Opinions on federation with Meta's new threads?

We have completely blocked and defederated from threads given the uncontrolled transphobia taking place there

Seems clear to me that Facebook should have no other interest in this other than ultimately making money. Thus it is antithetical to Lemmy and the fediverse in general, and should be treated as such.

I don't think they're there to make money. They want to take over the place and then absorb it in other to eliminate competition. Which is what they've always been doing.
- I mean, yeah, the end game there is to make money. They don't want to take it over for brownie points.
Not really, they're businesses that sell fediverse hosting, right?
- While I’m sure that one-click hosting for fediverse instances exist, I’d imagine most instance admins would be using general dedicated server hosting. It would allow for finer control of the backend.

Agreeing with the general sentiment. Anytime the big five 'engage' with the open source community they just use and abuse it. IMHO it would be in the best interest of the Fediverse to reject all partnership offers from the corps and make sure to defederate any instances they stand up.

You do realize that most of these projects are funded by cooperations, right? You do realize that the EU has a mastodon instance, right? You do realize that Mozilla has a mastodon instance, right? You also realize that mastodon is a cooperation rigbt? (Granted it is a nonprofit).
You do realize that most mastodon instantces are in some way affilated with a cooperation, right? Just by proxy. Using their servers, etc
- I'm still trying to figure out meta's Intention's, I have no problem meta monetizing their app. There is zero problems there.
- Isn't Mastodon a GmbH? (Basically the German equivalent to a LLC)

They really think we never learned from google+ or WhatsApp? They implement OpenSource, greedy milk it to the ground and close it or set their propetary code over it. Nothing has changed, we should be worried about activitypub since the greedy five are interested in it.

did whatsapp ever allow communication with other instances?

I can already see it. They will offer a solution to the identity “problem”, moving user accounts to their network. They will offer “free” hosting solutions so that more people can run communities without self-hosting. Over the course of years they will slowly inject ads, tracking, the typical enshitificaton fare.

I’m tired.

I doubt it will take them years to inject ads. It's Meta we're talking about

This article sums it up very well: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

Good read...thanks for the link.

Existing conversation over here: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/638694

Ty

Thank god Kbin allows to block an entire instance. Although I’d prefer if the fediverse collectively defederated from them.

One thing they've started mentioning over on Mastodon is that boosts can probably be legally used to build ad profiles.

- It's literally true, can you just stop this meta-dickriding?
I'm sure the GDPR won't cause them any problems in that regard, just like there haven't been repeated rulings from the ECJ that that's not okay to do with Facebook user data.
- It isn't available in Europe because it's literally illegal here
- Assuming they ever even launch in Europe.

Absolutely terrible. No cooperation should force users to creat a proprietary account for using the fediverse. Also meta evil.

The fact that Threads won't launch in Europe because it's literally illegal there tells me everything I need to know about this platform. Do not trust Facebook, do not federate with Facebook.

If only US would have sane laws too...

As I said in another post, this oddly reminds me of the XMPP days and how Facebook and Google supported it in the beginning and then dumped it once they had enough users over to their side.

Literally my first exposure to Threads as an active web service tells me that even if it weren't a blatant attempt at Embrace-Extend-Extinguish, you do not want to be federated with it. All your "favourites" from Twitter are there.

Jesus Christ how horrifying

I can’t imagine Meta believes in the general ethos of the Fediverse, not for one minute. It’s pretty clear how corporations act to dominate or disrupt anything they perceive as threatening their consolidation over “the market”. If the Fediverse gains real traction that’s going to be a problem for them and they will act accordingly.

One of the cool things about fediverse is from what I've seen, less toxicity in general. Seeing that most twitter users will use threads is scaring the shit out of me, I definitely don't want crazy people being super toxic for no reason here in the fediverse

A lot of people are using the same user handle accross platforms. That's an easy way to deanonimize people's data, and that's what is Meta aiming for (besides potential EEE tactics).

Please no.

It honestly annoys me that people are moving to this. Mastodon instances are mostly run by independent nonprofits. Bluesky is at least run by a "public benefit" for profit. But people seem all too willing to move to a site by another big tech company. The only silver lining is that hopefully, I can still follow the people that do use Threads.net on Mastodon/Calckey/whatever which is why I am against complete defederation and only pro-limiting them.

Also, their website is just a bunch of spinning balls, you cannot see posts or do anything besides just watch balls spinning around. Kind of a dealbreaker because I expect more than just spinning balls on my social platforms.

First it was the metaverse, now it is the fediverse...

I don’t want any corporate bodies on the fediverse

Completely agree. We've seen how corporate involvement in social media works, let's leave it behind.

