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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Join the pact and not just vow but actually do defederate Threads as soon as it comes online: https://fedipact.online/
i appreciate the message but what is that ui design???
the floating hearts that go over the text. the neon pink background. the fact that this serious pact is in all lowercase (i know im typing in all lowercase, but i think the fedipact is different from an internet forum). the weird text animation for hyperlinks that makes it unreadable for a second. this does not lead to any reasonable credibility
That is what nonconformity looks like. The internet of old looked similar to this. Nowadays, everything has ample whitespace, and is boringly styled, and ads everywhere.
That would be how I look at this page.
Webpages have ample whitespace and “boring” styling for accessibility and readability. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity is really stupid.
I mean with boring that every website looks the same, perhaps a splash of color but thats it. And even that isn’t a guarantee for accessibility or readability. This pink website is perfectly valid and accessible.
Why?
There is literally a link on that page titled “why”…
I don’t agree with it. Lemmy won’t be affected anyhow since the use-case is so so different. We hardly interact with Mastodon. We’ll be fine.
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.
data is not a problem, you should accept what you post publicly to be well… public
what most people are worried about is embrace extend and extinguish policy, if you haven’t read it already here it is
Everyone on the fediverse knows about EEE at this point; it’s mentioned in every other post haha
The dev behind Mastodon doesn’t seem concerned. Why are you?
i don’t like meta and everything they seem to touch with their greedy little fingers turns into a hollow husk of what it once was, if you want an example look at whatsapp
i like the fediverse and i think it has potential, i just don’t want to see it ruined slowly but surely
WhatsApp is owned and fully controlled by Meta. The Fediverse is federated and that’s the beauty of it. They can’t control it
you are right but they can dictate standards because of their massive user base, i mean they have had 10 million sign ups in 7 hours. that is more than the entirety of mastodon.
perhaps a more suitable example would be google’s adblock hostile attitude and how they can only do that because of their massive user base.
meta only cares about profit and i don’t think any profit driven entity entering fediverse is a good thing.
Yeah, but if they do try to dictate standards, then react, defederate, that’s all I’m saying. I just don’t think we need to be proactive here, our tools to react are fast acting and simple.
If they do go for the dreaded Embrace, Extend, Extinguish method, then let’s ride the benefits of “Embrace” and lose them when they move on to the next steps.
Look up the history of the dread Triple-E and count the number of people who said exactly what you just said here shortly before they got consigned to oblivion by it.
Lots of devs are foolish/naive, Eugen is just one of many to fit this bill.
The Mastodon Dev says it’s not a concern because of brand recognition.
That’s not a defense mechanism lol.
That’s not an accurate summary.
Please could you provide a better summary then? I must have missed the point, because I’m genuinely not understanding how the fediverse is EEE-resistant.
Being smart at coding doesn’t automatically make you smart at anything except, possibly, coding1. Eugen is young and is being more than just a little naive here. He hasn’t seen well-intentioned people get played for suckers enough times to make the pattern match on “bad actors do bad things, no matter what their pretty words”.
1 Why “possibly” here? Because “coding” is a far larger field than people understand—including coders.
Sick of people using downvotes to avoid thinking.
During the short time Google also acquired users, who moved from other XMPP software because…well, the software was more integrated with other stuff. So when you then defederate, the rest is left with less users and a terrible experience.
Google did the same with Chrome and the web standards too. Look at the browser competition nowadays…
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.
That’s an excellent take on the platform.
Excellent take.
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.
I mean Tumblr also wants to join the fediverse. They are smaller than Twitter, but still large to have some amount of influence.
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.
Competition drives innovation. If something from a walled garden fediverse comes to the broader world as a result, awesome. I mean, if we could federate with Reddit for example, and I could access their subs content but not be subjected to their 1st party app and ads and karma and that’s the stuff on top of their instance, I don’t care what they do on their server.
If anything it may introduce people as a gateway into the fediverse to begin with so when something happens on a corporate instance that pisses them off, they might feel compelled to look into the broader world around them. Not all, but some.
I guess the only big concern most people have here is the Microsoft EEE.
Some food for thought from Mastodon:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/
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.
Meta gets all the data as well, even if all people defederate.
