I for one would like to defederate from any and all corporations.
I love the idea that profit isn't a focus of the fediverse.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Meta (lemm.ee)
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Same. I've already added Threads.net to my "Blocked Domains" list on Mastodon. Hoping to be able to do that with Lemmy as well.
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Edit: Let's move further discussion here: https://lemm.ee/post/851217
I don't see any Lemmy <-> Threads interoperability happening in the near future anyway. I haven't looked at Threads very much, but from what I can tell, it's mainly going to be a problem for Mastodon rather than Lemmy. Even from a UX standpoint, it does not seem like Threads is really designed to show Lemmy content (and vice versa).
Having said that, Facebook has shown countless times that it's actively harmful to its users as a platform, so there's not much reason to believe that Threads would be any different. If Threads ever becomes interoperable with Lemmy, then I think defederation would be completely justified, unless they can somehow completely change their approach to ads, user tracking and feed algorithms. If that day ever comes, I will make a decision together with the lemm.ee community on how to proceed. But for now, it's not an issue - there is nothing to even defederate yet.
Thank you for giving a clear and concise answer! We appreciate your hard work you've put into Lemmy!
Can't you put threads.net on the defederation list anyway, even if there's nothing to federate yet? That way, there's not even a chance for it happening.
What I mean is, how exactly would you know that Threads now has users participating with our posts? It probably wouldn't be instantly, I wouldn't bet on there being an announcement on Threads' side, they might just start showing the content and comments from their users start showing up, and then you'd have this conversation you're talking about.
Why not just nip it in the bud immediately by pre-emptively defederating so that can't even happen? I certainly would welcome it.
I would prefer to have a conversation later about federating with Threads in case of those things you mentioned instead of the conversation being about defederating.
Please have this conversation with the lemm.ee community now about pre-emptively defederating. We can still have the other conversation about federating later as well.
Can’t you put threads.net on the defederation list anyway, even if there’s nothing to federate yet? That way, there’s not even a chance for it happening.
Well, at this point, we don't even know for sure if threads.net will become their ActivityPub domain, so we can't guarantee anything by doing this. But I will make a post about this topic.
I didn't think about that threads.net might not be their domain. I still wouldn't think it'd be bad to just put it there since that domain would very likely be it, but then it'd definitely be fine for me to wait for the actual domain.
Thank you for your work!
The network effects are hard to overcome for a majority of people and they shouldn't be punished for it. I think most of the people in charge of large fediverse instances are hyper aware of the embrace-extend-extinguish mindset and will be wary buying into corporate versions of the fediverse. Personally, I'll remain skeptical but I won't advocate for defederating or any punitive actions without cause.
I feel like past experience should inform the decision. Why give em another chance to shit things up?
Agreed. And believe me you, they'll find a way to screw us all over if we give them half a chance.
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Thats a fair take on the situation. Just hope everyone stays wary of the situation. I wouldn’t put it past instagram/facebook to try to feed ads all across the fediverse.
It survives through the way it works. If they suck enough, they'll end up being cut off from the rest of it. At the very least, people can choose an instance not ran by them. Even start their own.
My concern is content originating from Threads is going to be tainted by their sorting algorithms.
Are sorting algorithms shared across instances? 🤔
It’s not direct no, the concern I have regarding Meta’s algorithm stems from their size. By being so large, what is popular on Meta’s side would spill over. And I feel the way Meta shapes conversations through their algorithms always ends up in the most dumb and harmful content.
I’m honestly just kinda hoping it won’t be me scrolling on Lemm.ee and all the sudden see the type of shit I can view on Facebook because one person went and visited a Thread made up of Instagram users who just got enrolled in “the new Twitter”.
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People have made every point to be made already in the comments, so I'll just say I'm here as a user of lemm.ee to put my vote towards de-federating from Threads. And frankly, from any other corporate entity that intends to bastardise the Fediverse.
The purity test has arrived at lemm.ee.
especially since they aim to profit off of the open source software everyone has worked so hard on.
That's a two-way street, though, right? There are Lemmy clients like wefwef that are built using open source software (React) that Meta worked on.
It's an interesting thought experiment. Would wefwef or some equivalent have been possible if React had never been released? Course it would; Angular was and still is a great framework, as is Vue.
