Fediverse @lemmy.world CrimeDad @lemmy.one 12 mo. ago

What does defederating from Meta's Threads.net actually accomplish?

Afaik, whenever an Activitypub instance has defederated from another it has always had to do with some combination of bad user behavior, poor moderation, and/or spam. Are the various instance admins who have decided to preemptively block threads.net simply convinced that these traits will be inevitable with it? Is it more of a symbolic move, because we all hate Meta? Or is the idea to just maintain a barrier (albeit a porous one) between us and the part of the Internet inhabited by our chuddy relatives?

(For my part, I'm working on setting up my own Lemmy and/or Pixelfed instance(s) and I do not currently intend to defederate.)

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From what I have read, I think it's all of the above.

a space is wanted free from corps, ads, data perversion

people are fearful that 30 million people joining threads has automatically made it the largest instance. Once it integrates with ActivityPub and can federate, it will dominate the space and produce the majority of the content. People are fearful then meta will retract it/ defederate and take the majority of content and content production with it (EEE). This would effectively kill the fediverse.

many believe meta will not act in good faith and is doing this to appease European courts and laws

Because of all of this people likely believe keeping threads quarantined right off the bat is the best solution to mitigate the amount of damage they can do to what's already been established.

Edit: I am adding to this post as I just stumbled across a post from the host of the lemm.ee instance (which I am a big fan of). He has also listed some great cons of Facebook stepping into the fediverse:

-there is nothing stopping facebook from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores which would ensure they end up on the front page of "all" for federated servers
-threads already has more users than all of Lemmy's instances... therefore, they can completely control what the front page looks like by dictating what their users see and vote on
-moderation does not seem like a priority for threads which would increase workload for smaller instances
-REVENUE FOCUSED

I paraphrased a lot of this but as this is getting some traction I wanted to provide additional visibility to the cons of federating with the Facebook.
- Pretty much this, and I'd like to emphasize the part where Threads userbase outnumber the Fediverse 30 to 1 after only one day.
  
  Lemmy is evolving into a very nice place so far because of the type of users it's attracted, and the fear is that the atmosphere would shift on a dime when the voices here get drowned out by hundreds of millions of commenters from Instagram and Facebook.
  
  A few years ago, Reddit strategically banned two terrible subreddits during one of their shitstorms (the whole AMA firing scandal), just as Voat was getting popular. It turned from a decent community that was starting to grow and challenge Reddit's presence, to a right-wing extremist cesspool overnight.
  
  You also see this sort of thing happen to subreddits all the time. Some of them go from a good community, and either slowly or quickly, shifts into a much more terrible version of itself. Russian bots/ops have transformed subs to push their own agenda.
  
  The community matters, and how that community evolves matters a great deal. Communities can live or die from massive migrations like this.
  
  I started a community to track the H5N1 global outbreak but I do NOT want to moderate it long term; if it picks up, the anti-vax/Plandemic people are going to start showing up (they already do sometimes in the subreddit for it). I feel like opening the doors to Threads is going to hasten that.
- Meta taking their ball and going home some time a ways down the road is much less an issue than them dominating content by being there in the first place. They will have their own moderation and content rules that will shape the content that flows out from them, which will shape each community that interacts with it. Considering the very mercenary approach they have to that, it means that content will be far more monetized and monetizable. Which means both sanitization and pandering, neither of which benefits freedom of thought and discussion.
  
  Considering the huge influx of people coming to places like Lemmy or Kbin to escape that kind of situation (reddit), it may mean the death of the community that has grown so far, before Meta even considers leaving.
  
  Permanently Deleted
- Just to play devil's advocate:
  There could be some downsides to defederating it too:
  
  threads could be a gateway to bring more people into the rest of the fediverse in a user friendly way.
  
  It might cause the rest of the fediverse outside of threads to be more fragmented if some defedarate it and some don't.
  
  Absolutely agree. The optimist in me wants to be excited for what this means and how this could impact the future of, well, the Internet.
  
  But then I remember this is Meta we're taking about. They do not do things that are good for anyone but Meta. As someone who doesn't use meta products, this brings concern.
  
  This is such a blatantly obvious truth that I'm starting to suspect some users here are astroturfing, peddling this bullshit feigned naivety about the rampant unethical practices of FB/Meta. There's enough history that we don't need to question it or give Meta a chance.
  
  I've been working on building the !vans@lemmy.world community, but I may look into moving it to another instance if lemmy.world doesn't change their mind on federating with Threads.
  
  Edit: I guess they've only stated their plan for Mastodon, which is wait and see.
  
  Yeah, it feels like everyday there's a new post asking "HEY GUYS SHOULDNT WE ACTUALLY FEDERATE WITH THREADS?".
  
  Agreed, feels like bots are here pushing for federation with Facebook.
  
  btw, can we stop using the name meta and call them Facebook? i feel like the Facebook brand has worse connotations that should be leveraged to get people off their horrible platforms
  
  They do not do things that are good for anyone but Meta.
  
  They definitely do things selfishly in a way that maximises benefits to meta and ignore any downsides to anyone else, but while thier impact is probably mostly negative, there's some small positive aspects to some things they do, sometimes...
  
  I've pointed it out a few times, but I think it still bears repeating.
  
  Meta have done a lot of open source development, and in that way you're using "meta" products daily. They are the people behind React and GraphQL, for example.
  
  React (and React native, also them) is one of the biggest JavaScript frameworks, and GraphQL is an alternative to REST api's that brings solutions to many problems around REST api's.
  
  I can almost guarantee you that some of the pages you visit in a day use at least one of those.
  