ActivityPub has it in the name. All your activities in the fediverse are public.
The article talks about private data saved on your phone like health data, contacts etc. Threads takes those, Mastodon app does not.
Yes you are right, it was a brainfart on my part.
Meta is going to kill the Fediverse and it’s all probably a part of Zuck’s grand plan.
How would they kill it? I’m all for blocking them, but I’m not sure how could they kill Mastodon or other activitypub apps.
They could offer the slickest interface and keep people locked to their friends. That interface can use protocols that make it difficult/impossible for non-Threads instances to play ball (ooh this cool new feature is only available through the Threads app; Oh, my basement.world.ml.xyz can’t read that content). There are many ways to EEE, and I’m sure we haven’t even thought of some ways Threads could use.
I think defederation is our only option to protect what we have.
Yes, I totally agree with you.
My fear is that some people is advocating for defederating the instances that doesn’t defederate Meta. In my opinion that would be awful for the health of the Fediverse, as it’ll be even more scattered.
They’ll kill it by having the largest userbase, and therefore the most and best content, and then finally defederating and forcing everyone to join Threads. At least that’s what they’ll most likely attempt to do. It remains to be seen whether they’ll be successful. The EEE approach has been used before and is well documented. Read more on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
I understand, but if they defederate the Fediverse will be what used to be, right? I’m pretty happy with how are Mastodon and Lemmy so far. I joined both during the Blackout and I don’t mind less content but higher quality.
having the largest userbase, and therefore the most and best content
This is a non sequiter argument. It does not necessarily follow that good content comes from a large userbase. In fact, both of those things are rarely true at the same time. points vaguely at social media
I’m not saying Meta isn’t going to try to run the EEE playbook at some point. Its likely they will, but we are all already skeptical about it. More likely, the play now is to capitalize on the discontent and missteps over at Twitter, and capture the folks over there who are leaving¹. Mastodon and ActivityPub are a functional, free and open source implementation they can use to bootstrap a micro blogging and DM service that supports the familiar hashtag semantics. If they even decide to federate with us, it’s probably just an afterthought. We’re small, and already quite hostile.
Now… Is there value in having a gateway to that content? That’s arguable. I find the kind of stuff posted on Insta to be vapid enough or sufficiently commercial that I feel no need to interact with it. I probably still wouldn’t interact with it even if it happens to show up here. Same for the herpaderp-maga dingbats and their chicanery wandering into discussion threads. Down vote, block, move on. For certain, I would never get back into bed with Meta because-- c’mon-- they’re Meta, and they’re a known quantity. Same as if Google, Amazon, Apple, Reddit (and other failed social media giants) signed on. If their content is available here and of high enough quality to interact with then I’ll interact with it from here or I won’t interface at all. But no, I won’t go into your walled garden to play with your toys. “My terms take em or leave em,” and I think a lot of us feel the same way, deep down.
I do, however, think corporate engagement here IS valuable. In the same way that social media teams at your favorite retail brands engage on the Big Socials, I would also welcome their engagement here as well because its another avenue to interact with the brand as a potential, current or disgruntled customer. There’s no reason the media teams at Nabisco or Target couldn’t set up their own instance and interact with users on other instances. If they play along with us in flgood faith, it works. If they start being evil corporations they get defedersted and lose engagement.
ActivityPub isn’t going anywhere. It’s a standard and a suite of software implementations that nobody can take away. The early adopters are here the community is vibrant llterally in spite of Big Social and now the entrepreneurs are following.
Anyway, I think you’re right to be wary of this move, and about the prospects of the EEE playbook being deployed here as well. I also think we can afford to be a little more sanguine about it for the moment because Meta’s enemy is making a mistake, and we happen to be the arms dealer this week.
Make popcorn and watch the theater. I just read Twitter is suing Meta already, so you know this is gonna be fun!
