This is demonstrably false. Almost all servers that de-federate Threads still broadcast the RSS feed of your posts. This is available to everyone, even servers that are de-federated from yours.
If you don’t believe me, test this out for yourself. Append “.rss” to the end of your profile URL (exampleserver.com/@username.rss), and see what happens.
Hell, if I wanted to build a search engine for the Fediverse and not use ActivityPub, I could use RSS instead and I could index most of the Fediverse – whether you opt into it or not.
Let’s stop spreading the myth that de-federation by itself prevents Threads from accessing your public feed.
@Underfaker@fediversenews Maybe you don’t believe de-federating Threads will prevent them from accessing your public feed, but many people do. In fact, they’ve said so in replies to me.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews But does it prevent them from doing so legally? I can create searchable indexes of lots of things I find online, but that's often a copyright violation.
@toon@atomicpoet@fediversenews
So first up, I'm not an IP lawyer, or any other kind of lawyer, so I can only talk about how big online copyright cases have played out, from what was reported in the media, but I reckon that indexing is entirely legal.
Search engines have been indexing the content of every website they can find for over 30 years. This includes stuff that the owners really didn't want indexed. There have been many well-publicized cases of Google and friends indexing stuff that should have been protected but that wasn't, including private medical records, plaintext password databases, classified government documents, internal company documents, and more. Lazy hackers have been using google to search for filenames that might contain sensitive data (maybe something like "Patient admissions filetype:xlsx") for as long as search engines have existed.
As far as I know, no search engine has ever been found guilty of breaking the law by doing this, and nobody has ever successfully sued.
Closest I can think of to real legal problems for indexers was when Google started bulk-scanning copyrighted books, and making them available in books.google.com
That was a long time ago so I don't remember much of the reporting, but based on how that website works now, I suspect that the only copyright issue that stuck was "You can't just give copies away", The index remains, and you can read excerpts of books, but not the whole text.
@atomicpoet oh I didn't know about the rss API, if my deployments weren't fully static on purpose I'd consider using that for a widget showing my latest posts on my site :3
Defederating #Threads will, however, stop Threads from drowning out the entire rest of the Fediverse.
The result of federating is that Threads is the Fediverse now, and the rest of us are just the silent periphery that no one cares about and aren't even allowed to speak to Threads users (the federation is one-way). This kills the Fediverse. Easiest #EmbraceExtendExtinguish ever.
@argv_minus_one Limited federation is an option that addresses that. Admins can make it so that only specific Threads accounts that you follow show up in your home feed.
For example, if you’re only following @potus, you will only see his account and no one else on Threads.
De-federation is not a one size fits all solution, and there’s other tools available to address problems.
Regardless, WordPress has a bigger install base than Threads. What are you going to do if they turn on federation by default?
But also, I don't want my content appearing on Zuckerberg's platform, even if it does support two-way federation in the future. I can't actually stop them from scraping it, of course, but by blocking them, I can at least put them on notice that they are not welcome.
@argv_minus_one it should be called "user level domain mutes" though because once two-way federation is live, they'll still be able to see, react, and comment on your posts, you just won't be able to see them.
Kinda like sitting in a room with hungry bears with a blindfold on...😬
Really? When I instituted the domain block, the warning message said that users on that domain won't be able to see or interact with my content, if I recall correctly.
@argv_minus_one really...I had an example of this exact thing happening back when Eugen was pushing it.
I don't know why he insists on lying....I have seen it in the wild and tested it myself on my own instance. There MIGHT be a way to ensure that the blocks are honored, but that wasn't obvious from the situation so I don't know if it's possible.😬I can try to find the example I had, but no promises cause I've deleted many posts since then.
@argv_minus_one originally, my example was a user posting "I have blocked kolektiva" (now deleted) and they weren't an admin, yet in their replies there was many kolektiva users commenting on their post...
