[Discussion] Pre-emptive Threads defederation
[Discussion] Pre-emptive Threads defederation
Should sh.itjust.works preemptively defederate from Threads?
Threads is the not-so-new reddit-like twitter-like public forum platform by Meta, the same commercial company behind internet behemoths like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. They're working on ActivityPub integration so that they can bridge (federate?) with the fediverse. As far as I know, the focus is on Mastodon instances, but in the future that could include Lemmy instances too.
Some have raised the question, worried about the future of the fediverse or even claiming that it goes against its definition.
What do you think should be done?
EDIT: correction
EDIT.2: The Vote is on! Go make your voice heard. You have until Friday the 29th.
my take on it is that i am completely against any kind of bridging between the platforms. i do think the fediverse in general is in danger, by being a victim of the "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy
as many on lemmy, i use this platform because of its decentralized, open-source, not-for-profit nature, and think the whole fediverse community would be in jeopardy if we don't act
Exactly. I'm almost always against defederation, but the risk of EEE is why I'm in favor of preemptively defederating.
would like to had this more informed and well articulated take on why federation with Threads would be bad
If people are not ready or are not looking for freedom, that’s fine. They have the right to stay on proprietary platforms. We should not force them into the Fediverse. We should not try to include as many people as we can at all cost. We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.
And that is why I am voting to defed.
Defederation is meaningless, what matters is the dev side. Federating doesn't give them anything they couldn't get other ways for slightly more effort. The problems come if you allow contributions the greater community doesn't want to the code itself.
it seems they are already testing the integration
I’m in favour of anything that prevents Meta’s enshittification of everything.
Facebook should be quarantined as much as possible.
I'm for the preemptive de-federation.
Yep. Defederate.
If and when Meta becomes “federated”, I 100% will be on team DEFEDERATE.
I'm taking off my admin hat and commenting as a user...
One minor correction to OP's post: Threads is a X/Twitter clone, not a Reddit clone.
I'm in the wait-and-see camp. If Threads someday links to Lemmy, and if it becomes problematic for the function or culture of the platform, then I will be in favor of cutting them off.
As @ryathal@sh.itjust.works mentioned, the real risk is that Meta starts steering Lemmy development in its favor. I don't foresee that happening given that dessalines and nutomic oversee code contributions, and they certainly won't allow it.As an aside, I'm not convinced Threads will last long to begin with. It isn't looking like the X killer that Meta seemed to be hoping for. Meta has been trying to artificially drive engagement by creating shadow accounts for Facebook/Instagram users, and sticking Threads posts in people's Facebook feeds. Integrating with Mastodon feels like a further attempt to entice Meta users to adopt a microblogging app that nobody asked for. At this rate it may fizzle and die before they ever get around to interacting with Lemmy.
can threads not just kill all other instances with their huge number of posts that would come through and hide everything else?
Yeah, even if Meta acts with 100% good will, and the Threads users are wonderful and respectful, Threads is about 50x as big as the entire Fediverse, and Lemmy is a fraction of that Fediverse.
https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/494473
Starting out with the floodgates open could lead to Lemmy getting overwhelmed. (Plus, it could cause server costs to skyrocket.)
It makes the most sense to start out with Threads blocked, then (if Meta is behaving) to allow a trickle in to see how that goes.
This is my exact take as well. Defed if there is an issue, but wait and see first. I hate the kneejwrk reaction to circle the wagons here. I have been hating on Facebook for as long as anyone l, but this place badly needs content and users so I am willing to see where this goes.
Ask yourself why do they want to join the fediverse if they don't get anything out of it? Also, what would they be contributing to the fediverse besides more people. Every time I see more people, it's not great people, or thoughtful people or even shitty stars, it's just more people. Crowds help the fediverse how? It's like going to your quiet cafe and being overwhelmed by the sound of it.
You've probably seen this analogy because I've posted it way too much, but I think it really holds true:
I've used this analogy before, but threads is like a huge, 5k passenger cruise ship docking in a small town in Alaska. You don't have to know ahead of time that the 2 public bathrooms, one at the general store and the other at McDonalds, aren't going to be enough. You can also forecast the complaining about how everything isn't really tourist ready. It will suck for everyone. The small museum will be overrun and damaged, the people will be treated like dirt. It's an easy forecast.
Here's the important bit, just because they've never been in the cruise line business, doesn't mean you have to give them a chance to ruin your town.
Wait and see. As much as I hate Meta, i don't think we have much to gain by being a walled garden. Maybe we have also much to lose if we federate, who knows. I would not complain much if we defederate. If we do federate, there should be a zero-tolerance policy. If Meta tries some bullshit, or if there's the slightest doubt, we should defederate immediately.
