trusted meta to behave ethically then we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. forcing them to be explicitly unethical won't cost them any more. In practice, the only people hurt are the normies using threads, and their friends who use mastodon but still want to talk with them.
I suppose it's good sometimes to take a stand for something even if it doesn't change anything but inconveniencing yourself. I'm not entirely convinced though.
It's the same network.
Yeah although since you can also see Mastodon content here (from what I understand), I guess you can also see Threads, well, threads here.
Honestly, the more I think about this, I feel like keeping Threads will pull more people FROM there than it will push people away from Lemmy... once they learn what the fediverse is.
Anyone that's on Lemmy **now ** isn't going to go over to Threads.
I'm in favor of federation. The point of federated networks isn't that there are no evil corporations, but rather that they can't cause damage.
What Facebook can do:
What they can't do:
I think this is mostly relevant for Mastodon servers due to the format of the content, but the arguments are the same.
Absolutely the same for me. Threads must not be allowed.
This is like saying "my email provider should block all emails from Gmail".
And they can hoover your data right now. Like, you think bots aren't spidering the site already? It's a public website.
I actually think this demonstrates the exact problem. The reason you can't do that at the email level is because Google has taken over the entire email space. Ideally, we don't let threads do that.
Nowadays you have services like Outlook blocking emails Tutanota for "spam protection". I'd really rather threads not get so big that they can start dictating how the Feduverse operates in that fashion.
As I said down thread, the easiest way to get information with the structure of activity pub is to have a bunch of users and that is because the only way information gets transmitted to a server is by caching it based on post interactions.
That is exactly what millions of thread users in the Fedeverse would accomplish.
Would email be better if you couldn't send/receive emails from people with Gmail accounts?
It would objectively be more secure in terms of data privacy.
Better, in that regard, is subjective. It sure wouldn't be more convenient, but that's why we left Reddit and came to Lemmy in the first place. It sure wasn't because of convenience.
Please elaborate how email would be objectively more secure if you could block Gmail.
You can already block Gmail today from any other provider by putting a filter on incoming @gmail addresses. How does that make email more secure?
Yeah I'm not going to criticize anyone for not liking Google. Google's done plenty to sour people on them. But this is just the height of ignorant flailing.
We do this all the time. Email providers block millions of domains for spam.
I don't see any spam from threads.net.
I consider most content on Facebook owned sites to be useless spam.
Not yet anyway. I wouldn't expect that to stay the same forever though. Especially considering the amount of spam that's already on Facebook.
Facebook does not have good very good moderation on their platforms (it's only good enough to keep up their image in the public eye), and I don't think threads will be an exception to that.
I feel like it'll probably be one of the bigger sources of spam and hate speech on the Fediverse, at least for servers that don't block it.
Well gmail already blocks any non cabal emailaddresss so yeah we should all block gmail.
I've got my own SMTP server set up on a VPS and I can send to GMail addresses just fine. Am I part of the "cabal"?
Is the cabal in the room with us right now?
That's entirely different. As an individual, I have the choice to send emails to, or block emails from, Gmail.com.
But on Lemmy, if I am on an instance that federates with Threads, and I don't want Threads.net to get a copy of my content or posts (or have my content or posts show up on Threads.net in the future), then tough shit for me, my only option is to either go silent or move to an instance that has defederated from Threads.
People keep making the email argument, but it is not the same thing at all. I don't think it's fair for a large percentage of lemmy.world's users to not have a voice in a decision that will absolutely impact them, nor is it fair to have a stance of "then leave then."
If a user blocks a domain I suppose their content isn't send to that server anymore I hope?
It is. The user just won't see any content from the server they blocked.
They won't see any communities from the server they block. Users are not blocked in domain blocking.
How do you know? We should fix this on the software level.
Nope Lemmy's blocking system is cosmetic only. It's very much useless against defending from real malicious users. I assume the purpose it was built for was under the assumption that it was going to be used exclusively by easily offended snowflakes, which is backed up by the way that most users treat a person's claims regarding a malicious user or malicious instance.
People who keep touting the point that defederating from Meta means we are cutting people off from fediverse are picturing this situation wrong. Based on what I've read, people see this little island of people compared to the mainland where there will be physical barrier because shouldnt tear down the bridge.
