this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

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I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of us are here to avoid another corporate takeover of our preferred platforms. It would seem to me to be a tad irresponsible to allow Facebook into our space with open arms, allowing them to hoover up our data. I would love to keep using Lemmy.world, but will happily change instances if need be, and I feel many share that sentiment.

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[–] [email protected] 204 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

Well, right now Meta is pushing, not pulling. Meaning, Threads content can be displayed on Masto, but not the other way around.

IMHO, the bigger threat is having Threads content completely dominate other activity pub clients. Other clients / communities could get dependent on it. Then Meta is basically a drug dealer with leverage.

Data collection doesn’t bother me too much. I’m not going to install their client and all of the behavior trackers that come with it, and my activity pub content is already freely available to query on the internet. If they want it, they already have access to it. Everyone does.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Since lemmy can't pull from mastodon/threads, it seems like a complete non issue for now.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Correct. This is an issue for Masto, not Lemmy. It may never be an issue for Lemmy for all we know. Lemmy is focused on following activity pub communities not individual people.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Data collection doesn’t bother me too much. I’m not going to install their client and all of the behavior trackers that come with it, and my activity pub content is already freely available to query on the internet. If they want it, they already have access to it. Everyone does.

I will be able to follow and see friends' posts and sports teams' posts through Mastodon without needing a Meta account nor install their shitty apps.

All I posted via fediverse is public already, traveling into some obscure instances, so I don't care if Meta uses or shares my public posts.

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They'd hoover up your data regardless lmao. Anything you post here is fair game. It's not the same as Instagram measuring how much you look at a post or your location.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 10 months ago (10 children)

Yeah so many people misunderstand data on ActivityPub.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I was surprised to see lemmy.world didn’t defederate. I hope it does. And, I hope a mod weighs in on the planned direction for the instance.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 10 months ago (2 children)

There is no real need right now. Lemmy is focused on following communities, not individuals. This is more of an issue for Mastodon than Lemmy.

It might never be an issue for Lemmy. Threads would need to start organizing people around communities, or Lemmy would need to encourage people to follow individuals (something Reddit promoted and no one cared about)

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago

They weighed in months ago back when it was announced and said they were taking a wait and see approach, where if it did cause problems they would defederate, but didn’t want to preemptively do so. Many other instances did defederate already though.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Whichever way instances decide to go there's a few things people should remember:

  • We're lucky to have this option even if it's divisive at times.
  • It's not always about what we know will happen, sometimes it's concern over possibilities we couldn't even imagine at the time.
  • Growth is great but there's infrastructure, moderators and policies that can be overwhelmed.
  • Defederation can be reversed at any time if things change.
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[–] [email protected] 57 points 10 months ago (21 children)

The Facebook hatred is understandable and justified, but defederating with Threads is a misguided idea:

  • Federation is not required for them to be able to pull the data. Even if you block an instance, they can still pull whatever they want.
  • By closing down with Threads, you'll be basically guaranteeing that that all the millions of people that are there will never be able to migrate away.
  • By getting major (current) instances to defederate with Threads, it gets easier for Threads to just say "hey, we tried to be open but they still rejected us, so we are just going to go back to our walled garden."
[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Buddy i am here to avoid the lizardman and dont want him anywhere near me. Free software always has been an alternative to corprates and never a replacement. In the name of evangalic fediverse we should not give up our freedom. And above all this whill become like the trade agreement between Hati and the US.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Unless threads implements the full activitypub spec then everyone should be defederated from meta. There is a fine line for meta to walk to not harm the fediverse. Lemmy World is one of the few instances that can handle it. But meta should not be allowed to be a guiding voice in the direction of the fediverse at all

[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago (1 children)

+1, with an additional condition: when Meta inevitably tries to co-opt the activitypub spec and modify it in incompatible ways that only benefit themselves they need to be defederated immediately.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (8 children)

Seems like everyone who is "for" letting threads stay can be summed up by "why would I want to intentionally separate this from a corporate entity when they'll just get my data anyway" Like that's a fucking valid argument.

Oppose corpos at all fronts, it doesn't matter if they'll get you anyway. If that's your take, then if your country ever gets invaded, I expect you to bend over and invite the enemy inside.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Lol People are fucking idiots and these are the same people who complain about how everything is getting expensive when corporations are posting massive profits.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 10 months ago (7 children)

I'm actually really trying to play devils advocate... But I'm struggling.

I came to get away from the main stream socials.

I came to minimise my farmed data footprint.

I came to find other like minded people.

These principals alone are shared by quite a few I guess.

If we end up hooked up to the machine we were trying to escape from then coming here was near pointless.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago (12 children)

The amount of Meta bootlickers in this thread is incredible.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

Noe consider how the number will increase AFTER they start federating!

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

When it comes to Corporates it very much is like the Nazi Bar allegory: you let one Nazi stay because he's beheaving rasonably and not being nasty, and sooner or later the place is going to be full of his friends and turned into a Nazi Bar.

It's the same dynamic only with corporate logos, advertising, hypercommercialism and eventual enshitiffication instead of swasticas, racist messaging and violence.

Certainly in my eperience of it since the 90s, the Internet changed very much this from its early days and spirit as commercial interests from their original foothold almost entirelly subverted it to serve their interests.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (2 children)

allowing them to hoover up our data

Hate to break it to you, but the fediverse is public. Most instances don't even require an account for read-only access. If Facebook wants your data they don't need to federate to get it.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (10 children)

On one hand: great, federated tech is catching on.

On the other hand: fuck these clowns, they're not participating in good faith. If Meta wants to join the fediverse they need to interoperate fully with other instances instead of using activitypub to poach fediverse users.