Here's one such reply, but as you can tell, the original post isn't there because it was deleted. I can only assume they deleted it because they realized they were wrong...🤷♂️🤦♂️
@argv_minus_one@atomicpoet Thanks to our feeds here being follower-defined and not "algorithmic”, I don't see how Threads posts (and thus Threads itself) could drown out my feed or anyone else's feed unless they consciously decide to overwhelmingly follow Threads accounts. Plus, since we have access to Threads posts (for now) and not the other way around, this in some ways gives us MORE capability than those natively on Threads.
@argv_minus_one@atomicpoet I think Threads can play in the Fediverse sandbox without the intention of destroying traditional Fedi. I’m not saying they don't have the same surveillance capitalist goals for first-party users of their own platform but I think there are good reasons for them to enable AP support beyond trying to crush us or harvest our data.
@argv_minus_one@atomicpoet Yeah I should have qualified that toot-spree with saying that I am cursed with naive optimism 😅.
I think what I mean to say is that the people who are here are here because of what Threads isn’t, and what they can't be. Everyone else is already on Threads or X-Twitter. Threads goal is to suck out what remains of Twitters user-base, enable AP-based Federation to block out Bluesky (and perhaps achieve some regulatory req) and then play ball with other LG AP players.
Well, I saw your post because I was looking at my "all servers" tab. If my instance-owner hadn't blocked Threads, my "all servers" tab might be flooded with Threads stuff.
@ferricoxide@argv_minus_one@atomicpoet Ya know what? I honestly hadn't considered concerns around flooding the “Federated" timeline because in my mind this is already entirely unusable. I suppose if you rely on, or regularly use that feature and are concerned about what the Threads deluge would do to it (whether it be homogenizing or potentially harmful) then I can understand why the sheer volume of what Threads brings to the traditional Fediverse is a concern.
@shellsharks@ferricoxide@argv_minus_one However, it’s entirely possible to limit federation so that no Threads accounts show up in your federated timeline, but you still receive updates from selected Threads accounts that you want to follow.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews The fact that meta has the resources to do this sort of thing and leverage all its other data exploitation, makes me support defederating from Threads even more.
@AvonVilla If you want to de-federate from Threads due to moral and ethical reasons, that’s fair. I mention this because many people believe de-federation prevents data scraping – which is not true.
@AvonVilla@atomicpoet@fediversenews that's the thing.... ANYONE can do those things. It doesn't take lots of money to view RSS feeds or make something automated to store data from RSS feeds....anyone can do any of these things at any time.
If you're not okay with literally anyone getting your data, the only option you have is to make your profile private.
@BeAware@atomicpoet@fediversenews Yes I understand that public data is public. Federation is much more than that, it supercharges the value of data which flows from the fediverse to meta, allowing meta to exploit it in ways I find abhorrent, and in ways which are beyond the means of everyone else. Meta's tactics should be illegal but they are allowed. They have too much power as it is, I came here to avoid giving them more power, and now they are coming for me anyway.
ANYONE can do federation and "steal" your data. Nobody has to make an account that shows who they really are. I can make an account with all kinds of lies and fake info, then follow anyone I want and use their posts however I want and they wouldn't have a clue....
@BeAware@atomicpoet@fediversenews On the specific comment "anyone can do federation", remember too, that anyone can do defederation. MY point is that it should be done in the case of meta.
I'm happy that the instance I'm on has gone down that path.
Defederation is a response action. Something that one has to know about specific activity that would make them want to defederate. If you don't know, you can't defederate...your PUBLIC data is public. Blocking meta won't change that and they aren't the only bad actors in the world with access to your public data via Federation. We federate by default, meaning your data is exposed by default, to Meta, or anyone else that isn't defederated...
It's fine though, you keep dodging the point and it doesn't matter anyway because you got what you want and so do I. Have a good day.
@atomicpoet@fediversenews Leaving the Fediverse entirely is the only way to keep them away from your stuff. Like a real neighborhood full of unsavory characters.
