Server indexes of places for newcomers to join can be instrumental for Fediverse adoption. However, sudden rule changes can leave some admins feeling pressure to change policies in order to remain listed.
The entire point of the Fedi-verse is so that one person or small group of people can’t ruin the entire platform for everyone else. Anyone who tells you how to moderate your content, backed up by a threat can screw off.
Instance admins: Let’s give them a chance guyyyyss!!
Those of you who think the problem is data scraping or whatever are totally missing the point. All profit-motivated social media platforms engage in promoting hate content for engagement, and in doing so have deadly real world consequences. The Fediverse is one of the few online spaces where people can just be themselves naturally without being manipulated by algorithms. Given their history, there’s no reason to assume Threads won’t be any better about handling their own community, and anything that happens with them will affect the rest of us.
Maybe I’m just being naive, but this seems like an argument in favor of federating with Threads. One of the reasons Facebook and Instagram are so effective at driving engagement is that users have basically no ability to curate, sort, or filter the content that they see, especially since third-party clients are banned. You can’t even view most things without logging in.
The implementation of ActivityPub in Threads is a strange departure in this context - (federated) Mastodon users can view all of the content Threads has to offer without subjecting themselves to Meta’s arguably predatory curation algorithms. It almost seems like an escape for people who want to use a Meta-sized platform without Meta getting its grubby little fingers all over your mental wellbeing.
If people are worried that Threads will affect likes and comments (and therefore like/comment-based sorting algorithms) on other instances, it should always be possible to exclude Threads’s contribution to those metrics, no?
f people are worried that Threads will affect likes and comments (and therefore like/comment-based sorting algorithms) on other instances, it should always be possible to exclude Threads’s contribution to those metrics, no?
That’s one of the effects of defederating. And you are still ignoring the overall point of the comment 2 layers up from your reply.
Really I think you are losing the forest for the trees. Meta/Facebook/Zuck is a known quantity. They will corrupt and exploit any environment they are a part of via any means they can. We don’t need to be able to predict every last detail of how they will do so to know it is true. They have a track record of being awful, anti-consumer corporate citizens. WHY would we want to try to invite them in and try to contain them? Can we make the fediverse invisible to them? Of course we can’t, but why would we cooperate in any way?
Folks who don’t think this is a problem can use an instance that federates with them, just as I’ve chosen ( and will always choose) an instance that does not.
There is no reasonable argument for trying to be a good neighbor to Meta, because you can always, always be sure that Meta has no concern for being a good neighbor to you.
They will corrupt and exploit any environment they are a part of via any means they can.
Right, unless they can’t, though. Ideally the Fediverse should be resistant to this kind of influence without resorting to defederation. I’m also concerned that defederating from Threads will make more Threads users than Mastodon users.
We don’t need to be able to predict every last detail of how they will do so to know it is true.
I mean, some idea of what they might do would be nice.
They have a track record of being awful, anti-consumer corporate citizens. WHY would we want to try to invite them in and try to contain them?
I couldn’t care less about Meta itself. My interest begins and ends with Threads users. There are a ton of people that would never give the Fediverse a try for one silly reason or another—predominantly, I would argue, the fear of the unknown—and this seems like it could be an opportunity to overcome that obstacle if leveraged correctly. The prospect of everyone and our parents using social media that is not completely beholden to Meta is exciting to me.
Again, maybe I’m wrong, but this whole thing is basically an experiment, isn’t it? I’d like to see what happens before reaching any conclusions.
I’m also concerned that defederating from Threads will make more Threads users than Mastodon users.
Already done, and by an order of magnitude at least. (probably many orders, I don’t have the numbers at hand)
I mean, some idea of what they might do would be nice.
You can look at their entire history for that. And somewhere in this very discussion some other person has given a very plausible overview of their potential EEE approach. I’ll add a link to that comment later when I have time to find it again.
But, I’m starting to realize that no amount of evidence is sufficient for folks who want to federate with Meta, and at the end of the day my freedom ends where yours begins, so although I will continue to advocate for defederation and flee any instance that does not make that choice, I very sincerely encourage you to do you.
