Why I probably won't defederate from Threads

The whole point for me moving to the Fediverse was to get away from companies\platforms like FB\IG,and Twitter. Federate all you want with Meta I just hope there’s a running list of which instances does and doesn’t federate with meta so I can join the latter. Not sure why people are so hot on looking at pictures of people’s ugly kids on 2 platforms.

Do you want Facebook to do to us what Google did to XMPP???

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

I understand a lot of the arguments made and in reality you're right, if they want our data, they'll get it.

However, I also think that making it as difficult and therefore expensive as possible for them is a legitimate way to respond and make it clear to them that they are here on sufferance and not welcome. That might be seen as immature and pointless and maybe that's so, but I do think it's important to defederate from Threads to demonstrate our collective unwillingness to become their commodity.

Its interesting that everyone focuses on the privacy and the EEE risk of this, but my reasons for leaving Facebook were that Facebook is actively-allowing-the-promotion-of-genocide-because-not-moderating-is-better-for-their-bottom-line Evil. I left facebook because I'm not willing to provide the (even infinitesimal) boost to their network effects that my account had. For the same reason, Threads is an instant defederate on launch.

A valid point was made here that we should probably have a small section of the Fediverse federated with Meta as a way to access Threads without leaving the safety of the Fediverse.

But the rest should defederate. We must protect what we fought hard to gain.

"It forces them to play by the rules"

They will play by the rules because that's the Embrace step of EEE, not because anyone forced them to.

I think federation with Meta would be the best way to encourage low effort Facebook stye content, which sucks. Ban Meta.

Interesting take, but I am still defederating them to hell and asking others to do so. Facebook's moderation approch is to allow the most hateful cingeng under the guise of fair political speech and I won't stand for it

I won't be sucked in some other big tech social if I don't intend to. The moment my posts are accessible from Thread is the moment i will burn all my posts to the ground, just as I did before. My stuff can stay on my Hard drive for all i care.

defederating means that people who want to connect with someone on the platform are forced to install it. fuck that. not defederating gives people an alternative and shows them using the fediverse means they don't miss out on anything regardless of platform.

if I want to access threads content and I can do it using my existing fed account without installing their app and giving them access to my heartrate, microphone and bowel moton stats then frankly that's a win for us.

Its your choice as instance owner to do that

Visit https://fedipact.online/ to see a list of instance owners who will defederate their instance from Threads

Heads up: its a long list

Wait, Threads will be a Lemmy instance?

How can I as a user protect myself from this.

What on earth is Plume?

What exactly is Threads?

How does any of this work?

I thought I had a handle on what Mastodon was, but then there was this threads thing, and Lemmy is apparently also part of the Fediverse but not Mastodon, I assume, and Threads is its own thing, and calckey and kbin exist, maybe, and I'd never heard of Plume until this post...I don't understand any of this. Reddit and Twitter are how I would generally follow this sort of happening but Mastodon and Lemmy are ghost towns I don't really understand how to use. I'm so utterly lost I don't even know where to begin with finding answers. I don't even have known unknowns, just unknown in unknowns.

This is a good take, imo.

I never understood the privacy concerns. Well, I do insofar as it's safe to assume Meta is privacy-hostile. But many seem to think using Mastodon/Lemmy/etc. are some how "private" corners of the internet when they're anything but. It is very trivial for someone to access public data on fediverse sites as you've pointed out, and if they want that data they're going to get it.

The beauty of the fediverse is that we can choose who we trust with our core data, such as sign-up details, IP addresses, etc. Signing up to the Threads instance/app would be a disaster from a privacy perspective, but just treating them like any other server and taking advantage of the increased engagement from the content their large instance will post will likely increase content available on the fediverse and engagement across the board. Any decision to defederate with their instance(s) should purely be based on content and nothing more, imo. From a cross-server perspective, they're no different than any other large instance.

... could you argue that federation content from a cc-by-sa licensed instance would be in violation on a commercial instance? Meta is a us corporation after all

Interesting take on the matter. Right now, I'm not sure which way I sway, since there's valid points on both sides. On one hand, I'd hate to tolerate Meta, and I don't doubt they have some plan for trying to bend and twist the Fediverse to suit their own interests. But on the other hand, as of right now, forcing them to play by the rules of the open source software we collectively use is leverage against Meta, and allows us to safely access their content without having to download their apps.

Definitely going to have to think on this a bit more, myself.

It's a shame it isn't starting off federated. We should have taken hold of all of the discourse and aggressively maintained control from the outset

As a newbie to the Fediverse, thank you for this!

"Defederating won’t save our data" No, but it will sure as shit make it that much more difficult to get to it. You and every other idiot making this stupid fucking point seem to have very little knowledge in how deep Meta's data scraping goes and how much data one particular instance can generate. Do YOU want these cunts generating a complete mental profile of you, determining what products you NEED in your life, and then spinning up a fucking bot to spam you with directed posts about whatever horseshit dick pill or bootleg t-shirt they were paid to promote to you? Want to keep that from happening? Well, you can either ban every bot that posts shit in your direction OR you can defederate the cunts and avoid it altogether.

"Federation saves me from using their app" Why is this even a fucking question? Who gives a shit about their app? Is there actually anything you're missing right now that you just so totally have to fucking see on Threads that you can't get elsewhere? Are you not aware how the internet works and that shit's going to be screentshot and posted to every fucking news outlet if it matters? Are your friends and family so actively stupid they couldn't figure out how to use a slightly different app to post on the instance you created yourself?

"I may have long hair, a beard and a bunch of machines that run GNU/Linux but I’m not Richard Stallman." Well I would HOPE that you wouldn't be a toe-cheese eating CSAM apologist. At least you've got that going for you.

"Federation forces them to play by the rules" AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAH~ BAAHAHAHAH_!~!!!! AHAHAHAHAHAH! HAHA! HAAA! HA. Ha. Hahaha. ha. Good one. Fuck off if you actually believe this.

There is no fucking reason to let these pricks have their way. Fuck them in the ear, then fuck 'em in the other ear.

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that there's a lot of gatekeeping and shaming going on, especially against the Mastodon owners who are thinking about federating with Meta's instance.

Federating with Meta's servers should be a choice. If people want the ability to interact with celebrities and normies, that would be a huge boost to ActivityPub and Mastodon in general, especially for the servers that do end up federating with Meta. Their users would be able to interact and follow all of the mainstream people who are not on Mastodon.

It should be always be a choice. And for those servers that don't federate, things will remain the same. Don't try to gatekeep or spread FUD, it just makes you look paranoid and insular.

Thanks for laying this out. You persuaded me.