We have 2-3 months to compile a Threads block list

It is expected to be 2-3 months before Threads is ready to federate (see link). There will, inevitably, be five different reactions from instances:

  1. Federate regardless (mostly the toxic instances everyone else blocks)
  2. Federate with extreme caution and good preparation (some instances with the resources and remit from their users)
  3. Defederate (wait and see)
  4. Defederate with the intention of staying defederated
  5. Defederate with all Threads-federated instances too

It’s all good. Instances should do what works best for them and people should make their home with the instances that have the moderation policies they want.

In the interests of instances which choose options 2 or 3, perhaps we could start to build a pre-emptive block list for known bad actors on Threads?

I’m not on it but I think a fair few people are? And there are various commentaries which name some of the obvious offenders.

scarabic,

We need to think this through from the standpoint of an instance admin who is trying to figure out how to use Threads to make their instance grow. That’s really the only motivation I can think of to federate with Threads. Otherwise it’s just all downside. As a corporate social media entity, they are entirely opposed to everything Lemmy stands for philosophically, and their scale is a massive threat to the culture and operations of the much smaller fediverse. Why would anyone ever want to federate with them? Because they see it as an opportunity. To ride the dragon, thinking it can be controlled. This is madness. Choice 4 all the way and if it becomes necessary, 5.

jocanib,

The beauty of the Fediverse is you do not need to make everyone else agree with you. It is important that mods know what you want; what you think other people should want is irrelevant.

scarabic,

No, you don’t need to go around making other people agree with you, on the fediverse or anywhere, really.

But if you are going to enter into a mutual risk/benefit relationship with another party, it does help to understand what their motivations are, so you can figure out if they’re going to line up with your own, or lead to conflict.

My post is about trying to understand those parties’ motivations. Not make everyone agree with me.

alteredEnvoy,

From what I gather, EEE only works if:

  1. Fediverse users mass exodus to Threads
  2. Meta extends ActivityPub Standard so much that other FOSS projects couldn’t keep up.

I feel like defederating would not solve 1. If 2 happens, the fediverse would just defederate anyway.

(Ofc we have to think about the privacy risks of federations etc.

lunaticneko,

5, except fully neutral-ground instances (private ones used as personal access points or government instances for example)

jerdle_lemmy,

Choice 2. 5 is ridiculous and more harmful to the fediverse than the worst case of EEE.

CaptObvious,

I frankly prefer options 4-5. There’s no evidence that Facebook will play nice and a lot of historical evidence that they won’t. I want to be on an instance willing to take the nuclear option if it comes to it.

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

Everyone is talking about defederating preemptively because of XMPP and EEE. But the very fact that we know about EEE means that it’s much less likely to succeed.

Zuck is seeing the metaverse crash and burn and he knows he needs to create the next hot new thing before even the boomers left on facebook get bored with it. Twitter crashing and burning is a perfect business opportunity, but he can’t just copy Twitter - it has to be “Twitter, but better”. So, doing what any exec does, he looks for buzzwords and trends to make his new product more exciting. Hence the fediverse.

From Meta’s standpoint, they don’t need the Fediverse. Meta operates at a vastly different scale. Mastodon took 7 years to reach ~10M users - Threads did that in a day or two. My guess is that Zuck is riding on the Fediverse buzzword. I’m sure whatever integration he builds in future will be limited.

TL;DR below:

https://i.imgflip.com/7rt9zi.jpg

DankMemeMachine,

I hate to say it but we already need a better Twitter and Reddit alternative than what the fediverse has to offer, then. Each time a big company comes in, the communities will get thrown into disarray, eat eachother, and generally make the original ‘vision’ of the fediverse smaller and smaller. People will use what is easy, not what is best for their interests (at least for the vast majority). The solution is still open source, community managed and driven content, but it doesn’t look like the fediverse is a long-term answer.

redcalcium,

They already got millions of users. Depending how they’ll implement federation, the sudden influx of millions of unmoderated users into the fediverse might wreak havoc to small instances. So personally, I prefer no. 3, defederate (wait and see).

