this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Fediverse

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A lot of people dislike it for the privacy nightmare that it is and feel the threat of an EEE attack. This will also probably not be the last time that a big corporation will insert itself in the Fediverse.

However, people also say that it will help get ActivityPub and the Fediverse go more mainstream and say that corporations don't have that much influence on the Fediverse since people are in control of their own servers.

What a lot of posts have in common is that they want some kind of action to be taken, whether it'd be mass defederating from Threads, or accept them in some way that does not harm the Fediverse as much.

What actions can we take to deal with Threads?

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[–] [email protected] 211 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Join the pact and not just vow but actually do defederate Threads as soon as it comes online: https://fedipact.online/

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[–] [email protected] 159 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Meh, federated or defederated, threads poses only the first challenge to the fediverse. There will be other players with their own incentives that will join via ActivityPub, add their own custom features incompatible with the broader world, and entice users with slicker interfaces. Fediverse will need to show it can weather it, especially hard with the network effects of the larger corporations' user bases.

My hope is the pressure will keep open services innovating to better compete and result in a richer experience for everyone.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Best thing that could happen is that reddit would respond with a surprise "we too" will federate with you all, and implement activity pub. Then you have two big actors competing on an open playground. And we grab a drink and enjoy the light show.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago

Honestly, the reason I left Reddit was the 3rd party api bullshit. If they suddenly federated and I could use Lemmy to subscribe to some of their communities / subs again without needing to be subjected to their bullshit ads and 1st party client bullshit, I’d welcome that.

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[–] [email protected] 150 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (21 children)

Absolutely defederate from threads immediately from anything threads related.

Threads will collect any and all data they can about users disregarding which server you are on, and not agreeing to their business practices.

There's a reason they are not in the EU, including NI despite being in UK. And that's probably because their practices are illegal, and don't respect the rights of their users according to EU regulation.

The second Lemmy federates with Threads, I'm out of here.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Fun fact - GDPR is about European persons, not European servers. If an European citizen has a fediverse account on an American/African/Asian/… server and Meta collects all of their data and processes it, they are still in violation of GDPR. Locking European (Instagram) accounts out of Threads doesn’t make them comply magically with GDPR.

Good luck meta, have fun handling all those GDPR requests and proving that Europeans have consented that you suck up all their data…

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What I do not understand about this take is that they can already collect all of this data, today. They don't need to federate with the rest of the Fediverse to scrape basically all of the data they want. The only problematic thing they'd need an instance for is linking votes to users - which is something they could do just by spinning up a Lemmy instance. And they probably shouldn't be able to, Lemmy should try to figure out a way to anonymize votes.

Threads joining the Fediverse does not significantly increase their ability to collect data about existing Fediverse denizens.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I second this, the NI/RoI/EU situation with threads is proof to me that they are for sure doing threads for only the most shady/coporately greedy reasons.

The fediverse isnt ready for widespread/user adoption. Not everything has to grow exponentially overnight (this is a big problem with modern culture IMO).

Let the fediverse develop naturally and healthily, it will shine on its own in time.

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ignore it. Defederate. Defederate with any instances that chose to federate with it. Keep the fediverse small and independent. It's nice here, let's keep it nice.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

Yeap. It doesn’t to go mainstream; it’s already successful.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I keep asking but haven't gotten an answer, why must instances that block meta also block those that federate with META? Wouldn't blocking META be enough, as you wouldn't see their posta, nor users, nor comments in any way after blovking the domain?

Is this punitive or is yhere a reason I'm mising?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

In a federated system, users on Alice can see and post into communities hosted on Bob, eg alice/c/funplace@bob. When Meta tries to join, Alice chooses not to federate - avoid giving meta free content, protect its users from 'bad' meta communities, preemptively block toxic meta users, whatever - but Bob does federate. Alice users can't see meta/c/advertising, there's no way to subscribe to Alice/c/advertising@meta. Both Alice and Meta users can see Bob/c/funplace, and so alice users can see anything that meta users post there and meta 'gets' any content that alice users contribute. Bob effectively acts like a tunnel between alice and meta users.

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 year ago (11 children)

It's a clear EEE attack. Do not federate!

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

Exactly, Threads will use the Fediverse to seed content and then start to drift from the standard when they have sufficient user base that they don't need the outside content. They will start to shift all communities to be Meta-hosted and stop advertising the others. Eventually they will just disconnect entirely.

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@panja

Meta is going to kill the Fediverse and it's all probably a part of Zuck's grand plan.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

One of the worst parts from the "article" which is wildly misdirecting:

According to the App Store listing for the Threads app, it collects a variety of data, which stands out in comparison to the Mastodon app, which collects none. However, this affects only those who download and use the Threads app,

This is most probably decidedly false. Meta has always and will probably continue to collects whatever data they can, they build databases of relations, and collect not only on their users, but also the people their users have contact with.

If you write a message to a Threads user, you can be pretty sure as much as possible from that message is collected. Not just the message, but also any metadata that can be used to identify you and any context you are in.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How so many people seem to brush this off is beyond me. As far as I'm concerned the purpose of federated, decentralized services is being in charge of who to trust and huge corporations not controlling or monitoring every part of your online activity.

