I piss off people who pander to #Meta and believe every server on the Fediverse should federate with #P92 (a.k.a., #Threads) since, you know, notmeta.social won’t be doing that.
And I piss off the HOA of the Fediverse by suggesting we should have lobby servers that help Meta users migrate off of Meta.
But it’s fine if some people get upset. Not everyone will be happy in this situation.
Honestly? #Mastodon really loves talking about Mastodon and it's underwhelming in a way that it makes you question why you are even there in the first place.
What does this place offer me other than connecting with complete strangers who happen to have used the same hashtags as me? It feels... pointless.
I was very keen on embracing this platform, I adore the idea of the #Fediverse but it's been a very lonely and frustrating experience because, I'll be straight:
I set up my own instance in anticipation of #Threads, so that I could free my social graph from #Meta. This was my whole strategy. "Why would you want to do that?" you may ask. Well, I actually know people in real life who also use the internet and I want to connect with them. That's the whole point of all of this!
About the question of "Meta forcing their moderation rules" onto the fediverse. (which would imply no NSFW). This is not an argument to defederate from them prehentively.
(this is speculation we DO NOT KNOW what meta is planning)
My advice would be: DO NOT change your moderation rules. If meta cannot block posts that are explicitly marked as NSFW that’s THEIR fault.
And if they block you, let them block you. It tells a VERY different story to the press and observers if Meta blocks half of the fediverse because of NSFW content VS Half of the fediverse blocking Meta for no apparent reasons. (I now your reasons, but the journalists don’t)
Never stop posting NSFW. That’s one of the things that make us better than scared-of-a-single-nipple-on-artistic-photography instagram.
Imagine the story from the viewpoint of instagram users: "So you mean that there is NSFW stuff out there and meta is blocking it from me? Then I can just create a mastodon account and enjoy NSFW stuff there". VS "what a bunch of unwelcoming folks blocking Threads before it even launch"
People always tell you that evil turns upon itself.
That always seemed like some Disney movie shit.
Ever since my father went to war in Iraq in 1991 and I didn't know if I'd ever see him again for nine months--where my Mom physically wasted away in stress and grief--let's just say I take war very personally.
To me, the children of soldiers aren't invisible. The crying spouses as they leave aren't just good theater.
They are me.
They were my family.
So anyone that would voluntarily start a war of aggression, earns my greatest contempt.
(And yes, that includes my own country, and why George W. Bush gets to live out his live making paintings instead of apologizing for the rest of his miserable life to all the war orphans--but I digress)
@oliphant my 13 year old and I just watched #Threads and I had to explain a lot to him (I'm 57), so, yeah, I feel you and #gwb can asolutely burn in hell for his war mongering existence.
@alexeheath Very interesting. This will raise more concerns in the #Fediverse. #Threads will initially only import posts but it won't let anything out — that's hardly "federating". They just equipped the thing with an #ActivityPub ingester, that's it. Thanks for the detailed reporting!
Also, from what I read Threads (assuming Facebook calls it that) will be decentralized, as in other companies will be able to install the software upon their own servers. The only requirement is an Instagram login account (I do not think the software will be open source).
This is one of the reasons why blocking will be futile in the long run. It’s why I believe engaging with people on Threads & convincing them to join the greater Fediverse is a better long term strategy.
I plan on using this opportunity to convince many of my friends & family to consider options like Misskey & Pixelfed (Mastodon too, but some have tried that & were not happy—I will reintroduce Mastodon to them again).
I believe the reason most large instances will not block is that their community will not be thrilled that they can not communicate with their relatives on Threads. Most people have great relations with their family & many in the Fediverse (myself included) are on big social platforms because our friends & family are on there.
But in the end we will have to wait & see when Instagram launches Threads.
This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance
@jherazob I care more about the effects than intent in this case.
#Meta's #Threads / #Barcelona / #Project92 doesn't have the ability to do anything actually negative to the #Fediverse except potentially overload small instances with a flood of traffic.
I don't get the fearmongering; lots of talk about "breaking the #Fediverse" coming from people who aren't really doing a good job of articulating how exactly a new #Fediverse software--because that's all this is at the end of the day--will break an entire network of software that already works with each other.
> Lemmy is small so it gets more feature requests than it can code up.
Why? From who? Are a lot of #Meta users who are on #Project92 / #Barcelona / #Threadsreally going to be submitting feature requests for a software that they don't use?
> Meta comes in and looks at the most requested feature that’s been put on lemmy's backlog. Let’s say it’s some mod tool. Maybe even AI mod tool that sorts comments based on sentiment analysis.
What are the chances that this is something so significant that people would be willing to switch software over it?
> use lemmy and face flood of trolls in their communities
Where are these users coming from? This is already a problem on the #Fediverse, and we already know how to deal with it.
This scenario you're pitching seems wildly implausible.
That said, the good thing about Meta joining the #Fediverse is that it might inspire other major players (#Facebook, #Instagram, #Youtube, #Tiktok, maybe #Twitter) to join (albeit partially—as in allow people to follow accounts but not interact).
I was hesitant to add anything to all the Meta talk because honestly this place is just people complaining about Twitter and complaining about Meta
BUT I have one important thing to add that no-one seems to be saying?