Defederate pls
Don't defederate immediately, but do it automatically three months after threads goes live if users don't explicitly vote to keep it around. I wouldn't mind seeing how it goes at first.
I can't bring myself to care whether or not someone using a Facebook app can get a shit post in their feed.
Wut
I don't get the point of pre-emptively de-federating. This would allow lemmy to have a wider reach amongst a general audience rather than be a niche community. We should only defederate after seeing if it's a problem or not to be federated with them.
We've seen this multiple times before. This will not give Lemmy/Mastodon/whatever more reach, it will connect us to the metaverse and then after we have invested in it they will pull the rug. This is classic big tech vs OSS, using EEE to attack the competition.
Good news is this means they see us as a threat
What are the concrete reasons a wider reach would be better? Are there any other reasons why it would be better to have them or not?
It offers a completely different perspective than what people on lemmy provide, which is usually people in the tech sector. So many smaller subreddits exist on reddit because of it's wider reach. Look at !sewingrepairing@sh.itjust.works for example, the last post in "hot" was from a month ago, current numbers on lemmy just can't sustain smaller subs like that.
Here's my low int take: more people means more discussions, which is the whole reason we use this service in the first place
Completely agree. If it is really an issue, we can always defederate later.
The fun option would be to flood threads with shitposts and make them defederate from us when they start to lose advertisers
They will just hide that content in their platform
The way Threads works currently from what I understand is that they can send content to other instances, but not receive. Makes it seem even more useless if it's one-sided.
Ahh, nevermind then
Nay, not worse than some instances already in lemmy and exposure is two way, but looking at the results, it seems I’ll have to create an alt on some other instance if I want to participate with the bigger communities of Threads.
It’s funny that shit like this gets automatic defederation and not the way some admins behave, make bullshit up, and leave links up to instances they claim have pedo content instead of reporting it to the competent authorities. Just like Musk, they make Zuckerberg actually look good in the shit comparison. But people only want to see what they want to see, specially when it involves someone who puts on a very different face when they interact with them.
Federate, let them get a taste of sweet Lemmy content, then cut them off. Will make the Threads experience feel broken for native Threads users.
Will make the Threads experience feel broken for native Threads users.
Genuinely, why would you want that? It seems pointlessly hostile. Shouldn't we welcome more users?
For the lulz, obviously. I legitimately forgot Threads exists until this post came up so I'd be hard pressed to honestly claim any meaningful level of investment in the topic.
Serious question - I’m not up to speed on what kind of effort goes into defederating/refederating. If it’s easy, then is “wait and see” an option?
Alternatively, is preemptively defederating now and refederating later if we want also an option?
If both options are on the table, I say wait and see just because it’s unexplored territory though I agree that it probably won’t be great. If it’s a big pain in the ass to change our stance, also wait and see; that way we only have to do the PITA thing once.
If it's easy
It is, there's basically a setting on the server to block certain instances. So the admin would just update that setting to enable/disable federation. However, defederation doesn't delete any data on either side, it just stops the flow of new data.
So if you care about Meta having a copy of all content for some period, the better option is to defederate now and refederate later if they somehow play nice. There is a risk that Threads could defederate from any instances that blocked it, but I'm guessing they're not going to bother, I think they're just looking for data to scrape.
It's actually relatively trivial to scrape the public data of any instance. If Meta really cared (which I highly doubt), there's nothing stopping them spinning up a temporary instance with a bit that auto-subscribes to all communities it knows about.
Defederating from threads doesn't change the fact that all information on any instance is pseudonymous, but very public.
wait and see
Both are an option and easy enough.
Honestly, and that's my personal take as a user not as an admin... I'm in the "wait and see" boat, but I'm nor particularly full of trust about this so my goto would be:
- Defederate pre-emptively
- Wait for meta/threads to prove it's not a shitshow
- Reconsider federating if/when we get there
For those out of the loop, Mark Zuckerberg recently made an announcement on Threads
oh shhh...people, today is friday, the day to open up votes here in The Agora. but this discussion has only been up for less than 2 days
is it too soon to start a vote? should we wait for the next week? i don't want to press anyone but feel some urgency about this issues since, in case we defederate, it should be done at rhe start od this process, it seems to me
I don't see how rushing a vote would have been better.
I think there should be some instances that at least try federating with Threads just to see how it goes, but I don't want it to be this instance. The existence of voting in the Agora alone is a reason not to want a massive influx of new users from Instagram. This instance is uniquely vulnerable to the threat Threads may pose.
This instance is uniquely vulnerable to the threat Threads may pose.