Obviously as soon as Meta starts dealing with ActivityPub and Fediverse, the overwhelming majority of users will flock to their servers. They will be more userfriendly and responsive. In effect they will also hold the overwhelming majority of content and data. Just a matter of time till most of the other instances will become obsolete, due to bandwith regulations or smth similar,

The fediverse will be rebranded as the "Threadiverse"

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Basically "embrace, extend, extinguish" in a nutshell.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago

Just: We absolutely must wall off Meta.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think we should defederate any corp version of any federated app. Not due to privacy or anything, but because it silos anyone using those services from everyone else. Bluntly, I don't want people's B.S. propeganda on the fediverse, and the stupid crap conspiracy farm that Facebook and other places have become.

I'm sure it won't stop the stupid from reaching us, but it should limit the amount and impact that those users have. Additionally, it will remove a lot of high quality content from those services making them less viable for corps to run and maintain. They will happily farm the fediverse for content to attract users they can monitize.... I'm not a fan of handing them more content to steal while they share zero of the profits of that content with either the creators or the communities that handle that data.

I'm not doing their job for them in promoting entertaining and informative posts just so they can make money on it. They want it, they can put forth the effort themselves.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Push celebrities, influencers, and businesses to create their own instances, outside of Meta.

If they just use a Threads account, then the Fediverse gets made irrelevant. Along come the Three E's, and Meta walls up the garden and starts putting billboards up everywhere.

Celebrities, influencers, & businesses need to know that they can now have a social media presence that they own, rather than rent, where they can make the rules for the communities they host. It's good for them in that it keeps their Fediverse presence theirs, they get to call the shots and choose how their instance is set up.

Because if enough people have a strong Fediverse presence outside of Threads land, it'll make it much harder for Meta to pull the plug.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm doing my part here by promoting "Barbie", only in theaters July 21st.

This is my instance now.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

In my opinion, the people that use Instagram and will potentially use Threads aren't the ones who will get into the Fediverse.

They will probably not even know that this exists in the app as it just puts you directly in threads.net.

Also, there's the option that this is just a 'trend thing' that will die in a week or two, probably because people won't get used to or due to legal problems (as it's already happening).

Edit: typo.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I'm going to block it as a user until I find a friendly, stable instance of my favoured Fediverse flavours that blocks it for me.

There's no persuasive argument I've heard for treating Meta as anything other than a rampaging horde of Huns on the attack.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think defederating is the only way forward, Facebook will take over otherwise even if they do it slowly.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I was recently asked by my employer if we should move our social media efforts to fediverse and my recommendation was that this community it's both too small and also would be hostile (rightly) to corporate empty posting.

As soon as threads has a web interface that's usable I will be starting up there...

You put your recycling in the blue can, compost in the green can and your corporate garbage on Meta.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Aren't the privacy concerns about threads so bad they can't release it in Europe?

If you give meta a crack in the door of the fediverse it's going to do all it can to consume it entirely. Allow meta in at the peril of federated social media.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

I want nothing to do with meta or facebook.

If this gets serious I'm out of here as fast as I dumped reddit.

~tildes it is.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm going to recommend that if W3C starts accepting changes to the AP standard from Meta, the community must maintain a fork that rips out any offending parts.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I feel like the EEE attack is inevitable at this point.

Why else would they even be willing to federate?

They saw the threat that decentralized non-profit social media is and want to kill it before it has a chance.

All Lemmy servers and especially the largest ones need to defederate from it immediately.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Drop that trash

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's really no imminent threat with Meta and ActivityPub, as a standard.

As for Threads and Mastodon, the "threat" is mild. If Meta wants your data, they can get it without spinning up an entire social network. If the concern is that it's going to lower the quality of the content, well, there's probably some truth to that, but that would happen with popularity, regardless of which service became popular, and it's a problem solved by the block function.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

I will leave and block any instance that federates with Meta, including this one, and go start my own instance, and only federate with others that also block it if I have to. Don't you dare allow their corporate garbage into our space 😠

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Make an account and use chatgpt to shit post on it.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As the fediverse grows, there will inevitably be more centralized instances. Every big tech corp may want to start their own instance, similar to how most tech corps provide their own mail services.

There are millions of email service providers, but Gmail and Outlook are synonymous to email for a large amount of people.

Defederating with Meta and Tumblr is like Protonmail blocking every mail from Gmail. You just cripple yourself and make your instance useless.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Every user on threads has something in common. They were stupid enough to join threads.

I'm depriving myself of nothing by defederating that mess.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Threads doesn't need to do an EEE attack. They've already gained many more users than the entire Fediverse. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to not join the Fediverse at all.

I would never use Threads, but I would use a Mastodon instance that federated with Threads. I already see many journalists and content creators I like trying it out, who either stopped using Mastadon long ago or never even tried it in the first place. If Threads started doing things that negatively affected my experience, I would then switch to a Mastodon instance that wasn't federated with Threads.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)

In my opinion, nothing. If Meta is able to effectively take over Fediverse as people are claiming, then the Fediverse was never destined to survive to begin with. On to the next thing. This is the first real test of the resilience of this type of “decentralized social network”, and if it ends up going to shit, it would have eventually anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

we shouldn't do anything.

Isn't the whole promise of the fediverse that whatever the policies of one instance are, that doesn't necessarily affect all the other instances, and each can do their own thing. If an instance doesn't want to accept traffic from threads, good for them. But to try to organize a fediverse-wide response to threads seems a whole lot like the centralization the fediverse is supposed to not be.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I run my own instance and am defederating immediately (whenever they start federating). I did also join the pact.
I'll evaluate their impact a month or so in and decide whether or not to refederate.

I acknowledge there's potential for a positive impact here, so I will give them a chance.

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