What does defederating from Meta's Threads.net actually accomplish?

Kill_joy, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

From what I have read, I think it's all of the above.

• a space is wanted free from corps, ads, data perversion

• people are fearful that 30 million people joining threads has automatically made it the largest instance. Once it integrates with ActivityPub and can federate, it will dominate the space and produce the majority of the content. People are fearful then meta will retract it/ defederate and take the majority of content and content production with it (EEE). This would effectively kill the fediverse.

• many believe meta will not act in good faith and is doing this to appease European courts and laws

Because of all of this people likely believe keeping threads quarantined right off the bat is the best solution to mitigate the amount of damage they can do to what's already been established.

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Edit: I am adding to this post as I just stumbled across a post from the host of the lemm.ee instance (which I am a big fan of). He has also listed some great cons of Facebook stepping into the fediverse:

-there is nothing stopping facebook from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores which would ensure they end up on the front page of "all" for federated servers
-threads already has more users than all of Lemmy's instances... therefore, they can completely control what the front page looks like by dictating what their users see and vote on
-moderation does not seem like a priority for threads which would increase workload for smaller instances
-REVENUE FOCUSED

I paraphrased a lot of this but as this is getting some traction I wanted to provide additional visibility to the cons of federating with the Facebook.

Venator, 10 months ago

Just to play devil's advocate:
There could be some downsides to defederating it too:

• threads could be a gateway to bring more people into the rest of the fediverse in a user friendly way.

• It might cause the rest of the fediverse outside of threads to be more fragmented if some defedarate it and some don't.

Kill_joy, 10 months ago

Absolutely agree. The optimist in me wants to be excited for what this means and how this could impact the future of, well, the Internet.

But then I remember this is Meta we're taking about. They do not do things that are good for anyone but Meta. As someone who doesn't use meta products, this brings concern.

theterrasque, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I’ve pointed it out a few times, but I think it still bears repeating.

Meta have done a lot of open source development, and in that way you’re using “meta” products daily. They are the people behind React and GraphQL, for example.

React (and React native, also them) is one of the biggest JavaScript frameworks, and GraphQL is an alternative to REST api’s that brings solutions to many problems around REST api’s.

I can almost guarantee you that some of the pages you visit in a day use at least one of those.

They also have a lot of other things. You might have heard of pytorch, a major library for developing and running AI projects.

Just have a look at github.com/facebook and github.com/facebookresearch/

Edit: to clarify, my point is that maybe meta only thinks of itself, but technology wise they do it pretty altruistic and help the related technological communities a lot.

Venator, 10 months ago

They do not do things that are good for anyone but Meta.

They definitely do things selfishly in a way that maximises benefits to meta and ignore any downsides to anyone else, but while thier impact is probably mostly negative, there's some small positive aspects to some things they do, sometimes...

GONADS125, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

This is such a blatantly obvious truth that I’m starting to suspect some users here are astroturfing, peddling this bullshit feigned naivety about the rampant unethical practices of FB/Meta. There’s enough history that we don’t need to question it or give Meta a chance.

I’ve been working on building the !vans community, but I may look into moving it to another instance if lemmy.world doesn’t change their mind on federating with Threads.

Edit: I guess they’ve only stated their plan for Mastodon, which is wait and see.

maltasoron, 10 months ago

Yeah, it feels like everyday there’s a new post asking “HEY GUYS SHOULDNT WE ACTUALLY FEDERATE WITH THREADS?”.

lemmyshmemmy, 10 months ago

Agreed, feels like bots are here pushing for federation with Facebook.

Coelacanth, 10 months ago

Pretty much this, and I’d like to emphasize the part where Threads userbase outnumber the Fediverse 30 to 1 after only one day.

Lemmy is evolving into a very nice place so far because of the type of users it’s attracted, and the fear is that the atmosphere would shift on a dime when the voices here get drowned out by hundreds of millions of commenters from Instagram and Facebook.