The prospect of everyone and our parents using social media that is not completely beholden to Meta is exciting to me.
I firmly believe that hoping Meta isn’t going to be the worst possible company they can this time is not the way to achieve that, and is in fact actively working against that future possibility.
I’ve been alive, adult, and working in IT for the entirety of the existence of Facebook, so I’ve had a long time to see everything I needed to see about them.
But, I’m starting to realize that no amount of evidence is sufficient for folks who want to federate with Meta
This is an incorrect assumption, because
And somewhere in this very discussion some other person has given a very plausible overview of their potential EEE approach. I’ll add a link to that comment later when I have time to find it again.
I would be very interested to read this! There are definitely limits to my optimism here. I think Meta is a horrible company and I don’t expect them to act in the best interests of the Fediverse; I’m just not yet convinced that them giving up what is essentially free and ad-free API access to one of their platforms cannot be used to our advantage. Threads federation could absolutely be catastrophic, but it’s also possible that it’s a good opportunity; that’s all I’m saying.
And somewhere in this very discussion some other person has given a very plausible overview of their potential EEE approach. I’ll add a link to that comment later when I have time to find it again.
In a non snarky way I say that if the dozens of actual past actions linked in the two wikipedia links, plus the recent events I linked, still leave you in doubt, I don’t see how a plausible but still speculative EEE summary is going to tip you over, but I’ll clap anyway if it does, so:
What’s the number of Threads users compared to Lemmy? If the number of Threads users greatly outweigh the number of Lemmy users, then we’d simply be drowned out by all the Threads posts. That’s part one of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Extend adds functionality to Threads that Lemmy either can’t support or won’t support for a while due to development time. People migrate to Threads because Lemmy is “missing” functionality. Plus, though I’m not clear on the exact legal specifications, proprietary code can be added to open-source code, and the proprietary code would be copyrighted. In other words, Lemmy devs would have to figure out a way to interact with and mimic Threads’ proprietary code using open-source code.
Extinguish is when Threads’ support of Lemmy is eventually dropped. The users left on Lemmy have suddenly lost a huge amount of content, and they’re left with fewer users than before Threads enabled federation.
There are definitely limits to my optimism here.
I do feel a little bit bad being the table pounding pessimist in this circumstance, but I don’t see how one can look at this company’s history and come to any other conclusion. It frustrates me like few other areas of disagreement about tech do to imagine folks look at everything Meta has done and think we need to wait and see how they will handle this.
for real. im new to lemmy but places like hexbear seem really good for trans stuff. i hate how so many trans places are dependent upon facebook or reddit to exist. facebook itself is problematic because those fuckers already assisted a genocide in myanmar, whats to stop them from helping to massacre trans people here?
HB and blahj are the two explicitly pro-trans instances. Hexbear is strongly oriented towards communism but I would strongly suggest them over blahj just because of their abysmal handling of c/196’s noncery. They just don’t have as strong of a track record as hexbear.
hexbear seems way more active in the trans spaces at least. its also nice seeing everyones pronouns and being able to guess what variant of transness someone is talking about when theyre describing their experiences.
im on lemmy cause i saw advice saying that you could access pretty much all the lgbt spots on the fediverse from here, which seems true. ive already seen a bunch of transphobic bullshit on this site and on blahaj so maybe ill just swap to hexbear, idk
Yeah you should make the jump if not seeing transphobia is your goal. lemmyML is a great omni-instance but as a result you’re going to be exposed to a lot of right-wing bullshit. And really, transphobia on blahj? That’s extremely disappointing but not all that surprising.
yeah one of the top trans posts the other day was filled with transphobes and people debating the merits of transphobia. i think blahaj doesnt have very active modding?
