Fediverse

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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.

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You're So Vain, You Probably Think This App Is About You: On Meta and Mastodon (tracks.ranea.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Shared by @tchambers and originally written by @chipotle

With kbin’s microblogging integration I think this is particularly relevant for our community as well! It’s a great read please take the time to read the full post.

Relevant Paragraph:
"Look. At the end of the day, I’m a Mastodon partisan. But I don’t love its collective tendency toward self-important dogmatism....The truth is, #Threads is not about Mastodon. It’s about Meta and only about Meta, and Mastodon isn’t important enough to them to spend the considerable effort that would be necessary to destroy it.

It’d be awfully damn ironic if the Fediverse decides it’s become necessary to destroy itself to stop them."

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

So if Threads isn’t trying to overwhelm and destroy Mastodon, why have ActivityPub support at all? Two answers. First, “Look, see? We’re open!” is not only perceived as a great talking point these days, it’s perceived as a regulatory relief valve. Look, see? ActivityPub! We’re open!

Second, remember that the business model for Threads is keeping you on Threads. If 95% of your friends are on Threads but 5% are over on that weird Mastodon thing, now you don’t have to use Mastodon to follow them! Just follow them from Threads! Woo! Will Threads be a good Mastodon client? No, but it just has to hit “good enough.”

These are also great points to highlight imo. A throwaway defense against regulation and entrenchment by enabling access to the few friends that outright refuse to use their products both make more sense to me compared to some of the EEE arguments & data collection. I'd be more inclined to see Meta/Facebook doing the bare minimum with ActivityPub and using a strict allow list vs. open federation, but time will tell.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I agree. Threads, from their perspective, is not about Mastodon or the fediverse. We don't show up on their radar. We're a speck of dust on their roadmap. We are a complete non-factor to Meta and their plans. They want ActivityPub so they can demonstrate interoperability to EU Privacy Watchdogs who have so far costed them $1.3 billion in fines and are threatening with more. That's why Threads is not available in EU.

But who cares about that really? Not me.

It doesn't really change my attitude towards them. I joined fediverse, because it's the only place where you yourself can control the signal to noise ratio. There's no algorithm that shoves ads or influencer opinions down your throat. The moderation is largely crowdsourced to users. I want my "social media" to be "social". I want control over the things I see in my timeline.

That's not to say Mastodon/fedi doesn't have it's problems. It does. Many of the things OP lists are correct.

But at the end of the day, Meta doesn't care about us. But I care about me. Block the shit out of Meta. They're harmful to humanity.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And now the emotional argument...

Why is it so hard for some people to admit that some precaution is required when we are dealing with predators like Facebook?

Let's focus on what we have instead of spending our time and money on federating a monster with 100 millions accounts.

We don't want to become a threads client. Our development must be independent of Facebook. It won't be independent anymore if 95% of the content is coming from Facebook. We need time to digest more users and now is absolutely not the time to federate such a big thing as 100 million users.

Get real. If people want threads then let them install threads. Nothing wrong with that.

And please stop with the "friends" thing
We get it: your friends are on Facebook. We are building something different. That's all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Why is it so hard for some people to admit that some precaution is required when we are dealing with predators like Facebook?

I think this author of this piece is very clearly in favor of precautions and state their preferred integration as "silence" mode not unfettered federation:

"Personally, I would federate with Threads in “silence” mode: my instance’s users would be able to follow Threads users and vice versa, but posts from Threads would not show up in any public timelines on my server."

I agree that there should be precautions in place to prevent a glut of threads content dwarfing all the locally produced content. I think the fear is that if some instances go for the hard defederation route, defederating from threads and threads-federated instances, we will effectively be bisecting the existing fediverse in two, which may be a cure worse than the disease.