Now that the first official, federated connection from a Fediverse account to a single (!) Meta threads.net account has been made, the Threads topic is boiling up again.
Many of us Fediverse citizens see this as an opportunity for the Fediverse to gain in importance.
At least as many are sceptical about whether we should be exchanging data with Threads at all.
As an instance admin, I'm worried about making a decision that could alienate users on both sides. 😓 🧵
@thomas@binarytango I say this to all instance admins — we are guests in your homes. Each of you should and will do what you believe to be in your own instances’ best interests. Personally I believe that attempting to isolate ourselves from capitalist social media (as opposed to finding some uneasy way to coexist with it while blocking only actual abuse) is short-sighted and doomed to fail. Offering a superior experience to what Threads can, is the way.
@mjf_pro@thomas@binarytango
In waging war against Meta many are forgetting the People.
Threads’ users are almost certainly not as knowledgable about social media challenges, both technical and ethical. I dare say many don’t care. A great way to help them care is to welcome them in with open arms and show them a better way.
I would like to give the decision as to whether data should be exchanged with #threads into the hands of the users.
Unfortunately, there is no direct checkbox in the user settings that prevents the exchange of data with a instance.
But maybe a little pragmatism will help here: perhaps we should see public data/posts for what they are: Public. If you want to share less, you can make use of the "Followers only" function and set your profile so that only accepted users are allowed to follow. 🧵
... This will allow you to take back full control about the destinations of your posts: Just accept follow requests from users who have their profile on servers that you trust. Ignore requests from #threads.net.
Post public information publicly. Post private information in "Followers only" mode. In this case no posts will be transferred to threads.net if you didn't accept any threads.net users as followers beforehand.
@thomas Wie? EIGENVERANTWORTUNG? Das hat ja die letzten Jahre so gut geklappt ;) Aber ich bin bei dir mit der Einstellung. Und jeder, der schon eine eigene Homepage betrieben hat muss sich bewusst sein: Das steht im Internet. Das kann JEDER sehen.
Good post. Mastodon users have a ton of control over how people can interact with them. I think users should be responsible for knowing how Threads will affect them and set their privacy settings.
@thomas That is a good decision for now. De-federating/Blocking will always be an option later, if necessary, and everything we post public is PUBLIC anyway.
That's the thing that's owned by one of those user abusive, privacy invasive companies, right?
I'd block them immediately for their policies and corporate leaders alone, not even considering their awful track record.
You know they're already scraping as much data as they can. Why make it easier?
I'd be actively fighting+blocking them.
Let other instances interoperate with the enemies. Plenty of other instances if people want to get dirty.
@thomas Hi Thomas! Especially for an instance like metalhead.club I think it would be really nice if we could follow band accounts on Threads. With the way connectivity is working now (looks like you can only follow dedicated accounts) I see no issue of Meta abusing Fediverse content or Fediverse (e.g. public timeline) being overwhelmed with Meta content, so we could just wait how it develops ?
A poll would only make sense if you could limit it to the instance, which isn't possible AFAIK
@thomas
Well, I already set my profile the that not everybody can follow but has to send a follow request. So I would have control over followers using threads/ meta.
The only "problem" would be the local timeline as @hannsr said before. I expect many people to keep their toots "followers only". At least I would do this for the majority of my toots although I‘m already careful in regards of personal data.
@thomas honestly I'm conflicted. As a band it makes sense for our posts to be accessible. On the other hand I am deeply concerned by the idea of embrace, extend, extinguish. Overall I feel like federation with threads is very bad for the fediverse indeed. But purely for promotional purposes I feel like it's good for this account personally. I will accept any decision by this instance as a collective as long as my personal account on kolektiva is kept kindly out of meta's grasp.
@thomas I think having information to make informed decisions is a good thing.
When I start thinking about the historical track record of Meta I go back to this TED talk that talks about what Facebook did with Cambridge Analytica
@Kitty@thomas I’m extremely weary of anything Meta related. Unfortunately their data collection policies on iOS doesn’t exactly put my mind at ease in that respect 🫣
@thomas That is what ActivityPub is for, right? we have real control now. There should be data exchange with any platforms that follows the rules, and we as users can decide what we do with the privacy of our account. I will probably have little to none interactions there, but might want to follow some account that could be unique there. ✌️
@thomas I do like your decision. Public data should always be considered public and thus used, and #threads doesn't change anything in this regard.
The argument of protecting data by defederating is weird to me, as this data is already public.
I don't like Meta, so I will stay cautious, but I appreciate that I still have the choice!
@thomas FWIW I personally am okay either way. Not thrilled to have Meta gobbling up my data, but I do understand that some people will want to follow some others on Threads
@thomas I still miss a lot of bigger accounts (be it news outlets or just "popular" people) here to make it my main microblogging-thing and i think something like Threads is the only realistic possibility to integrate such accounts into the fediverse.
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