2y ago

Are we defederating from Threads?

I've seen that some instances have already done it preemptively.

140 comments

Admins are in agreement that we don't want federation with Meta.
I don't see us currently federating with them - https://lemmy.ca/instances
We'll make sure it stays that way! I've added threads.net to our blocklist.
- Great to have an official answer. Thank you!
- I decided to sign on here because of this stance. Also I missed the company of my fellow Canucks ;)
  
  Welcome, good to see ya!
- Good-faith question for you admins to laymen like myself; what do you believe you are protecting yourselves from by blocking Threads? Isn't the nature of the Fediverse resistant, if not immune, to corotate shenanigans? Isn't the only thing you're accomplishing by defederating Theads is that you're just making yourselves invisible by a large userbase who are too lazy to care about their own personal data?
  We're all still protected, no?
  
  Personal take - I don't think it's reasonable to assume the meta will operate in good faith. I don't have confidence that they will moderate their users, and I believe their only interest will be in slurping up 3rd party data to make their platform more appealing and decrease the chance a user will go elsewhere to find things. They don't want you going anywhere else for that juicy ad revenue.
  
  We don't want to make the same mistake that was made with XMPP and Google.
  
  They want to avoid Meta from repeating history:
  Embrace, Extend and Extinguish
  
  Every network that wants to stay decentralized has to guard against anyone gaining a controlling interest.
  Once an instance gets big enough, it generates a kind of gravity, attracting not just the majority of new users, but tempting everyone else. And a few years or decades down the line, we end up with a centralized service. History has shown that anyone with the capacity to be a controlling interest eventually exercises that control to serve its own ends.
  I don't know if anyone is discussing the potential problems of existing good-faith instances becoming too large, but I think we should be. A Meta controlled instance would instantaneously dwarf any existing instance and maybe the totality of all instances.
  
  It's also about the content threads will bring
  Think about all the dimwits, grifters, and douchebags on Instagram. Think about how shitty front page reddit posts were. Do you want that here?
- Thank you!!
- This is great news—thank you!
- I know lemmy.world isn't blocking any instances but they aren't federating meta's Threads.net yet.
- It would be nice to see a post detailing why you are defederating this instance from threads.net
- It would be great if you could explain why threads.net is being blocked.
  
  Because f*ck Meta? Isn't that enough?

I vote to block them as well. Don't let Meta get its claws on lemmy.ca content or user info.
- How is defederating going to help here? I'm genuinely asking. Doesn't that just stop their content from showing on our feeds? It shouldn't affect the amount of user data they can collect which isn't much anyways because we're not using their proprietary software.
  My understanding is that people on exploding heads for example can still read these comments too. They just can't reply. Or they can but we don't see their replies. Only the people that federate with them do.
  Am I getting something wrong here?
  
  I also dont underetand the tactic.
  Couldnt anyone just start a single user instance and gain access that way?
  
  I think only users of that instance see the replies and not even other federated instances with them, since the replication needs to sync with the source (of which none of them can do).
- You're absolutely right!
  Meta is a threat to the privacy of fediverse users, if there are fediverse instances that remain federated with Meta.
  Ross Schulman, senior fellow for decentralization at digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that if Threads emerges as a massive player in the fediverse, there could be concerns about what he calls “social graph slurping." Meta will know who all of its users interact with and follow within Threads, and it will also be able to see who its users follow in the broader fediverse. And if Threads builds up anywhere near the reach of other Meta platforms, just this little slice of life would give the company a fairly expansive view of interactions beyond its borders.
  https://www.wired.com/story/meta-threads-privacy-decentralization/

I don't know if we are but I think we should. No interest in interacting with facebook in any capacity.
- I'm new to federation as a concept, but isn't the only thing you accomplish from defederating Threads is that this community will miss the opportunity to grow its userbase? Isn't the whole point of the fediverse that anyone can be anywhere and access anything from anywhere else?
  If so, the only people who come out behind are the people signing up on Threads specifically, who are granting every piece of personal data to Meta. But people signed up on other instances are protected.
  As far as I understand, the existing fediverse is not at risk of anything, correct?
  