We aggressively remove transphobic/transmisic posts/comments on lemmy.ml. Please report any that you see. But understand that we don’t control the content of other Lemmy instances, so when you select “All” instead of “Subscribed” or “Local,” it’s the wild west.
i guess the question is more of bans and not just removals. for instance this guy lemmy.ml/comment/9833425 seems to regularly go on to write misogynistic and queerphobic screeds, but seems to not have been banned because he is a moderator and has been here for 4 years?
He’s gotten some temporary bans as well as post/comment removals. Omega_haxor is right about hexbear: it’s explicitly socialist, unlike lemmy.ml, and it’s even more explicitly supportive / aggressively protective of the trans community. Several of the largest instances have defederated from hexbear, so for better or worse, access is more limited.
my thing is this guy is a clear misogynist, hes discussed his misogyny for 4 years now. you dont have to be a socialist to think thats unacceptable. are the rules simply never enforced with bans?
getting all defensive about keeping misogynists around? maybe just ban the misogynist? doesnt take someone being new to realize that youre just inviting reactionaries that will drive people off the service, i had this whole interaction and understanding within three fucking days. people come here to leave reddit, not to find more redditors
i asked, and you did not answer, do you actually enforce your rules with permanent bans? what causes someone to be worthy of a permanent ban? do you simply just like this guy and go to bat for him?
I’m not going to take the time to dispel your presumptions nor explain myself, my motivations, or this Lemmy instance. I’ll just say that I’m not convening a grand jury trial and constitutional convention because one new user (who on first impression is giving Western chauvinism vibes) had one negative interaction with one Global South socialist who has been here over four times longer than me.
Edit to add: Again, please note that this is not an explicitly socialist instance. I won’t elaborate as to why, but it’s no more by accident than the explicitly socialist ones. What is lemmy.ml?
who on first impression is giving Western chauvinism vibes
🤣 im a communist, dweeb. you dont have to be a communist to think misogyny is bad, in fact, thats the prevailing opinion almost everywhere. the idea that the global south is in some way inherently reactionary is absurd
all youre giving off is chauvinistic reactionary misogynist vibes. jesus christ this place is a shithole, good luck getting anyone that isnt a white guy and/or a techbro here. all im getting is you got a handful of bigoted buddies that you hang out with and are completely uninterested in introspecting on it
for real. im new to lemmy but places like hexbear seem really good for trans stuff.
I am not trans, and so this may be incorrect, but while of course you can use any instance you choose, IIRC it’s lemmy.blahaj.zone that is very explicitly trans-supportive at the instance level. (I’m not saying other instances are transphobic, to be clear)
Edit: I see you’ve already taken the convo far past the comment I replied to, sorry for not reading ahead!
The guy who runs the growyourownservices network despite seeming very professional is extremely emotionally biased and hates Lemmy as a software (and seemingly any instances that will choose to run that software, regardless of their affiliation towards the developers).
So he basically refuses to acknowledge the existence of Lemmy and by extension a large portion of the threaded fediverse, and when he does acknowledge it he’s talking shit about it.
Blocking shitty instances is great. Users should have more ability to include the instances they want to hang out with, in their own experience, but I’ll almost never object to a “fuck Nazis” policy.
Blocking other instances that don’t block shitty-enough instances makes sense. Hexbear is a chan board for tankies, but then .ml is only “more serious” by having mods snip and tut at anyone besides those tankies. If there’s any actual Nazi instances, I don’t wanna know, and I don’t wanna see anybody that hangs out with them.
Blocking instances based on M’Zuck’s embrace-extend-extinguish plans, yeah okay sure? That’s predicting existential problems for federation as a concept.
But a list of instances… not even mentioning them… by association? That feels kinda skeezy.
I guess if it’s specifically a “where you should sign up” list, versus a “here’s all the servers that aren’t fucking Nazis,” then… okay. But if this is a solution, maybe we have deeper problems.
…I’ll almost never object to a “fuck Nazis” policy.
What, as in you’re always in bed with Nazis? Cause basing yourself out of sh.itjust.works at this point is a pretty good indication that you are ok with fascism.
Funny, first time I’m hearing about Fedi garden, so… Why should I care?
