I have closed my public instance, finecity.social, binned my account there and moved back to mastodon.social. My bots will keep running on calckey.bloonface.com but I won't use that site for anything else any more.
I have fallen out of love with #Mastodon and #fedi in a big way, I don't intend to use it much any more. The past couple of weeks has crystallised that this isn't really a platform I like much.
It's 2026. The Fediverse is tens of thousands of instances, but they don't federate with each other because every single one of them is on a blocklist. Either the one now built into Mastodon, the one created to block the instances using the built-in blocklist because screw those guys, or the "free speech" one built to block both since neither of them are in favor of "free" speech. It's normal, now, to see many Mastodon users having multiple accounts on multiple instances. All talk of politics, religion, and sex is banned on almost all instances participating in a blocklist. Who knows what will start another FediWar, and get that instance attacked by the other side, with denial of service attacks, or swat teams, or anything else to destroy. For talk of politics and such, people now go to BlueSky, or the new Element features for forums. Oh, Matrix is just called Element now because that's basically the only client that works with Matrix version 450.5. Mastodon clients now have a "check in" feature, where you can check up on your friends, or enemies, on other instances. It just takes a username, and pulls an RSS feed from the other person's instance. There's even a "take screenshot" button beside each post, so you can paste it into Discord, or Element, with your friends and gossip about it. There's talk of a mythical server that doesn't have a block list, but FediExplorers still haven't found it.
But the fediverse is now cold, and spiteful, and angry. And alone. Because no one can live among others. No one understands anyone else anymore. It started out so small, and with the best of intentions. And now, for better or worse, social media is broken.
I did the requisite responsible reading about Threads federating, and I decided to domain block them after thinking about it.
Anybody who wants to view my public posts can still view them.
This is mostly an infosec account, and there's AFAIK zero infosec community presence on Threads.
I'm not really interested in helping Threads grow an infosec community presence.
I don't think there's any Mastodon admin ready for the network effects of several million users suddenly joining the network. There is shockingly little discussion about problems like coordinated inauthentic activity, which are going to come at that scale. I'm REALLY not interested in seeing or interacting in any way with chinese state disinformation campaigns lol
Mastodon servers and clients are held together by duct tape and prayers by people in their spare time. Threads is held together by people paid full time salaries at a large multinational corporation. Threads can make a better fediverse app and a better fediverse server than anything that currently exists. I think any future where people start downloading the Threads app as their default client to interact with the fediverse, and where people start using threads.net as their default server, is one that is very dangerous for the existence of the fediverse as a set of interoperable clients and servers built on open standards. I'm doing my part to make this as unappealing and as high friction as possible 🫡
fuck libs of tiktok, and fuck threads which is currently platforming them. The impact of accounts like Libs of TikTok on rolling back LGBTQ rights in the real world is a very good example of why network effects, discoverability, and social media amplification are dangerous.
Thanks to @jerry for letting people on this instance make this choice themselves. Having this kind of choice is a welcome change from other social networks.
A poll: if you're planning on blocking Threads , do you want your posts to federate there so that hate groups can interact with them and Meta can track you?
The way blocking works on Mastodon, if your instance hasn't enabled "authorized fetch", blocking Threads won't actually prevent your posts from federating there if somebody on another instance who hasn't blocked Threads boosts your post. This means that anybody on Threads can still potentially see your posts, including hate groups like Libs of TikTok and Gays Against Groomers. And Meta's privacy policy says they'll use the information to target advertising and improve their products by training AIs. And most large Mastodon instances today haven't turned on authorized fetch.
If you're planning on -- or considering -- blocking Threads, do you still want your posts to federate there?
Apparently not many people believe me when I say that "normal" users using the "block this domain" option, is functionally just a mute....
There's gonna be LOTS of very mad people when they find out for themselves that meta/Threads can still see their posts....😬🤦♂️
To actually block Threads, you have to be on an instance that actually blocks them. As of right now, the biggest instance that blocks Threads is masto.to
So all this talk most of you are doing, means absolutely nothing because the majority of you are still federated....
People who have created a fediverse account for your lab: how did you decide on a server?
We want to share our research updates with a lab account, but there are so many considerations to make regarding moderation, federation, donation, visibility, etc etc 🫨
Użytkownicy #Fediwersum dzielą się na dwa obozy: obóz "Twitter 2.0" i obóz "Małe społeczności".
