this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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I don't mind the threads integration much actually.
The idea that they will destroy it by just... Being a bigger instance? Because they can influence development? Isn't this shit developed by a tanky? A self-proclaimed stalinist? Why the hell would they capitulate to a megacorp? I'm more worried about the actual developers ruining this shit than Meta and Threads.
Even if you aren’t against federating with threads on principle part of the challenge is going to be able to keep up with moderating their entire user base en-masse and being able to afford the cost of federating content from so many users at once.
It’s a burden I doubt a lot of smaller instances can handle.
You make a very good point there. That's probably the best reasoning to be against federating with them I've seen. It also brings up duplication of content. If they have so many users, would it be possible that a smaller instance getting content from them could literally fill up all their storage space, assuming it's not a gigantic data center but something self-hosted? Text may not be problematic, but images from Instagram can be massive. I suppose if your instance was that small you'd already be picking and choosing what to federate with, though.
I mostly agree. The one thing I will say in favour of defederation is hate content. Meta has incredibly lax moderation. People can literally say "this person deserves to be killed", or even "I would absolutely murder this person if I came across them" and Meta will be like "yeah we understand this may be disappointing to you, but we're gonna allow that to stay" if you report it.
I saw that here, too. Thought about reporting when I saw the sidebar didn't even have a rule against it (forgot which community though - my app doesn't present that in an obvious way)
There's definitely users who will do that here. There are on any platform open to sign-ups by the general public. But my experience has been that it's very likely to get removed if mods or admins are made aware. I don't think I've ever gotten a positive response on Meta.
Yes, by being a bigger instance with piss poor moderation. We'd be overrun with trolls and spammers
they could develop new features but intentionally implement them in a way that they are not compatible with other services. they could put all the other instances they federate with on rolling blackouts so that it seems like they are down when in fact it's just them cutting the connection. doing just these two things with purpose could make it look like Facebook has the most advanced and stable instance. in addition, as you mentioned, it would also have the biggest populace. there would be pressure to abandon other instances to join that instance to stay in touch.
The people making the most noise about it don't seem like they're pressured one bit. Also, walling it off through defederation won't stop any of what you propose may happen, anyway.
Why would that happen anyway? A lot of people already came here from bigger sites, like reddit for example. If we don't federate, then why would people who are already here be pushed by something that isn't there?
The only "solution" is granular federation - the fediverse side could treat them differently, say by having their posts and comments count less when building a feed... But that's easier said than done. Do they build a "threads ranking" feature into the core, or do they they give admins the tools to build specific configurations for federation?
It's definitely not present in Lemmy, and I don't believe Mastodon has it either. And on that topic...
For example, there was a post claiming they're blocking toots referencing pixel fed. I don't know if it's true or not, but they easily could. And in doing so, they effectively derank those posts in the fediverse (see point 1)
There's a lot of ways they can leverage their size as a weapon. They're not another instance, they're a private monolith running their own code... And they have a terrible track record
Genuinely surprised to see this comment so high up, with so many more upvotes than downvotes. I personally have no problem with Threads, and some of the higher-profile celebrities, comics and artists I want to follow are already there. That I can add other fediverse accounts to my feed, or add Threads accounts into my Mastadon/Lemmy apps, it's a win.
I'm not oblivious to why folks don't like it and want no part of Zuckerberg's companies. I still prefer open platforms to closed ones, and Zuck seems to understand that too. I personally don't buy the EEE fears. This ain't Microsoft.
yeah if threads integration means that i could interact with my friends threads posts with mastodon account i don't mind it. it's not like they are gonna use mastodon. maybe there might be a chance that people on threads might visit mastodon once they are fed up with spams on threads.
The chance is higher that threads will add some features mastodon doesn't support and then people will leave mastodon for threads.
embrace extend extinguish
and break compatibility so that neither of the users won't be able to share posts properly. yes i am aware of their shenanigans. i am gonna use mastodon even if they make it a sinking ship. plus i hope people realise it doesn't have porn/spam bots like threads do.
the very fact that they don't allow instagram users to view threads post without making them open a threads account tells me how much they are gonna try to push threads by any means, even if it affects other platforms like mastodon.