If your instance decides not to block Meta straight away, ** you are free to block Meta’s instance yourself, so you can stay where you are and Meta won’t ever bother you **
Do people not know this? Why all the harassing of instance owners when the power is in your hands?!
I've read that some users are vowing to leave the #Fediverse because they are on a server that has agreed to federate with #Meta's #Threads app, or they're on a server that has not made their position clear on whether they'll federate with Meta.
I'd recommend reading https://fedipact.online to find 418 servers that have pledged to block Meta you can migrate to, though not all are open for registration. Among the biggest are pixelfed.social, mastodon.nl, mastodon.art, pixelfed.de, and others!
Ideally I’d say I (and IMO the average user) might want to be in the middle group aka "I want to connect with my friends and family but I don’t want trolls in my replies."
But I don’t mind making an alt-account in the first group, I already have an Instagram account it cannot be worse than being on the actual platform. What’s great is that the second part of our handle is a literal advertisement. I’ll interact the hell out of meta users and show off my cool handle (bonus points if I can find a very funny domain name).
I will also subscribe to the actual Threads with my actual instagram account as soon as I can. Why? Not to create content for meta, but because I like trying new stuff, being an early users and reporting back here. The same I do for Bluesky.
Of course that doesn’t mean that I support Meta. Meta is an adversary to the community-led fediverse. There is a choice to make between safety and connectivity with friends, there are multiple strategy to get people off meta and onto the fediverse. There are a lot of in-fighting here and disagreements.
But the simple truth is that no one likes meta, they have no ally here.
I think it makes way more sense to see how Meta's participation plays out in practice, rather than immediately jump to most extreme possible response.
I believe that wandering.shop is here for our users, and if our users want to connect with their friends and fam on Meta, then I believe we should give that system a chance.
Feels like the part of Mastodon that was obsessed about twitter's demise is now obsessed about killing Meta's ActivityPub project.
I just enjoy using Mastodon. I don't care what Twitter is doing, I don't care what Meta is doing. If they want to join us on ActivityPub, then feel free. It's an open-standard for a reason.
Many of those I see arguing against defed'ing #P92 argue that staying federated will allow people to be attracted away from the #Meta-based solution onto the rest of the #Fediverse.
...but IIRC I've only seen a few people mention that it's already possible for people to be attracted away without needing to federate with them at all. Everybody here who wants to help people leave P92, just create accounts there and link them to #Fedi servers, just like with :birdsite: :thonking:
...after all, #P92 / #Threads is a new app, and apparently people will have to sign up for it separately. Why not just get a few #Fedi stalwarts on there and tell people "hey, want to remove the ads without a premium subscription?"
They've just signed up for a new account anyway, if they don't like it, they might be tempted to try a second, right? 🤷
Yet another question people are asking me: "How can I, a common person, help hasten the demise of #Meta through #ActivityPub?"
Again, I want to re-emphasize this. #Fediblock is not an all-purpose tool. It's useful as a hammer. But in this scenario, we don't just need a hammer. We need drills, pliers, saws, and blowtorches.
That said, we must protect communities that choose to defederate from Meta. Which means that if those servers don't want to receive messages from any Meta-owned services, we must not only be respectful of that, we should make damn sure that those servers are quarantined from Meta. So much of the success of fighting Meta will require safe spaces from Meta.
The next thing we need is lots and lots of nodes. Currently, we only have ~25,000 nodes on the Fediverse but we need more. Preferably, these nodes should be small, agile, and well-moderated. If you have the finances and/or skill to run a node, it's important that you do so. To compete with Meta, we need to build scale -- and the easiest way to build scale is by adding more nodes to the Fediverse.
What will also be key is lobby servers. These will be servers specifically set up for migrants from Meta-owned services to help onboard them towards the rest of the Fediverse. To run such a lobby server, they need to be welcoming, moderated well, and free of the elitists and gatekeepers that poison so much of the Fediverse currently.
How to get people from Meta to try out the rest of the Fediverse? We need people willing to be ambassadors on #P92 who are ready and willing to evangelize the rest of the Fediverse. Folks like @tchambers are very good at this on Twitter, and I have no doubt that we can do the same with P92. Except this time we'll have the benefit of federation already happening 😉
Now if there's one thing I've learned about the growth of the Fediverse it's that bad corporate decisions pay dividends. We've already experienced waves of migration from Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit. And I have no doubt that it's only a matter of time before Meta makes another corporate mistake -- as they tend to do.
In which case, we need to strike fast. When another Cambridge Analytica happens, we need to remind everyone on Meta about the lobby servers that are on standby, and ready to take them on. Unlike previous migrations, let's not be unprepared for this. Let's be especially prepared since Meta plans to join the Fediverse.
Finally, we need more devs. Specifically, we need devs willing to build innovative server and client software that takes aim at Meta. And to do that, we need to support the devs that currently exist -- show evergreen devs pondering whether they should invest here that we, as a community, are appreciative of our current devs.
If you like #Mastodon, #Calckey, #Kbin, #Friendica, etc., it's important that you open up your hearts as well as your wallets and fund the next stage of Fediverse development.
This will take a lot of work. But if you want to fight Meta, challenge their dominance of social media, this is what must be done.
Personally, I'm hyped about the future of the Fediverse -- regardless of whether Meta eventually lives to tell the tale.
How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) (ploum.net)
This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance