That’s a big decision I won’t make without community input as it would affect all of us.
If we purely treated it as just another instance with no history then I believe our stance on it would be to allow them, as we are an allow-first type of instance. While there are plenty of people we might not want to interact with, that doesn’t mean we should immediately hit that defederate button.
When taking history into account it becomes a whole different story. One may lean towards just saying no without thought.
All of our content (Lemmy/Fediverse) is public by default (at the present time) searchable by anyone and even if I were to block all of the robots and crawlers it wouldn’t stop anyone from crawling one of the many other sites where all of that content is shared.
A recent feature being worked on is the private/local only communities. If a new Lemmy instance was created and they only used their local only communities, would we enact the same open first policy when their communities are closed for us to use? Or would we still allow them because they can still interact, view comments, vote and generate content for our communities etc?
What if someone created instances purely for profit? They create an instance corner stone piece of the “market” and then run ads? Or made their instance a subscription only instance where you have to pay per month for access?
What if there are instances right now federating with us and will use the comments and posts you make to create a shit-posting-post or to enhance their classification AI? (Obviously I would be personally annoyed, but we can’t stop them)
An analogy of what threads is would be to say threads is a local only fediverse instance like mastodon, with a block on replies. It restricts federation to their users in USA, Canada and Japan and Users cannot see when you comment/reply to their posts and will only see votes. They cannot see your posts either and only allow other fediverse users to follow threads users.
With all of that in mind if we were to continue with our open policy, you would be able to follow threads users and get information from them, but any comments would stay local to the instance that comments on the post (and wouldn’t make it back to threads).
While writing up to this point I was going to stay impartial… But I think the lack of two way communication is what tips the scales towards our next instance block. It might be a worthwhile for keeping up-to-date with people who are on threads who don’t understand what the fediverse is. But still enabled the feature because it gives their content a “wider reach” so to speak. But in the context of Reddthat and people expressing views and opinions, having one sided communication doesn’t match with what we are trying to achieve here.
Tiff
Source(s): https://help.instagram.com/169559812696339/about-threads-and-the-fediverse/
PS: As we have started the discussion I’ll leave what I’ve said for the next week to allow everyone to reply and see what the rest of the community thinks before acting/ blocking them.
Edit1:(30/Mar) PPS: we are currently not federated with them, as no one has bothered to initiate following a threads account
I am for blocking Threads. You mentioned history, and history shows that nothing good comes of playing ball with Zuckerberg. We are not a commodity to be used by billionaires, and I feel that the Fediverse exists to at least partially prevent that.
And as for public info, we can’t stop people from scraping the data in other ways, but we also don’t need to directly facilitate it by federating. Why make it easier for Zuck to get access to the data?
Lastly, no matter what he says, Zuck can’t be trusted. I’m almost certain the entire reason he wants to use ActivityPub in the first place is to either gain access to the kinds of people who have left Facebook and Twitter and commodify them, or to somehow maneuver in such a way that it kills or cripples the Fediverse.
Either way, it’s a no from me. Fuck Zuck.
to somehow maneuver in such a way that it kills or cripples the Fediverse.
With similar companies having Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategies, I’m hesitant to let malicious actors like Meta have free reign. I don’t care about if some instances have (clearly labeled) ads or charge subscriptions. And as long as apps make it clear you are talking to the void, the choice of theirs to not federate in the other direction is not a big deal if there is a way for a user to block instances.
To add to this, Zuck is currently the most followed person on the Fediverse:
Source: https://fedidb.org/popular-fediverse-accounts?page=1
Threads will use the content generated here for money without paying a cent.
I do not want to be a donating free labor source for a billionaire. They will take our work and lock it behind a login. Why would we want that ?
Do not federate.
As mentioned - everything can already be accessed relatively easily for data-mining.
So we should make it easier by federating?
Yes, but one option is stealing content, the other is giving it freely.
A committed thief can take my stuff either way, but I still lock my door and close my windows.
I’m in favour of upholding our open nature. Federate with threads.
I am against blocking threads and any other instances. Threads should be treated like beehaw. But users should be aware of one-way communication.
How would someone follow a threads account from Lemmy?
You’d search for a user@threads.net in the search function I think. Just as you would any other user on Mastodon
Lemmy doesn’t have follow functions for users, only for the community actors. Lemmy users can’t follow individual accounts. Though threads users can follow them, and also follow communities just like Mastodon users can. Also they can post to communities and reply to posts and comments in them the same as Mastodon users can.