  They also have a lot of other things. You might have heard of pytorch, a major library for developing and running AI projects.
  
  Just have a look at https://github.com/facebook and https://github.com/facebookresearch/
  
  Edit: to clarify, my point is that maybe meta only thinks of itself, but technology wise they do it pretty altruistic and help the related technological communities a lot.
- In addition to what you said, I think additional aspects to consider are the open standards and protocols Facebook/Meta have already abandoned once it became convenient to do so:
  
  XMPP access for Messenger/Chat
  
  RSS feeds for any newsfeed source. They even continued to use the RSS badge (which is unofficial as far as I'm aware) for their follow icon even after they removed RSS feeds.
  
  The bare minimum price of Meta's integration into the Fediverse should be nothing less than the return of those standards, and honestly even that may not be enough.
- People are fearful then meta will retract it/ defederate and take the majority of content with it (EEE). This would effectively kill the fediverse.
  
  I don't see how that could possibly happen. It's not like they can buy the Fediverse. Seems to me far more likely that the Fediverse will be gain interest from people wishing to follow/interact with Meta users without being beholden to Meta and if/when Meta decouples from it again the Fediverse will be larger than before. Sure, some may come and go, but others will find interests outside of Meta.
  
  Like everyone is pointing out, they already will be the largest instance. They are not going to gain that much by trying to trying to absorb the rest of people who are likely in the Fediverse from dissatisfaction with Big Tech and wanting to break free from their algorithms and restrictions.
  
  I think you're underestimating evil.
  
  Competition is for losers.
  
  Nah, I know they are evil, but I also know that there are things people want that they will never provide because they want full control and an advertiser friendly environment.
  
  Like say, where would NSFW artists be more at ease? The Fediverse or an Instagram offshoot? Especially in the wake of Twitter falling apart.
  
  Let's also not overestimate the scheming of tech tycoons are either. I believe Meta is making a blunder and I don't think we should stop them.
  
  Let's also not overestimate the scheming of tech tycoons are either. I believe Meta is making a blunder and I don't think we should stop them.
  
  You shouldn't underestimate it either. Even if this isn't their intention now, it's something they could easily do whenever they feel like it, and do you really trust Meta to have that power?
  
  I don't think it's possible to take down decentralized social media unless it fails by itself, unless the ecosystem here is so completely unappealing people decide to get back to all the well known ills and dullness of Facebook.
  
  Even compared to XMPP, it's not the same. Chat programs are a communication tool. Social platforms are communities.
  
  I am not underestimating them, I don't know why this insistence that I must be. I think people are catastrophizing and spelling doom forgetting that we are seeing tech companies fucking up time after another, and also not giving enough credit to the advantages and potential that we have here.
  
  If you think all it takes is peeking over the fence and the Fediverse will fall apart, the maybe it could never be. But I think the interest in something different will only grow now. I believe we can take users out of Meta instead.
  
  Considering pornographic content isn't allowed on threads... not really much choice in that matter.
  
  That's my point though. There are things that will never find a home under Meta's umbrella, so it cannot just take it all over.
  
  while it will draw more users into the fediverse, nearly all of them will join directly with threads
  
  users who would have joined other instances will be parasited to threads as the safest best supported option
  
  whatever threads does, other instances will be forced to copy or risk losing feature parity with the most important player in the space.
  
  existing users will get accustomed to the content from threads as occupying the dominant super majority of content on the site.
  
  Threads will essentially be the space, with all currently existing communities left as periphery. Which is very bad on it's own because the decentralized space is no longer decentralized, and in fact is in the hands of Meta.
  
  Meta will eventually wall itself off because not having control of your users social graph is an unnecessary threat. And since they are the space, so they will lose very little by walling off. When they do wall off, the fediverse will have it's communities deeply intermingled with Meta, and when people lose most of their friends and content to meta walling themselves off - most are going to choose to relocate to meta.
  
  Slowly growing the decentralized space organically is important to avoid this kind of stuff. If we allow someone to become the hyper-dominant instance, the principle of de-federation ceases to matter because they have so much controlling leverage over the users.
  
  I do still think this is a good thing, but it's a complicated good thing that could do more damage. I am very worried that they aren't starting off federated. That also means their internal community norms will develop isolated from what fediverse has tried to establish.
  
  I am extremely skeptical of 2 and 3, because it means people who already decided to drop mainstream social media platforms will go back on their decision, and it suggests that people want instances to be more like Meta, rather than for it to function in a user driven way that provides things that Meta will never be willing to offer.
  
  If people can be tempted off of the Fediverse so easily, the problem is not Meta. Keep in mind that right now people are already choosing not to engage with Facebook. I'm not naive to assume that they won't have appeal and influence and dirty tricks. but seems to me like such a complete lack of faith in the Fediverse to assume that if Meta merely exists alongside the ecosystem, it's inevitable that everyone will jump ship. That sounds like what they wanted was a Big Tech-driven platform all along.
  
  I don't think that's right.
  
  Comes to mind also that Mastodon has had many years of headstart. How much of a slow growth does it still need?
  
  Luckily, we'll find out not too long from now. Hope you're right.
  
  . It's not like they can buy the Fediverse.
  
  They don't need to. They only need to buy the admins. And we know that some admins have annouced they are for sale.
  
  In the Fediverse it's easier to escape that than it would in any other platform.
  
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What does defederating from Meta's Threads.net actually accomplish?

Slowly growing the decentralized space organically is important to avoid this kind of stuff. If we allow someone to become the hyper-dominant instance, the principle of de-federation ceases to matter because they have so much controlling leverage over the users.