I just saw that lemmy.ml has pre-emptively defederated from threads. Are there any plans to do that here? I personally want nothing to do with Meta/Facebook, and I'm sure that's not an unpopular opinion around here.
edit: y'all, please pay attention to where you are when coming from all.
edit again: kbin really ought to make a post's home instance more clear.
Yeah, I don't see much point in federating with anything Facebook comes up with.
However, I suspect the planned AP support by Tumblr will be the bigger question. Solarpunk obviously has been always very strong on Tumblr and the current owners of Tumblr are not nearly as bad as Facebook, but it is still a huge corporate run instance if and when it joins the Fediverse.
I'm glad to hear we won't be federating with threads or any other meta products. As far as Tumblr, things might be a bit more complicated. Chris Trottier, a developer who is the admin for calckey . social , read Meta's latest press release about Threads and it mentions Tumblr as well as Wordpress, which many websites run, who are both owned by a company known as Automattic. His take is that Meta has likely been in discussion with Automattic about Activitypub and that could have a big impact on the Fediverse.
I did see that, yes. Indeed I also think this isn't a big nefarious plan of Facebook to kill the Fediverse (we are probably too small for them to care), but the damage will be done by them never the less and we better try our best to limit the damage as good as we can.
I came here originally cause I think this instance is likely to defederate from Meta (and cause I enjoy the content and want to contribute a bit of course), though I‘m also not the type to raise a big stink if it didn’t, at most I upvote and affirm posts like this.
I really like about the Fediverse that I can basically just move on to another instance which suits me better, if I notice things going a way I don‘t want them to.
I’m personally opposed to defederation in all but the most extreme circumstances. I think more people communicating, even through a questionable platform, could be a could thing. A lot of people are speculating that this is some scheme to kill the fediverse but there’s no real evidence of this yet, and frankly, I’m not convinced we’re big enough that Meta would really consider us a threat. If evidence of such a scheme does materialize, then obviously at that point defederation makes sense. But at this point, I think defederation (and denying potentially millions of people from experiencing the fediverse) solely on speculation seems like a bad idea.
I was actually thinking of suggesting a defederation policy be drafted, so that we can have clear circumstances under which we would or would not defederate. That way we can operate off of consensus rather than the whims of admins—well-intentioned as they may be. Curious what the community thinks of that idea, whatever the decision on this particular topic ends up being.
I'm personally opposed to defederation in all but the most extreme circumstances.
Can you define 'extreme circumstances'?
Is literal nazi propaganda extreme enough? Because you can already find it on Threads.
I was actually thinking of suggesting a defederation policy be drafted, so that we can have clear circumstances under which we would or would not defederate
That I agree with. Instances should have it layed it out clearly.
I mean it depends on how much and how it is being managed. Unfortunately, nazi propaganda is prevalent in many societies, so I don’t think it will be possible to have a platform be completely free from it, excepting very small, isolated communities. I can find it on posters outside my house, but that clearly doesn’t reflect the views of the vast majority of people in my neighborhood. It’s here on Lemmy as well. I don’t think that alone warrants some kind of quarantine policy, if those views are being actively opposed and/or removed. If an instance is operating as a safe haven for those views to fester and spread then that may warrant defederation if it is causing serious harm to federated communities.
But it is intentionally a bit vague and left open for interpretation as there will be always edge-cases and people trying to game rules. So no, I don't think it will be ever possible to have "clear circumstances under which we would or would not defederate", its always a bit of an individual judgement call related to both our specific community here and the health of the wider Fediverse.
In the specific case of Threads, I think it would probably not matter so much for our specific community here, but the threat to the wider Fediverse is very real and warrants a coordinated attempt to keep them out as best as we can.
And "denying potentially millions of people from experiencing the fediverse" is just not the case. They are free to make an account on another Fediverse server that is not run by a known bad actor like Facebook.