70ms, 10 months ago

I started a community to track the H5N1 global outbreak but I do NOT want to moderate it long term; if it picks up, the anti-vax/Plandemic people are going to start showing up (they already do sometimes in the subreddit for it). I feel like opening the doors to Threads is going to hasten that.

p03locke, 10 months ago

A few years ago, Reddit strategically banned two terrible subreddits during one of their shitstorms (the whole AMA firing scandal), just as Voat was getting popular. It turned from a decent community that was starting to grow and challenge Reddit’s presence, to a right-wing extremist cesspool overnight.

You also see this sort of thing happen to subreddits all the time. Some of them go from a good community, and either slowly or quickly, shifts into a much more terrible version of itself. Russian bots/ops have transformed subs to push their own agenda.

The community matters, and how that community evolves matters a great deal. Communities can live or die from massive migrations like this.

Zorque, 10 months ago

Meta taking their ball and going home some time a ways down the road is much less an issue than them dominating content by being there in the first place. They will have their own moderation and content rules that will shape the content that flows out from them, which will shape each community that interacts with it. Considering the very mercenary approach they have to that, it means that content will be far more monetized and monetizable. Which means both sanitization and pandering, neither of which benefits freedom of thought and discussion.

Considering the huge influx of people coming to places like Lemmy or Kbin to escape that kind of situation (reddit), it may mean the death of the community that has grown so far, before Meta even considers leaving.

xcjs, 10 months ago

In addition to what you said, I think additional aspects to consider are the open standards and protocols Facebook/Meta have already abandoned once it became convenient to do so:

• XMPP access for Messenger/Chat
• RSS feeds for any newsfeed source. They even continued to use the RSS badge (which is unofficial as far as I’m aware) for their follow icon even after they removed RSS feeds.

The bare minimum price of Meta’s integration into the Fediverse should be nothing less than the return of those standards, and honestly even that may not be enough.

TwilightVulpine, 10 months ago

People are fearful then meta will retract it/ defederate and take the majority of content with it (EEE). This would effectively kill the fediverse.

I don't see how that could possibly happen. It's not like they can buy the Fediverse. Seems to me far more likely that the Fediverse will be gain interest from people wishing to follow/interact with Meta users without being beholden to Meta and if/when Meta decouples from it again the Fediverse will be larger than before. Sure, some may come and go, but others will find interests outside of Meta.

Like everyone is pointing out, they already will be the largest instance. They are not going to gain that much by trying to trying to absorb the rest of people who are likely in the Fediverse from dissatisfaction with Big Tech and wanting to break free from their algorithms and restrictions.

venia_sil, 10 months ago

. It's not like they can buy the Fediverse.

They don't need to. They only need to buy the admins. And we know that some admins have annouced they are for sale.

TwilightVulpine, 10 months ago

In the Fediverse it's easier to escape that than it would in any other platform.

ZagTheRaccoon, 10 months ago

1. while it will draw more users into the fediverse, nearly all of them will join directly with threads
2. users who would have joined other instances will be parasited to threads as the safest best supported option
3. whatever threads does, other instances will be forced to copy or risk losing feature parity with the most important player in the space.
4. existing users will get accustomed to the content from threads as occupying the dominant super majority of content on the site.

Threads will essentially be the space, with all currently existing communities left as periphery. Which is very bad on it’s own because the decentralized space is no longer decentralized, and in fact is in the hands of Meta.

Meta will eventually wall itself off because not having control of your users social graph is an unnecessary threat. And since they are the space, so they will lose very little by walling off. When they do wall off, the fediverse will have it’s communities deeply intermingled with Meta, and when people lose most of their friends and content to meta walling themselves off - most are going to choose to relocate to meta.

Slowly growing the decentralized space organically is important to avoid this kind of stuff. If we allow someone to become the hyper-dominant instance, the principle of de-federation ceases to matter because they have so much controlling leverage over the users.I do still think this is a good thing, but it’s a complicated good thing that could do more damage. I am very worried that they aren’t starting off federated. That also means their internal community norms will develop isolated from what fediverse has tried to establish.