Obez,

I'm starting to dislike the concept of ActivityPub. It gives power to the admins instead of to the users. Users should be able to decide what servers they connect to and what content they see. I hope another protocol like Nostr becomes more popular.

cakeistheanswer,

When the barrier to entry is technical in nature you get a selection of the competent in that space as your representation. It’s not perfect, but it beats zuck, musk and Huffman.

Deref,

Nostr is the Bitcoiner protocol. It's simple but inflexible and not that censorship resistant (if you don't run your own relay you can lose data). ATP is more like Ethereum, way more complex but you can build actually useful apps with it.

Illecors,

It gives this power to anyone willing to shell out a fiver a month.

Xanvial,

Until your instance defederated from big instances

Illecors,

I mean, if you yourself are your greatest enemy… Not much can be done there.

Madbrad200,
@Madbrad200@lemmy.world avatar

…and the know how to set up and maintain a server, which is beyond most

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

You can also use third party providers like these guys who can set up an activity pub centric website for you.

That looks like a pretty good starting point for people who have just a moderate understanding of servers and websites

redcalcium,

There are hosting companies that offer managed mastodon instances. I assume they might offer managed lemmy instances as well in the future.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Yeah that's something I've not seen discussed here much. I get that people want control, but getting started with an ActivityPub centric site (like kbin) is now cheaper than ever. Get your own cheap hosting on a VPS and handle some traffic.

People can even create their own instances just to federate with everyone and absorb their content if they're worried about the rules and regulations or "x server not connecting with y"

Overall I think it's a pretty good system compared to a single silo like Reddit

Obez,

Except when people choose option 5 from this list and defederate you because of who you are federated with.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

That's one of the most glaring issues I see with activityPub. The Reddit style, I'm going to block you because your follow XYZ sub mentally.

I've got no solution for it besides hiding which places federate with who, but by looking at the content you'd be about to make an educated guess anyway

TheRealBob,
@TheRealBob@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah dude people will absolutely defederate your ass if you federate with bigots or whatever. No one is owed federation or a platform of any kind.

Federation is not a right, it’s a privilege.

jocanib, (edited )

Each individual user, even though others disagree with them?

The only way to organise it so that all users get what they want is to make it easy to move instances. By and large, it is.

TheRealBob,
@TheRealBob@lemmy.world avatar

As an instance admin, lol.

I’m paying for the server. I’m handling all the maintenance, moderation, etc. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m gonna allow nazis or whatever other horrible shit is out there anywhere near my instance. I’m not going to enable bigotry. Fuck that.

Everyone can see my instance’s TOS as well as who I’ve defederated and why. If they don’t like it, they can find another instance. They’re not entitled to an account on mine.

samothtiger,

If 9 regular people sit down with a nazi without protest, you have 10 nazis. Threads will absolutely not stop nazis from posting nazi stuff. We know this because Facebook is full of nazis. Why would anyone want nazis at their table? Because they’re nazis. Anyone who wants to federate with Threads is a nazi. Do you want to federate with nazis? Option 5 is really the only way to keep the nazis away from the table. This is not an exaggeration. There are literal nazis given free reign on Facebook. There will be literal nazis given free reign on Threads. If you don’t stop the nazis because you want to interact with your friends who interact with nazis, you’re enabling nazis. Don’t enable nazis. I can’t stress enough they are literally nazis.

lemmy,
@lemmy@lemmy.stonansh.org avatar

“literally” You might want to google that word.

samothtiger,

Are you saying people who call themselves nazis and wear nazi memorabilia and fly swastikas and are antisemites and think the nazis were the good guys during WWII are not literally nazis? Because I’ve got news for you, buddy. They’re nazis. Literally.

DaDragon,

What does Threads have to do with Nazis? We are talking about the new Twitter competitor from Meta, right?

