The more I'm trying to understand the call to block #Meta's #P92#Threads, the less sense I think it makes. Let's see some of the arguments:
"Meta is evil": Yes they are. Don't sign up to their new service. I don't think all of their users are evil though. I still have my facebook account.
"There are privacy concerns". Yes there are - for their users, not ours. For us, as admins of communities that are willingly federated, what are the privacy concerns? Most of the stuff we do is public anyway. We're federated to hundreds/thousands of servers. Do we know who owns each of them, and what they do with whatever data they get from us? If you think there are privacy dangers from federating with servers that you don't know what they do with their data, then we should defederate from everyone we're not 100% sure about - so basically from everyone. Saying that federating with a Meta server is dangerous is like saying that an open federation was a bad idea all along.
"We have to protect our users". From what? I get defederating from nazi servers, and then we are actually protecting users. If Meta doesn't completely screw up moderation, I don't think we can seriously claim that interaction with Meta users in general will be abusive and harmful. If your users don't want any interaction with Meta users, they can block them at user level.
"We have to protect the Fediverse". From what? From being an open space for communication? From not being a walled garden? By pushing people to actually use Meta's platform, if they want to communicate with other Meta users? Do you realize that the biggest obstacle for mass adoption is that most users need social media to communicate with their friends, and if they can't do it from fedi, then they'll stick with Twitter or Meta? And if you don't want "mass adoption", then what are you even doing using an open protocol? Just set up a defederated instance or forum. I use an open protocol because I want users of the platform I provide to be able to communicate with more people on other platforms. I don't have to agree with the other platforms on everything - if we did, we'd just make one platform instead of thousands of different ones. I'll use fediblock to protect users from abuse and harassment, not from communicating with whoever decides to use a "free" platform (and "pay" by viewing ads and giving up their privacy). I think they're getting ripped off, but hey, it's their choice. It's definitely not the same as being a nazi.
"We have to stop Meta's plans". Sorry to break it to you buddy, but you can't do that by blocking them. ActivityPub is an open protocol and they have every right to use it. They will attract users for a number of reasons: They'll have celebrities on board, they have the money to provide a smooth service, and they can provide communication with their already enormous userbase on Facebook and Instagram - and with the fedi servers that will choose to federate with them. If you think that the current active fedi userbase of a few million people worldwide is such a selling point for Meta... it's not. It's not what will convince people to sign up. If someone wants access to the fedi userbase, they can already do that by just signing up on a Mastodon, Calckey etc server.
I'm all for blocking the new platform if it causes actual practical problems for us. But declaring you'll block them anyway because you don't like Meta (I don't like them either)... to be honest, this kinda feels like an admin power trip to me. It could be even perceived as an asshole move to your own users. You're not "protecting" them from Meta. If they want to be protected from Meta, they can just not sign up to Meta. If they don't want any communication with Meta users, they can block them on a user level.
I'll be discouraging anyone from using Meta's services, as I already do. But forbidding fedi users to interact with Meta users is not the same thing.
