I used to think that there would be 1, main 'Fediverse' with all of the 'big instances' connected to each other. The recent Threads debacle has shown me otherwise.

The point of the Fediverse is that there is no one single entity, or group of entities, dominating it all.

Right now it feels like whatever the big instances do, we kind of have to go along with to be a part of anything. As the Fediverse grows, there will be more options to suit different types of users.

I think it's fine if big instances federate with Threads and it's fine if they don't. People can just join instances that align with what they want. It's not like defederating means being cut out of the Fediverse, that's not possible.

Great design. I'm eager to see how it plays out.

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[–] tourist@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago (21 children)

I'm out of the loop

Last thing I vaguely remember about a defederation incident was honeybear or something like that upsetting everyone

[–] kplaceholder@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

The controversy you are referring to is regarding specifically .world defederating Hexbear "preemptively" before the latter could federate with anyone, out of fear that the "annoying tankies" may overrun everyone else. Since Hexbear is a relatively small platform run by volunteers like .world is, and the basis on which the defederation was justified was shaky at best, a lot of users raised an eyebrow. There was a similar move by .world later on where they defederated from Lemmygrad, another "tankie" instance, due to alleged hate speech of which the admins failed to provide a single example, and it was clear as day that .world admins just wanted some excuse to defederate away "the evil communists".

In this case, the situation is different, because it involves a lot more than just .world. A large, for-profit instance Threads, run by Meta, is opening up to ActivityPub, and people are afraid of the reasonable possibility that Meta is attempting to either destroy or absorb the Fediverse as a whole. Besides the shitty corporate attempts in the past, Threads is also overrun by a lot of algorithm induced hate speech and far-right extremism, and there is a legitimate concern that this will spread to instances that federate with Threads.

Hexbear (and others like Lemmygrad) are different in that they are still part of the Fediverse, they are run by volunteers like most instances, and remain federated with other large instances such as lemm.ee. But the fact that hate speech is rampant in Threads yet .world admins want to "wait and see" make the Lemmygrad defederation even clearer and funnier in retrospect, lol. I complained back in the day when Hexbear was defederated that I'd rather let users choose for themselves whether they wanted that or not, and I got told to go to another instance. Now that we are federating with Threads anyway, might as well do that.

Edit: Typos

[–] mateomaui@reddthat.com 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Threads is also overrun by a lot of algorithm induced hate speech and far-right extremism

Pretty sure you’re confusing Threads for Twitter. Threads doesn’t contain any more of that than lemmy or mastodon already does, and it’s probably less, so such handwringing is overstated. They’ve already implemented a “Restrict” setting in addition to blocks and mutes, and frankly their handling of blocking and how people can interact with your account after being restricted or blocked is already more effective than what’s here or on mastodon.

[–] dameoutlaw@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago

Thank you. People on the Fedi fail to realise how similar they are to the places they call out. This disinformation and misinformation is insane. People don’t care to be accurate nor honest. I don’t get how anyone can attempt to claim any moral superiority

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