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Apparently this guy thinks Nazis are everywhere. Almost reminds me of Russian propaganda, Ukraine is full of Nazis we need to go over there and clean house etc.

It sounds like they just don't like people with differing opinions and anyone who doesn't toe the line must be a Nazi or Nazi sympathiser 🙄

samothtiger,

Meta enables nazis. I spelled it out right in my comment step by step. Did you read past the first line?

starlinguk,
starlinguk avatar

I'm really worried that people are this ignorant about Meta/Facebook.

Puffymumpkins,

I get your point, but by the time I finished reading your comment my brain stopped registering nazi as anything more than a series of letters

ninekeysdown, (edited )
@ninekeysdown@lemmy.world avatar

So why is it important to not federate (or block) with Thread? Asking seriously. I read the article and while those are valid and real concerns. What is the net gain of that action? How does it help the fediverse? I cant see any way that it helps and lots of ways it hurts. At this point it seems like a lot of what ifs.

Edit:

If you need the reasons why to block Threads (meta) I think the answers below explain it better than most!

Illecors,

Once federated, an instance get a ton of data about users and their actions. I am not willing to provide that to facebook.

carbotect,

They can get the same information even if defederated. Your profile info is completely public regardless.

CthuluVoIP,

Defederating is a one-way transaction. Any instance that defederates from Threads will only stop themselves from receiving data from it, but Threads will still be able to pull data directly from any and all instances.

Illecors,

With enough instances not federating threads thr data they can get will become spotty.

I understand it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s nothing on threads I want to receive.

CthuluVoIP,

I don’t think that’s true. Unless it’s a server side server denial rather than defederation, all posts on Lemmy are public. This means Threads will directly receive updates even from defederated instances.

Illecors,

Posts are public, yes, but you won’t be able to see a post from an instance you’re not federated with on your own instance. Yes, you can just load the instance url directly, but that’s just web scraping. All voting interactions, views, etc are not available in those cases.

I understand that if we have a setup like this:

<pre style="background-color:#ffffff;">
<span style="color:#323232;">    Threads
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  /         X
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A ----------- B
</span>

then interactions from instance B on a post on instance A will, in fact, be available to Threads. But nothing happening on B will.

Interactions on posts/communities on instance B coming from instance A will not be seen by Threads.

Overall, I think Threads will not actually ever enable federation to begin with, and even if it does - Lemmy is a bit of a different beast compared to Mastodon.

MeetInPotatoes,

CMV: The people who want to receive data from Threads should just…make a freaking Threads account. The whole argument to connect with them at all is weird. It’s like recording a Disney movie to your DVR box and setting up streaming from your smart TV to your tablet so you can now enjoy the movie you recorded in bed…when you could’ve just downloaded the freaking Disney+ app.

It’s also (somehow) like when you’re already in shorts and a t-shirt but still a little warm and someone else wants to turn the A/C off cause they’re cold. They can put on more clothes and be totally comfy, I cannot (politely) take any more clothes off.

nave,

Accessing threads from mastodon is significantly more private than downloading the official app.

ninekeysdown,
@ninekeysdown@lemmy.world avatar

That’s something I had not considered, good to know. I think I need to setup an instance in my lab and do a deep dive into it. Thanks!

gvsabi,

@ninekeysdown @jocanib i would say its because its meta trying to get a foothold on the fediverse and possibly take people away from here. people might just use threads instead of mastodon or lemmy since they can get the content on threads. my take

ninekeysdown, (edited )
@ninekeysdown@lemmy.world avatar

Wouldn’t more people using federated software be a good thing? EEE is a valid concern eg XMPP (GTalk). I’m not sure (not saying it’s impossible) how that would happen in this case. I see it being more like email than XMPP for instance. I could be way too idealistic & optimistic as well

gvsabi,

@ninekeysdown just more people using the fediverse isnt the main goal. or at least my goal. its keeping the stuff foss, privacy respecting, and etc. activity pub allows for federation but what is built on top of it can be proprietary as hell. as is the case of threads. im threatened by threads because its taking away peoples privacy.

ninekeysdown,
@ninekeysdown@lemmy.world avatar

Excellent point that I had not considered. Thanks!

