Good.
Every instance should block Threads.
For the Meta apologists, I have a reality check for you:
Threads was immediately subject to mass amounts of radicalizing, extremist content, and there have also been instances of users having personal information doxxed on Threads due to Meta's information-harvesting practices. [1]
Threads was marketed to be open to 'free speech' (read: hate speech and misinformation) and encouraged the Far-Right movement to join, who have spread extremism, hate, and harassment on Threads already. [2] Threads has been a hotbed of Israel-Palestine misinformation/propaganda. [3] They also fired fact-checkers just prior to Threads' launch. [1]
As already established, Meta also assisted in genocide! [4]
Meta/FB/Instagram also have a strong history of facilitating the spread of misinformation and extremism, which contributed to the January 6th insurrection attempt. [5], [6]
This really should be obvious by now.. but Meta mines and sells their user's information.[7] Just look at the permissions you have to grant them for Threads...
FB users have to agree to all sorts of unethical things in the TOS, including giving Meta permission to run unethical experiments on their users without informed consent. [8] Their first published research was where they manipulated users' feeds with positive or negative information, in order to see if it affected their mood. It did, and they successfully induced depression in many of their users!
I will now turn to an article that surmises well the core practices of Meta as a company:
Elevates disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories from the extremist fringes into the mainstream, fostering, among other effects, the resurgent anti-vaccination movement, broad-based questioning of basic public health measures in response to COVID-19, and the proliferation of the Big Lie of 2020—that the presidential election was stolen through voter fraud [16];
Empowers bullies of every size, from cyber-bullying in schools, to dictators who use the platform to spread disinformation, censor their critics, perpetuate violence, and instigate genocide;
Defrauds both advertisers and newsrooms, systematically and globally, with falsified video engagement and user activity statistics;
Reflects an apparent political agenda espoused by a small core of corporate leaders, who actively impede or overrule the adoption of good governance;
Brandishes its monopolistic power to preserve a social media landscape absent meaningful regulatory oversight, privacy protections, safety measures, or corporate citizenship; and
Disrupts intellectual and civil discourse, at scale and by design. [9]
Let me help you summarize, like 80% of that comment:
2023 Word of the Year Is “Enshittification”
Overall, for as well researched and organized that it might be, it misses the main reason for Meta opening to the Fediverse:
To comply with a new EU law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which comes into force on March 7th
Posted on March 6, 2024: https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-messenger-messaging-interoperability-eu/
...and now:
25 March 2024, Brussels: Commission opens non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act
Enshittification had already been largely discussed here.
I saw users minimizing the aberrant business practices of Meta and doubting their role in assisting in genocide.
My point was to highlight how unethical and horrendous Meta itself is.
@hedge I dislike Facebook, so that's why I am here. But if the only way to stay in touch with people I know irl is on Threads, so be it. Either my server federates with Threads, or there's one more Threads user in this world.
Well, at least that's what many people would choose, imo. On the flip side, if Facebook itself would be federated and my server would federate with it, I would simply delete my Facebook account. Period.
I get that Meta is an outrageous organization, but people seem to forget the purpose of these platforms altogether - which is communication. And communications happen when other people use the same platform as well. And okay, let's say I have a managed Fedi server (which is the most hassle-free option of self-hosting, leaving money and legal stuff aside). What am I gonna do if, e.g. I get a Tinder match and the girl is asking me for my Facebook or Insta? Should I say something like "hey, I don't have either, but make an account on this random-ass website where only a few hundred people are there as well, and you don't know anyone of them personally"?
If people want to get people to leave the Meta platforms for Fedi and whatnot, then federating with Threads and educating people this way would actually be a better option imo.
I see your point of trying to help everyone communicate with each other. However, as has been pointed out repeatedly in the last few months, the threat of a 3e strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish) applied by Meta is imo very real and dangerous to the whole fediverse. That's why people want to defederate threads. And when large corporations use their huge userbase to make everyone else's life harder and peer pressure you into joining them then that's on them. I mean, there is a reason we few people are here on the fediverse. For most it's probably making the effort to stay away from those privacy-invading, controlling corporations and create something by the people for the people. I get that it is tempting to be able to reach the masses stuck in platforms like Facebook or Instagram. But this comes with the real threat of destroying what we've build here. Restraining from federation doesn't cost us anything though, as we've already made the decision to get together here in this small community.