Time for a controversial and uninformed take: React gained so much traction early on because of the connection to FB, back before everyone hated FB. Every halfwit tech manager heard of it and had to get on the hype train. It wasn't ever "better" than Angular but it reached a critical mass and just snowballed.
The FB engineers built it and GraphQL for themselves to solve a specific set of problems on the Wall page but it took a LOT of open source contributors to evolve it to where it is now.
My proxmox virtual manager uses Facebook's zstandard compression algorithm, it's fast and it works. Can't complain.
You're right, it is a controversial and uninformed take ;)
AngularJS was awful. It was clunky, relatively slow, and wasn't intuitive to use. It wasn't until Angular (2) where they started gaining back some good will. Vue wasn't very popular back then.
React came in with one of the easiest flows you could pick up. Prototyping with React is a breeze. The flow of data makes sense. It is intuitive for a non web developer to use. It was 100% better than AngularJS for the vast majority of things that people needed for it.
Where React falls apart is when you are scaling up with systems that are firing many events at once. It just has no good way of dealing with the amount of re renders. But for small projects and prototypes? Yea, it's great.
I'm a Software Dev, and I've used React for a couple of years now. Using Angular atm though lol.
I get the hate boner for Meta, I have one myself. But Meta maintains the React codebase, you're really selling them short in that aspect.
Please answer admin
Isn't there ongoing work on Lemmy to give users the ability to block whole instances? I personally would love it if meta never federates to begin with but if they do, next best thing is being able to block them out of my life.
I also suspect that several instances will choose to de-federate and this will be a silo I would gladly join.
Can you as a user "defederate"/ignore it? Then it should be up to the user.
No, you can't. Best you can do is blocking communities and users.
You would gave to pick/make an instance that has the fed-list you desire. But you can make your own custom instance for just you and your friends. Don't even need to host any communities or take up any server space doing it. So, if you look at it that way... Yes. Yes it is up to the user. It's just a bit tricky.
So theroerically I could make an instance like lem.ee by myself for the sole purpose of holding my profile, give it a cool name like flipping.flops and then “block” the instances I don’t like?
This is what I ended up doing with Invidious. Rolled my own instance and serve it out to my devices over a ZeroTier network. It is kind of funny that there is all this PostgreSQL table and backend setup to support a single user, but it works really well.
I think the situation should be monitored and we should take a “wait and see” approach.
Likely, it will end up like all of Meta’s other products but, that said, I do think a place to easily communicate with a large population isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I see introducing a bigger group of people to how decentralization works is an ultimately good thing but Meta has history of being untrustworthy.
I’m obviously conflicted about it so I’d just like to see what happens and make a decision with as much information as possible.
I honestly see no harm in assuming that Threads is a harmful actor, defederating, and if they prove they aren't then we can easily federate again. Same wait-and-see approach. It's no problem to switch from defederated to federated.
It's just incredibly more likely that it is harmful, thus when using "wait and see" we should be on the default side of whatever that implies while waiting, which in this case is being defederated.
This is absolutely the right approach. Facebook's reputation should be enough on its own for us to defederate.
If by some miracle, it eventually looks like it's on the level, that's when discussions of federation should start.
What we really want is for all the platforms such as Meta, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and any other you can think of, to get out of their silos. Let the content flow and you choose what you subscribe to. Maybe it will be the Fediverse, or maybe something like Nostr, which I think is even better since it incorporates the concept of validating the author of anything. Hopefully, the Fediverse incorporates that concept of validating the author, even if only the clients do it.
Isn't there an issue with scale here?
With 30m users already, Threads could absolutely create problems for many lemmy instances. I'm not familiar enough with the activitypub protocol to know what gets synced and how often, but seeing the growing pains that already exist I feel like a user count orders of magnitude higher than what we have now couldnt be great.
If instances start blocking other instances, that is where the federative system starts falling apart. Don't subscribe to anything you don't want to participate in, but don't make that decision for others. My two cents.
federation means that you cant make that decision for others, as they can set up shop in an instance thats more conservative with their defederation
I'd like to challenge this... I think that's the entire point of federation and a great strength of the system.
It does put the onus on us as users to choose a home instance meaningfully. The only instance that 100% aligns to your individual preferences is the one you run yourself, which is an option.
I totally agree. Having said that I would change instance if mine restricted what I could view or reach.
Some apps can block instances (Lemmy Connect can) for you locally as a user, but it doesn't stop your content from making its way INTO the fediverse which is a problem for some.
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