Can't wait for every instance to block it lmao

People should note: this is an instance meta community not a place for general discussion outside of lemmy.blahaj.zone

There have been plenty of posts about it, and I can't find the one that better broke down the situation, but it went like this:

We don't need Meta and they will be probably just after your data, which is anyway completely public regardless of whether you join threads or not (since the protocols are open, and they can simply look into everything you post here or there). So we might as well not give them data directly by joining their platform.
the most our instances can do is to either federate with them, or not. But that's not the only thing, since you will still be seeing their content if your instance federates indirectly with them (through another one, that doesn't block them). This will leave 3 main groups of instances:

Instances that federate with Meta's Threads.
Instances that don't directly federate with Threads
Instances that block threads completely.

[1] and [2] will mostly carry on their merry way while [3] will be super isolated, since [1] and [2] will be the biggest groups.

I can't really recall the bigger arguments that summarise the idea, but it all comes down to:

lets show Meta's users that they're welcome in the fediverse, and that they too can leave big corps for a more decentralised community. If we block them, some instances (that are maybe less liked) will instead be the front page of the fediverse for these new users, and that wouldn't probably make a good impression.
Meta joining the fediverse voluntarily will be its own demise, since we are not leaving for them, and their users will see that Meta doesn't really bring anything to the table and instead just takes.

Then i think meta trying to connect to the fediverse is more trying to maintain its own users and keep itself relevant. Meta has never showed its users its content in a timely manner and does so to feed ads and sow their own opinion. If meta can say "don't leave for the new thing, we'll bring it here and water it down" then they're not bring facebook content and community to use, they're just aggregating our content into their feeds.

Ahem.

YOUR DATA

our data

It's a double edged sword. I like the idea of activityPub getting more focus so it can be optimized and improved. I hate the idea of getting low quality Facebook style spam. I get that you can block things but I'd rather it just not be there

I like the idea of activityPub getting more focus so it can be optimized and improved.
Just like Google did with XMPP, most of those improvements will be for Threads/Meta only while making the rest of the fediverse look subpar.
- Honestly - good. If that keeps the “normal” users on that platform, which will likely be defederated, I’m perfectly fine with that.
  There’s a large population difference between the current fediverse and XMPP in the past. I think there are enough people who would stay on the non-mainstream platform to keep it alive.

I have seen the word "defederation" thrown around a lot. What would this mean for the average Blåhaj zone user if we defederated?

Basically a big brick wall between the two instances. Their posts and users wouldn't show up here. It'd be like they don't exist.
- That sounds useful. Imma assume that most Blåhaj zone enjoyers would not like Instagram users on here...

Great. I came here specifically to escape big tech bullshit, and now they're coming to infect the fediverse. At this point, I don't care. Once they get a foot in the door, it's already too late. I'll just leave if I have to, I haven't had any social media in years at this point anyway. I can't envision a world where Meta doesn't use covert tactics to gain a stranglehold over this place.

What's the opposite of federation, let's do that. Use ChatGPT to send mark zuckerberg only lies

I mean isn’t that the beauty of it? You don’t have to subscribe to anything meta and you can join servers that actively block it. I think it’s a good thing if it gets more users on activity pub so our communities can thrive.

In an ideal world, I would agree with this, but as OP mentioned, the worry is they'll do something similar to what Google did with XMPP. Meta starts adding non-standard features and extensions to activity pub, grows their platform to the point where all other instances are forced to adopt the same standard, then they defederate to close off the ecosystem, making them the only option for many to stay connected. I feel like the only way to not fall into that trap is to either not bother copying whatever proprietary stuff they add right from the start or not federate with them to begin with. If there are alternatives I'm not considering, I would love to hear them.
- Yeah point taken for sure. I would hope the kbin and lemmy servers I am apart of block federation with Meta.
Can you imagine the quality of user that has stuck with the abusive spouse that is Facebook all this time? You don't want them in here.
- Lol no I do not want Facebook content. I think I probably didn’t explain myself properly. I hope the fediverse gains more legitimacy and exposure to more people because of this and some of them come to lemmy and kbin and others. I don’t want anything to do with Facebook or it’s algorithms.
  EDIT from my other comment:
  “No I do not want Facebook content. I think I probably didn’t explain myself properly. I hope the fediverse gains more legitimacy and exposure to more people because of this and some of them come to lemmy and kbin and others. I don’t want anything to do with Facebook or it’s algorithms.”
I think you are lost. This is an instance meta where that discussion is being had. We are discussing lemmy.blahaj.zone