[POLL] (Part 1 of 2— if you vote in one poll please vote in the other— if you boost one poll please boost the other)
How do you, personally, feel about an app owned by the company that calls itself "Meta" (the operators of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and now "Threads") soon federating with "Mastodon"/"The ActivityPub Fediverse"?
@mcc threads voluntarily hosts and promotes alt right accounts, so even if I was not very enthused about it is already against most mastodon servers' rules. We don't federate gab, why should we federate gab adjacent?
@mcc yeah, I have no intention of signing up for Threads. Instead, I will follow the organizations/journos that inevitably setup there from here, then enable approve follow requests and block anyone from Threads. It's going to be a read-only relationship.
@mcc indeed, this makes total sense to me. While we talk about twitter refuges, many on Twitter had originally been fb refugees, and many who came here directly probably also had been fb/meta avoiders. It's like electing an Allende, and then having Kissinger show up on your doorstep. You don't know what he will do, but you know it will not be good.
@mcc 100% the case for me. Automattic has proven to be a helpful partner in improving the web as a whole. Can't imagine many people feel the same about Meta.
@mcc#federation does not force any user to anything. It just offers the option for each user to decide for themselves whom they want to interact with, instead of being limited by technical interoperability limitations. I see only upsides, no downsides.
@SallyStrange@mcc This would be indeed a big problen, and defederation would be the ultimate answer. But let's see, it obviously depends on the moderation policies and practice of #threads. I think there are indications that they will work on preventing the worst, simply because growths requires making preople feel welcome. But let's see.
@folkerschamel@SallyStrange Facebook was an unfriendly, unsafe place for trans people and therefore occam's razor suggests Threads will be an unfriendly, unsafe place for trans people as well, especially considering the parent culture's level of trans tolerance has decreased over the last ten years
@mcc@folkerschamel
If someone needs more evidence than "Libs of Tik Tok is allowed to post there" to conclude that the moderation policies are going to be hostile to trans and gay people, then I don't know what to say.
Assuming they follow through with the #activitypub integration, the good thing for influencers is that they can have a reach into the huge number of users of #threads while building and owning their follower list on #mastodon. In the worst case they can simply cut #threads off. On #twitter you are locked in, you don't own your follower list.
@folkerschamel@mcc What are you waiting to see? What evidence would convince you that Facebook/Meta do not have moderation policies adequate to protect LGBTQIA+ people?
@SallyStrange@mcc Personally I think that good media like #cnn.com and co do good reporting on what's going on on social media, including more broad and deep analysis, not only based on personal anecdotes which I don't have since I don't use these platforms. I'm a big fan of quality second sources. You are also contributing to it.🙂
@folkerschamel@mcc That's a list of potential ways to obtain evidence. My question was, what kind of evidence would convince you that LGBTQIA+ are/will be unsafe on Threads or on instances federated with Threads? Are you currently convinced that Facebook is unsafe for LGBTQIA+ people?
@SallyStrange@mcc You are a stranger to me, but nevertheless your judgement is contributing to me forming a opinion.🙂 But very strong evidence would be for example a #cnn or #cbsnews article quoting a reputable scientist having done a study. As has happened for example about #twitter.
You may be right and it may be necessary to defederate. Maybe not. I'm only saying for me personally let's see. Because I also see the chsnce for a lot of positive outcomes, e.g. fulfilling a #fediverse .
@folkerschamel@SallyStrange@mcc if your metric for the validity of any piece of evidence is if it's featured on #CNN and #CBSNews, of all places, you're too privileged and far gone to have any opinion of you taken seriously.
This is "I'm 14 and I'm a skeptic!" level of discourse.
The funding apparatus for doing such studies is underdeveloped and biased against queer people, Black people, and other marginalized identities
This is called "hyperskepticism," where a person avoids assimilating knowledge that undermines their biases by setting the evidential bar unreasonably high.
I am right and it will be necessary to defederate, unless a lot of things change, in a big way, and quickly.
@folkerschamel@CynAq@mcc 1. Fair point--I was thinking of traditional social sciences type of studies which involve more than downloading scads of data from Twitter and then sorting through it. But then why haven't you availed yourself of any of those studies in order to answer the question you previously ignored: do you think Meta/Facebook do an adequate job moderating hate and incitement currently?
2. How could you possibly discern whether institutional science has biases when you've made institutional science your sole source of knowledge?
