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.

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YOUR MOVE LEMMY.WORLD

Seriously, I don't want to have to pull up the tent stakes already.

You should anyway to spread the load.

I would like to put my 2c here. Fediverse, defederated and self-hostable platforms give you the opportunity to not be closed within a walled garden. I would say that people on the fediverse should be more flexible and be ready to change an instance, or self-host themselves if that is their thing, in case something goes wrong. You must remember that it is you now who decides where to build the tent. I think of it as a summer camping holiday: You go to a camp, stay there for a few days, but when it starts to rain in the area, becomes boring, or a group of noisy campers comes in, you relocate to another camp, if you cannot do anything about the problem in your current camp.

So, I would say you as a fediverse user should be prepared to rebuild your tent repeatedly, even if you stay on a single instance for a long time.

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Every time I see a picture of him I think it has to be edited or something. He’s like a walking Snapchat filter.

"Hello, fellow humans!"

Does any other human out there love smoked meats ?

Context for those out of the loop

The best part about the full smoked meats vid is when his "friends" (i.e. employees) come over. What really gets me is that the friends NEVER speak unless spoken to, because it's just a really awkward work event where Zuck has to pretend he has friends.

It made him look so gosh dang relatable.

No, that's not the word I'm looking for. Unlikeable. That's the one.

I don't know about these smoking meats, but I enjoy human activities such as breathing air and walking with my leg.

This could be the intro to a found footage horror film about a cannibal that smokes his victims.

Believe it or not, but this image is also not edited

He likely has a skilled pr team that has crafted his image as unique, brilliant, and even all this alien/ lizard stuff. In general, he is simply a billionaire and for sure not have much in common with working people.

the lizard thing is unfortunately just antisemitism, and older than zucc himself. the whole alien lizard people running the world bit comes from David Icke, who is very much a fascist, and was inspired directly by old school Nazi conspiracy theory texts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

It looks like his face was stretched vertically at the middle of his nose, and someone blurred his undereye area and blended the bottoms of his eyeballs in. Disturbing stuff.

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I would like to also add this argument into the discussion, since I've seen a lot of people who are voting for federating with meta, with the argument that defederating just because we don't like someone goes against the idea of Fediverse, and interconnected network of diverse servers that is should inclusive and allows people to connect.

It's quite the contrary - allowing Meta in goes directly against the idea of Fediverse, and we should fight it as much as possible.

This is a literal quote from the main header on https://www.fediverse.to/

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

Judging by this main selling point of the Fediverse, it sounds to me like Meta shouldn't be in the Fediverse do begin with, and every instance should defederate from them by default.

100% I will only be using instances that don't federate with corporations.

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I hope Lemmy.world does the same.

I'm moving if they don't.

Same. I just wish there was an easy way to transfer. I just found the communities I wanted and I don’t look forward to making a new profile and adding them all again.

I already have an account ready to switch. It's still early days so it should be relatively painless if it means sticking with the Lemmy instance that knows capital will only expand and ruin things in the pursuit of profit.

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I would say we need a vote if lemmy.world should do the same. I would be for blocking meta.

Well, why don't we have a Lemmy feature where the individual user can block content and users from an instance? Rather than defederating completely?

I wonder how qualified the average Lemmy user is to participate in this sort of decision. This call to defederate feels a lot like Brexit. Maybe I'm just projecting my own ignorance, but I doubt 1 in 50 people have a more informed opinion than "meta bad".

Honestly, I wonder if that even matters. I'll be the first to admit that I have no deep insight on that matter and that I would simply want to see Meta blocked because it's a privacy-invading, manipulative entity that sucks up all data it can get in order to force-feed people ads and products. Products that contain algorithms that are extremely unhealthy for mental health, as the only thing they care about is "user engagement", which is driven by drama and conflict. You get nothing but information bubbles and prioritized bullshit content that stirrs you up. There is no value in that, it's mostly just harmful. The fediverse apps are being created to offer an alternative to exactly that stuff, and I am here because I want to get away from big tech. If lemmy.world doesn't take a clear stance to separate itself from the likes of Meta, then there is simply no point in using it over any corporate alternative. I honestly expect lemmy.world to follow lemmy.ml in this clear approach, or I'll switch instances. I'm just giiving it some time to come to the right conclusion. But if Meta is being allowed to freely interact here and scoop up everything for their purposes, I'll be on lemmy.ml in about 2 weeks. That's a reasonable time frame to see a discussion unfold and wait for an outcome. Even if blocking Meta won't completely stop them from grabbing data here, it's the right thing to make it harder for them and to send the message that their approach is not wanted here.