Agreed.
100% block Meta everywhere it's trying to extend its poisonous tentacles.
It's not "very real". Because people already on Mastodon right now aren't going to suddenly switch to threads. We have nothing to lose.
I dislike Facebook, so that's why I am here. But if the only way to stay in touch with people I know irl is on Threads, so be it.
Do you see how they are already using their size to control and negatively impact the fediverse? The very fact you are arguing that.
If you know them IRL, you can tell them IRL to get off of facebook.
If they won't well, either keep talking to them IRL or reexamine who your friends are.
Facebook is not (yet?) negatively impacting the fediverse. Fediverse users are.
Facebook is not (yet?) negatively impacting the fediverse. Fediverse users are.
Meta negatively impacts everything by being Meta. You should not cover for nor defend them.
“I don’t think it’s nice to federate with a company that has been cited in multiple independent reports of massacres/genocides,”
And I don't think it's nice to take the choice away from users. I can block threads all on my own -- I don't need a nanny who doesn't even cite their sources.
Considering that their literal stated purpose is to create a curated list of 'nice, well-run servers', I don't see how delisting someone is remotely outside of their wheelhouse. If a server is federated with meta, it's not well-run. Easy peasy.
Nobody needs to be listed on Fedi Garden or has a right to be listed on Fedi Garden. They can still federate or defederate as they wish, just as Fedi Garden can choose to list them or not as they wish. Everybody gets to do what they want, as is the point.
I love when people conflate rights and ethics. I agree with you that no one has a right to be listed on Fedi Garden. And I still think it's not nice to pressure admins into taking choice away from users.
It's literally a list of well-run servers. Do you not see how you're attempting to 'take away choice' from the proprietors of the list by telling them who they must list and what criteria they must use for their website?
You're perfectly capable of doing what they've done. Go spend the time to curate a list, put up a simple little site, and make your own decisions. Nobody's stopping you. That's the point of federation and independence. You get to do what you want if you have the follow-through.
Admins likewise can do whatever they like. They can choose to federate with threads or to not.
Personally, I think it's a little shady to run around shaming people who put their time and effort into projects and insist that they must lick Meta's boots. Little bit suspect.
Your hyperbole makes it obvious you have no place in a reasonable debate about this topic.
I agree 100%. I don't need someone else overriding my existing right to decide whether I want to block or not (where is that going to stop). Anyway, I connect and follow individuals, not their whole instance. I'm not going to see anything from Threads unless I choose to follow someone. And if any friend reboosts stuff I don't like (from Threads or anywhere else) I block that "friend".
I agree 100%. I don’t need someone else overriding my existing right to decide whether I want to block or not (where is that going to stop).
To some extent, most instances already do that on some instances, whether they do it for Threads or not.
So, you're @danie10@lemmy.ml.
Your home instance is lemmy.ml. Its federation list is at:
It includes in its Blocked Instances list, has defederated with, 181 instances.
Now, you might well agree with some of those being blocked. Like, maybe they're spammers or harassing people or God knows what. They might host speech that might be illegal in some jurisdictions, be classified as hate speech there. They might contain content that's socially-unacceptable in some countries -- one of my first experiences on the Threadiverse was being sent by a random kbin.social sidebar comment recommendation into a conversation that Ada, the lemmy.blahaj.zone instance admin, was having with some guy in the Middle East, whose country had apparently blocked that instance at the national firewall level due to it having LGBT content or something like that. There's pornography on lemmynsfw.com. Consentual-nonconsentual and synthetic child pornography on burggit.moe. Piracy material on lemmy.dbzer0.com. Some instances won't approve of that being accessible from their instances, and in those cases, the instance admin is already blocking things.
I chose my home instance -- lemmy.today -- specifically because it was an instance policy to try to avoid defederating with instances, and it presently has an empty blocklist. But as best I can tell, most instances have some level of content or user behavior or whatever on other instances that they consider unacceptable and will defederate over. Maybe not it's not Threads, but they're aiming to block something.