  I guess people are worried about Meta pulling some moves out of Embrace, Expand, Extinguish playbook.
  
  It is at risk. Meta/Facebook have done this before. They embrace, extend and then extinguish. Eventually they say the only way to be safe as to use their products, force people to switch over as all the content is generated on threads and there goes the fediverse. It's better to get ahead of them and just not allow them to link up. Facebook is a hostile actor in this space and needs to be treated as such.
  
  I'm of a similar mind.
  My time online is limited, and if Threads ends up having the most interesting stuff then that's where I'll spend my limited time. If I can follow users from Threads over at mstdn.ca then I would very likely stick with the Fediverse to get the best of both worlds. I'm mostly a content consumer so I go where the content is.
  Also, I don't really think Threads and Lemmy are a good match, if Threads is more a Twitter substitute then I think Mastadon is a better match (and all micro-blog class Fediverse platforms). So I suspect not many people will use Lemmy to follow anyone/thing from Threads, defederating them won't have much practical effect.

A lot of us just left a site because it was ruined by corporate greed. I don't think corporations belong in the fediverse. If there's a vote, I vote for defedding with Threads.

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I think we definitely should.

I, for one, vote in support of defederation from Threads. No reason to allow Meta to use our content to boost engagement on their for-profit platform. And pull users away from places like Lemmy at that.

+1 for defederating

The ideals that led to the Fediverse are antithetical to companies like Meta
- The ideals of the Fediverse is an open network.
  
  The problem is that it only works if the ideal scenario occurs being that we all work together to make things better. Corporate interaction in open source has shown that embrace, extend, extinguish is a very successful strategy.
  Would we be harming the idea of a completely open network? No doubt. The question is whether or not allowing corporations would be better or worse for us in the long run.
  
  Open and unmolested by big corporations

I'm confused. Is threads even federated to lemmy? I thought it was more of a mastadon/microblogging thing?
- Federation is independent from content type so technically yeah, but seeing as you wouldn't really want to see microblog type content in a link aggregator style display... It doesn't really matter. Not to mention that afaik threads ain't even federated yet...
  
  Yeah I figured there's a bit of an apples and oranges thing between the two, even if they use the same underlying protocol. On the one hand, it may mean there's less risk of threads poaching lemmy users/content (as compared to mastadon or even twitter), but on the other hand, there may not be much value in federating with them in the first place.
- Mastodon, kbin, lemmy and all the other fediverse apps all use the same api, activitypub. This means we can all interact with each other even with very different ui and content goals. Mastodon doesn't interact with lemmy much right now because the uis don't really mesh very well, but it's possible. If you see a post that has @community name> in it that's a good sign it probably came from mastodon or similar.
  
  That's interesting. I have a mastadon account but I've never used it to try and get on lemmy. I have gone from lemmy to kbin though, even though I have a kbin account also.
- Any service which makes use of ActivityPub should be able to federate with other services using the same. Hence why you can see posts from people using kbin. You can usually tell when a mastodon user comments because their reply will start with an @replyingto @originalposter

Federation with Meta would significantly increase network traffic and storage costs?
- Then Meta would help everyone cope with the extra workload ... then help some more with a few changes .... then offer some new features ... then help with increased usage ... then offer more features ... then push out the smaller instances and take over everything ... then wall off ActivityPub ... then start charging people and advertisers .. then make billions ... then watch users rebel and start a new system and repeat it all again in 10 or 20 years.
  
  The cirrrcle of lifeeeee...
  
  ActivityPub is maintained by W3C not mastodon, or lemmy, or other fediverse system. Meta doesn't need federation to push W3C to do what they want
- Pretty sure it'd only increase traffic if folks on a fediverse server followed someone on Threads. So unless there's a sudden gigantic flux of fediverse users following Threads users, it shouldn't have a huge near term impact.