Pierwszy z nich ceni sobie komunikację pomiędzy różnymi instancjami i oprogramowaniem, zapewniające jak największą docieralność do użytkowników. Drugi obóz stawia na korzystanie z kontroli, na którą pozwala federacyjność - dzięki czemu może zapewnić użytkownikom małych społeczności komfort i poczucie bezpieczeństwa niedostępne na wielkich platformach społecznościowych. Ten podział stoi u podstaw kontrowersji nt. współpracy i komunikacji #Fedi z #Facebookiem.
so misskey.io announced they're introducing a temporary measure against the spambots by ignoring all posts, boosts, replies and whatnot from other instances, UNLESS a user from a different instance is followed by someone on misskey.io
if you wanna maintain communication with misskey.io's users you should make an account from there and follow your main that is on another instance (the announcement itself recommends this method)
And now, to complete the set, please read my infosec blog. This one doesn't go to Never Gonna Give You Up. You may wish it did.
The fediverse is a privacy nightmare, completely independent of anything Meta might or might not do with it, and nobody seems to really want to engage with that.
The same thing that drove me nuts about the BridgyFed/BlueSky bridge discourse also drives me nuts with the Threads discourse. :neofox_what: Why isn't there a fediblock level that lets admins default to suspending a server, but allows users to opt back into federating with them? Is there a technical reason for it?
I really don't think it should've been on the BridgyFed developer to build an opt-in system that rightfully should've already been in Mastodon, the same way I don't think blocking Threads outright is the best solution (granted it's better than openly federating, hence why they're suspended here). Why doesn't Mastodon have a built-in system for letting users opt-in to federating with a server? :confused_dog:
But there are also some important differences! For one thing, we've got the benefit of learning from the XMPP experience. And that's only the tip of the iceberg ...
What do others see as key similarities and differences between the two situations?
💡 Problemem współczesności nie jest #Twitter, lecz #Facebook Dlatego rozwiązaniem nie jest alternatywa do Twittera (Mastodon), lecz alternatywa do Facebooka.
As a server admin, what are the things you would like to know before applying a domain block (and/or a #blocklist), or what kinds of steps would you like to perform?
Some of my thoughts:
How many people would be impacted on our server and theirs?
How significant the impact would be for those impacted?
Apparently there’s more drama? Y’all gotta stop giving them that much power over your lives. They’re sad little dictators with servers not, like, someone or something cool. #fedimeta but also fuck .art
Well, it's only been a few days since Threads announced the ability to turn on Fediverse integration, but I can't help but feel disappointed with the lack of users actually turning it on as of yet...
My instance only knows about 250-300 accounts that have turned on Federation. I know this isn't nearly the full list, but it's obviously going to be limited because of "opt-in" which goes against ActivityPub to the core...😬 🤦♂️
I don’t believe the EEE narrative about Threads federation. The number of #fediverse citizens isn’t large enough to justify the (substantial) investment in Fedi/Masto/ActivityPub interop if the goal is just to bring them to Meta. @mosseri explicitly said that the goal was to enable people to move off Threads and I believe him, because…
Can we just have activitypub:// protocol links the same way we have mailto:// links? :neofox_what: I'm tired of posts opening on their original instance instead of just plunking into my own instance.
I think Jo is singing the song of the canary in the coal mine about #Fediverse surveillance here. If CCP is monitoring queer folks in the Fediverse you know other governments are too. And some will be quieter than others.
i think blocklists should be made publicly available so users-soon-to-be can check them out and make a decision whether they want to join your instance or they're going to lose a half of their contacts during migration
I just joined a themed instance to make an english-speaking alt and when I tried following people from other instances I found out most of instances with people I wanted to follow are suspended. they suspended even Absturztaube and Snowdin Town, pretty decent and comfy instances. I didn't count but the blocklist probably contained hundreds of instances, malicious and decent alike
the blocklist wasn't available before I signed up
yes, you can just delete your account if you review the list right away after signing up but what if you've run the migration proccess and lost most of your followers due to defederation?
yes I'm aware you risk being defederated for not having defederated someone but you handle the same risk if your blocklist isn't available because some admins may think you aren't blocking anyone