Zaktor,

I don’t think the Fediverse has privacy as a primary feature. If federating is enough to grab some hidden data, it’s a simple matter to set up a small dummy instance to get that access.

ApathyTree,
@ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Basically my understanding of the fear is this:

Meta joins.

Meta makes friends with everyone because they are playing the long con. They act nice to start, play by the rules, etc. nobody thinks they are nefarious.

Meta develops features that users want on top of the existing framework. These features are things everyone actually wants, not what meta wants because meta is hooking people -give them what they want so they use it, then walk it back later, perhaps silently as a “bug” that just never gets “fixed”- perhaps they suppress aspects of the platform, like make the community/individual finding hide the instance it’s on to make it feel more like centralized social media, perhaps they release entirely new features that enhance the experience. Either way, they make small changes because they can, which lowers the experience of those who interact with it because it’s intentionally buggy with FOSS versions. They likely have FOSS versions running so they can test compatibility to make sure they provide a slightly better experience (why wouldn’t they?)

Users join the meta instance for the enhanced features because they don’t actually care about how the fediverse works, they want a seamless experience (which currently the fediverse does not really offer, none of us can say otherwise)

Meta becomes the biggest instances of activity pub, but with enhancements that make other instances super buggy.

Nobody wants to be on the buggy instances so they switch to meta if they don’t care about privacy.

Meta pulls plug. Fediverse dies (they hope) or at least goes back to only being used by the small subset of the population that would never consider the giants to be options. They pulled all the people they could from what already existed.

Now whether or not that’s actually an issue for a platform that actively wants to be “counterculture” (which fedi absolutely does) is yet to be seen… but we already know what meta wants, which is money, and FOSS and money aren’t really compatible. Just on principle. So what meta wants and what they are doing are at odds currently, and I think it’s only a matter of time before they show the hand they have to play.

But I think that’s what the “defederate immediately” group is hoping to prevent. We all joined because we are sick of the hostile takeovers (even if the media companies technically have every right to do so with their own product) and to prevent being beholden to one of the major players. If everyone defederates immediately, meta won’t be able to actually embrace, because they aren’t being embraced back. At that point all they can really do is fork the software, but they would probably scrap it. It’s not exactly a great platform for a company that has their own.

Importantly, why else would they adopt it? What value does free and largely unmonotizeable software actually have for meta? If they wanted to for themselves, they could easily build a Twitter clone. They didn’t. They adopted a free open source platform. Why? What value does that hold for them over just making their own, if they don’t feel threatened by the alternative?

Pandantic,
@Pandantic@lemmy.world avatar

I was thinking, aside from EEE, just getting access to all this free content that they can put their advertisements next to was a major reason for them to join AP.

nekat_emanresu,

People aren’t noticing that they could just release a new app or mode for threads that’s Lemmy like and take our community info as their starting seed data. Tada! They also killed Reddit with the same move that killed twitter. I think meta would want to destroy this style of program more then copy though, so I’m not convinced they will copy a Lemmy app.

DarienGS,

The whole point of the Fediverse is that people can use whatever platform they like to get content from Mastodon, Lemmy etc.

OtakuAltair,

From what I understand, they’re likely trying to kill the fediverse by making it irrelevant (embrace, extend, extinguish) seeing how it’s finally starting to grow, since they can’t just buy it up this time like they’ve always done to competitors.

Even aside from that though, their algorithms designed to retain user attention by any means necessary are definitely going to seep into and poison the fediverse, at least indirectly, if they’re federated.

Not to mention they could easily run ads as normal posts and boost them artificially; they are an ad company after all. Wouldn’t put it past them.

Not federating with them means we don’t have to deal with all that, and the fediverse can just continue to grow naturally as it’s been doing.