Good points. Yes, I do prefer to give an instance at least the benefit of the doubt. Difference tho really with Fediverse is you have to search and follow stuff to see it. It does not get inserted into your feed through ads or people playing the algorithms. So generally I'm only seeing what I follow. I suppose we do need to choose our instances wisely. Certainly, if an instance (not just a user on it) is really spamming or impacting on other instances, I suppose there can be grounds to block it. But we have not all been spammed yet by Threads. I don't like Threads (cancelled all my accounts years ago) but I left a few good friends and family there that I would like to reconnect with, and follow them. I also like that my metadata stays on the Fediverse side, so I don't need a Threads account or their app tracking me.
I just would not like to be denied the option to even reconnect with my family and friends. Same goes for WhatsApp interoperating on Signal protocol - I have many friends and colleagues I left behind on WhatsApp, and would like to reconnect again with them.
That's just mad. Instances should have the free choice to choose. I am pro-threadseration
Especially when any individual can decide themselves to block Threads or Lemmy.
Strongly disagree.
Facebook is a major component of the return of fascism in the United States. Arguing for allowing them to federate is like arguing for ISIS to be part of the fediverse.
No. This isn't the matter of making a choice. This is a matter of ensuring that outright poison isn't allowed into one's system.
Well, it's a list of "well maintained/moderated servers
Any server that federates with threads, a product of Meta a company known for their low quality moderation and lack of ethics, is clearly not a well maintained/moderated one.
It's not a new rule. The admin is just applying the sites rules as they are, instead of making exception for threads as many of the techbro admins that are getting their servers excluded have been doing.
Cliff and his co-admin Kyle Reddoch are now working on their own alternative index, that doesn’t include this requirement. It’s a massive undertaking, and requires vetting communities asking permission for inclusion, and regularly checking in on community developments. Still, they’re optimistic.
“[We] are making a list on our Wiki of instance that both federate and defederate from Threads,” Kyle writes, “we feel people [should] have the choice themselves and not have someone else choose for them.”
I kind of think that it'd be nice if there were support for various instances claiming that they support various collections of policies, as it'd be an easier way to identify how instances work and choosing one.
Like, right now it involves manually reading through each instance's sidebar, but if it were published in a standard way, it could be used to filter instances on lemmyverse.net, to help a user find an instance that they like.
And one instance could commit to multiple sets of (compatible) policies, doesn't need to be just one.
From a user standpoint, when the first step in entering the Threadiverse is a huge number of instances and manually reading through lots of individual instance policies, that can be a bit overwhelming.
Federating with Threads only hurts Meta. It does not help them in any way. You are not doing them any favors. If you are concerned about reports of genocide attributed to Meta, then you should federate.
Users who create accounts on Threads because they actually want to communicate with people they've heard of helps Meta. Defederating helps Meta.
I would argue that federating with either of the biggest companies on the fediverse is a monumentally bad idea.
Not just because of "Reports of genocide" or anything specious like that; which can be debated for days and days on end by people in both good and bad faith; but because both Threads and Meta are simply too large to be moderated correctly and be capable of managing basic issues such as harrassment and extended bouts of hate-speech which should never be considered acceptable; even if you do not necessarily agree with all of the goals and policies of the Fedi Garden; as strict as they are.
With that being said; I do fully support an Instance's choice to federate, not federate or even limit their federation with them.
In most cases this should not affect instances; but unfortunately there are people who will ignore all warnings and use the Fedi Garden as a whitelist instead of a list of instances that you know will handle policy violations quickly.
On the other hand I absolutely also respect the needs of communities who ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY WILL NOT TOLERATE instances who choose to federate with either X, Threads, or any other instance they deem to be too toxic to play nicely. As instance operators you absolutely have the right to block problems BEFORE they happen, and if you happen to KNOW an instance will absolutely be a HEADACHE, you have every right to say NO. If the users do not like your decision; they are free to find a better instance for themselves; or spin up an alt account on a better instance.