I defederated preemptively from Threads around half a year ago, because that’s what I believe is the best, not because a site I’ve never heard about threatens me.
Seems like a way of bullying community leaders into running their instances how Fedi Garden feels is appropriate. Which is intrinsically against the nature of the Fediverse, in that instances are meant to have their own autonomy.
Fedi Garden's position in this space is to be a directory, not a dictator. This feels like an overstep.
Fedi.garden also has their own autonomy. They have the right to make whatever rules for their website they want. If you don’t like how they run their list, then don’t use it. Make your own. If people like yours better, they’ll use it instead.
I think communities/sites etc. on the fediverse should live and die by their decisions. They can make this decision if they want, time will tell if its the correct one or not. That is the nature of the fediverse!
The nature of federation is that you can make your own instance with your own rules independent of a single walled garden and still participate with the other members. Create your own index if you don’t like this one.
And that is exactly what Fedi Garden is going against here. This is not letting each instance to decide who they want to federate with and who not. They’re telling instances to defederate threads.net or else… That’s forcing their values onto others and bullying them to do as they say. That is dictatorial.
They only list instances that share their principles. The only “forcing” being attempted here is the two of you insisting they need to list instances they don’t want to list. The point of federation is that you can start your own list if you don’t like their policies.
Sure, but Fedi Garden is seen as the de facto "primary" hub for this sort of information. There's a certain power dynamic at play in this sort of situation that is being weaponized.
It's like if LemmyWorld decided "We're exclusively a furry community now", after being the "main" Lemmy instance. Sure, they'd be within their right to do so, but it does a disservice to the Fediverse at large when things that can be seen as critical parts of the Fediverse's social infrastructure are suddenly slanted in any one particular way.
If it helps bring perspective. I’ve never even heard of Fedi Garden before this post. I did a lot of puzzling over choosing instances for Lemmy and Mastodon when I first joined and never saw a link to them. I’m not sure why they’d even be seen as a trusted list for a new users, since at joining the user also doesn’t know anything about them or their values, reliability, or reputation.
Plus, once you’re in the Fediverse you then learn you can just change instances. Once someone points out that [other instance] can talk to Threads users the individual can just switch or stay depending on their preferences.
It’s funny to me how many big flare-ups and popular issues have been about defederating or controlling other instances but we’ve not really had a single popular event where users work on anything together to benefit community.
Individuals have made tools but there’s not been calls to action and mass cooperation events for anything beside silencing unpopular groups. No community design discussions devising and implementing tools or features, no group efforts to catalog or document or display useful data…
I don’t know if it’s just that people here haven’t considered the possibility of doing something positive or that outrage about others is just so much more compelling
I’m kinda against defederation or blocking anything at an instance level, unless the instance causes straight up legal issues or is literally created for the sole purpose of harassment
Well, I think Threads meets your litmus test requirements.
It is a certainty that Threads will heavily influence the future development of Activity Pub. This will inevitibly lead to the corporatization and enshittification of any service Threads can affect.
The only resistance we can offer against this is defederation and noncompliance with the will of the behemoth.
You’re missing the point. Fedi Garden is threatening to defederate from anyone who doesn’t defederate from Threads.
Imagine if other instances start doing this about things that aren’t threads. “Delist from db0 or world will delist you”, “delist from Lemmy.ca or Lemmy.ml will delist you.”
I understand your “what if” scenarios, but this is an existential crisis that needs to be resisted against with all instances working in concert. This is not a “what if” scenario. This is the actual iceberg and it is big enough to ruin the fediverse for all instances, no matter their affiliation with the garden.
So, we either unite to defend the independence of the fediverse, or we let a corporate giant take it by ovewhelming us with their “important updates for your security” until we are all assimilated.
Every time something like this gets posted, there are always Lemmy users crying to defederate their Lemmy instances.
But remember, the current concern is with Mastodon, NOT Lemmy. Lemmy can’t actually view the post types that Masto and Threads make. Wendy’s can post all the Threads ads they want - we’re not going to see them here. We can’t. That hasn’t been built.