I'm 100% convinced Meta is pulling a classic embrace, extend, extinguish move here.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Meta should be fully jetisoned from the entire federation. If people want threads, join threads. edit: If people want their sports and brand posts then aggregate using RSS for corporate and non-corp social media. The whole purpose of the fediverse was to be NOT linked to tech bro empires.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago (11 children)

Given that we've watched communities like Reddit become more closed, I would rather Lemmy not do the same. The best thing an instance can do is keep them on a very tight leash, and kick out at the first sign of a rule being broken.

What Lemmy needs, above anything, is engagement. Be open to the users from Threads, instead of punishing them because you hate Meta. Many people joined Lemmy because the idea of the fediverse meant freedom to choose, and while instances are free to allow/deny who they want, it shouldn't be a detriment to users that want to experience Lemmy.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (13 children)

Why does it seem like everyone with this position is unaware that data here is already available publicly?

Please expand on how you believe blocking threads improves your privacy.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 10 months ago (7 children)

My objection with federating with Threads has nothing to do with privacy or data access, it has to do with keeping the ActivityPub protocol alive. Embrace, extend, extinguish is a much more legitimate threat to the fediverse than data scraping ever will be. No, the danger is that Meta will begin to contribute to the protocol. At first, contribution by a corporate actor would seem like a fantastic boon to an open standard that we wish to see grow, that's the embrace phase. But it would not be long before Meta began adding features that are exclusive to a Threads user - they'll extend the protocol to better accomplish their ends. In this way, they seek to bring more and more users into their platform in order to take advantage of these exclusive features while maintaining compatibility with the larger Fediverse. The end goal is to have enough users that when they decide to break that compatibility, they will make off with the majority of the users from the open community; that's the extinguish part.

This is a well-established strategy that large tech companies have employed with open standards in the past (see XMPP). I strongly believe it is in the Fediverse's long term interests to remain defederated from Threads, and any other large corporate player. Better to have fewer users and grow organically than to federate with Meta; we may see a short term boost to the fediverse, but the long term risks outweigh any benefit.

That being said, the nice thing about the fediverse is that I can just leave this instance for another if I disagree with the admin's decisions.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Facebook is a data harvesting company. Yes, it can scrape the data but why hand it to them on a silver platter? Let them scrape it, if they want it so bad. The issue is facebook has destroyed democracies , bought out competition and never had a good track record so why risk it. If we federate, it'll be like smoking cigarettes even though we know smoking causes cancer.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago

Seconded. Fuck Meta.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why can’t it be as simple as fuck Facebook! I don’t want a multi billion dollar corporation playing in my sandbox.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

Hard agree. Fuck da Zuk.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (6 children)

There sure are a lot of accounts here NOT from .world throwing in their opinions

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There should be an option to make posts instance-local for such things.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (3 children)

If the majority of us are truly here specifically to enjoy the freedom of choice, then it would follow that peering with Facebook wouldn't be a major risk for active users here, and possibly an opportunity to reach a less savvy audience.

Lemmy and mastodon are platforms good for connecting broadly. There could even be a separate instance that is a subsidiary division of a major player.

And as far as hoovering up our data, we're already out here putting it out there. Don't put sensitive data on here and don't sign up for an instance owned by surveillance-capitalists.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I agree that we should defederate. I like it here, but I'll definitely change instances if Lemmy.world decides to federate with threads (or any similar platform) and isn't very cautious about it. No hurt feelings of course, if I'm not part of the majority here, but from the responses I've seen so far it seems like most people here agree.

I do respect one thing, and it's that everyone I've encountered in this discussion is interested in keeping the fediverse alive and well. ╰⁠( ^⁠‿^)⁠╯

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If this functions to poll users broadly, then count another one for NOT federating. I came to Lemmy to not have my feed dominated by a tsunami of corporate junk curated by one of the worst influences in modern society. And if the counter argument is that I can block their content, then you can go join threads. I have no desire to be on a service where the majority of other users are constanly being fed crap from Meta and then interacting here, even if I can't see the initial influence. I can go elsewhere, sure, and will if they federate, but I like it so far and would rather not. But consider, at least, the kind of thing .world will become if the only people here are people who think, "Hey, maybe Zuck's new project won't be so bad!"

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

I can see it playing out fine either way, although it's certainly more turbulent federating if we are to see their content and it washes out the other communities (which to my understanding is unlikely since it's user based content like Mastodon). As others said, they already have our data, too.

Instead, I just wish the more... extreme communities didn't defederate already. I'd love to see Meta users react to Hexbear or Exploding Heads in an unfiltered, unadulterated way (or those much much worse instances that everyone defederates from). Instead they get us relatively tame, generally nerdy Lemmy users. I didn't even know what a Tankie was back in the before times!

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (12 children)

Imagine blocking hexbear and allowing Facebook.

Fuck lemmy world

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (9 children)

Not federating it seems like a weird choice. Can't each user block Threads themselves if they want? Isn't that the point of the fediverse? User control?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Is threads federating with Lemmy??? I thought it was federating with mastodon (and mastodon-like).

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Honestly, the more I think about this, I feel like keeping Threads will pull more people FROM there than it will push people away from Lemmy... once they learn what the fediverse is.

Anyone that's on Lemmy **now ** isn't going to go over to Threads.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (7 children)

I'm in favor of federation. The point of federated networks isn't that there are no evil corporations, but rather that they can't cause damage.

What Facebook can do:

  • read your public data (they can do this wether anyone federates with them or not)
  • let their users publish content to other Fediverse users

What they can't do:

  • serve you ads
  • serve you an algorithmic feed
  • impose their ToS or rules
  • collect data for analytics/tracking/marketing
  • force you to use a certain client
  • make changes to the protocol or design

I think this is mostly relevant for Mastodon servers due to the format of the content, but the arguments are the same.

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