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
I'm really tired of the holier-than-you people on the Fediverse!
No, Threads is not full of trolls and evil people just because Meta is evil. Threads is full of people who are not terminally online like we are. This is idiotic to want to block Threads by default. If anything let's show them there is another way.
No, the big Mastodon instances are not full of trolls and evil people just because they're the big instances. They're full of people who are into the Fediverse but for reasons that are theirs have no time, energy, or interest to join smaller instances. This is idiotic to want to block such instances. If anything let's teach them about smaller instances.
And right now, I see people building bridges with BlueSKy and I see very negative reactions from some people about that. Well... No, BlueSky is not full of trolls and evil people.
I'm so fucking annoyed with this bullshit attitude.
Honestly, if your response is "don't federate" every single fucking time, have you thought for a second that maybe, just maybe, you are in the wrong place? Fedi fucking verse. It's in the name.
If you don't want to communicate with people who are different from you, you're honestly no different from the people you are calling names. Please go to your instance that's defederated from everyone else, or even better, go on a closed Discord or something.
Fuck, I barely finished my second coffee and I'm already annoyed.
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.
It’s funny to me that some people on Threads are saying Mastodon (mistakenly thinking it’s a one service) will always be ”small” and ”closed”. Well, soon we’ll be in the same crowd with the Threads people, perhaps with others like Tumblr too.
The Fediverse can expand unlike the other truly closed social networks. This is exactly like talking about the Internet in the 80s, ”it will be a small thing for the nerds, and always will be so”.
@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.
Threads: I'm in a wrong party and don't know what to say. I feel awkward, everyone is so happy with their gym selfies. Everyone asking endless questions and asking things from the algorithm. Lots of people use it like Instagram, every post is a selfie with a meaningless caption. Some are copy-pasting the same sentence over and over again for each line. Endless quote-post memes... What the fuck is this shit I don't even...
Bluesky: A Twitter clone, but still very barebones. Notifications are still not working, there are no hashtags and I don't find any relevant content to me in any of the feeds. It's mostly Facebook-like what's up in life, furry scene and AI photos. No news, no tech/web scene, no nothing. Not to mention it's still invite-only and won't support ActivityPub (yeah I know the reasoning behind that but for me it's mostly bullshit, I look forward to trying bridgy fed).
Mastodon and the Fediverse: Here I'm at home on my own server. Most content, most features. A community is friendly but has also lots of nitpicking, some angry dudes. Still the most safest, most healthy and most customized, but somehow the most hated network elsewhere. "Too techie", they say. "Too difficult", they say. "No algorithm", they say.
Nostr: Kinda promising, but way too obscure, strange and even techier than Mastodon. Too much crypto shit.
Well, that's that. Sometimes I feel like Internet is ruined. But I believe in the open social web movement and I want to see this grow.
In no other place I can write a status update as freely as this, as long as this or with a low bar as this. I LIKE this 100%. The same can't be said in those other places I'm experimenting with out of curiosity. There I'm the weird kid. Here I feel like myself.
The sheer number of #Zuckerberg (and others) #quislings in the #Fediverse is going to kill it. Inside of five years #independent, #distributed#SocialMedia will be dead for all practical purposes, and the people holding the daggers covered in its blood will be those who were inside it.
@sour@fsf@dsfgs The pro-#Facebook/#Threads crowd is just number-obsessed. They think more people means more legitimacy or something. The fact that the Fediverse is small is for me the appeal; for them it is a source of shame or something.
They want Zuckerborg's (sic) "connect all teh thingz!" ethos, forgetting about things like "community" and "consent" and other soft things you can't attach numbers to easily.
"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.
All self-aware communities on #Fediverse should suspend #Threads just as @aral has done. There's no need for a toxic corporate experiment with the aim to expand the monetisation of #HumanRights violations. #Privacy
All these folks tut-tutting about various #fediverse instances preemptively blocking #threads should be aware that many instances are taking this step because Threads is full of #transphobic and outright fascist types that #meta is either unable or unwilling to moderate and instance admins are just treating it the same way they would any other instance that has that issue.
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...
I think that interoperation with big walled gardens is part of the reason why #activitypub exists. Furthermore, there are no technical measures to completely shut off #Threads, and the social measures are unlikely to work.
I know the risks, I’m old enough to remember #Microsoft embracing and extinguishing browsers and open documents, #Goggle defederating from #XMPP and #Facebook predatory tactics.
On the other hand, I think that federation with the big players is unstoppable. The protocol is open and there is no way to get every last instance to defederate. If people want to see the big players’ content they’ll move to an instance that federates with them. And defederating from those that connect to threads sounds like a Zealot’s suicide pact.
I think that the best way to ensure that #Meta plays fair is to create a fediverse that is as diverse, open and vibrant as possible, with plenty of open services (Lemmy, mastodon, misskey…) and commercial ones (Flipboard, tumblr…) so that threads users will feel compelled to interact and miss us if Meta stops federating or shadowbans external content.
Now that for-profit tech companies are beginning to implement #ActivityPub, I think it's important to establish what we want with the #fediverse and whether federation with #Threads, #Flipboard, Tumblr, and the like bring us closer to or further from those goals.
With that in mind, I've come up with a few statements (in no particular order) that describe what I think is an "ideal fediverse" — a fediverse that's not necessarily realistic but that we should aim for:
No actor controls a large portion of visible activity.
Users can move between instances without penalty.
Creating and running an instance requires minimal effort.
People on or entering the fediverse understand the variety of available options.
There is no downside to using free and open-source platforms over proprietary ones.
These definitely aren't comprehensive, and if you have anything you'd add, let's discuss that! They're currently helping me reassess my stance on Threads now that Flipboard is also entering the stage, and I hope they're helpful for others as well.
I'll elaborate on these five statements in the comments.
New blog post: Understanding ActivityPub - Part 4: Threads
A first detailed look into how Threads implements ActivityPub. Learn about the data that is shared (or not), an interesting implementation of HTTP signatures, and Threads' take on quote posts in ActivityPub.
Well this would make #ActivityPub support on #Threads pretty pointless. It’ll mean the vast majority of their users will be defederated by default and have to opt into the #Fediverse. Defeats the point @mosseri.
How Threads will integrate with the Fediverse ( plasticbag.org )
Lemmy.world Should Defederate with Threads
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...