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¹ Conspiracy theory (I just can’t help myself!): On today’s episode of Billionare Behaving Badly, Zuck underwrites a portion of Musk’s Twitterbuyout. Musk trashes the brand and liquidates the stock. Tesla buys the infrastructure and Meta buys the user base and their analytics
This is a non sequiter argument. It does not necessarily follow that good content comes from a large userbase. In fact, both of those things are rarely true at the same time. points vaguely at social media
I was coming at it from the perspective of an ex-Reddit user. The main appeal of that site to me was (is?) the size of the userbase and the fact it meant you had access to literally any type of person at your fingertips. Every niche interest was represented, there were people of all ages and walks of life and you could find help or others in the same boat no matter what tech issue you faced or rare ailment you contracted. This type of “content” if you can call it that is only available once the population reaches a certain critical mass. Smaller communities are of course more conducive to civil discussion, high-effort posting and actual conversations, but looking at the popularity of that social media you’re gesturing towards I’m not sure that’s what the majority of people are even after.
It’s not that I want to attract Facebook users to Lemmy, it’s more that Threads as an alternative could well siphon other users who might have otherwise come over here, ending up preventing this site from reaching critical mass. Then again, maybe this particular fear is overexaggerated right now since - as you say - Threads is competing with Twitter and not Reddit/Lemmy.
I find the kind of stuff posted on Insta to be vapid enough or sufficiently commercial that I feel no need to interact with it. I probably still wouldn’t interact with it even if it happens to show up here.
I think the problem is twofold here really. First is the All feed, which by function of how the engagement algorithm works would instantly get flooded with content from Threads if they end up federated, drowning out the content from here. It would not be a matter of deciding not to engage with the post from Threads and keeping scrolling. You wouldn’t browse Lemmy anymore, it would just be Threads and Meta all the way down.
Second is the comment sections to any discussion even on communities here would likely get flooded with Facebook comments. By sheer volume of users they have already too many of them would find their way here. And it is again not exactly the type of - let’s call it “discourse” - I’m chomping at the bit to partake in.
More likely, the play now is to capitalize on the discontent and missteps over at Twitter, and capture the folks over there who are leaving¹.
I think you’re absolutely right and I think if Zuckerberg even knows what “Lemmy” is then it’s because somebody mentioned it in passing when briefing him about ActivityPub. It’s clear trying to usurp Twitter has been planned for a long time and you can understand why. If Lemmy was involved in the thought process at all, it would only be as inspiration for how Threads could in the future be connected to yet another new platform which in that case would outcompete Reddit, which is a site I’m sure Zuckerberg would very much like to usurp as well.
I do, however, think corporate engagement here IS valuable. In the same way that social media teams at your favorite retail brands engage on the Big Socials, I would also welcome their engagement here as well because its another avenue to interact with the brand as a potential, current or disgruntled customer.
But social media teams at your favorite brands don’t connect on social media in order to contact disgruntled customers or discuss consumer concerns, they do it because it’s great, cheap advertising. RyanAir doesn’t use twitter to ask customers if the uncomfortable seats injured their backs, they make funny tweets because they believe it will sell more cheap plane tickets.
Hell, even if the social media admin appears to be discussing actual issues with consumers I doubt those issues would go anywhere afterwards. The big brands aren’t interested in consumer concerns but they probably wouldn’t mind looking like they are since that would make people more sympathetic towards them and more likely to chose their product.
Make popcorn and watch the theater. I just read Twitter is suing Meta already, so you know this is gonna be fun!
Can we arrange for a cage to be built in the courtroom and schedule it so Zuck and Elon give their testimonies in between the rounds of beating the shit out of each other?
Well stated! I agree wirh you on most of it The only point I want to make is:
the size of the userbase and the fact it meant you had access to literally any type of person at your fingertips
The niche communities themselves tended to be small and focused, which is what I say improved the quality of the content. Contrast with the large, default sub’s when I think we both agree failed to add value. I say that communities happened to accrete there was because it was low effort and low friction. Now, not so much. It was a naked grab for cash by usurping the uncompensated efforts of a few dedicated people. The true believers moved on.
As a market place of ideas, reddit was a good mega mall. The anchors sucked but the boutiques were cool. Now it’s just a great big building full of disregarded storefronts after the holiday sales have ended.
They don’t even have discussion forums like Lemmy. They might have the most twitter like crap but they won’t have the best content.
Since when has Facebook had the best content? I mean I could see them getting a large user base and lots of content, but I have never looked at Facebook or Instagram and wished that content was on another platform. So I guess I’m not too worried.