What are the objectives of defederating?
To protect our data? They can create stealth instances and get the same data. I think we have to accept and be mindful that the things we share on the fediverse can be exploited by people we don't like.
To exclude their users? I understand they have partnered with Namecheap to offer users customized instances with their own domain. Is it even a technical possibility to exclude all their users' instances?
To make a statement? Okay, but then we need to do more than just defederate.
- This article has been circulating around the fediverse and I think it greatly illustrates why it's so important to defederate from large corporations before they can get a foothold. It's about so much more than just them getting our data.
  https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
  
  In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway.
  Isn't this what actually killed XMPP? XMPP still works, is still viable. But everyone stopped using it. That's got more to do with Facebook than Google, imho.
- It's more about protecting ActivityPub protocol than anything.
  Before we know it, thread will impose its proprietary protocol and the fediverse will simply die with it.
  Honestly, I'm not sure if it will happen. Social media is already pretty much corporate world so we will see what will happen.
  
  Okay but how does this protect the protocol? What is the difference between us defederating them, and what you describe which is essentially them defederating us? Why would they bother in the first place, then? I don't really think any of this is about us, but rather about Twitter and Google.
  Like, does it endanger the HTTP protocol that we exchange HTTP data with them?
- I don't see a point in defederating. As long as the only data they get is the content of my posts and votes and replies I don't care. More people in the fediverse strengthens it and splitting up into kingdoms is basically what we have now. Defederation should be done only if being federated is harmful to the users here.

I don't think it's even on ActivityPub yet, so as far as I know you can't really defederate from something that doesn't even exist yet. But I think it's probably for the best that all instances do defederate just to tell Meta and Zuckerberg to fuck off.

I don't see anyone here arguing that this instance should remain federated with Threads. So far it's unanimous that we should defederate from them. I agree. We should keep this separate.

Please do.

I want to know what you guys are talking about, and I think a get the gist of it, but my lord, do I feel old and don't understand actually most of those words. Is there a "explain to me like I'm 5" place I could ask what are those federations and threads?

I honestly don't give a shit.
- Of course you don't. I'm sure 95% of people don't. Most people don't bother taking a stand on things unless it affects something more substantial like their wallets.

Genuine question here as I'm still new to the fediverse.. isn't defederation a one way street? Like if an instance defederates from Threads, they can no longer see anything from Threads. But Threads can still see things on all the instances? If that's the case, it doesn't feel like it's hurting Meta too much if other instances defederate from it.
- Admins could theoretically also block Meta-owned domains from accessing the API endpoint but that's a moving target

Why should we defederate from threads genuine question? They can’t control us can they? Or is it because it would ruin many instances due to the amount of users posting content on threads resulting in many threads post on home feeds here on Lemmy?
- Cooperate greed a couple times has taken open source projects over by first helping, then offering 'thread exclusive feautres' which no one else cna support - but obviously they can support all open source protocols, giving them a one up. This leads to more users using theirs until it becomes a big layer in the game, and slowly they can factor out all open source/free parts of the software until its essentially another Instagram with full control in their hands

Eh, they aren’t federated yet and even if they do, I don’t really see a point in having less content by blocking them server wide.
Can’t you just block it individually if you don’t like it?
- Currently, there is no way for a user to block an entire instance, only individual communities. Ideally, this would be implemented, and then the user, like you said, could make their own decision whether to see Threads or not.
  
  Lemmy Connect just added the option to block instances. However it doesn't seem to be working at all from my experience. But I think that'll be fixed in the coming days. And I'm sure other apps will implement the feature, as well as the adoption to Lemmy/Kbin itself. Just a matter of time.

Made an account here because of it; lemmy.world was my first server and I'm fairly against any federation with meta or any tech giant. Tolerance paradox applies here too!

I'm running a small Gotosocial based instance and will be defederating simply because I'm afraid of the bandwidth and general load when like there is 1+ billion new users federating via Threads.

I switched from my lemmy.world account to this one because I assumed this instance would defed from meta.

Just wanted to ask, but how do you defederate a non federated platform like threads? Does it just block the website and its links on this instance?
Edit: nevermind apparently they also used ActivityPub so it makes sense. But as a non microblogging website like lemmy that is more like reddit than Twitter, what does defederation mean?
- Pretty sure it just simply means content won't cross over in either direction.

looks like the high and mighty took the bait:
https://beehaw.org/instances
They even federate exploding-heads.com

140 comments