I don’t think this is EEE, I think this is a chance for meta to dominate the narrative by drowning us out with algorithmically curated censorship, distractions, hatred, outrage etc. I would join threads if I want threads, I would be on Reddit if I want corporate influence.
The mastodon post for the same server admins admitting to allow Meta thanks @BrikoX and @Melco
Thanks lunar for articulating my central point better than I could.
Most of my primary content was within the comment section scattered so I’ll try to put it up here and edit more as i go. I was worried I’d butcher things so I avoided updating my post. Ignore the mess
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EEE - I don’t want to talk specifically about this. Many others are, and you can talk with them about it.
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Privacy - My views on privacy is that lemmy is already fully public and facebook merging into it probably wont reduce your lemmy privacy in any meaningful way. Ignoring lemmy, your privacy is already fully breached in ways I’m not going to explain here.
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People keep making blind claims that facebook/meta can’t use their algorithms to interact with us, so i will explain. For the record I know most of this effects mastodon directly, and not so much lemmy.
Threads will be able to control what gets minimised and maximised based on whatever secret algorithms they use. These end results are known to people that want to know, it’s how our parents and grandparents, became increasingly detached from reality. If facebook/meta wants to censor their users, they will, if they want to promote hate against LGBTQs then they will. Those users will then interact with our users, slowly shifting our conversations and the overall culture of lemmy into the same cesspool that is facebook.
Secondly, the content of threads will be selected by a relatively massive userbase which will drown out our content if we stay federated. Of course that content will be optimised by their algorithm, thus influencing fediverse content.
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Now onto the principle matter. FACEBOOK IS EVIL, like genocidal evil, a propaganda arm of the empire evil. They have a heavily proven track record. “Wait and see”? There is no need to ignore facebook/metas criminal record.
The admins here should have clearly stated their intent but have been deafeningly silent. People are asking for clarification or in my case, acting because of a clear lack of action.
Other posts are talking about this and I will assume you have been reading them.
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pjhenry is a troll that ignores what people actually say, he focuses on his intentional misunderstandings and straw-men, just stop feeding the troll guys, he only wants to fight over nothing. He only acts in bad faith.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a wait-and-see approach.
I’ll wait and see if Facebook is even gonna end up doing federation correctly. Maybe they wont.
We know the history of Meta. We ignore the history to wait and see.
This is literally FUD. Unless you can provide actual details of what the problem actually would be, you’re just spreading fear with no basis.
Given the relative scales, it’s best to put protection in place, then wait and see.
If Threads is a positive place, we open up and nothing is lost.
If Threads is a(nother) cesspit of hate and bots, then we have protected ourselves from it.
That argument works the other way a lot better. Mainly because a delay of a day or so won’t kill anyone and we’d actually see if it’s a cesspool and not some random screenshots or hearsay.
The admin is ready to defederate. Theres no benefit to doing it early.
I disagree entirely, that’s simply incorrect. You can observe whether it is a cesspool or not whether you federate or not. The federation will not affect it at all. Everyone is able to go and use Threads, we won’t need to rely on “random screenshots or hearsay”, or to federate in order to see whether it’s good or not.
It’s an unknown quantity, 1000x bigger than the current fediverse. If we federate then block, there is just a mess to clean up. And you know the first few days are going to be a nightmare anyway, as they are with any social media platform, while the controls spin up and new ways to abuse them are found.
The benefit to doing it early is to let it land and let the smoke clear before making a judgement, without creating a mess for existing users. This is really obvious.
I fail to understand your benefit. Defederation is extremely quick. If it’s a problem, there’s no mess to really deal with. I fail to see what the problem is even if it is problematic for a day or two. No one has actually voiced a real concern that provides a valid benefit to defederating beforehand vs seeing what happens and then defederating. You lose absolutely nothing.
As you said, “if it is problematic for a day or two”. It could be enormously problematic.
You fail to understand the benefit, and I don’t need to convince you, it’s still correct :)
Pretty sure you can’t explain what’s wrong because you have no idea how ActivityPub works.
Good rebuttal though. “Just trust me I’m right. Stop asking for details or questions. Just do what I say.”
