Even though it was a proprietary solution (with an open source base), I really miss #GigaBlast - last I checked there was still no word on why it went offline about a year ago.
More than anything, the following isn't any sort of treatise on threads itself. In fact, Threads is largely irrelevant - this is an impeachment on the state of the (deprecated, monolithic silo) mentality that is somewhat pervasive in the Fediverse: That you switch one Satan for another Satan. You swap out #Sunnyvale_Syndrome silos managed by people who in no way have your best interests in mind for some masto admin you don't know anything about, regardless of their stated mission.
You're not consulted, at all, about blocks and mutes of remote users and domains (instances) that you may or may not have interests in following, connecting with, or otherwise engage. Such is indeed the prerogative of the instance admin and their so-called staff members, and truth be told, all without due consideration of your particular feelings.
A couple of notions, ...
First, Fediverse development is in a state where you can choose to migrate your account elsewhere - well, not really the history of your posts, includng graphics, etc., intact, but certainly, your follows and followers lists. Masto no longer can monopolize on keeping you put and under the thumb of what could very well be eventually revealed as some, immature, juvenile, tyrannical despot who wears the clothes of some benevolent dictator as their disguise.
Next, even with respect to the most feature complete platforms, you easily can self-host the most comprehensive amongst those - if you can install a WordPress Website, then you can install a Hubzilla or Friendica Server. You can invite your friends and family, or just leave it as a single-user instance.
If you do that, no one can tell you what is appropriate - it's your world. You make your own rules. you decide what and who you want to see and allow through your machine - Want Threads? kewl. Don't want to interact with the big bad zuckerberg wolf? Kewl - block it. It's your world.
Similarly, and I cover this often, there's no real community in selecting an existing server to join. Sure, you can choose to only watch the "local" stream, revealing just how limited and how little in common you share with most of those folks, or you can build your own streams by following the things that interest you and allow people to connect with you on your own terms. The community you have, is always ultimately going to be the community you build for yourself - not some recommended antennae designed by some admin on a Misskey fork that purports to know what you want.
Some added benefits of Hubzilla and Friendica instances are built in interoperability with other Fediverse network protocols. No, Threads is not one of those. Threads is ActivityPub. I'm talking about native communication between your account and Bluesky, or Diaspora - two very vibrant and active networks of Fediverse instances that don't even speak the same language as the old, feature starved masto platform.
I'll also post real quick, just a mention (with links this time, I've been asked to always do this) of single-user-by-design Fediverse platforms you might find quite to your liking. They vary in features and even the bells and whistles that their respective developers felt that they wanted to address, but the basic functionality is there - again, you decide for yourself what sort of community you want and what kind of blocks or mutes at the domain or user level you're interested in.
Now, let me just say, smolweb, instead of single-user Fediverse platforms, because as suitable as they are for self-hosting (often in your home on an old laptop or Raspberry Pi) as single-user instances, that doesn't have to strictly be the case with some of these:
I'm going to keep this short enough to put the emphasis on the boost of my previous post below - the important concept being that in coming to the Fediverse, it is you, who should be in charge of what and who you interact with, and not somebody else who (as evidenced recently) will pull the rug out from under you and tell you what you can and cannot do, who you can and cannot talk to, or worse than all of that, ... Will judge you.
You shouldn't take that kind of shit from anybody. You be you. You're fine just the way you are :)
> On any online space, you should consider who you give power to. Who has the control over who you choose to associate with?
I concur 100% with this assertion.
> All that the instances who sign the fedipact are doing is signalling to some of us that somewhere is safe for folk who don't want to engage with Facebook at all.
I don't think that's all, and actually, What those instances may (inadvertently) be signalling is that they will take it upon themselves to remove the Freedom of Association from the user themselves, without prior expectation or consultation.
I don't know where "Freedom of Speech" entered the conversation, but the notion of "Freedom of Association" has indeed been taken from those who have chosen to excercise those privileges belonging to the users themselves. Waking up and realizing that you can no longer communicate and share recipes with grandma, without evern having been consulted, is an affront to the Freedom of Association - it's inclusive of an even larger issue surrounding the reasons that *smolweb and single-user and self-hosted platforms are protective of such principles Freedom of Association.
Further, it serves to create an environment (especially when so many platforms now support migration ingress) where one's Fediverse accounts are considered ever more transient, as the realization that having an account on a silo based Fediverse instance is the antipathy of #Fediverse and #DeSoc philosophies.
It also erodes the trust between the average user and administrators that you thought you could entrust with respecting your freedom of association with.
> This is a Freedom of Association issue, ...
it is indeed, and a betrayal of trust for anyone who realizes that it is the overreach by someone else to decide that you should not have the Freedom of Association that likely brought most folks to the Fediverse in the first place.
I did a little non-scientific, anecdotal survey by contacting people I know on many of the instances that arbitrarily decided to remove those freedoms from their users overnight, and discovered that many have already migrated to other instances, or are contemplating it - the interesting thing? Many of my acquaintances had already decided to, or even configured their accounts to block #Threads; but to have someone else tell them what they're allowed, or not allowed to do, is a violation of someone's freedom to choose for themselves by despot personalities who dismiss the relevance of a right to choose for oneself.
It's a simple matter, to block instances, at the domain level, from one's own user account, and on most Fediverse platforms, there's actually an announcement utility (usually only used to beg for donations) whereby administrative staff can inform their user base of their own ability to control how they themselves choose to exercise their own preferences with respect to #Freedom_of_Association.
Ironically, when perusing the stats, it's the very largest (deprecated, monolithic silo oriented) Fediverse instances (in terms of the # of user accounts and MAU) that have chosen NOT to trample upon the individual user's Freedom to Associate with whom they themselves decide.
NOTE to Fediverse instance admins: Please take under consideration the trust that has been placed in you with respect to the freedoms all individuals are entitled to determine for themselves - reach out to your user base, deploy surveys, collect votes, whatever, but please don't just decide for someone else what you decide is good for people who are NOT YOU.
Subjugation and assimilation into the Borg Collective goes both ways folks.
Really now, why do people stubbornly adhere to the belief that Government entities require warrants to determine anything about you - like, where you are at this particular moment or the GPS coordinates of your location last Tuesday at 17:42hrs UTC? ... And pretty much anything else you can dream up about yourself: The content of conversations with others, everything you've purchased at anytime, what you are likely to eat for dinner this coming Friday, your medical records; you name it!
All without a warrant, even for local law enforcement.
And why would they bother, when they can just buy it from the#privacy_miningcompaniesthat you already gave it to for free?