Would you mind expanding on that? Why do you think that? If that refers to voting in the Agora, then I'd like to mention that users from other instances can't vote in the Agora. That is only for users of sh.itjust.works.
It kinda defeats the entire point of the fediverse. It couldn't be more obvious what they want to do, and that's control it, or destroy it.
Defederate
As much as I hate Meta/Facebook, we need activity and content to keep Lemmy alive, and Meta can potentially help provide that. If after federation, it turns out to be overwhelmingly toxic or the users provide no value at all, then defederate. If nothing else, doing it later will encourage Meta users to try other insrances.
I was just checking this point before registering here, and this instance pleases me :)
My concerns have mostly been voiced already. EEE is a very valid strat used by larger companies. Additionally, I am super concerned that integrating will cause a flood effect and drown out and replace the existing communities. Just look at what happend with Reddit's purge for a good example, while I wasn't here prior, everyone I've chatted with who was has stated it annihilated a lot of the existing ideology that existed prior to the exodus.
I don't plan on staying here if you defederate with Threads, but I respect your right to do it. The move seems unnecessarily reactionary and premature. I think the open web has more to gain from encouraging companies to invest in ActivityPub than it does siloing itself off from anyone who represents real growth in the space.
If you want the community to remain small, fair enough. I believe in a world in which every social media service is using ActivityPub; I don't care what or who they are. I don't even really understand what the anti-EEE crowd is afraid of? The protocol is run by a neutral party (W3C), I can't imagine any features that would compel major change, nobody that's already on the Fediverse is going to leave, you can always decide later to defederate... The system already seems pretty well protected against hostile action.
I was thinking about this some more, and now I think this entire conversation and vote is entirely irrelevant. Not just not worth having, but actually completely makes no difference.
A big company like Meta is gonna want to control what content is on it. Which means they're almost certainly not going to use a blacklist model, they're going to use a whitelist. This allows them to carefully control who they're federated with.
Their federation list will likely be a who's who of big influential mastodon servers, maybe some pixelfed servers. They probably don't even know that Lemmy exists, let alone the 8th largest instance. If/when they realize Lemmy is a thing in a few years, they might approach lemmy.world and/or lemm.ee.
All of this to say, I don't think this vote matters.
Please defederate from threads.
We should defederate the internet. LAN not WAN!
Defederate
Disclaimer: I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but despise what I said in my message, I am not strongly for or against federation with Threads. I just feel it’s better to give another point of view to the situation (there is no harm, people who disagree with this instance final decision will just migrate somewhere else, regardless of the choice).
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I don’t think we should treat Threads differently than any other instance. If they cause no harm, they should be allowed. As a consequence, I would personally not defederate immediately.
I am more concerned at a more general level, in the sense that federating with a large instance can be difficult / impossible to handle moderation-wise (which is not specific to Threads). This could be solved by simply putting the charge on Meta (just like any instance): if they can’t moderate their content, we will defederate (and revise the decision if changes are made on their side).
I also don’t really see why this would hurt the fediverse: it’s not like they can’t already get all the data they want from the fediverse, and the moment they will push ads to the fediverse, the instances will just defederate.
People will just follow the content they seek. If they have to migrate towards another instance federating with Threads (or directly leave for Threads), they will (which might not be an issue for the fediverse).
Nothing.
What do you see as the risks to the larger fediverse in having Meta federated?
What benefit does Meta hope to see?
What do you see as the risks to the larger fediverse in having Meta federated?
for me the main risk would be the loss of freedom, as in the open way it is developed. if threads is openly weaved to the fediverse, their closed development methodology will dictate it's future by virtue of its monopoly and the way for that future will not be defined by the interests of the larger community - as it generally is now with the fediverse's platforms and apps open standards
a second important risk is the quality of the conversation will likely drop abruplty. the dominance of the userbase will be too big too fast. i'd like for e.g. Lemmy to grow and keep on growing (not that i care that much about it) but i think this would not be the way to do it
What benefit does Meta hope to see?
the benefit any company seeks with any new product or implementation: to increase it's bottom-line, AKA money
how? one way is using everything that's going on in the fediverse as 'content' for their users - who they'd be "milking" for said bottom-line. and that content's upkeep, that would bring them said profit, would not cost them a thing
EDIT: grammar
They get to claim to have less of a monopoly. Plus try to snuff Mastodon.
If you are hosting another instance, and have not had a vote, do it before the Threads bots vote for everyone.
You do realize that any votes from outside our instance get auto-removed, right?
My suggestion was to anyone who runs across this and runs their own instance but has not yet held a vote for their users. 😉
Defederate
Cut the thread.
Defederate.
Just like every other time these things have been posted, I wholly oppose defederation.