TwilightVulpine, 10 months ago

I am extremely skeptical of 2 and 3, because it means people who already decided to drop mainstream social media platforms will go back on their decision, and it suggests that people want instances to be more like Meta, rather than for it to function in a user driven way that provides things that Meta will never be willing to offer.

If people can be tempted off of the Fediverse so easily, the problem is not Meta. Keep in mind that right now people are already choosing not to engage with Facebook. I'm not naive to assume that they won't have appeal and influence and dirty tricks. but seems to me like such a complete lack of faith in the Fediverse to assume that if Meta merely exists alongside the ecosystem, it's inevitable that everyone will jump ship. That sounds like what they wanted was a Big Tech-driven platform all along.

I don't think that's right.

Comes to mind also that Mastodon has had many years of headstart. How much of a slow growth does it still need?

ZagTheRaccoon, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Luckily, we’ll find out not too long from now. Hope you’re right.

Kill_joy, 10 months ago

I think you're underestimating evil.

Competition is for losers.

TwilightVulpine, 10 months ago

Nah, I know they are evil, but I also know that there are things people want that they will never provide because they want full control and an advertiser friendly environment.

Like say, where would NSFW artists be more at ease? The Fediverse or an Instagram offshoot? Especially in the wake of Twitter falling apart.

Let's also not overestimate the scheming of tech tycoons are either. I believe Meta is making a blunder and I don't think we should stop them.

NoneOfUrBusiness, 10 months ago

Let's also not overestimate the scheming of tech tycoons are either. I believe Meta is making a blunder and I don't think we should stop them.

You shouldn't underestimate it either. Even if this isn't their intention now, it's something they could easily do whenever they feel like it, and do you really trust Meta to have that power?

TwilightVulpine, 10 months ago

I don't think it's possible to take down decentralized social media unless it fails by itself, unless the ecosystem here is so completely unappealing people decide to get back to all the well known ills and dullness of Facebook.

Even compared to XMPP, it's not the same. Chat programs are a communication tool. Social platforms are communities.

I am not underestimating them, I don't know why this insistence that I must be. I think people are catastrophizing and spelling doom forgetting that we are seeing tech companies fucking up time after another, and also not giving enough credit to the advantages and potential that we have here.

If you think all it takes is peeking over the fence and the Fediverse will fall apart, the maybe it could never be. But I think the interest in something different will only grow now. I believe we can take users out of Meta instead.

Zorque, 10 months ago

Considering pornographic content isn't allowed on threads... not really much choice in that matter.

TwilightVulpine, 10 months ago

That's my point though. There are things that will never find a home under Meta's umbrella, so it cannot just take it all over.

ultrasquid, 10 months ago

Meta are performing what is called an EEE attack (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). Basically, it involves a larger corporation creating a thing that hooks into an open standard, artificially inflating it, slowly adding new, proprietary closed-source features that other members of the open standard cannot use, and eventually removing support for the open standard entirely, forcing other users to enter their walled garden because that's where all the people are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Kurt, 10 months ago

EEE is definitely the SOP, but I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work here. I don’t think there are that many users to steal away from Mastodon et al, compared to how they did with XMPP, for example.

FaceDeer, 10 months ago

Meta are performing what is called an EEE attack (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish).

Large numbers of people are saying that Meta is doing this. And then people are quoting each other saying that, linking to the same article over and over, and whipping themselves up into a frenzy demanding that everyone defederate with anyone who's not defederating with Meta (even though it's not even possible to federate with Meta yet - Threads still hasn't implemented ActivityPub).

It's currently just a big moral panic and I'm awaiting some kind of actual evidence that there's a real problem here.

1chemistdown, 10 months ago

Threads still hasn't implemented ActivityPub

I’m on kbin.social and when I go to /d/threads.net it is very active. I would not be able to go there if they haven’t implemented activitypub and federated.

static, 10 months ago

/d/ is a domain, not an instance

If you look at the activity of https://kbin.social/d/threads.net those are hyperlinks to threads.net

FaceDeer, 10 months ago

Neat, this is news to me. Last I heard they hadn't pulled the trigger on that. The sky doesn't seem to have fallen as a result, yet.