More users means more content, especially for a Twitter-like service which is based on following individual people. And apparently they already have more sign-ups than Mastadon.
Twitter had more users than Mastodon. Probably still has, despite Musk’s best efforts. Yet … I’m on Mastodon, not Twitter. I get a lot more good quality content from Mastodon than I ever got from Twitter. Interesting. It’s almost as “more content” doesn’t mean “more good content”.
Almost.
Same thing with Reddit. Literally every time I peeked in at Reddit it was a cesspool. There was loads of content, sure, but it was a slurry of shit every time I looked into it. Lemmy, despite being orders of magnitude smaller, gave me better content. That’s why I’m on Lemmy and my Reddit account lapsed years ago. Again, it’s almost as if “more content” doesn’t mean “more quality content”.
Almost.
4chan and 8chan have more users than Lemmy too. They probably have more good content as well, right, and aren’t a septic tank of toxicity.
Hopefully that stays true. I’ve definitely been in the same boat, sort of reviewing the Reddit front page every now and then out of habit when I’m bored at work, but immediately getting bored after the first page or two and after the first couple comments. I only go there for the most niche subreddits (some video game communities) or when I’m researching an issue now.
I’m not sure how you know that?
They’re not going to kill it because we’re not going to let them… what’s with the nihilism? If you’re gonna resign that easily just go ahead and download tiktok and instagram and give away all your data today.
For example, we cache and reprocess images and videos for you to view, so that the originating server cannot get your IP address, browser name, or time of access.
Yes, isolate me from those scary non-Threads instances daddy
Eugen’s naïveté is going to destroy this whole platform.
Yeah, I’d like to see an actual explanation of why the Fediverse is insulated from EEE aside from ‘Mastodon brand recognition’.
I think by brand recognition they don’t necessary mean “mastodon is a known brand so it’ll be fine”, rather that mastodon is a big enough brand for their voice to be heard… I imagine that it’ll end up being like mozilla and google with the w3c, where even if one is far more open and collects less data than the other while also having fewer users, they still agree to and collaborate to create the same standards, and users can disable these
In the grand scheme, though, no one uses either mastodon or lemmy. I’m sure, to the devs and people who joined before 2021, that a couple million users seems like an enormous victory (and it is), but relative to a half billion twitters, the 1.5 billion instagrammers, or even the 5+M that signed up for Threads on the first day, it’s nothing.
Those Threads users aren’t part of Lemmy or Mastodon, they’re part of Threads. They don’t have to know what Lemmy or Mastodon are, even as they benefit from content created there. Once Threads is big enough, they either DOS non-corporate instances with mountains of data, disable those instances with protocol-breaking customizations, or just ignore them because all the biggest communities and content are hosted at Threads.
When mozilla & google started working together, Firefox was the majority browser and chrome a ridiculous upstart trying to squeeze into a domain dominated by IE and FF. The fediverse does not have mozilla’s power in that analogy. I mean, fediverse may survive after that, but the commercial players will absolutely siphon off anyone who cares more about the user experience and content than about privacy on a public forum, which probably means the user base of July 2022, not July 2023.
Half a billion Twitter users? At its peak Twitter had 300 million monthly users. Or are you talking total number of Twitter accounts, even the ones that have been lying dormant since 2016?
Twitter has always been an also-ran as a social media site. Despite being a “major” and “international” site, its peak user count was smaller than a lot of strictly-regional social media sites. Sina Weibo, for example, was until recently regarded as a failure because it had “only” 600 million active users, and that’s a single-nation site for all practical purposes, against Twitter’s “international” membership. (With a major cash and marketing push from new owners Ali, Weibo has grown quite a bit since those failure days, mind. It still has only about 600 million active users, but it’s become quite an influential social hub at the expense of Tencent’s QZone.)
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Threads is exactly showing the biggest problem with anything Fediverse. It’s simpler for the user so it will be accepted. The amount of people I’ve already seen join is huge compared to mastodon.
Lemmy doesn’t need to be #1 in popularity. I’d prefer it to split and maintain a higher level of quality, even if it’s smaller as a result. Even if Meta can grab data either way, it should be disconnected on principle.
Yup, my main concern is being fed stuff Meta wants us to see so they can misinform and manipulate public opinion. I want to never interact with Meta again.