Where is the indication that lemmy.world have “bent the knee”?
mastodon.world announced they won’t block threads yet and lemmy.world has the same owner.
The fact that you ask that is exactly what i mean.
edit: The deafening silence is what i was referring to here, my post has an update about what i mean further. I should have fully explained at the time but was going into “answer everyone” overload and cheaped out.
You even admitting to not reading the post when you said this. The link you added leads to a post that you then admitted to not reading til later. They haven’t bent a knee. You’re just overreacting. You’ve provided no evidence other than just “look at their history” or vague claims similar to that. Other times you just insult the person providing an actual argument. You’re a bad faith actor. You’re toxic. Are you sure you don’t belong on Threads?
So the argument for them bending the knee is that someone on a different instance disagrees with you?
I just read the post you linked in the op. I was against federating then changed my mind after reading the post. Their reasoning makes sense, there is no benefit from detaching now but it’s good to be cautiously optimistic with no issue with federating if there’s potential harm.
They are pushing for a system to keep threads in check, which is what is needed
it’s good to be cautiously optimistic
I vaguely remember a quote about nazis at a table.
edit: i’m implying that this instance is complicit, nothing about you personally.
Also, i totally agree with upgrading lemmy itself.
Cautiously optimistic means making sure you’re actually seeing if folks are Nazis before calling them Nazis. They’re saying let’s sit at the table and leave the table if we see Nazis.
You again have provided zero arguments as to why a wait and see approach causes any problem. If the defederate a week after Threads launches ActivityPub, what horrors would have occurred that can’t be undone? And if it’s as bad as you suggest, it’d likely be only hours after launch.
Rather than make thread after thread after thread about it, just start an instance with blackjack and hookers and threads.net on your blocklist
In response to your update about the algorithm, I highly suggest reading how ActivityPub publishes posts. This won’t be as much of a concern as you think. It’d require breaking the spec entirely. It would literally not be compatible with other instances if they had a real-time algorithm like that. The only thing it can truly effect is if you browse Threads directly. Even then, there are certain standards it has to follow if it wants to be compatible. More than likely, you will get a “diminished” Threads experience (ie: you will not see any “benefit” of any Threads specific functionality). They already stated if you apply Thread specific privacy controls, it simply won’t be posted to the federated feed. It’s important to realize their actual feed will not be the same as the federated feed. I do not think Meta wants to capitalize on the fediverse. I think they’re doing it as an inexpensive option to be available in the EU without having to interoperate with direct for-profit competitors.
Again, some folks won’t be sold on the mess federating with Threads will look like. Let it play out and if you are correct, they will defederate very quickly and there won’t be any lasting harm. Meta will gain nothing. You will have stressed and lost years off your life for worrying so much.
Just drink some tea and watch the sunset or something.
Thank you for pointing out that this is so much worse than just EEE. Meta has a long history of social and political engineering, and deliberately creating a toxic environment that turned all of our parents and grandparents into deranged conspiracy theorists. They don’t just let hate thrive on their platform, they artificially inflate it in the name of engagement and profit.
I see no reason to assume they won’t do all of this again, and should they do it all again it’s going to impact the entire Fediverse. Even if you just stick to instances that block Meta, if you’re federating with instances that aren’t, the toxic environment Meta is likely to build will come back to you. If the majority of instances fail to block them, I can’t bear to stay here and watch what has become the internet’s most healthy and vibrant community rot from the inside.
I honestly don’t understand why this is even a debate. If even a fraction of the shit meta has pulled was done by a smaller Fediverse instance, we all wouldn’t hesitate to defederate from them.
And to those of you who justify Threads because Meta is somehow the lesser of two evils compared to Twitter, please remember that while Twitter is owned by a raging and incompetent manchild, Meta has eroded democracies and played a major role in a genocide. Don’t fucking support these murderers. Meta is more than happy to spread even more hatred and killing in the world if it boosts their profits.
I’m gonna need to see an argument on how Threads’ toxicity will reach places that are at least once removed. You can’t just use it as evidence when it’s not even clear it would happen. It’s like saying this community is already tainted because there are folks who also have Instagram accounts. If it’s not via people spreading the toxicity, I’m all ears to hear your reasoning. Cause it’s far from just being obvious.