Federating on the other hand means a very real risk of permanently halting the fediverse’s growth in favour of corporations’, like Google did to XMPP

ninekeysdown,
@ninekeysdown@lemmy.world avatar

That’s a good point. Would it not make more sense to block/de-federate when they start being bad actors rather than preemptively block? I’m not saying that preparing is bad, I think it’s very much need and valid to assume they will be bad actors. I would like to be wrong and believe that being good hosts is better for their bottom lines. I do not expect them to do anything good because it’s the “right” thing.

mrmanager,
@mrmanager@lemmy.today avatar

These companies are horrible. It’s the right time to block them right now.

OtakuAltair,

If there’s one company you should preemptively block, it’s Facebook. They have a track record of destroying anything and everything they touch and there is zero reason to think it won’t be the same this time. From this post:

They aren’t some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They’re a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:

  • Helping enhance genocides in countries
  • Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
  • Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make “facebook” most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
  • Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
  • Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren’t able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
  • Even now, they’re on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.
ninekeysdown,
@ninekeysdown@lemmy.world avatar

This is the best response I’ve seen. Abso-fucking-lutely made it clear why it’s impossible to trust meta in anyway shape or form. Thanks!

Nerorero,
@Nerorero@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Week 1, the entire global Page is Kylie Jenner pictures

Bradamir,

I don't get this platform. I'm about to just give up on social media altogether.

I just want to know about new games and whatever else that interests me. Why's that so hard.

simple,
simple avatar

You really don't need to care about whatever's happening with Threads as a casual user

artisanrox,
artisanrox avatar

You do need to care as a casual about data miners that would love to sell your info to health insurance companies and crackhead conspiracy theorists.

scarabic,

That’s adulthood. Sorry. You gotta start paying attention to how the sausage gets made, or you may wind up in the sausage.

drspod,

I just want to know about new games and whatever else that interests me. Why’s that so hard.

Then only subscribe to communities related to your interests. This is what I do and I avoid pretty much all the irrelevant stuff that I don’t want to see.

Meta-discussion about the Fediverse will happen in !fediverse since that’s what this community is about.

pulaskiwasright,

4 is honestly my preference. I don’t see the need to defederate from instances that federate with Threads. But I do want to see a list of instances that federate with Threads so I can personally never comment or post there. I don’t like the idea of comments and posts I make being used to generate ad revenue for Facebook.

scarabic,

100%. It boggles my mind that we’re even considering this.

carbotect,

Would be funny, if major instances are choosing option 5, making many communities divided and useless, right before Meta announces, that they don’t plan on federating with Lemmy instances. And that Threads will only federate with Tumblr lol

Seriously tho, how will Threads impact Lemmy anyways? They don’t have communities there, right? Their posts will probably not show up here regardless of federated or defederated, if I understand correctly.

jocanib,

You can follow Lemmy communities from Mastodon.

RxBrad, (edited )

But have you actually tried it? Here’s a sample. Go take a look. (EDIT: My link is worthless unless you are logged in to mas.to. Go look up username fediverse@lemmy.world in your Mastodon client of choice)

It’s a completely unmanageable firehose of comments, spewed only in chronological order.

Honestly, the link between incompatible types of social media like Lemmy and Mastodon could be severed in my opinion, because it’s mostly just novel with little benefit.

Zaktor,

If you’re not on mas.to that link will just collapse back to a lemmy.world view.

RxBrad,

You’re totally right. Edited.

Zaktor,

It looks like you snipped some of your original comment in the process. It just ends mid sentence now.

0x4E4F,
@0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works avatar
  1. Make your own instance, defederate from everyone, make 20 accounts, disable account registration, post from 2 or 3 accounts, upvote from the rest and make conversations.

/j on the 5… cuz it’s a bit extreme.

beneeney,
  1. Get put in a room. A rubber room. A rubber room with rats.
key,
  1. Make rats.world lemmy instance for you and your rat friends.
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