TwilightVulpine, 10 months ago

I'm wondering what they could possibly even Extend in a way that the Fediverse can't keep up? The most they can do is to gatekeep people who are only in their ecosystem, but... they already do that. Whoever is only on Facebook and Instagram is only on Facebook and Instagram, and it didn't stop the Fediverse from existing.

p03locke, 10 months ago

Basically, it involves a larger corporation creating a thing that hooks into an open standard, artificially inflating it, slowly adding new, proprietary closed-source features that other members of the open standard cannot use

While I wish ActivityPub was GPLv3, it is at least under the MPL, and they are going to have a hard time introducing proprietary closed-source features on a communication platform that requires them to share the source code.

Kichae, 10 months ago

Anything that lands on Meta's servers is open for Meta's use, however they see fit. Providing free training data for their algorithms just isn't something everyone here is ok with.

Many of us are here consciously because we're anti-corporate exploitation, not merely because our previous hangout spot fucked around, and Meta is king shit of corporate exploitation, and we want nothing to do with anything that's helping them.

FaceDeer, 10 months ago

Providing free training data for their algorithms just isn't something everyone here is ok with.

Defederating from Meta changes nothing in this regard.

Kichae, 10 months ago

They can take. That doesn't mean we need be ok with giving. Just because they're ok with theft IP doesn't mean we need to be ok with them doing it.

FaceDeer, 10 months ago

What "IP theft"? By using a service built on ActivityPub you are inherently and deliberately broadcasting your posts to the public. Meta has just as much right to read those posts as I do.

BNE, 10 months ago

I’d counterpoint by saying that Meta isn’t a person - up its not really a apples-to-apples comparison here. They’re trying to get in here to make money. Pure and simple. I’d wager we aren’t - we’re here hour community.

Our wants and needs are opposed, that’s why I’m not comfortable with letting them commercialise/monopolise whatever they want - especially somewhere that could offer us a more healthy online experience and upset their business model long term.

etrotta, 10 months ago

If by algorithms you mean things like GPT, all data on the fediverse is effectively public and arguably even easier to be collected than the likes of reddit, and is almost definitely going to be used to train models whenever or not the fediverse federates with threads.
There's still significance in defederating though, specially when it comes to preventing "Embrace, extend, and extinguish"

Kichae, 10 months ago

Being publicly viewable doesn't make it public domain. We each maintain our copyright. Our posts are our personal intellectual property.

We can't stop them from using them, but that doesn't make them theirs, and it doesn't mean we should just hand them over freely.

If they're going to use them, they can at least make the effort to take them.

Teon, 10 months ago

Just a reminder that on Mastodon, you can choose "Block domain..." on a post. So an instance federating with meta can be blocked by the user. It would be nice to have that here on Kbin and/or all the other Fedi platforms.

NorthWestWind, 10 months ago

The mastodon instance I’m on decided to limit threads instead of banning it (decision made by voting). Threads posts will not show up in our timelines, but if we follow an account on threads we can still see them in home timeline. I think this took care of most of the stuff while still being flexible.

valaramech, 10 months ago

Honestly, I feel like the bigger issue is the immense flood of content that's going to pour out of Threads. I'm not sure if many of the self-hosted instances will be able to federate with it and continue to function.

diskmaster23, 10 months ago

What kind of sever requirements are needed?

RxBrad, 10 months ago

This seems like a more viable argument than much of the EEE stuff, in regards to Threads v Mastodon.

But I simply don’t understand the ins-and-outs of how Threads stuff gets federated, and how much toll it would actually put on other servers.

valaramech, 10 months ago

My (limited) understanding of ActivityPub is that it functions on a publish-subscribe model. If you and I both ran instances and federated with each other, every time a message was posted to my instance I'd send a message to you and vice-versa. Now, let's say a new person comes along with their own instance and they want to federate with us, but they have 1000x more users than we do. If we federate with this new instance, we now both have to handle 1000x more traffic.

This is effectively a Denial Of Service attack.

