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Can you be more specific ?
Are you referring to Meta, as in Facebook? I am not aware of them being part of the fediverse.
We are federated at this time and do not currently block any instances from appearing through this one.
I'm going to assume they are referring to Meta (FaceBook)'s Threads program that has recently been slated for fediverse integration. https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/mark-zuckerberg-replacing-metaverse-with-twitter-killer-threads-fediverse/
My 2¢ is that, while I don't care for the mega corpos tainting my beloved fediverse, I very much see this move as an example of how companies must "adapt or die" in action. Given Meta's track record with trying to get a foot in the door of the next big thing, I'm dubious toward their success but wish them well, as more decentralization is always welcome. Threads may fail but its users may find they like this whole "federated instances" thing, speeding up adoption.
That all said, Threads (and Instagram) are slated to be on boarded into the same ActivityPub protocol that Lemmy, Kbin, and Mastodon all use and share. So, end of the day, by default we WILL be interacting with Threads users the same way we on Lemmy currently interact with Kbin or Mastodon users.
The same freedoms and limitations of federation are and will be available to use as before. At least in the short term future.
Hey, thanks so much for the info! I had no idea they were incorporating the fediverse into this Threads program (which I have not heard of. Looks like Twitter, but better, since it's federated).
If you think Threads is better cuz of federation then you'd love Mastodon. It's basically federated Twitter with double the word limit and more QoL features than Threads.
But yeah, Threads started as a seized opportunity after the whole X thing happened and people were looking to migrate off the platform. Meta basically tried to offer its own Twitter to syphon users into its own ecosystem.
I do love Mastodon! We had looked into setting that up before deciding on Lemmy (due to it's clear similarity to Reddit).
I was indeed referring to Meta.
Here's an article about the Dropbox imbroglio... https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/15/dropbox_ai_training/?td=rt-3a
It includes these paragraphs...
"That could have been the end of it, but for one thing: as noted by developer Simon Willison, many people no longer trust what big tech or AI entities say. Willison refers to this as the "AI Trust Crisis," and offers a few suggestions that could help – like OpenAI revealing the data it uses for model training. He argues there's a need for greater transparency.
That is a fair diagnosis for what ails the entire industry. The tech titans behind what's been referred to as "Surveillance Capitalism" – Amazon, Google, Meta, data gathering enablers and brokers like Adobe and Oracle, and data-hungry AI firms like OpenAI – have a history of opacity with regard to privacy practices, business practices, and algorithms.
To detail the infractions through years – the privacy scandals, lawsuits, and consent decrees – would take a book. Recall that this is the industry that developed "dark patterns" – ways to manipulate people through interface design – and routinely opts customers into services by default because they know few would bother to make that choice.
Let it suffice to observe that a decade ago Facebook, in a moment of honesty, referred to its Privacy Policy as its Data Use Policy. Privacy has simply never been available to those using popular technology platforms – no matter how often these firms mouth their mantra, "We take privacy very seriously.""
I do not intend to have an involuntary Meta account.
In the sense that Meta may have an informal profile on you through your browsing habits, cookies tracking, IP addresses and etc - it may be in some ways that we all have involuntary accounts kept on us with today's major data brokers.
I don't see how this could be avoided on web2. We (the user population of the internet) need to transition to open source platforms like this one / other activityhub fediverse capable softwares. There isn't nearly as much incentive to learn about and try to advertise to us when we don't allow any sponsored advertising on our instance.
There are other ways to advertise of course. Posting topics about how tasty a food item was, etc, could and should be weighed with skepticism on online platforms. I imagine this instance will stay focused on the DRS niche and so we likely won't have to worry about that here.
Really interesting discussion all the way around. Thanks a lot for making this topic.