Lemmy.ml has now blocked threads.net / Meta

Dessalines@lemmy.ml to lemmy.ml meta@lemmy.ml – 3016 points –

It should come as no surprise that the lemmy.ml admin team took about 2 minutes to decide to pre-emptively block threats / Meta. Their transparent and opportunistic scheme to commodify the fediverse and it's users will not be allowed to proceed.

We strongly encourage other instance administrators to do the same, given the grave threat they pose to the fediverse.

528

You are viewing a single comment
View all commentsShow the parent comment

Our data is already public though? The ActivityPub standard specifies that the majority of data we publish on any given instance is public through that instance's API, and a web scraper could be easily built that would comb through and gather all of it for advertising or machine learning purposes. The only real way to avoid that would be to take the sites themselves private, which would kind of defeat the point of social media, or to just not use social media.

This private data is what Threads is after.

And, no, it’s not “already public.” Or, for your sake, I hope yours is not. Mine certainly isn’t, and I don’t want it to become so.

Oh yeah, the app is a monster that will eat all of your data. I thought we were talking about federated data they would get from the other instances, which is more or less public. My data as shown in that image is not public and I have no plans to hand it over to Meta.

well… you make a point that everything that you post on the internet is “public” in a sense, but there’s a pretty big difference in the effort required to scape it and providing direct API access to the data source which gives Meta access to much more than simply the contents of a post.

think of it as the difference of bing able to get a blood donation and sticking an IV directly into another person’s (or, in this case, anyone’s and everyone’s) artery, unfiltered, anytime, every time, on-demand, and without permission. forever.

no thanks!

Thanks for this visual. I'd extend the question to:

Will facebook be able to create dummy instances that would federate with the large/established instances and take our information?

I know fuck all about this.

one important distinction before I answer your question: Threads in a product of Instagram, not Facebook, and, although all are owned by Meta, each are run independently… but their business practices - and, thusly, their collective interests/goals/methods in and of data harvesting - are the same: invasive, exploitative, and, revolting.

Will facebook be able to create dummy instances that would federate with the large/established instances and take our information?

that’s exactly what Threads IS: a new Meta-owned service based on the same federated service that runs Mastodon and Lemmy (ActivityPub) and intermingles content and data from those services’ instances, and hence the widespread calls to defederate from it. so, it seems that you’re, at least, starting to get it. The calls to defederate (block) Threads is in the interest of keeping our data out of Meta’s hands. This would also mean we won’t see their content, but most people here don’t want to see that here anyway (or, at least, would rater keep the two separate).

edit: it’s also an example of Meta’s (and other large tech company’s) practice of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish with regards to emerging, independent technologies which they see as a threat to their control and profitability in the market(s) they control.

"Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE),[1] also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate",[2] is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found[3] that was used internally by Microsoft[4] to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences in order to strongly disadvantage its competitors.

The strategy's three phases are:[12][13]

  • Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard.
  • Extend: Addition and promotion of features not supported by the competing product or part of the standard, creating interoperability problems for customers who try to use the "simple" standard.
  • Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions.

Meta wishes to establish Threads as the new “standard” of the Fediverse which is antithetical to the entire concept of the Fediverse, which is to resist centralized, corporate control of the platform and to remain independent, open-source, and free.

any more questions?

I should've been more clear about my question, how would I, as a lemmy user, know if an instance has gone rogue (taken over by another entity, meta/fb/ig).

My actual worry is about an instance stealthily created by meat/fb/ig that is not identified as a threads instance/service. Say you have deferedated the fuck out of all known identified Meta created instance so they cant push trash content, then as an example:

an instance owner gets bribed and creates another instance to federate with established instances and gives control of it to FB. At this point fb/ig/meta know they'd just be kicked out again if they even peeped that they now own the inatance.

What is the trust model between instances, where/when does it break?

if the instance that meta now owns doesn't push out threads-content, they still have access to our data and I'll just be unaware of it and next thing we know we getting profiled from what we post in our private instances.

I should’ve been more clear about my question, how would I, as a lemmy user, know if an instance has gone rogue (taken over by another entity, meta/fb/ig).

Excellent question (due to the primary methods of how these companies hide their malfeasance)! The answer is in two parts:

  1. You wouldn’t… at least, not directly: Like many diseases, drug tests, or with identity theft, the only way you’d know is by way of detecting the “traces” or after-effects of it. What companies like this do - steal your personal data for their own profit - does not necessarily have a negative “primary effect*, but has a long-term secondary effect. That is, you aren’t negatively affected immediately, but, over time, these companies use your personal and private information to manipulate and take advantage of you for their own profit. It can be leaked or hacked due to their own irresponsibility or cheap security measures (or mistreated employees) and your money can gets stolen (or worse), and you can have your identity stolen or worse. All of these things have and continue to happen, and stronger and more comprehensive laws to protect against this sot of data and privacy failures at the corporate and government level are working through various governments as we speak, but… we also must work together to ensure that open-source solutions and communities do their best to ensure community and personal data privacy are enforced in the meantime.
  2. Meta and Twitter, another private companies have realized years ago that private data is the most valuable type of data. These companies will and have done everything to use any method at their disposal to guarantee their everlasting access to it. They are unscrupulous and unrelenting. The Fediverse is an open and open-source response to this trend, a viable alternative to everything from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and every other form of social media. As a result, ever form of corporate social media will and has targeted for EEE, that is Expand, Engulf, Extinguish (as addressed above), for it is recognized as the next-generation of online platform for communicative discourse/interaction.

so, the iterative control/model relationship is about to be wrestled out of the control of major corporations for the first time and major corporations are about to fight with the public over that. we’re about to see if that’s something which is realistic.

I wonder if there could be precedent set if a collective should come forth and file an antitrust lawsuit.

edit: this would all be very unprecedented, and the last time this happened wa in the 90’s, and I was on behalf of Netscape by the DoJ, so… I dunno. It was weird even then.

They don't even need to go that far. All data on lemmy is publicly available to anyone. You don't need an instance or even an account. Defederating from meta/threads won't stop them from reading all data out of the fediverse.

Meta wishes to establish Threads as the new “standard” of the Fediverse which is antithetical to the entire concept of the Fediverse, which is to resist centralized, corporate control of the platform and to remain independent, open-source, and free.

Exactly this to the point that it's getting me increasingly annoyed that people are advocating to let Meta in. Like..wtf are you talking about, this entire Fediverse thing is exactly the opposite of Meta, and directly a result in response to corporate control of online interaction. Why in the world would we want to connect with Meta?! This is the anti-Meta, anti-Reddit, anti-Twitter.