I really hope we can get some good people from Threads to move over before Meta starts to do even more untrustworthy things.
Besides the absolutely absurdly move of following and pushing a fake"Fediverse" account that makes people think Fediverse is a single entity or organization, they've already started discussions about expansions to AP to allow platforms to support ads and other shitty ways of monetization.
Fedi needs to make money to survive, I know that. I am behind that, but ads are the shadiest of all the monetization methods because of tracking. Nobody wants to be tracked no matter how "innocent" their activities are.
They've been REALLY quiet since activating AP on their end in a seemingly bad faith move to make the Fediverse seem "useless and pointless to use" by forcing users to educate themselves on the Fediverse if they even know it exists while also making the option to turn it on obscenely hard to locate from normal use.
All in all, I'm VERY skeptical of Meta's intentions and don't really think they'll end up fully federating in the end becuase "why enable a feature that a wide number of our users think is a useless feature?". I feel right now is as far as they're gonna go with it, maybe worldwide, but still one way because that benefits them, not us, and they won't push a feature that people think is useless.
Obviously this is intentional bad faith tactics, but they still have time to prove me wrong and I really hope they do. I really really hope one day we get full federation, but I would be very delusional to have high hopes that such a thing will ever occur given this week's revelations.🤦♂️
Threads: Your content will appear on a user's timeline if they comment on your posts.
Me: But then my posts won't show up for the thousands of people who silently enjoy them. Just the people who call me a dumb bitch because they don't understand satire will see my posts.
Co-founder of Twitter joins new Mastodon board of directors. Right, so federating with Threads wasn’t a mistake. This is just the direction Mastodon is going. Oh, well. Another Mozilla emerges.
In my bio I explicitly state that I block threads.net.
The reasons are many but focused: privacy violations, and using the results of those violations for political gains for the organizations that pay for them. Organizations that by strange coincidence are run by billionaires that don't like democracy.
Sharing what's going on with actual #fediverse#censorship happening over on #threads. Zuck has beef with a small #nonprofit newsroom calling out #meta#facebook ethics and they've decided to try wiping it off the internet. Tell all your friends to bring their receipts to #mastodon before they're gone too
Serious question for those that this is relevant to: if you don't understand how ActivityPub works, even a little bit, why do you feel the need to have opinions on how it should work?
Isn't this backwards as hell? Shouldn't you try to understand how something works, then ask why it is that way and if it's intentional?
Too many people here have this strange opinion that they have some sort of privacy, even if their profile/posts are set to "public".
This is just simply not true. We're on the internet. There's over 20,000 Fedi instances and there's just no way to manually parse them to make sure there's no "bad actors" using your "public" posts for whatever the hell they want.
We already see this happening with things like NewsMast which is aiming to be a "news" app where their users don't have to login or register to a Fediverse server, yet they will see posts by Fediverse users from bigger instances based on "categories".
Maybe do some research about how the protocol works and how it's VERY opt-out to the core, before you have opinions on it. Just saying....
An important distinction is slowly being uncovered about the definition of the term "fediverse." Who is it that gets to decide what this place is? How are we being represented? These are not easy questions to answer and if we don't do a better job describing ourselves, then the job will get done for us by people who don't understand the underlying values we hold. #fediverse#meta#threads
Looks like this is going to be the net result for the foreseeable: a load of migration one way from open platforms into threads. Not a great harbinger of things to come
@LemmyKnowsBest not sure what you are picking up on, but I think our #mastodon server runs well partly because our admin works for Google and can bring his expertise over here. I have mixed feelings about that. He is very obviously a fan of the big tech companies and seemed a bit miffed that we all got so upset about #Threads trying to #federate
Which is funny cuz I've never really been to any of those. No accounts and only visited IG a few times because something else linked there for some information.
Also, I didn't really notice Threads was succeeding.
@sab I think the concern is more about tens/hundreds of thousands of toxic bros from Threads jumping into conversations on the fedi. We'll know enough not to follow them, but they'll be able to find us.