If the users do not like your decision; they are free to find a better instance for themselves
Or just personally block Threads...
I would argue that federating with either of the biggest companies
What other company are you referring to?
because both Threads and Meta are simply too large to be moderated correctly
They're not. Meta is simply not motivated to implement proper moderation.
That being said, I acknowledge and agree that moderation is poor, which is, once again, why you should federate. To let people know they don't need Meta. To show them how to escape the exploitation and harassment.
The Fediverse will likely not be much different in terms of moderation, should it ever become even a fraction of the size.
May I direct you to Embrace Extend Extinguish. It's happened before, and you're a fool if you think Meta isn't federating specifically to go this route.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Can you explain how defederating prevents Meta from extending open standards (ActivityPub) with proprietary capabilities, and using the differences to strongly disadvantage Threads competitors?
The reason embracing works is because it creates connections between people using the system and allows them to piggyback off of other services.
At the moment, the wider fediverse may not have a ton of people, but the quality of content blows mainstream social media out of the water. By making it available through Threads, new users are going to be encouraged to follow their normal pattern of gravitating toward the big thing while still having access to this content. If we post on servers federated with Threads, every piece of content we add is a boon for Meta for absolutely free. The fact that they have deep pockets means they already have independent federation beat on the server end in terms of stability and long-term reliability. It makes a lot of sense for the average user to just grab a Threads account and not worry too much about which other instances have the odd hiccup or potentially stop existing.
On the other hand, if people exposed to the fediverse keep hearing about all this stuff that isn't on Threads, there's a better chance that they'll get into the decentralized account model that's natural to federation. The logical conclusion quickly becomes making accounts in places that are federated with the places you want to read and post, and if Threads isn't connected to all those places it means it doesn't serve to unify fediverse accounts under a corporate banner.
Threads has a resource advantage, but we have a content advantage. If we let Threads in, the content advantage dissolves, because not only do they gain access to fediverse content, they pollute it.
Thankfully the reality is that the choice will always lie with server owners, not via consensus. As long as the owners of servers with higher-quality content and better moderation don't open the floodgates to Threads, that pocket of high quality content that a Threads account can't have will always exist.
Personally, I suspect the above will be self-perpetuating, as connecting with a larger social media entity will degrade the quality of content. The best bits will always largely be inaccessible to the big sites.
This is a topic that's been covered a hundred times, with intelligent people realizing the "extinguish" doesn't exist.
If Meta decides to stop federating then we are no worse off than we were before they started.
The fact that I haven't had anything equivalent to Pidgin or Trillian installed in over a decade says otherwise. When Facebook became big it literally wiped out the active userbase of 4 concurrently relevant instant messaging platforms.
As far as I can tell they seem to have at this point largely been supplanted by Discord.
Federating with Threads only hurts Meta. It does not help them in any way.
This is completely false. The entire reason they're federating is to instantly get access to a much larger pool of UGC for their users to interact with. And of course they get to also choose who to federate with and who to block, so they can choose instances that have the kind of content they want, all for free, while suppressing instances they don't like. If your instance starts to try to "convert" people off of Threads, they can (and will) just block you.
Users who create accounts on Threads because they actually want to communicate with people they’ve heard of helps Meta. Defederating helps Meta.
Threads has more users than ALL fedi.db-tracked fediverse instances combined (Threads: 160m, Fediverse: 10m). They don't need us for users, they need us for content. Just like Reddit, there are usually a few dedicated 'content generator' users on any given instance, who post the bulk of the UGC. Gaining access to those is Threads' goal. Federating is how they achieve that.
This is proof to me that the federated model has failed. I was so hopeful early on in the fediverse, I thought it was all we needed. I no longer feel that way. It's not a network of users, its a network of power tripping fiefdoms.
Client relay network topology is the future of social networking. Check out Nostr (and ignore all the bitcoiners, see the network for what it is).
The problem you're having is that you're addicted to being a consumer. The fediverse doesn't hand consumers a golden key to have everything they want for free at no effort. It hands creators and organizers the tools to do what they want.
You were never the target audience for federation if you can't be bothered to set up your own instance.
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