I’m glad there is something but I think a clear document has the potential to avoid a lot of potential issues. Such rules would help eliminate or clarify many edge cases and I somewhat doubt that we’ll ever be large enough that instances are deliberately trying to game our specific rules. But if it does we can always revise the document with whatever solution seems most practical.
And sure, people are free to join Lemmy… if they know about it. Which they largely don’t, and perhaps never will if we choose to isolate ourselves from most of the web. But it seems I’m in the minority on this issue so the decision has been made. We will see what the consequences are in time. Given Meta’s past behavior, it may prove wise. But there is also a cost to defederation that we should keep in mind when making these decisions.
I think that in the long run, if the Fediverse model is successful then a confrontation is inevitable, but i think it makes sense to defederate as a response to Meta doing something specific and deplorable rather than just for joining.
I also like the idea of drafting a defederation policy.
I would supprt pre-emptively defederating Facebook / Meta.
Directly relevant history: they allowed their users to talk to third-party XMPP servers as long as it suited their business. With size comes arrogance, so while doing that, they introduced compatibility issues which caused other people much avoidable work. Finally they blocked their users from interacting with third-party messenger apps.
Indirectly relevant history: Facebook has caused damage to society by allowing better manipulation (targeted advertising) and helped fuel conflict (preference for content that makes people click).
A company with their history and ownership model can be expected to behave selfishly to the detriment of others.
I think pre-emptive defederation is unnecessary, but the platform has been live for like two minutes so I'm reserving the right to change my opinion down the line. I want to see how things play out. My biggest concern is lack of moderation.
I'm not of the camp that wants to keep the Fediverse an exclusive club. I want ActivityPub to become a universally accepted and expected standard like email. I want to break the corporate vendor lock-in on social media so that billionaires are unable to completely control the digital commons. This is ideally the first step on that path.
I've had multiple conversations about this across multiple platforms and I've yet to get an realistic answer on how federation could be harmful to the Fediverse, outside of bad moderation. At which point we take the same action we take on any instance with poor moderation. Everything else has been vague gesturing.
I'll just direct you to @ProdigalFrog's comment in this thread because I think it responds to your points better than I would be able to. Meta is bad for humanity as a whole, and they shouldn't be allowed to infiltrate an open platform such as ActivityPub.
I'm aware that Facebook is a bad company. That's why I refuse to accept their rebranding like most of you already have, because they are relying on that to try and shed some of the bad association with their name.
However, I agree with the person who responded to that comment; I can easily envision benefits, but nobody has been able to describe to me how they can harm us via federation. Every time I've asked it's only been vague gestures. I can see a way for us to inflict harm on them via federation by giving us the ability to siphon users from them without depriving them of connections. I cannot see the opposite happening, because people who are already here have explicitly opted out of their system to begin with. It seems to me that we have everything to gain and nobody can specifically describe what we stand to lose.
I'm not saying we should give them a chance; I'm saying we should use this as a weapon.
Just a reminder that regardless of what kbin.social decides, you can block federated domains for yourself. Go to: https://kbin.social/d/domainname
So I just blocked Threads and it was: https://kbin.social/d/threads.net
On the right side, click the "don't" icon (circle with a slash through it). When it's red, that means that domain is blocked.
That's great for kbin users and all, but this community is meta for the slrpnk.net instance, which runs lemmy.
edit: that also seems like it would just make links to said domain invisible. They can see you, but you can't see them. I could be wrong, as I've never used kbin before.
I don't care either way really considering I can already hide a domain on my own. I'm more of a wait and see kind of person. If they're really toxic, defederate, sure. But I don't see any harm in seeing how it even plays out at first.
Have you not seen screenshots yet? Its already become a hive for fascists and Nazi shitposters. Even if that weren't the case they will be spamming everything with ads, its a no brained decision that they need to be defederated. I'll personally leave any instance that doesn't do so.
I haven't looked into it at all. I didn't see any reason to. If it is like that, then sure. Like I said, if it's toxic, defederate it. I just have no clue what's on it because I wasn't interested in joining it.