Try it. Go view someone’s Mastodon account in Lemmy. You don’t see their posts.
It’s not us seeing Threads that’s the problem, it’s Threads seeing us (and thereby trapping all of us in their sticky web we tried to escape, what with their shadow profiles and whatnot).
So what would stop them from shadow profiling you by scraping content, or using a different domain? Most lemmy instances are configured to federate with a blocklist, meaning any unblocked instance can download data. Facebook can just make an instance under a different domain and download the data that way. Or they can just scrape user data from the web facing interface.
Posts and comments on lemmy are public. If facebook wants your publicly accessible data from the fediverse, de-federating from threads isn’t going to stop them.
@Ghostalmedia@deadsuperhero I think the fact that I was able to see and reply to this comment of yours from Mastodon proves this idea false, if you check the Post history of this account you will also find that content posted in Lemmy is visible.
They absolutely do interact, lemmy is way more Mastodon friendly than most people give it credit for, considering the fact that communities/groups, automatically boost every post and comment for visibility.
So people on Lemmy being concerned about poorly moderated or cesspool microblog instances is indeed a valid concern.
we’re not going to see them here. We can’t. That hasn’t been built.
It has been partially built insofar as Kbin and Mbin can see Mastodon posts here and Mastodon interacts with us. Wouldn't surprise me if Lemmy eventually gets some of that functionality too.
If Meta starts to EEE ActivityPub that will affect all of us.
You will in fact see their posts if they reply to Lemmy comments. They’ll then appear as comments in Lemmy. I believe Mastodon users can also post to communities by using hashtags, though I’m not 100% clear on that.
When you @ mention a community from Lemmy as a user on Mastodon you can post to that community from Mastodon. The first sentence of your Mastodon post will be used as the title, which is why they often look so strange on the Lemmy side.
You can also follow a Lemmy community from Mastodon, but it gets a bit messy as every comment will be shown as a boost Mastodon side.
I hope the groups addition that Mastodon is working on will fix that mess.
I post stuff on lemmy via my mastodon account so I don’t have to deal with image hosting on my lemmy instance, so its not quite that simple. You’re not wrong, but they do interact
Maybe I’m naive but I kinda don’t get it. People talk about defederating as if…what, all Meta IP addresses will be magically blocked from scraping your content? Any script kiddie can harvest Lemmy/Mastodon/whatever content.
Has Meta shown itself to be a bad actor? Yes. Should my email provider block all emails from Meta? Well…that’s a bit much I think? If Facebook email still existed, should my email provider block that?
My point is yes, Meta bad, but all Thread users also bad? I thought — and apparently I’m very wrong here — that the Federation paradigm was kinda like email. And the only email I want blocked is a domain where every single user is malicious, not a domain run by a malicious entity which has normal people as users, who aren’t necessarily very tech literate.
I don’t actually care, but I just find it a little confusing tbh.
I’m actually curious about “Embrace Extend Extinguish”: What can they do? They “extend” the ActivityPub protocol in a proprietary way, ok. Doesn’t mean any other instance has to use that, no? Ok, that would mean if an instance doesn’t follow that extension, it can’t interact optimally with Threads, but how does it matter? To me it seems all that can be lost by that is the content/user base that Threads brings into the Fediverse and then we are at the same point as we would be if we defederated immediately. Maybe I’m missing something here?
I think this article, How to kill a decentralized network, gives one of the best explanations, because it uses a real world example of how it has happened in the past.
I guess it is impossible to say what would have happened if Google never used XMPP. To me it mostly looks like google joined XMPP and made it way bigger than it was before and eventually left it again, making it small again. But is it worse than before Google even joined?
Maybe, but can we say for sure?
Maybe the lesson is not “don’t let the big corporate players in”, but rather “make sure the development of the underlying protocol itself is done in an open way”. If Google/Meta adds proprietary extensions, just don’t add them to the main protocol. If they leave the protocol again or changed their implementation in a way that is largely incompatible with the open version, nothing is lost than what they brought in initially. Doesn’t that make sense?