People left reddit because of corporate f*ckery, and some of them are now making excuses for meta?? What kind of mental gymnastics is this?

A lot of people left Reddit because it was a drowning ship. They didn't flock to the fediverse because of what it stands for, and they'll happily bounce over to the next popular corporate run data farm at their earliest convenience.

I agree with your sentiment, however I don't think Reddit is a sinking ship. It sucks, me and many other people are angry with them, some of us left but it's not nearly enough to make them actually sink. Reddit is too recognizable a brand.
They're too big to fail.

It's too big to fail in the same way Facebook is. It's inundated with normies. The actual interesting content and creators and worthwhile discussion will find a new home.

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It's just a typical day on the internet, honestly.

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the lemmy.ml admin team took about 2 minutes to decide to preemptively block threats / Meta

The only sane approach to this "dilemma". Thank you for keeping the instance free of "threats" (I see what you did there)

Excellent. Big corporations go against the very idea of the fediverse.

Amen! I made a longer post explaining my reasoning for blocking Threads and the decision took only 15 minutes.

Congrats on being based as well! I'm not on your server, but thanks for looking out for your users.

Thank you so much! Let's make sure the XMPP situation never repeats ever again.

Still using heavily encrypted, self-hosted XMPP to talk to my family without META.

Even if they somehow manage to drag the majority of users over to their platform, we'll still have our little free haven.

Yea most people who will use threads probably wouldn’t use other Fediverse things or even know what they are. And people who are already here hate Meta anyway

Yep. My only concern about Meta joining the Fediverse through ActivityPub is privacy related.

Any federated instance can read any other federated instance, their users and what they do or what they talk about. A perfect victim for Meta's ad-targeting data siphon.

Yea that’s interesting, it’s already public data but I get your point.

It's public data to some degree.

It's a whole other thing when they can see what an admin of an instance can see.

I think the more concerning part is the medium in which people use Threads. It's one think for Meta to scrape for data, it's a much worse thing for someone to install the apps on the phone.

That's the last, worst step... Installing any Meta app on your device, making it a de facto telescreen.

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Prophylactic intervention is the best defense against Metastasis.

Well done Lemmy.ml - hopefully the rest of the fediverse follows your example. This is, no exaggeration, an existential threat to the fed.

The fediverse taking off is an existential threat to Meta. I have no doubt that they will take any actions they consider necessary to maintain control over most users.

Good riddance to Meta's bullshit. Stop them before they get to the first E in EEE.

Here's a sign to put up at the border between Lemmy.ml and Threads, which will surely have a 100-meter wall built on it with 50 kV electric fences, barbed wire, watchtowers, snipers, and whatever to keep those Meta corporate fuckers out.

::: spoiler Threads Quarantine Zone sign :::

Thank you for your integrity and ethics. This action sends a strong message to the capitalist leeches where we stand.

Gonna go against the grain here a little bit, but why? If they are federated, it will mean that you can move off of threads more easily to other servers and not get locked into a walled garden. Encouraging companies to embrace federation will avoid the shit shows like we've seen at twitter and reddit, since users will be easily able to jump ship without much loss. Additionally, apps like threads make federated platforms much more approachable to newcomers and those who do not even know what the fediverse is.

I'd love someone to explain it to me, but this feels like a massive footgun.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Embrace: they embrace the fediverse, bring millions of new users to it and everyone is happy. The fediverse grows and the new meta instance gets a ton of content. Everyone is happy

Extend: meta begins to add features to their instance which clashes with or is unusable with other instances. These begin to pile up and issues develop.

Extinguish: meta unfederates from other instances. People are now forced to stay where they were and lose a majority of their friends and content from metas instance. Or switch over. Mass migration away from original instances. These instances die

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I mean, lemmy.ml explicitly describes itself as a community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts (and I'm reasonably certain it's run by actual communists) so I'd have been quite surprised if they'd embraced Meta tbh.

one problem it that it has threads has a very large userbase and it will likely flood the fediverse so instances that dont block them may dont really have other content and from what i understand is that the content there is flooded with influencers. At least the type of influencers i think are annoying and too comercialised.