What are you even arguing anyway? You’re saying defederating Threads isn’t even enough. There’s no sign they’ll even federate beyond platforms of similar concept (micro logging as opposed to link sharing/exchange).
Are you just saying by simply existing, if everyone doesn’t defederate them, the fediverse dies?
Your reply is a perfect example of how threads actions are causing toxicity in lemmy.world.
edit: Id just like to point out that at no point does he respond about meta being evil and unworthy to associate with, which is the important part he should be talking about.
I’d argue your attacking of other people shows that Threads isn’t the reason behind people being toxic. Folks like you simply exist.
Thank you so much for being the first to properly understand the threat I was trying to express. You said it so much better than I could at the time.
I think the reason we are debating is because there are already bots and bad actors working hard to change and forge opinion. I think this style of fediverse just died, but we are close to easily making a new better one.
This is so histrionic. The whole point of the fediverse is instances connecting. If you want a safe space go join a forum or something.
Then why is there the option of defederating at all?
Defederating must be based on facts and evidences, not on imagination.
I’d argue defederating can be based on whatever the hell the admins of the instance wants. That’s the freedom of the fediverse, instances are free to choose what they do and do not want. And you the user are free to choose the instance that aligns with your wants.
Obviously, we’re only guests in the admin’s house, as long as the admin wants us to be there. But during the time I was on Mastodon, I saw some (de)federation discussions, and the admins said that most of the time: facts, not assumptions.
My statement was more referring to the idea that defederating based on facts are not a definite rule. Ideally facts are used, but sometimes it won’t. Speculation is pretty fair considering prior facts in this scenario.
No one is using any facts that actually makes sense. They just keep using scary corporate spooky words. Ignoring that the toot says they will defederate if there is reason to do so addresses the “speculation”. It’s simply a matter of whether the defederate now and risk being overzealous or defederate the next day after they see evidence. There’s no real harm in making sure one isn’t overreacting.
Embrace, extend, and extinguish is a real tatic used by big tech companies for years though. It is fair to assume this strategy will be in play, as times the FOSS community hasn’t things died as a result.
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I’m getting sick of these “time to leave” posts about people wanting to jump ship on each sites decision. Beehaw decided they only want peaceful severs, time to leave. Lemmy.ml was founded by communists, time to leave! Lemmy.world doesn’t instantly defederate from other instances, time to leave!
You can’t just continually shuffle the community from site it site.
It’s almost like this constant ‘call to leave’ is meta’s Trojan horse.
A way to create discourse, lower patience of users and make them question their new home away from corporate enshittification.
I just ignore posts like this, as a partially functional human I am able to form my own opinions and draw my own lines in the sand.
I agree with you. We should not kill them for not defederating immediatelly
While a entire community can’t convince itself to leave, the beauty of the fediverse is if you as a user want to leave it’s very easy to switch instances and get access to most of the same info you want.
If you only scroll-read here - then, yes, it is easy
I certainly post and read. I’m happy with my instance currently, but should lemmy.one does something I don’t agree with I will have no problem switching.
People are so weird. Their online presence means so much to so many. I want to reply to all of them, just switch instances. As important as they feel, nobody is going to bat an eye when they move, yet they feel that they are really losing something if they do.
I’m glad someone realizes it. Online presence is something you want to be worthless. If people see worth in that can lead to a set of problems you don’t want.
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Is there any way to move a community? I created !vans@lemmy.world but I will not be hosting this community on this instance if it federates with Threads. Also going to stop donating to Lemmy.world if this is the route they will take.
I think it’s silly people are using arguments from pre-launch. If what I’m being told is true from what is being posted there, it’s no doubt that it’ll get defederated from most places fairly quickly. However, whether your instance federates with it or not will do nothing to address your concerns that are legitimate. You have nothing to fear from the algorithm or curation in any way. That won’t affect you, federated or not. You also won’t be drowned out either. That’s not how federation works. Threads will dominate the narrative for a bit regardless of federation.