I think a good example is how Slack started off by having good IRC integration, then slowly added features which were incompatible with IRC, and finally terminated IRC integration.
So clearly, Slack killed IRC, right? (…of course they didn’t!)
I see the potential situation with Threads as similar.
the problem occurs when most of the content comes from Meta (they will likely have the vast majority of Fediverse users). especially if major communities exist on their instance. when meta decides to no longer support fedi integration, those in the fedi are forced to decide between staying with their communities by ditching the fedi and moving to threads or having many of their communities ripped away.
meta will do this at some point as a play to draw users to them, but we can decide if we want to be affected when that comes to pass.
I think most people simply just don’t know how federation works and they imagine that defederating blocks Facebook from accessing your content when in reality it’s the exact opposite; it places one way mirror between us from which only they can see thru. There’s also some great irony in the fact that they’re talking about genocide while advocating for using the nuclear option to block Facebook despite the massive number of innocent casualties it’ll cause.
EDIT: Turns out I was mistaken. Defederation indeed does stop the flow of data both ways.
it places one way mirror between us from which only they can see thru
What do you mean by this? Even if Meta would collect data from defederated servers (I don’t think they would), it would be massively more complicated than if they were federated.
Federarting means there’s a two-way road between your instance and threads.net and traffic can flow both ways. When you defederate it stops the traffic flow from threads.net to you but the traffic from you to them is unchanged. Even if every single instance defederates them they can still see all the content that’s posted there. Nobody else just wont see any of theirs. Only your instance admins know your email, ip-address and so on but all your posts and messages are publicly available to anyone and you can’t stop them from accessing it.
It’s basically the same thing as blocking an user. You wont no longer see their messages but they will see yours.
EDIT: Turns out I was mistaken. Defederation indeed does stop the flow of data both ways.
I hate to admit when I’ve been wrong but this seems to be one of those cases. I tried to use my lemmyNSFW account to view content on a instance that doesn’t federate with them and I indeed can’t see any. I stand corrected.
Brother these things are in no way the same. One is a tech giant knowingly aiding and abbeting governments who are ethnically cleansing their country and another is not being able to see posts from a different instance. The only great irony is you calling them innocent casualties.
It’s a comparison. By definition they’re not the same thing but there are similarities; you’re doing something that affects 100% of the userbase because you have an issue with 2% of them.
This is like comparing requiring students in schools to wash their hands to genocide. The scale is the same but the impact is vastly different, and if you don’t want to wash hands (or be defederated) you can just move. Except for changing activitypub instances is even easier than changing schools and both are easier than leaving Palestine.
You should think of a better comparison cause this one sucks.
Also no. You’re doing something that affects 100% of users because the node these users use is malicious. The problem is the underlying structure not the people using said structure. Maybe this makes them stop using said structure.
Its like being upset that I dont answer unknown numbers. “Well only 10% are scammers so you’re affecting 100% of calls”
There’s also some great irony in the fact that they’re talking about genocide while advocating for using the nuclear option to block Facebook despite the massive number of innocent casualties it’ll cause.
Sir/Madame, not being able to see some online content is nothing at all like having your family members murdered in real life.
It’s a comparison. By definition they’re not the same thing but there are similarities; you’re doing something that affects 100% of the userbase because you have an issue with 2% of them. Like Israel fighting Hamas and the entire Gaza population having to suffer because of it.
The thing is your article blames meta for not doing something that would be impossible on lemmy by design. Meta didn’t act to silence messages calling for violence but there is no mechanism to do this top down on lemmy only by defederating instances or individual communities/instance admin banning posts. Exactly the same thing could happen here, if the user base ever got large enough.
@VirtualOdour the point of me sharing that article was just to try to put a human dimension on genocide for that callous person above.
Meta have been implicated in at least two genocides now and openly obstructed the International Criminal Court in their investigation of one of them. I think people are only pointing that out to show how evil Meta are.
But if you want to know what specifically they will do to ActivityPub, the other article I shared has more direct relevance: How to kill a decentralized network.
