this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Fediverse
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ActivityPub is the protocol that Lemmy/kbin/Mastodon use, and is the basis behind the fediverse. It's also the same protocol that Threads uses. They're all different site/services, but they can all interact with each other through the ActivityPub protocol, assuming they are federated to each other.
At the moment, Threads is entirely separate, as they haven't federated with anyone, but eventually they will want to join the fediverse, and the question is whether or not to federate with them. They will always be able to view our content as it's public, but if we federate with them we will see their content and they will be able to post content here. Keep in mind that Lemmy currently has about 70k active users, and that Threads just got 30 million+ sign-ups. We don't know how many of those are active users, but it's certainly more than all of Lemmy put together. If they come here, that's going to be basically impossible to moderate.
Ahh, so if I'm on Site A, I can view and comment on things from Site B, so long as A and B are federated with one another. The worry then is basically seeing and dealing with Meta's bullshit here, and them more or less taking over through EEE tactics. That makes sense now.
Lemmy communities aren't federated with Meta threads by default, right? It's opt in. So just...don't federate with .meta or whatever they'll use? Apart from "don't affiliate with The Zuckerbot", I'm still not sure what the worry is all about.
There's a bit more to it, but essentially yes. For example, beehaw.org has defederated from lemmy.world, but we can still view their content. We can interact with their content and reply to their posts, and other instances that they are federated with can see what we do there, but beehaw users can't see any of it. Basically federation is a one-way street. You can federate with an instance, but they don't have to federate back.
That's kind of the motto of the fediverse in general. It's supposed to be de-centralized and de-corporatized. There are no built-in features for advertising, for example. It's meant to be a place that is safe from the things that we're afraid Facebook is trying to do. Overall, it mostly is. They can attract people out of the fediverse and into their garden which they plan to wall off, but they can't quite shut down the independant instances.
Ahhh, now it makes sense, thank you! So...do we panic because Zillaberg is making a federated Twitter sequel, or...?