Yeah I don't understand the issue.
People want the fediverse to grow, so FB entering it is a good thing no? Otherwise realistically the fediverse will likely stagnate and always just take up a tiny bit of space.
The more people involved the better. Sometimes I feel this group just wants to shoot themselves in the foot.
I DON'T want the fediverse to grow if that growth is full of extremists, hate groups, porn bots, etc.
But the fediverse already has that lol. I've had arguments here with extremists many times.
You won't just magically cure it by stopping FB from federating. Putting your fingers in your ears and closing your eyes doesn't make it go away.
But we're talking our current problem but instead expanded into a community 80 times the size of the fediverse. That's a little more hate than we've got now, no?
So what do you want exactly? Do you want the fediverse to remain small and irrelevant forever? Or do you want it to grow and become the dominant space with more bad actors but more useful actors as well?
Because you can't have both, and you will always have more extremists and shitty views with larger groups. I for one think the fediverse is a better implementation of the social tech for pack of a better word, and would prefer its implementation over the closed wall implementation of non fediverse applications.
I'd prefer remaining niche, thank you very much.
That's completely fair. 👍
Meh. Tankies>fascists
You'll have both though in the fediverse... So it's pretty irrelevant. Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they don't exist.
Outside of the odd troll here and there, fascism isn't a huge problem (at least on lemmy). Exploding heads died in like a week and you haven't really seen any popular resurgence of far right politics here since. Can't speak for the rest of the fediverse but lemmy seems to have carved out a semi-comfy niche for itself
I haven't seen far rights here myself, but it's a self selecting bias.
I've definitely come across more far lefts here than any other platform I've used which are equally as bad as far right imo.
I'm always concerned if there is only one strong group representation like that though. I'd rather have no extremists obviously, but if we have one side at least allow the other, otherwise that sort of crap starts seeping elsewhere.
Lemmy already is full of extremists and hate groups. Perhaps you mean you don't want hate groups you don't agree with?
Even if this is somehow true (no clue who you federated with, man), we're talking a community abt 80 times the size of the fediverse whose owner does not care and will not do anything other than dump its worst upon us.
Even if they aren't planning EEE, they might just be trying to rid of the fediverse by filling it with junk.
There's not much one can really do about that. You can block their instance or join one that does it for you but that still doesn't stop them from joining the fediverse or seeing the content here. Being an open platform means that it's also open for the actors you don't like.
With hate groups and extremists I was refering to the anti-right-wing, anti-capitalist, pro-socialism/communism, pro-anarchy, anti-AI, anti-facebook/twitter/google etc. sentiment that's alive an well all over our frontpages here.
Not extremists, just people who want their data to belong to them.
It's a quite diverse group of people of whom some are extremists.
The issue is that Meta's intention is to extinguish the fediverse, not to add to it. I can't believe people are still falling for this tactic.
But honestly, the fediverse is tiny and I find it's not a suitable replacement for anything at the moment. It does need to have more people joining for it to be a complete replacement.
As to whether Meta will extinguish it or not I don't know, but at least in the short term it could help. I don't think it's reasonable to pre-emptively shoot your foot off because you might get gangrene - I'd rather wait to see it and then decide.
The fediverse just needs time to grow. It's still a very new thing. Growth will take a long time, but the fediverse needs to be an alternative to corporate social media, not integrated with and dependent on it.
It will be more difficult and damaging to defederate later when Meta starts throwing its weight around, because people will become accustomed to a much larger community. The fact that threads has many more users will give Meta disproportionate power over the fediverse, but unlike other open source/free projects, their only goals are to profit and gain more influence over society.
It's best to never federate with them, even if that means losing growth opportunities in the short term.
That's a fair call.
It does run the risk that the fediverse will always be irrelevant and will never see the growth needed to actually be useful for most people.
I'd prefer the risk myself but get that others aren't.
I was kind of hoping the hysteria would be over by now. Walled gardens are a bad thing, I'm pleased when holes are poked in them.
"Hysteria", that's one way to belittle people.