And your closing statement about “us” and “we” is culty and creepy. Don’t speak for people you don’t even know.
You want a server run by “one of you”? Run one yourself. You can do so for well under $100 a month (likely significantly lower depending on how snappy you want it).
I’m kind of tired of folks protesting against people hosting instances for others and entitled individuals making demands that they’ve done nothing to earn.
This has nothing to do with corporate. If you read what you linked, you’d know that full well. I’m guessing you didn’t go more than that one link deep and didn’t dive down to read the given reasons for the stance. Lazy.
I really wanted to reply to you but deleted half way in, sorry burning out. most people aren’t responding to what I’m actually saying, but just making massive assumptions half the time. For example I’m not talking about the API, EEE or privacy at all in the slightest.
Us and we can be used strangely by some, you might be reading into it a bit too much, but i also coulda phrased better. we/us as in the refugees of corporate bs from reddit.
I replied to the points you literally put in your post. I don’t know what you want. What points are you making then? What worry did I not address?
I really wanted to reply to you but deleted half way in, sorry burning out
I just want basic respect and for you to be literate. Go view lunars answer to see my central point. I’ve answered everything else you have said in other posts here. I’m not going to feed trolls any more.
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I don’t WANT to agree, but I kinda do.
We’re here because Reddit was shit on top shit, led by gaping anus. We all accept that Meta is the same.
We didn’t want Reddit profiting from our work. Meta will do the same, only more competently.Defederation is useless at scale They can continually spin up new instances that act as spies and bridges to Meta’s area.
Once enough Meta bridge nodes are woven into the Fedi, they’ll be masked by a backchannel to mask the exchange/activity.Someone plz tell me I’m wrong, but this is how I think things work in the background…
- Bob creates a Lemmy node - @Zucc1.ughfuckoff. It has 3 users and basically shops around until someone in lemmy.world’s sphere allows federation. Zucc1 looks like any random, small instance.
- Once federated, Zucc1 syncs to its connected Lemmy instances - for now there is no Meta connection.
- Zucc1 can then federate with a bunch of other instances, including Zucc2.
- This repeats for a few weeks, infiltrating Fedi. This could be happening now.
- A new set of Lemmy nodes spin up and federate only with a portion of the spy instances. The spy instances don’t respect the federation rules, distributing portions of the Fedi sync back to the Meta connected nodes, masking the source and destination.
- Once signed posts are received by the spy nodes, user names are swapped with a table synced by spy and bridge instances. @User1@T4server.threads becomes @User7@Zucc4.ughfuckoff.
- The Threads user sees their message from @someone@lemmy.world (which can also be swapped if they worry Threads users care about any of this stuff).
- The Lemmy user sees the message from @User@Zucc4.ughfuckoff.
Probably easy to combat when it’s one instance here and there. If it’s constant and automated, federating would have to be paused until the spies are weeded out and there’s a better detection strategy. If they get a big enough network going, they could all dip out at once, change identity, and refederate back in as the Fedi network flips out because of all the sync mismatches. Just more new nodes joining in. They have the source code, so they can act differently from other instances as long as it doesn’t cause problems.
Is this a realistic scenario or am I way off base? I feel like it has to be one of the two.
Just defederate with meta?
I’m not on lemmy.world, but I’ve joined some communities that are. I think an important question is, for any community mods who take this stance, do you plan to shutter your lemmy.world community and move to another?
This situation is one reason why it’s important to get tools for community migration into Lemmy. (Another is: what if an admin simply has to shut down their instance for personal reasons?)
(Also FWIW there’s already reason to defederate based on the garbage moderation even if you’re not concerned about EEE, so I don’t get admins who are in “wait and see” mode.)
I didn’t think about this from a community owner pov. It would be pretty rough on them.
Meta is known to promote bad things. There is already enough evidence and a top level corporation should be seen as representative of all their holdings. Meta facilitates genocide… i should get some articles but I’m done for a while.
also, “wait and see” feels like a judge that has alzheimers and can’t see the persons criminal record.
Meta literally posted pro Brexit propaganda courtesy of Cambridge Analytica on the night before the referendum. They’re evil as hell.