(how to post to Lemmy from Federated Microblogs)
Title Section Post body Hashtags (optional, can also be in body) Community Actor handle mention i.e. @community@reddthat.comMaybe Mastodon is better… (h/j)
It makes sense that they can do that, though, since Mastodon can, and Threads functions similarly to Mastodon.
In a lot of ways it is better, supports hashtags, has full activitypub support (not just the group support) which allows following users, and allows boosting.
Though it also has severe drawbacks like a lack of MD support (glitch-soc has it but normal Mastodon doesn’t), doesn’t allow arbitrary link attachments like lemmy, and does not have good community/group view or threaded comments, though these last two are mainly front-end issues.
I am absolutely not in favor of federating with threads, beyond the EEE scares and corporate abuse they also have a huge problem with moderating properly and have large amounts of trolls and transphobic content. Facebook has a very bad track record in general with moderation and has allowed this type of content to thrive on their other platforms in the past, threads doesn’t seem to be an exception.
just leave it status quo like this is better. Let’s see where it goes
The fediverse is a public forum. Everything you post and interact with is public, and every large digital ads company has been scraping public forums for about as long as digital advertisers have been scraping the web for anything. By defederating you aren’t keeping anything secret from Meta, you’re just siloing yourself off from interactions with their userbase (for better or for worse).
I think the decision whether or not to federate really comes down to user experience. Is the instance full of trolls who just harass and annoy? Block the heck out of 'em. But if it grows the fediverse and allows for more interaction, honestly I’m down for it. I hate Meta/Facebook for their terribe UI, poor moderation and data hoovering behavior. By interacting with Meta via the fediverse the only data they’re getting is the exact same data they probably already scrape, but I can actually interact with normal people on sane terms
The Threads privacy policy for third party servers (quoted below) is extremely sparse, only collecting the exact same data any federated server would collect through federation
Information From Third Party Services and Users: We collect information about the Third Party Services and Third Party Users who interact with Threads. If you interact with Threads through a Third Party Service (such as by following Threads users, interacting with Threads content, or by allowing Threads users to follow you or interact with your content), we collect information about your third-party account and profile (such as your username, profile picture, and the name and IP address of the Third Party Service on which you are registered), your content (such as when you allow Threads users to follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in your posts), and your interactions (such as when you follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in Threads posts).
As I mentioned elsewhere, Zuckerberg is currently the top fediverse user: https://fedidb.org/popular-fediverse-accounts?page=1
Due to the huge difference in numbers between Threads and the Fediverse, if Threads implements groups (in a similar fashion to Mastodon), those would directly compete with Lemmy communities.
Once those communities are created and have millions of users, people will probably join them, as they have the most users. Once this is done, Threads could then implement new features and explain that they cannot federate anymore, forcing people to move to Threads. This article details what happened with XMPP and GChat: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
We (users of Reddthat) already see the natural tendency of most of the users to gravitate towards the most populated instance (LW) and its communities. This trend would become exponential with the numbers difference between Threads and the Fediverse.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that if the size of Lemmy.world is already causing so much problems, imagine what would happen with threads…
Technical problems aside, I am against big instances, a single entity holding so much power is a problem no matter who that entity is. I would suggest creating a policy against that, but it’s hard to figure out concrete limits against such instances, maybe no instance should hold more than 50% of MAU?
Last but not least, as others have said, threads is known for their poor moderation. Cutting off trolls early is important in creating a healthy platform, the more space and attention you give them, the worse they get. Threads is not ready to deal with that, nor does it have the incentive to do so.
Threads it known to lack moderation for transphobic content: https://glaad.org/smsi/report-meta-fails-to-moderate-extreme-anti-trans-hate-across-facebook-instagram-and-threads/
A good enough reason to defederate
dont federate with threads
Another element, I had a look at other instances policies for Threads.
Defederated:
- https://lemm.ee
- https://lemmy.ml
- https://lemmy.ca
- https://sh.itjust.works
- https://lemmy.dbzer0.com
- https://programming.dev
- https://lemmy.blahaj.zone
- https://discuss.tchncs.de
- https://hexbear.net
- https://feddit.de
Are still federated:
- lemmy.world
These servers also block threads as well. Basically all the most popular instances except lemmy.world are blocking threads.
Thank you! in the meantime, I found this list, easier to use: https://fedipact.veganism.social/
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