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.
EU blocked the app yes, because it gathers a lot of data from the user of the app.
Not the website/service in general though.
privacy concerns around their app, it’s a nightmare. never install it. but they can’t get any data from the protocol that you aren’t already publishing, and they can already get that without starting a different service.
Given that everything right now is just speculation - I say sit tight, observe what actually happens and respond appropriately if it does start to go wrong. Defederation is very easy, we can do it when we need to
yeah people are already saying the fediverse is dead… it’s just stupid to concede that easily. Just block the corporations and if they end up with more content and more users, just… ignore them? its’s not conplicated
I don’t think we should defederate threads. It would only give Meta a walled garden which we will be outside of. Let them embrace us here and encourage everybody to scatter across instances so they can’t defederate reasonably
That actually sounds like a good idea. Are there any drawbacks to this that we’re missing though?
The drawbacks is that we aren’t showing mastodon as an alternative. If we defederate we cannot tell people it’s “threads without the ads”. I know people talk about Embrace, Extend, Extinguish with Google, but Meta have been rather keen on decentralisation recently, even claiming that they want their “Metaverse” platform to be decentralised
It’s worse off if we don’t federate with them. That way they get their walled garden and people don’t bother to use mastodon as it’s incompatible. Federation gives everyone choices.
Large numbers is not the same as quality content. I submit as my evidence … well … Facebook. And Twitter. And pretty much every corporate “the numbers go up!”-based social media site.
Don’t use it.
I am kinda curious to see how federating with it would actually work. I.e. what kind of content would actually end up in my “All” view, the usual facebook trash or actually interesting stuff? And would there maybe be interesting communities on it?
There would be interesting communities for sure, but your All feed would quickly turn into a Threads feed.
I welcome the extra content and massive expansion of the fediverse! Having millions of users has its advantages. Smaller communities will still exist.
I think defederation isn’t the solution. Am I dumb in thinking this could actual have a mutual benefit?
Just an example: I will never use Threads, but if I can communicate with them from my Mastodon account, I would like to have that option.
Many who don’t see the danger were not here in the 2000’s. There are so many great technical achievements that were killed by microsoft, google or facebook EEE’ing the shit out of it. Remember jabber/xmpp? Yeah, both FB and Google implemented the protocol in their chat apps. Everyone was thrilled; I could use my jabber client to connext to fb and talk to my friends. Then they remembered there’s not any money in that and killed the projects.
Even if it’s good for the fediverse now, as soon as they realize they can make more money by not having to sync with other companies and organizations, they’ll be out of here, leaving nothing behind like a swarm of locusts. The only defense is defederation.
XMPP was extremely niche before Google and it is slightly less niche right now. It did not die.
You can not destroy the fediverse with EEE in my opinion.
I wouldn’t call you dumb, but naive yeah. I don’t trust anything facebook does and them trying to get involved here is just another shot at unethical data collection. The content on all their sites is shit and sinpleminded so imo nothing they do should be welcome here.
if I can communicate with them from my Mastodon account, I would like to have that option.
That’s the Embrace part, and it is mutually beneficial. Later on, Threads may give your Mastodon account a special color to mark you as one of the crazy socialists, and let their own users exchange unique awards, super-boosts, or other neat Extended features. Then connection between Threads and Mastodon-at-large becomes unreliable due to technical differences in protocol or just volume of content. Threads users see a handful of their friends drop off for no apparent reason, but ‘classic’ Mastodon users lose almost everyone and the platform is effectively Extinguished.
So you’d end up … exactly where we are now?
This strategy works so well it’s scary. Though sometimes the open protocol ends up winning… Spotify has been trying to kill podcasts for ages, but they’re not winning even by dumping money into exclusive content.
Spotify and Meta is after different products and customers. They are here to find opportunity to gather more data or clever way of monetizing content. Fediverse/users will be their product not their customers.
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”
Obviously as soon as Meta starts dealing with ActivityPub and Fediverse, the overwhelming majority of users will flock to their servers.
Very few people here will go there. They would gets lots of new people, with or without being part of Fedverse. And they would likely only do the Mastodon like part of Fedverse.
Basically “embrace, extend, extinguish” in a nutshell.