Their bots are posting anti-threaxit content as we speak.
I keep forgetting that most people don’t get the censored info about how evil facebook/meta is. Its a huge list of items. I’m considering compiling it.
You do realize algorithms won’t apply to your instance, right? ActivityPub doesn’t support the type of tech you’re worried about.
I think many of the wait and see is due to not even knowing how well Threads will turn out. Threads may come out with some valuable creators. And if they implement the same capabilities as Mastodon, they can just limit Threads. People can see posts from those they specifically choose to follow on Threads, but nothing else.
You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face.
If anyone does decide to leave lemmy.world, do not leave the lemmyverse. Join another lemmy instance or start your own instance. Lemmy is the future. Free, open source, federated link aggregator.
You don’t need to stick with Lemmy. Kbin is just as good. I actually prefer it because they already solved the problem of allowing users to block domains.
What is the difference between lemmy and kbin? Is Kbin PHP while lemmy is rust based?
Honestly, I don’t know much of the differences or if it’s even simply which framework they used. It just seems to be two different link exchanges/sharing apps that are compatible with each other. Like, I’m currently on kbin but can see this just fine. I’m not sure what my instance’s stance is currently, but there’s no need to act beforehand as there’s nothing lost by doing it afterward instead of before. I don’t understand the people complaining that it needs to happen immediately right now. Just seems so impatient and entitled. Folks just need to calm down. They’re pulling their hair out for no reason. No one has been able to articulate an actual real problem with wait and see. Just very vague “meta is obviously evil” kind of deal.
I understand privacy being a concern but reddit, lemmy and kbin are not designed for privacy since all posts are public. I guess the upvote/downvotes could be more private perhaps which will protect what users voted on if a database leak occurred.
And E2EE messages are coming in the future I believe
Yes. It’s nice to have choices.
I have multiple accounts and … So I am actually fine if Lemmy.world keeps Threads on. In fact I’d just be curious more than anything.
I can always just use my other account on another instance if things go bad.
I believe the approach described in https://www.timothychambers.net/2023/07/03/instagram-threads-and.html is much more pragmatic than “Meta is bad, Threads will corrupt us” argument and I honestly believe that fighting among fedi instances would be the first win of EEE strategy. Meta IS bad, federation with Threads may be an opportunity, fighting before even watching and assessing the situation is wrong imho. “Watching Like a Hawk, with our Fingers Over the Block Button.”
We don’t have to wait and see? Meta has a proven history.
His write up doesn’t cover the issue my post is about, but it does cover a fair bit. I also worry about fracturing the community but see it differently. If everyone rejected meta or if everyone embraced meta, we would be an unfractured community. Unfortunately we aren’t fully one way or the other. The best part though is that we can split into different instances. My biggest issue is that to my knowledge, on lemmy.world there were no announcements stating intent, and to people like me that means pro-corporate and I need to leave. If they just announced I would have just slowly left without much fuss.
i do realise lemmy isn’t effected that badly compared to mastodon, but the basics still stand.
I feel like your post is low info outrage bait.i am no expert on all this but this seems dramatic.
I made the mistake of not just updating my post when I reply to people. My responses are scattered through the post. I encourage you to ctrl-f.
I was getting sidetracked, but thanks to your encouragement I updated the main post.
Awesome! Thanks a lot for caring enough to do all this.
Thanks :) I should have done it sooner. It was a touch exhausting managing a dozen conversations at once. Have you seen my cute downvote collection? haha
Or you can just leave once you actually see what happens. You lose nothing. You’re providing no actual problem posed by wait and see. If it isn’t good and they defederate after Threads federates, there’s very little difference to defederating beforehand. Certainly no permanent problems. I think most people are choosing not to stress and worry for literally no reason, especially when it may not come to pass.
Less stress in your life is better. Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.
I think it’s absurd to give Meta the shadow of a benefit of the doubt. in the past, they have explicitly stated their intention to make facebook the internet. If zuck had his way, there would be exactly one website, a monolith collecting your data to more efficiently serve you ads. There is no world in which their participation in the fediverse is not self serving and a net loss for the rest of us.