@SallyStrange@CynAq@mcc I don't have enough ingormstion about #meta and #Facebook to have a solid view on their content moderation. But from what I've read so far it seems to be significantly better than #twitter. Good science can be identified by various means: the methodologies, peer review, secondary sources and much more. It's not a catchword one sentence issue. Also noting that of course institutional science is not my only source of knowledge.
@folkerschamel@CynAq@mcc You don't care about this topic except as an abstract intellectual exercise. There's no scientific evidence for justice being preferable to injustice, after all.
@CynAq@mcc@SallyStrange My main point was that scientific research is (usually) a more sound source of information than first impressions and anecdotal stories. The latter can make you feel good, while the former provides you more solid information.
@folkerschamel@mcc@SallyStrange I know what scientific research does. I'm a published material science researcher myself (if you check my bio, it'll say master's. I left my PhD program before I got my degree because of my ADHD related burnout but I kept publishing while I was in it).
That's not the point though. Why bring non-scientific, for profit news corporations into the mix when talking about validity of evidence? Even scientific research must be read in context, taking into account the conflicts of interest of the authors, the funding body of the research, (if possible) the personal political background of the researcher as well as their publishing history, and this is for physical sciences with infinitely more re-testable data and far less ambiguity in interpretation compared to social sciences. With social sciences, it's imperative that you consider the authors' biases against yours within the sociopolitical context it's published in.
When you suggest outright profit motivated organizations with a history of disinformation in service of imperialist agendas as the arbiter of authenticity in scientific research, I'm not gonna take you seriously, and that's the most generous I'm possibly being. On a less good day, it would be an auto block from me.
@CynAq@mcc@SallyStrange I read a lot of scientific publications, but realistically I cannot keep track and judge of all of them, especially in areas which are not my expertise. So I rely on trustworthy secondary sources like good media. Nothing is perfect, but this approach is much more solid than the mentioned subjective feelings and anecdotal information.
“Users on Facebook experienced the highest percentage of online harassment. About 75% of those who experienced online harassment reported at least some of that harassment occurred on Facebook.”
Literally the number one corporate social media site for harassment of LGBT people. Though that study was before Musk Nazified Twitter, so they’re probably only number two now.
Unfortunately #mastodon and #threads are not included. #instagram and #facebook are the safest (or least unsafe) of the (largest) social media sites included. As you suspected and as expected #twitter decreased significantly.
@SallyStrange@skotchygut@mcc I don't care about influences specifically, and personally I'm not so much a social media users, but obviously social media are core element of our #society, so I think it's interesting to think about how people can use it in different ways, and what the consequences are.
@mcc That is absolutely how I landed on it. I was very willing to learn that Actually, Tumblr Is Just As Bad, and my reaction to that would be 'okay, cool, so no tumblr either.'
But facebook are a very clear, precedented bad actor who cannot be trusted.
@mcc this is what I've been trying to explain to every Facebook enthusiast claiming that the injections to P92 were just due to “corp hate”: while there's definitely users that will object to any corporate presence (heck, some even reject other users simply for being professionals), there's a huge difference between a know bad actor with decades of history of horrible privacy and moderation practices, and a company known for bolstering and supporting the open web.
@elmuerte It's interesting that the only real defense I've seen of Threads isn't even "they won't bait and switch" but rather "when they bait and switch, it won't actually have the ability to really harm us"
@mcc I think we should be distrustful of any for-profit social media corporation joining the Fediverse. While I certainly have more ambivalent feelings towards Tumblr than Meta, the former has taken profit-motivated action against its own community in the past. Corporations will always act in their own self interest, even if it means acting against the interests of the people. The Fediverse can protect itself against such action by refusing to federate with them.
@mcc All trust placed in for-profit companies is folly. In this case, apparently Tumblr wins the marketing game, because it manages to appear (at least to this audience) as warm and fuzzy and trustworthy, by virtue of having had fewer controversies so far, or simply not being the obvious evil that is facebook. We're at the point where not being as bad as facebook earns you trust.
@mcc makes perfect sense to me. Tumblr in Automattic's hands has shown a commitment to working for the remaining community there, which shows they're trying to be good actors. They show they're worth federating with. Meta has never shown atonement for any of their myriad sins without being taken to court or legally regulated to do so.
@mcc Yeah. I feel like this kinda mentality is more harmful to the Fediverse than it is good, because we're overlooking the net positive that literally owning your data while still being able to communicate with less techy people in the same way is.
Most people (wider audience) don't wanna follow Joe Bloggs who they found from a blog post with a Mastodon link on, they wanna follow their favourite content creator or something. Wider adoption is good because it invites innovation. :)
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