I have threads silenced on Infosec.exchange, .town, and fedia.social. That means people here won’t see stuff from threads, but you have the option to follow and interact or outright block the threads instance.
There are some, though, that are hyper opposed and not finding that to be sufficient. Hypothetically speaking, if I were to create another instance that did hard block threads (activitypub, DNS, firewall, etc), would what would be the type of instance would you like to see?
@jerry Personally, I think the whole thing is insane. We have a ton of control over our accounts already. If folks are really that opposed, they can go stand up their own systems.
You bend over backwards already keeping this running. I wouldn't want to add more to your load.
@SpaceLifeForm@skydog perhaps. Our bandwidth costs are a function of how many active users we have on our instance, rather than how many are on other instances. I am not going to be too upset if we gain a lot of new accounts, so long as they are well behaved.
I do not trust the for-profit, manipulative data-suckers. I would prefer an atomic firewall to keep them out.
I simply have zero trust they won't try to kill Mastodon if they can't absorb/co-opt it.
I fired fb because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
I fired twitter when all the hate groups and trolls began oozing back after the "free speech champion" welcomed them.
My fury is not with you (and I regret anyone who would attack you for seeking input and offering options); my fury is aimed squarely at those social media sites that are undermining our democracy with their greed, dishonesty, and collusion with our adversaries.
@jerry there is no "I don't care and like the option to choose myself (to follow threads)"-option, but I don't care and like the option to choose myself (to follow threads).
I think you found the perfect spot with just silencing them.
@jerry How large is this hyper opposed group? I think what you’ve done is actually best of both worlds. The rampant and immediate hyper criticality is the type of thing that makes mastodon terrible IMO and makes it less valuable as a whole.
@theomegabit well, I have already seen a noticeable drop in members and people are cancelling donations left and right, so it’s substantial, however it’ll be sorted out soon enough after they’re gone.
This maximizes user choice. People who want it, have it. People who don't want it, they can simply not have it. I see this as the best possible outcome.
I also see a guide to individually block threads, not sure how well that works.
I am from a country where threads has taken off a little, and I'd rather be with them, than without.
@jerry i dont want to give my private data to facebook or twitter so i dont participate there, but the fact of the matter is a LOT of police/fire departments/government agencies will only post on extremely popular platforms like threads or twitter. I would love to be able to interact with these organizations and get their timely updates while not being forced to feed the facebook/twitter marketing machines
@ajsta ok, that is what's happening.
I was going to wait till morning, but I know I'll wake up to an angry mob.
The issue is that when infosec.exchange (and some other instances like mastodon.social) make a connection to threads.net, threads.net is responding with content from instagram.com. The IP we are connecting doesn't seem to be responding as threads.net, which is what causes the TLS error. Even if the TLS cert weren't an issue, the application running on the threads.net endpoint we connect to wouldn't be able to service the API call to resolve the user.
I have no idea why, other than that they've done something to prevent us from connecting.
I see in Kevin's post, that he sends a "hi" to the threads.net account - my understanding is that the federation for now is one way - making it more like one of the twitter reposters - we can subscribe, but any replies or messages sent to the account goes into the bit bucket.
there was no intentional gating or blocking or selective allowing of an instance. a fix got deployed and things should be working now for the accounts that are allowed to be visible through webfinger.
@ajsta actually I am seeing the same thing now that I understand it what you were saying. I don’t really know why that is happening. I have a feeling it relates to the reason that looking up the account is throwing an error. @GossiTheDog
@jerry so, I can you my hopes and plan were to be able to be an infosec.exchange user who could interact with threads and its users. If that (meaning the chance) goes away, I’ll probably choose threads and just let this go dormant.
FWIW, I think a lot of people who are taking what they feel is a moral high ground about not federating with Meta are instead are digital equivalents of NIMBYs who are going to doom the Fediverse to obscurity, and in a few years we’ll be making “is this the year of the Fediverse!” jokes like we do with Linux desktops.
@jerry I find your response to this discourse to be the most sane/rational. It gives users some protection while also allowing for the dust to settle before making a formal decision regarding federation with Threads.
I imagine most, if not all of the flak you'll be getting will be from people who are quite firmly on either the "Pro-Threads" or "Anti-Threads" side. The former will say you're a gatekeeping elitist for not openly embracing Meta while the latter will say you sold your users, and by extension, the Fediverse out to Meta/Big Tech.
Wait until the latter hears about how much corporate involvement there is with the Linux kernel and how it's still alive and well despite that.
@WaddlingFungus thanks for that, and you’re right. I am already getting a fair amount of anger for not taking a firm stance one way or the other. I expect that will continue.
@jerry Good luck. I hope to hear what you end up doing. I've not done anything here. But that's because I'm pretty firmly in the perspective of allow stuff to be reported before taking action. But it's harder to justify that if you're a bigger instance. You can't keep on top of that.
@jigmedatse every time Threads federation is in the news, I have dozens/hundreds of people demanding to know what I’m going to do. Some threaten to leave if I block them, others threaten to leave if I don’t block them.
@jerry Honestly, any instance that federates with Meta I want no part of, including this one, and that sucks, but at some point we need to have the guts to take a stand for what is right and not tip-toe around doing it.
I'd rather be in a smaller community that shares the same ethics and ideals I do, than one that rationalizes operating with evil.
@jerry I think open access to information and choice are important principles. If users want to access Threads, they should be able to do that. If users want to block the instance at an account level, then they are currently able to perform that action.
Silencing Threads or setting up a separate instance undermines these principles. While “yeeting Threads into the sun” is personally satisfying, I am not sure it is warranted unless Meta performs actions that undermine or are hostile to the Fediverse.
I’m personally not aware of Threads having much to offer for the InfoSec community. It’s possible that its presence will go completely unnoticed for users of this instance.
@jerry I don’t think large-scale blocking them is beneficial, but I know I’m in a very tiny minority. I vote for whatever gives you the most fun and the least amount of headaches. If it involves yeeting anything into the sun, I require video proof.
@geekgrrl@doboprobodyne indeed. It’s a whole different animal, as compared to Mastodon. There is some ability to interact back and forth, but it’s limited.
@jerry as someone in the "wait and see" camp, the current plan of record seems fine to me (and I'm not even mildly disappointed, like you mentioned in another fork 😆)
@jerry Keep on doing what you did, maybe make a notification for new members about the blocks with a tip on how to follow. I like the lack of noise personally...
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