Threads currently (supposedly) has 70 million users. If only 0.001% of those users are interacting with federated content every second, that's still 1000 messages every second. Smaller instances are likely not configured or tuned to handle this level of traffic on top of their existing traffic.

pulaskiwasright, 10 months ago

Facebook can bootstrap their product with federated content made by users who are in the fediverse because they don’t want to support a company like Facebook. By not defederating, you would be helping Facebook every time you post a comment or make a post because you would be giving Facebook free content to further their for-profit goals.

Facebook will also be taking fediverse content and displaying it next to ads.

sauerkraus, 10 months ago

Defederation is one-way. An instance you defederated with still has access to your instances posts.

BananaTrifleViolin, 10 months ago

I'd say the biggest reason is culture and identity. The threadiverse is small at present - about 120k - and the microblogverse is bigger - 8m - but still smaller than the Threads.net 70m already and potential 1bn if meta leverages instagram. Why would a smaller and growing new independent social media platform want to be swamped by a commercial tidal wave? There isn't really a benefit to the independent parts of the Fediverse.

It's better for the independent parts of the fediverse to grow organically, remain independent and grow it's own identity rather than disappear into useless oblivion.

Also if I understand it correctly, the Threads.net is a microblogging site so while they may both use ActivityPub, Lemmy does not support microblog content. For Lemmy, it would mainly be the Lemmy content appearing within Threads.net. Federating with Threads.net is more of an issue for Kbin (which does both Threadiverse and Microblogverse content) and Mastodon (which does Microblogverse content) - the content would be visible in both directions. So for Lemmy it might be a big influx of users so may be manageable, but for Kbin & Mastodon it may also be a flood of content which might not be mangeable. But correct me if I'm wrong on that.

incogtino, 10 months ago

I fully agree. I’ve seen the XMPP EEE analogy used a lot, but I don’t think it is the real objection

We’ve got a nice respectful community, of people who want to see community-driven interaction and sharing succeed - Threads offers nothing we want or need

Tatters, 10 months ago

You said threadiverse a couple of times when I think you meant fediverse.

Eufalconimorph, 10 months ago

They sad threadiverse to distinguish it from the microblogiverse, both are part of the fediverse.

Twitter, Instagram, & Mastodon = microblogging.

Reddit, & Lemmy = threaded discussions.

STUPIDVIPGUY, 10 months ago

Mostly because I don’t like meta and have made a point not to use any of the platforms related to them. I don’t respect them and don’t want their content or their creators to be a part of my fediverse.

JoumanaKayrouz, 10 months ago

Regardless of what they MAY do, let’s take a look at what they HAVE done and ask ourselves if these are actions that are acceptable in our community.

I say that disseminating misinformation and propaganda around elections in the US and elsewhere is bad and fuck ‘em.

GONADS125, 10 months ago

They’ve also carried out experiments manipulating people’s feeds to make them happier or depressed…

Not only did they play a crucial role in election misinformation, but they’re largely responsible for the radicalization and violence in the alt right.

We know they mine/monetize all your data they can…

Fuck FB/Meta/Threads. People are going to bitch about reddit and them simp for Meta? Give me a break…

Boiglenoight, 10 months ago

If I wanted to use Facebook and subject myself to the community that includes, I’d use that. I prefer a less hostile/more thoughtful place, which Lemmy.world is to me. If Threads becomes accessible to Lemmy.world and brings that community within this sphere, I will very likely move on.

AbouBenAdhem, 10 months ago

I think it might accomplish more to wait a few days or hours for them to do something that egregiously violates community standards, then defederate en masse—and use the defederation as an event to draw media attention to their practices.

Kurt, 10 months ago

It would be nice if there was some kind of open Internet code of conduct that could be pointed to as a reason for defederating, which journalists could reference in their coverage.

sauerkraus, 10 months ago

The code reads: moderate your own instance however you like.

Grangle1, 10 months ago

Threads is already 30x bigger than Lemmy and many times bigger than even Mastodon. Mass defederation won’t be making any sort of large media news outlets. We wouldn’t have any sort of significant numbers at that point.