But the net isnt like that. People have just as much freedom creating a Threads account as they do a Lemmy or Mastodon account.
And don't say that the fediverse is too difficult to understand for the average person. That kind of rhetoric is what will push people away.
Everyone needs to be patient with growth. It's not going to happen in a year just like it took years for reddit to grow. I do believe that more and more people will be interested in the fediverse once they realize that corporate oversight is non existent here. And that can only happen if we keep the major instances disconnected from Meta or any for profit company.
If meta wants to data farm lemmy, what's to stop them from hosting a 1 user instance, being federated with lemmy, and....? Profit?
I'm not worried about information going that way, it's an open source deal, information is already going that way.
As for getting more content from another instance? I'm not against it, as long as it's regulated, and at risk of defederation if it gets out of hand
So my understanding is that the way Federation works in the activity pub standard is that information is not cached on a server unless it interacts with another piece of content. It's basically a web of users, and one user cannot reach far on that web. That would mean the easiest way to collect mass amounts of data is to sicc their users over here by the millions.
Although if my understanding is incorrect, I would be happy for someone to educate me.
No, they don't even need an instance, all of the data is public and freely accessible.
Any admins of Lemmy.world reading this? Can we tag them?
I thought Threads was supposed to be a competitor to twitter? I don't understand how they'd even integrate with Lemmy instances. I'm here to see posts from boards/forums/subs, not from specific people. Would posts from random Threads user profiles start showing up on the main page?
Threads will kill the Fediverse and chuds welcome it with open arms.
"everyone who disagrees with me is a chud"
Nah just every corpo lover is a chud.
Chud identified
How?
Flooding it with minions memes
Isn't that half of lemmy world already?
Lol true. I had to mute the meme communities. Felt like a thrift store of 2012 Facebook memes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
I'm still on the fence on this. I feel like they should federate fully instead of only one way, but I'm trying to understand the threat from Threads. I know it's probably been done to death, but do you have a link or thorough explanation of why bringing more users and content to the fediverse is harmful?
Aside from E3 as shown below, my biggest fear is overshadowing the rest of the Fediverse
It’s one thing to say users can just individually block the instances, but that won’t help once the majority of all content is coming from them (and it will their user base dwarfs the entire Fediverse combined).
Individually blocking threads will lead to losing visibility of non-Threads users who are engaging with their overwhelming content generation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
A good read one one concern. Another is privacy. Genuinely, thank you for being curious.
Fuck anything and everything about Meta. Don't let them near this.
I am in agreement on this one.
I will absolutely change instances to one which has defederated from FB.
I'm planning the same.
I wish lenny made it as easy to migrate as Mastodon did.
Since 1.19 launched it is. Now you can export your subscriptions and settings to another Lemmy account
It's encouraged to not stay on lemmy.world anyway
What public info could they gather? My IP?
Not even that.
IP address isn't part of your public profile, so it's not something they could ever access unless you make an account on there directly.
Why is your account marked as a bot?
Oh, no.. I was trying to block bot posts, and may have accidentally checked the box.
Bad bot
You're not fooling anyone.
Well, they could gather that, then skim through your posts, and then look at all the other ways they've gathered your data, like any of the Facebook trackers on various other websites, then create a shadow profile of you with all of the collective sum information they have.
And that's assuming you don't already use Facebook or messenger, in which case they basically have everything anyway.
It also assumes that they haven't purchased any data from data brokers to create these shadow profiles. Having an IP is actually pretty bad, all things considered, when you have a trove of information
It doesn't make sense for Lemmy (or Mastodon) to send your IP to other instances. Without that IP, all they have is your username. They can't really track you based on just the username.
Fuck, I shouldn't have used my reddit handle.
They could already get all of your profile and post info… I could get that right now through the free api for every account on this and every other thread with a couple dozen lines of code.
Edit: I’m also unclear on how they would ever get your IP- if you never use their frontends the only IP they’d have access to is that of the server your account is hosted on… Which would only be your own IP for the extreme minority who host their own instance from their personal internet connection, and Meta wouldn’t be able to tell that that’s the case anyway.
I'm copying pasta from my previous reply on other post
Once they can interact with your account, they can pull your data into their server and analyzing it to deliver ads campaign.