The fedi already has every kind of hate and -phobia and -ism present, of course, but if the wrong people from Threads get involved, that could go up by an order of magnitude and push us past a tipping point where our network of volunteer moderators just can't keep up.
"Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.
"free fediverses" that reject Meta – and surveillance capitalism more generally
The free fediverses have a lot of advantages over Meta and Meta's fediverses, some of which will be very hard to counter, and clearly have enough critical mass that they'll be just fine.
Here's a set of strategies for the free fediverses to provide a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism. They build on the strengths of today's fediverse at its best – including natural advantages the free fediverses have that Threads and Meta's fediverses will having a very hard time countering – but also are hopefully candid about weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a long list, so I'll be spreading out over multiple posts; this post currently goes into detail on the first two.
Opposition to Meta and surveillance capitalism is an appealing position. Highlight it!
Focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety
Emphasize "networked communities"
Support concentric federations of instances and communities
Consider "transitively defederating" Meta's fediverses (as well as defederating Threads)
Consider working with people and instances in Meta's fediverses (and Bluesky, Dreamwidth, and other social networks) whose goals and values align with the free fediverses'
Build a sustainable ecosystem
Prepare for Meta's (and their allies') attempts to paint the free fediverses in a bad light
Reduce the dependency on Mastodon
Prioritize accessibility, which is a huge opportunity
Commit to anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and pro-LGBTQIA2S+ principles, policies, practices, and norms for the free fediverses
"instances are valuable for the relations and interactions they facilitate locally AND for their ability to connect you to other parts of the network."
By contrast, @evanprodromou notes that "Big Fedi" advocates typically see instances as typically see the instance as "mostly a dumb pipe." But The Networked Communities view aligns much better with the free fediverses' values – as does the "Social Archipelago" view @noracodes sketches in The Fediverse is Already Dead. Not only that, it's good strategy!
Here's how @zkat describes caracoles: "you essentially ask to join concentric federations of instances ... with smaller caracoles able to vote to federate with entire other caracoles."
And @ophiocephalic's "fedifams" are a similar idea: "Communities could align into fedifams based on whatever conditions of identity, philosophy or interest are relevant to them. Instances allied into fedifams could share resources and mutually support each other in many way"
The idea's a natural match for community-focused, anti-surveillance capitalism free fediverses, fits in well with the Networked Communities model discussed in part 3, and helps address scalability of consent-based federation discussed in Part 2.
There's likely to be a lot of moving between instances as people and instances sort themselves out into the free fediverses and Meta's fediverses -- and today, moving accounts on the fediverse today. There are lots of straightforward ways to improve it, many of which don't even require improvements to the software. And there are also opportunities to make creating, customizing, and connecting instances easier.
The free fediverses should work together with people and instances in Meta's fediverses and on Bluesky whose goals and values align with the free fediverse
Many of the Meta advocates I've talked to share the free fediverses' long-term goal of building a sustainable alternative to surveillance capitalism -- and the same is true for people on Bluesky. So there are likely to be situations where some of the people and instances in Meta's fediverses and Bluesky wind up as situational allies to the free fediverses.
A few areas where collaboration could be very useful:
A key principle of organizing is meeting people where they are.
Moderation on decentralized networks is a shared challenge.
Bringing concepts similar to Bluesky's custom feeds to the fediverses, and more generally focusing on human-focused and liberatory (as opposed to oppressive) uses of algorithms in decentralized social networks designed from the margins.
Meta's fediverses, Bluesky, and the free fediverses are all vulnerable to disinformation.
Transitive defederation -- defederating from instances that federate with Threads as well as defederating from Threads -- isn't likely to be an all-or-nothing thing in the free fediverses. Tradeoffs are different for different people and instances. This is one of the strengths of the fediverse, so however much transitive defederation there winds up being, I see it as overall as a positive thing -- although also messy and complicated.
So the recommendation here is for instances to consider#TransitiveDefederation: discuss, and decide what to do. I've also got some thoughts on how to have the discussion -- and the strategic aspects.
How Threads will integrate with the Fediverse ( plasticbag.org )