That is NOT the point that people are making. Threads will not be displaying content scraped this way, which is the actual point. People do not want their stuff broadcast and open to interaction from an instance hosting a literal domestic terrorist (Chaya Raichik), which a defederation achieves wonderfully.
@privateger You don’t know what Threads will or will not be doing. If they integrate an RSS reader into their app – which is both possible and plausible – your feed will be available on Threads.
@atomicpoet And then I would block on user agent, or simply disable RSS functionality for unauthenticated users.
Your point being? Bend over and give up because they may be able to access my information in some obscure way? This frankly just reads like you telling people to give in because the big corp will take it anyway, which is just nonsense.
People that dont want their stuff on Threads shouldn't have their stuff on Threads. The fact that you seem to believe it's alright to be advocating for Threads to become part of fedi while also basically stomping on user choice is absolutely baffling to me.
This isn't a false sense of security. If you prepare for every single possibility, you wouldn't be using your computer, you'd have turned it off and buried it in a concrete block under the ocean starting around the early 2000s.
Large parts of security is being able to RESPOND to threats as they come up. It's always a balance between convenience and security. Disabling public post view for example would make scraping harder, but it would also make it a pain in the ass for normal outside users to see the full context of posts.
This isn't a binary choice. Stop acting like it is. You know this.
@privateger If you follow anything Meta does, then you’re probably aware this isn’t a matter of “threats as they come up” but a threat that is already here.
It’s almost certain that Meta is accessing your public feeds for their own use.
Tools already exist that allow RSS to be converted to posts on Facebook and Instagram. It’s therefore almost certain that someone is building a tool that allows re-broadcast to Meta’s social networks from an RSS feed.
the data is just one of many reasons for not wanting to have anything to do with meta.
I have no idea why everyone is only focussing on the technical aspect and simply ignoring the 100 others
@evelyn Telling people “Threads will never access your public feed because they’re de-federated” gives people misplaced confidence and a false sense of security.
Even if Meta never officially uses RSS, what will stop someone from mirroring your account on Threads via RSS?
@atomicpoet perhaps it lacks some nuance, but it's also not useless to take such a precaution. If someone wishes to limit the reach of their posts, and to prevent them being viewed by users on Threads, this seems to be an effective means of doing so. The fact that there's arguably side-channels is neither here nor there.
@evelyn Well, a good portion of the Fediverse is not as technically inclined as you are. What you see as a generality is, to them, an absolute assurance.
If people discover their posts are being re-broadcast on Threads, I don’t want them upset because they thought de-federation would prevent that.
@privateger@evelyn People already grab RSS feeds of websites and broadcast those feeds on the Fediverse. That’s how so many news sites have unofficial profiles here.
So it’s not just plausible for someone to use RSS for re-broadcast on the Fediverse. It’s already being done.
@atomicpoet@evelyn I could scrape a good 90% of the fediverse by simply hooking up a websocket client on the federated feed of mastodon.social.
But that doesn't mean that defederations are not effective. They STILL turn your posts into read-only copies at worst, which will stop the worst of the abuse.
If Threads becomes an active bad actor using scraping to acquire content, bad things can happen to them when people retaliate, with either hostile AP implementations or lawsuits.
Why would they do this, when they can instead just not do so and enjoy the boring people on mastodon.social instead? They won't be hostile, they're used to the shenanigans at this point. Mastodon gGmbH welcomes them with open arms. Why force the other people into the system too? Meta is a company, they care about money.
Scraping at large scale with RSS is also horrendously inefficient. You'd have to send requests for EVERY profile, every time you want to check for new content, which would equal thousands upon thousands, or even millions, of requests every single day.
@privateger@evelyn Yes, there’s many, many reasons to de-federate Threads. I’m not talking about those other reasons.
De-federation, by itself, does not prevent Threads from accessing your public feed. You already imply agreement with me by saying you could scrape a good 90% of the Fediverse.
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