If lemmy was as popular as Facebook then exactly the same thing would have happened. Lemmy is designed not to have the top down control which the article says Facebook should have used to hide posts.
You can’t blame Facebook for something if you support an alternative where it wouldn’t even be possible to avoid that thing.
If you’re willing to acknowledge that we can move on and you can try and say in simple terms what you think meta did to obstruct the ICC, try to be accurate and concise.
Your topic's a false premise. First of all it's totally valid to criticize someone for something that couldn't apply in the current situation, because what's being criticized is the decisions and attitudes that their actions reveal.
Meta's refusal to moderate a website they control after multiple warnings that it was being used to incite genocide speaks to their institutional values, accountability, and culture.
By contrast, plenty of instance owners have shown responsibility, accountability, and good faith about admins moderating the instances they control.
try to be accurate and concise.
Lol that's condescending, and it's also a bit offputting. I come here to bloviate thank you very much. :)
The thing is though, I'm not part of the wider conversation about facebook above. You glommed onto a very simple, very specific point I made to someone else about the human impact of social media incitements to genocide.
What Meta did to the ICC isn't even related to my above link (which is about the Tigray genocide, not the Myanmar genocide). But it's well-documented, and I'm not interested in rehashing it here.
There’s also some great irony in the fact that they’re talking about genocide while advocating for using the nuclear option to block Facebook despite the massive number of innocent casualties it’ll cause.
It is very not cool to compare actual-people-are-dead-GENOCIDE to a website not being included on a list of another website.
I dont care if they scrape my comments I just wouldnt want to see sneaky "promoted" posts aka ads and I enjoy the idea of boycotting facebook.
Ultimately the decision is for the instances owners and admins to make, not ours. I will just migrate to one that doesnt federate with facebook if I have to.
I just wouldnt want to see sneaky “promoted” posts aka ads
I don’t quite see how that would even work. Those posts would need to be coming from individual users rather than from Facebook itself and you can just block those users. Facebook can display ads in between posts on their own app but those wont be visible to people using other apps.
Hopefully fediverse admins are sensible enough to ban users who are blatantly posting advertisements. I know that a lot are, but I also know that a few of the bigger servers tend to turn a blind eye to that kind of thing.
Facebook feeds its users content according to an algorithm.
Facebook and lemmy users can interact with the same user content (liking, commenting).
There are vastly more Facebook users than lemmy users.
By dint of Facebook’s greater number of users, lemmy users will see the most popular content that is fed algorithmically to Facebook users.
Conclusion: lemmy users are being fed content by the Facebook algorithm (in this still, thankfully hypothetical, scenario).
Like imagine Facebook promotes some viral post and it gets a thousands of upvotes. Any lemmy user on a federated instance, sorting by upvotes/hot/etc, is going to see that post.
That’s the kind of top-down reach that is so alien to the fedi
Threads exists for the sole purpose of capturing some of the people showing interest in the fediverse as twitter dies and keeping them in the facebook ecosystem. Once it believes it has exhausted this window of opportunity it will defederate just as it de-federated it’s xmmp based messenger service once it thought it had the upperhand.
Every server that defederates from meta preemptively is working to build a resilient community that will survive this inevitable scenario. Every server that federates with meta will become dependent on it then collapse as their users leave to join threads once that becomes their only option to continue interacting with the threads users that their social experience was built on.
Your post only concerns threats to an individual user re scraping or malicious interactions. The threat meta poses to the fediverse is systemic. In the long run the meta-blocking servers are the fediverse. The meta-federating servers might see some short term attention but in the long run will have the same fate as those that hitched their wagons to the metaverse.
And the only email I want blocked is a domain where every single user is malicious, not a domain run by a malicious entity which has normal people as users, who aren’t necessarily very tech literate.
You’ll never get the tech iliterate people to switch to the rest of the Fediverse otherwise. Defederating Threads is about making it as bad as possible for its users - it’s about hurting Meta and stemming its bad influence on the web.
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