TiffyBelle, 10 months ago

A sense of pride and accomplishment?

jalda, 10 months ago

Afaik, whenever an Activitypub instance has defederated from another it has always had to do with some combination of bad user behavior, poor moderation, and/or spam.

Nope. It is because the admins of the instance have decided to do so. It might be for the reasons you list, for completely different reasons, or for no reason at all.

j4k3, 10 months ago

It is mostly tracking, privacy, and FOSS related. Most of us are here because of a centralized asshat CEO’s actions. The last thing we’re interested in is a guy with a much bigger hat.

Deathsauce, 10 months ago

Unless Vermin Supreme decides to host his own instance on the fedi, I wholeheartedly agree.

Blakerboy777, 10 months ago

As far as privacy and tracking go, can you unpack that a little more? Isn't everything you post on the fediverse totally public to begin with- isn't even already likely that they have spun up servers to test ActivityPub integration with, that have already pulled your fediverse posts? This just seems like a symbolic gesture more than anything.

j4k3, 10 months ago

Yes, my posts can be scraped easily, but not my IP, dwell time, what I voted for and how, what I read or didn’t, who I’ve blocked, the communities I follow, where I came from, what else I am doing, where I went next, fingerprinting my connection, my device sensors, and especially the way I react to suggested content and echo chamber manipulation. All they can do is scrape me saying things like:

“Targeted or general advertising for any product indicates to me that the company paying for the ad makes a low quality product that is over priced to pay for spam marketing. I will always seek out the better priced or better quality alternatives that do not fund advertising like this. I have never click or followed direct marketed advertising, except when it interrupts me in an annoying way. Then I will duplicate the tab, click the ad, go the the landing page, let it load, click a link on the page, and let it sit in the background while I use the old tab to go about my day. I close their tab and automatically wipe all cookies at the end of every browsing session or after leaving the tab open for a few minutes to ensure it costs an order of magnitude more than the ad impression did. I will make sure I cost them a full ad click for pissing me off. I never use my browsing/social media devices to make purchases. They are not even on the same network and VPN.”

Data miners are more than welcome to scrape this post, and show it to all of their advertisers please.

p03locke, 10 months ago

but not my IP, dwell time, what I voted for and how, what I read or didn’t, who I’ve blocked, the communities I follow, where I came from, what else I am doing, where I went next, fingerprinting my connection, my device sensors, and especially the way I react to suggested content and echo chamber manipulation.

You’re under the mistaken impression that lemmy.world actually gives a shit about your privacy. They don’t. One day, they will do the same thing to you that Facebook does to its users. And disconnecting from lemmy.world and signing up to another instance won’t change the data they already have.

Don’t trust Facebook. Don’t trust any of the corpos. Don’t trust Lemmy, Mastadon, KBin servers you log into. If you want privacy, keep that shit to yourself, in your own home, under lock and key.

j4k3, 10 months ago

Drop the tin foil dude, and go touch grass. I’ve been around since this thing was tiny. Lemmy isn’t even relevant in what you just ranted. Ruud seems like a good guy to me. He hosts this. It is hosted on a cloud server. I’m sure that service is probably collecting data, just like others are doing on several layers of the internet. This place just makes it a good bit harder and more aggregated. Everyone is not out to get you. Like Ruud hosts a bunch of federated servers. His ability to scale as this place grew is impressive. The guy is a mod in the Self Hosted community and as best I can tell, his priorities align well with my own. Maybe they don’t align with yours. I’m okay with that. My priorities don’t align with reddit, that is why I came here. Maybe there is a better place. I hope you find your place. Please don’t troll me with poorly informed ranting and paranoia.

vegetaaaaaaa, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

what I voted for and how

I think you’re mistaken, as far as I understand, any server that federates with your home lemmy instance has access to what posts/comments you’ve up/downvoted: lemmy.world/comment/704895

This by itself makes it very easy for “malicious” server operators to profile users.

kbin makes it very clear through the /votes/up /votes/down pages attached to each post/comment - lemmy doesn’t show this information in the UI, but you can get it easily by federating your own server with the instance of the user you want to profile.

Agree with the rest.