Just look at this
They can connect the point of interest based on their users interactions with other users on other instances. It doesn't matter even if you don't use their apps, they just need to connect the points.
Whenever an account from Threads upvote/ downvote or reply to your comments/posts or vice versa, Meta will analyze that and they can sell ads based on your political leanings, gender, geo-location, hobbies, marital status etc.
That's the options from what I saw on fb ads dashboard years ago. If you're from US, that options are broader and more detailed.
I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding how data is handled in federated systems. When an account from Threads interacts with your post or you interact with a Threads post, information is exchanged exclusively through Actions sent between the servers- never to or from your or their client and another server. It looks like this:
Client <=API=> Instance <=Action=> Instance <=API=> Client
They don’t get any information that isn’t already available publicly to any random user on your instance- no IP address or anything otherwise. Threads’ mobile app data collection has no bearing on their ability to collect information on you.
Edit: To be clear- there is theoretically a set of protocols in the ActivityPub spec that allows for direct client to server communication (unimaginatively called ActivityPub Client-to-Server), but it hasn’t been adopted by any current Fediverse software implementation that I’m aware of.
What a wild conspiracy theory.
Legally, they can't collect and process any of the data unless you accepted a contract with them. Just by sending an upvote or a comment to their instance, you don't agree to any of this.
And if they choose to ignore the law and just do it anyway, they still can't, because all they have is the data that your instance sends them. They don't have your geo-location, device Id, etc.
I am not getting it. If i am not using their threads client and signed in to a de federating instance, they would not get my IP address right?
They wouldn’t be able to get it even from a federated instance as long as you don’t use their frontend.
I'm not worried about Threads joining the fediverse. They can't even properly implement hashtags and trending topics, which already puts them far behind Mastodon and X.
Also, how would users on a microblogging platform be able to interact with a Lemmy instance? I'm a bit confused about how ActivityPub works in that respect.
The 'they can farm our data' argument is a bit moot when Lemmy is already publicly accessible, and it makes us no better than Spez if we are trying to combat people for 'data scraping"
I will be leaving if lemmy.world defederates with threads.
Just give users the ability to block instances themselves so we can be done with this.
Stop letting other people make decisions for you.
Yes.
Threads content won't show up in your feed unless you go out of your way to follow a threads user. All defederating does is deny your users the benefits of activity pub. If twitter is anything to go by then Threads content will be on this platform through screenshots anyway.
By that logic, and I'm not disagreeing, then any time we defederate, like from explodingheads.com or hexbear.net, then we are just limiting options.
The flip side to Federation is defederation. It's not Federation if there isn't the option to defederate. It's one of the core features of the protocol.
No that's different because hexbear and exploding heads posts and users will show up in our feeds and users have to block. Now that lemmy has instance blocking on an individual level there is much more room for federation.
I mean, they can easily flood the ratings and sure All is just Threads content, then you're not getting involved in Lemmy/Mastodon content, you're just talking and engaging on content sustaining Threads and your comments are probably helping engagement next to adverts displayed to users.
It isn't a good proposition, at all.
Meta doesn't do anything that doesn't benefit their bottom line, especially for their ad business.
I agree. Defederate.
I'm of two minds about this. I have no love for Facebook and Zuk can go fuck himself. I want Lemmy to be free of the same fucks that ruined Reddit and formally corporatized it.
At the same time, I want Lemmy to grow. I don't want this to be our little corner of the Internet that's tucked away. I don't want an information bubble. I want to see user-managed spaces like this grow and overtake the corporate ones.
So I choose to stay neutral. The two philosophies I described are at odds with each other here. I'll go with what the majority decides -- that's the whole point of it being user-managed after all. I'll just say that I think we should give ourselves options to reverse and monitor any changes as time goes on. We need to see how things progress, regardless of what decision we make, so we can course correct if necessary.
They should, but they're not going to. If mastodon.world isn't doing it, lemmy.world isn't either.
Edit: both mastodonworld and lemmyworld are owned and operated by the same admins and such.
Federate, let them get a taste of sweet Lemmy content, then cut them off. Will make the Threads experience feel broken for native Threads users.
Ah yes, those sweet bean memes will really show em! ;o
And our national meming treasure, The Picard Maneuver.
That's fucking disgusting
You overestimate the number of people using Lemmy compared to the corporate bandwagon
You overestimate how seriously I'm taking this.
that makes no fucking sense
Federate with
Defederate from
I think every lemmy instance that is concerned about its users should defederate. If their users start mingling with our communities, the comment sections and the posts would be completely different from what we see today. Today we have a small but passionate user base and should remain that way. New users should know about lemmy and join any instance on their own, and not by their threads client.
It's been a few months, did it happen?
I think that interoperation with big walled gardens is part of the reason why #activitypub exists. Furthermore, there are no technical measures to completely shut off #Threads, and the social measures are unlikely to work.
I know the risks, I'm old enough to remember #Microsoft embracing and extinguishing browsers and open documents, #Goggle defederating from #XMPP and #Facebook predatory tactics.
On the other hand, I think that federation with the big players is unstoppable. The protocol is open and there is no way to get every last instance to defederate. If people want to see the big players' content they'll move to an instance that federates with them. And defederating from those that connect to threads sounds like a Zealot's suicide pact.
I think that the best way to ensure that #Meta plays fair is to create a fediverse that is as diverse, open and vibrant as possible, with plenty of open services (Lemmy, mastodon, misskey...) and commercial ones (Flipboard, tumblr...) so that threads users will feel compelled to interact and miss us if Meta stops federating or shadowbans external content.
Facebook will definitely pay the admins and mkae them sign a NDA. If I was the admin and they offered me $5-10million, I'll sure sell you guys to facebook so I understand if Lemmy.world Admins did the same.
No it shouldn't.
No.
Let's federate with Threads. Let's not jump to conclusions beforehand.
I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and see how they behave. We can always defederate later.
And with Discourse. No federation with companies !
Yea.
Let’s wait and see.
lets release goldfish
Yeah, let's defederate from a major player that wants to participate in the decentralized nature of this protocol. That way we further fragment Mastodon and guarantee its failure in the long run! Good call!!!
It should, but it won't because it's run by corporate shills who likely were bribed by Meta and possibly even Reddit goons to keep social discourse in the hands of the ruling class.
what are you even talking about at this point
It = .world since your reading comprehension is so poor
I don't know why you tried to go for a personal jab, my reading comprehension is fine.
I'm obviously asking about what you're inciting, especially since lemmy.world is a European instance.
Sure it is, and that's why you chose to patronize me by asking such a stupid question.
Now go play with your toys or something. Go build something with your blocks.
mastodon and Lemmy users jumping to conclusion with weird gatekeeping nonsense and conspiracy theories? shocker. and they wonder why mastodon didn't take off post twitter.
The difference between a conspiracy theory and an actual conspiracy is evidence.
Remind me again why Zuck was called to testify before Congress?
Actually that was a rhetorical question. But here is a video you all need to watch.
https://youtu.be/G272R50v6ww
The way I see it, Meta and Zuck are a far far stretch from deserving either trust or benefit of the doubt.
Wait and see, sure, but I can be defederated while doing the waiting.
If for some magical reason, it turns out great, then we can just refederate once they've proven themselves.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/G272R50v6ww
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Yall remember that time Facebook did an internal study of the massive psychological harm it and instagram was causing teen girls, then kept it secret and did nothing about it?
Yes it’s true, looking at pictures of pretty people all day can make some people feel less pretty about themselves. Shocking, I know.
Odd how you left out the part about them trying to use the study to make instagram better. Totally no bias on your part!
Would you be more or less upset if they didn’t care to study it at all? Genuinely curious how you think them trying to understand their platform better makes you angry.
Your entire post history is just defending facebook.
I don’t even use Facebook nor have I ever.
I was more of a Google+ kind of nerd.
What rock do you live under that you think Meta isn't an active threat to the privacy of literally everyone in the world?
is exist in head
world won't defederate from the right without a long drawn out process (see Exploding Heads for example). However, if someone posts "Karl Marx is great" or "Communism makes sense" or "capitalism is bad", you'll probably see a defederation before the enter key is hit. (Hexbear).
lemm.ee or lemmy.ml are where it's at. I don't think it's great for power or userbase to be focussed on one instance. lemm.ee has 0.19 and world doesn't despite their junior and senior infrastructure folk from their full 7 week interview process for volunteer positions.
Edit: People are on Lemmy likely because the actions of corporate Reddit went too far. In what universe would that demographic be cool with Facebook...
Hexbear is toxic, and I say that as a communist. I actually came here to escape them after being on lemmy.one.
As you pointed out lemmy.ml and lemmy.ee are still federated here, despite the beliefs of users on the server. Why, I post here about communism all the time and nobody cares.
I only mention this because its why id rather not leave this instance. Hexbear users lead a targeted harassment campaign against me.
But I agree, threads is dangerous to the Fediverse, which is the topic at hand.
lemm.ee isn't left wing, they just don't believe in knee jerk defederation. Check the post on defederation by the lemm.ee instance runner (https://lemm.ee/post/4543536). Very mature, very balanced and very principled. Compare that to the lemmy.world one, and it's a no contest.
I'm a socialist, and while I think tankies have a dumb conclusions (that Stalin and CCP are good things), I have not seen anything I would consider toxic. Seems that people cannot handle large images. Maybe in a world where caps lock is shouting, that's toxic. Not for me though.
Can you explain what a targeted harassment campaign is, and give examples. I've heard many people claim this, but I've never seen anyone provide evidence.
A post I made in an unrelated thread was linked and mentioned in the "dunktank" community on hexbear telling the users there's to come "dunk" on me, followed by personal insults and in one case a guillotine threat.
However, this is not the topic of conversation, and Id prefer us stick to threads federation.
Link?
Link, please. I'm open minded but I'd like to see some evidence so I can make up my own mind on this.
I deleted that account and moved here, I just explained that. All of by posts are gone.
Sorry you dont trust me.
Although, as I said none of that is even relevant to this topic
As I said, I've seen a LOT of Lemmy folk claim toxicity and zero examples. The ones that provided examples was weak AF. When it goes past individual cases to a narrative with little backing up, I kind of need to see something substantial to believe it. We all know believing stuff we read online from internet strangers never goes well. We are knee deep in comments here, and comments on any thread tend to deviate. It's kind of the whole charm of things like reddit and Lemmy.
Then go back to hexbears bro you are simping too hard right now
I also think that instance defedration may become a thing of the past and now, with v19, leave it to the user to decide.
That said I'm fully on board with blocking Threads.
I do agree that this is a good step, but those of us that are concern about privacy arent protected. It will stop the receipt of data on our end, but Facebook will still have access to any posts interacted with by Threads users.
Given their habit of creating advertisement shadow profiles of non Facebook user, that is concerning.
It would, however, all me to migrate to an instance that isnt federated with threads, and block leas savory instances here on Lemmy who arent data concerns.
You aren't protected anyway. There is literally nothing to stop Meta from creating an unmarked service to scoop up all ActivityPub data that it can.
There actually is based on how Federation works. Federation only works by caching information between users that are interacting with each other. So the easiest way to do that is not by scraping, but by siccing their millions of users into the Fediverse.
It's why not everyone's lemmy pages look the same depending on the instance
If that really was their end game, they'd just use bots. Much more effective that way.
Google already indexes lemmy and mastodon.
Are we being defeatist about it? Because I don't think the solution to data privacy invasions is to just directly give them all the data straight into their servers.
34 blocked servers at current count, not great not terrible.
While I don't generally consider hexbear leftist (they're more militant liberal tenderqueers), I agree that de-federation is usually a bad idea, and should generally be reserved as a last resort for stuff like pedos.
Did you even check what those servers are? Because blocking spam servers is hardly what I would call knee-jerk defederation, but lots of users here are angry at the very idea of defederation because they were led astray and told that federation is something different than what it actually is (they think that it's an open and free platform with no curation or moderation on what servers they're allowed to access).
What about hexbear is toxic?
Hexbear is tankie shit, it has more in common with the right than anything else.
Uhh… ![email protected] is literally “CAPITALISM BAD” on a constant basis and it’s one of the most upvoted communities on the instance. And I don’t think Marx is the one people actually have an issue with, it’s more all the idolization of Stalin, Putin, Mao, Xi and the rest of the gang.
v0.19.0 has a giant federation bug. My instance hasn't updated, either.
Ah, interesting. Wasn't aware of that. Thanks for sharing.