Programming.dev Meta @programming.dev Ategon @programming.dev 8 mo. ago

Threads Federation Poll

polls.programming.dev Programming.Dev Threads Federation

Poll to determine what the community wants in terms of threads federation

In the past we said we were going to run a federation poll regarding Threads (activitypub compatible instance created by meta) and now that theyre ramping up federation and we have a new instance coming that would interact with that I decided its time to do so

This poll is only open to people who have an account on programming.dev as it only affects those users (other instances decide federation on their own).

This also only affects us pulling content from them. Them pulling content from us isnt stoppable on our side (and if it is they can still get it through things such as boosts from instances in the middle on the microblog side or by querying the api).

There will be mention of a link aggregator side and a microblog side. The link aggregator side is this site and the microblog side is a new instance being started up where I wanted to get this poll out before I release it publicly.

On the side of Threads they are making interacting using activitypub opt in so the amount of users there would not flood out everything else as people need to explicitly change in their settings that they want to interact with mastodon, etc.

Regardless of whats voted you shouldnt notice any changes on the link aggregator side similar to how mastodon users barely pop up now

This will be pinned in the instance for a couple days to ensure as many people as possible vote. Afterwards ill collect the results and make a post with them here (not pinned)

Note accounts created after this poll was made cant vote to prevent vote manipulation

34 comments

Head nod regarding the ranked choice voting
- What happens if I pick the same option (e.g. Blocked) as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd option? Is that a waste of my voting or is it exploiting the counting method so that I can really be insisting with what I really want?
  
  Ps. I already voted different options anyway because it sounded like what was expected from me.
  
  Waste of a second and third choice since then I cant ranked choice it. The second choice doesnt count until the first choice is eliminated
I feel deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of federation with Meta.
- Yeah theres a reason why were running the poll rather than explicitly choosing one so thats its more of a community decision. Even before this was ran I knew what would likely be voted but this solidifies that
  
  I still appreciate the community interaction
I hate to sound like an elitist asshole, but i really dont want to read posts or comments from people who only used threads prior to discovering this community. I am in one Facebook programming group with good posters, but the overwhelming majority of them are low effort crap.
- You must really hate yourself then.
  
  Why else would i participate in programming discourse on facebook
I have just voted to limited as first option because I imagine we can then switch to any other (e.g. my second option, open) based on the experience so far. Would that be possible? I mean revisiting whatever we set now in a couple of months. Maybe using the results from this same survey, or a new one...
- Yeah ill be doing another vote after a bit (probably 6 months but dependant on how fast their activitypub features moves)
I'm not convinced it will make a difference one way or another. The people on Threads will largely not opt in to federation when they have the option and those that do generally won't look for programming communities on Lemmy.
- Yeah this is more for the new instance that will be started up that will have the potential to interact with it a lot more. Want to keep federation the same across all our instances
  
  You're going to set up a new lemmy instance?
To be honest it's hard to decide, I hate facebook/twitter/etc. I don't want to be close to those social networks. I find Lemmy great, small enough to have a decent community and big enough to get content unless you doom scroll 24/7.

But just last week I needed to search for something and I only found the answer in reddit, I even felt weird going back to that place. I'm not sure we got enough members to cover that kind of necessity. And I feel that if we alienate from other places we'll eventually die because of lack of members/content.
- If our content gets federated to threads then it just means that google results will point to it first rather than to us, they will probably have better indexing and search features than the fediverse. People will also probably think the content originated on threads too (since that's where they see it and threads could easily obfuscate info like that) instead of who actually made it.
  
  It could increase the short term engagement but in the long run, it will just serve to make threads better.
  
  I accidentally commented while still considering if I was going to comment.
Even though the "open" option would only allow Threads accounts to post via mention, I am still concerned about bots. I imagine as soon as bot owners find out they can get access to more views via federation, they will spam as many instances as they can get away with.

So I am voting at best "limited" to curtail spam in the feed. I am less concerned about spam in the comments because it will hopefully get downvoted. But who knows, bot accounts may be upvote farming.

I am split between "limited" and "blocked" at the moment. I don't mind real Threads users being able to subscribe and comment, but bots make me worry.
- We can ban bots individually similar to how we do so now from accounts that try to be hosted on lemmy or kbin instances (in that case its mostly seo spammers and usually gets snapped relatively quickly and if they end up spamming the same link we have automods to remove certain links or images that contain links which ive being using currently on a guy making accounts trying to advertise his scam credit cards)
I'm having trouble opening that poll in my client.

I migrated here to minimize my interaction with Meta, after my previous instance federated.
- Link to it again outside of the url field: https://polls.programming.dev/lR76
  
  Thanks!
I do not understand the difference between Limited and Silenced. It sounds like one is more strict than the other but not exactly.
- Limited means threads users can't make posts on programming.dev (but can make comments). On the microblog side they're the same
I honestly don't care about the opinions of people using Threads. I'd rather only see posts and comments from people who actively joined the fediverse, not blindly following social media. So my first choice would be blocked.
Is there any chance of doing one style then coming back in a month or more and reevaluating?
- There will be another poll in around 6 months
How are you validating that people don't just vote with multiple usernames?

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- I have ways to check, I won't say what they are so people don't try to bypass it

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