And with the flood of content server admins that only do it for fun will get a problem with moderation.

There was a dude in this comment section that left a link about some type of essay (the link contains something with 15 minutes).

Edit: https://sopuli.xyz/comment/879382

You realize that accepting meta/threads terms you give them permission to sell your data right? They will sell it to advertisers. They help the fbi and others track your every step. Also on fediverse you info is stored locally if the server goes down you don’t have to worry about your info being accessed remotely. I think I saw something where they said that lemmy and kbin store your data for three days then it gets auto deleted. If I was a large instance I would block meta also. Everything meta touched dies!

I got this step, defederating essentially says to them that I dont consent to them getting my data.

But I'm really missing something here, since any instance that zucc controls that is federated to the large instances just exposes my data to zucc.

Defederating is one step, the instance owners have taken that step now, so far so good, well then zucc will just create a lemmy/kbin instance that they own, they join the fed and not even announce meta's affiliation with it, my data is still zucc'ed.

I agree with you. I think this is a way to introduce people who aren’t tech-savvy into Activity Pub and Fediverse, which is ultimately a good thing.

Yes, Meta has a history of being untrustworthy, but I think a place that allows communication between a large population isn’t a bad thing either.

I would rather wait and see when Threads is full federated and what that means. We just don’t have enough information to make a decision.

I would rather 70 million people have joined Mastodon but that’s just not how things work and we need to be realistic.

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Hi guys, I'm new here from Reddit and I'm still learning about Lemmy and the Fediverse. Can someone ELI5 how not blocking Threads can negatively affect this community? Thanks.

This is the gist: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

Basically, big companies can destroy decentralised network from within once big enough people adopt it.

What they do is

  1. Embrace - adopt the network with their own proprietary system, like Threads for example, as opposed to other system in the fediverse right now that are open source.

  2. Extend - spend resources like money, manpower, and even extensive knowledge on how to expand and make the network a better place with a lot more features while simultaneously promoting and making so that only their proprietary app can access it in the best way.

  3. Exterminate / Extinguish - once they have good amount of users, they can start crippling the other side, like maybe Threads can see posts from Lemmy and Mastodon but not the other way around, people are gonna think that Threads is superior and leaving the original instances. They can also pull back resources like even the people who used to work on developing the network that they used to give so generously before, and such the maintainer now has no way to keep up in developing the network.

Also known as the EEE tactic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Billy Gates tearing up with pride right now

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

I think the idea is that by being the largest player they could take over and add features that the rest of the fediverse didn’t have. And then the people here (mastodon) would move there to keep following their favourite celeb.

I don’t think there’s any good argument why you couldn’t keep both for different things. Or why Facebook would even care about the ~200k users on mostodon when they cracked 70M in 24 hours

I think it's because Threads will be able to use content generated from unblocked instances.

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The great part of federation is that users who want to use Threads still can, and instances who don't want to federate with Meta don't have to. People who want to double-dip can sign up for their favorite instance(s) of choice, as well as with Threads. Neither one has to have any app shut down and everyone still gets to make a choice as an end-user rather than be decided upon by an unmovable authority. Win win!

Great news, now let's hope every instance follows.

Haha... I wasn't wrong when choosing lemmy.ml as my lemmy server 😉

Joined today. Feeling good about this decision. 🤘🏿

Same here, we gotta put our activity where our beliefs exist.

Kudos...... It's very much appreciated and a refreshing change to not be let down by something you enjoy online.

Joined a few Lemmy instances, but the admin team taking actions like these might make lemmy.ml my main place to go. Anything corporate is irredeemable.

Thank you!

Meta will only go full on E/E/E on the fediverse, even by "accident" (like adding new features and breaking the standard). Better choke them off right from the start and build small organic communities instead.

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Excellent news. I would have moved to another instance that did block if .ml didn't block them. Thank you for this lemmy.ml

I think a preemptive block on threads and meta is a wise move! I did it for both my Mastodon and Lemmy instances.

I hope beehaw does it too despite their status a pro-liberal instance.

Liberal/free market ideals are very well aligned with Fediverse/Lemmy: freedom to chose social media providers without being locked-in, free market of instances, free market of both front-end/backend software, freedom to run or fork the software myself...

Sure, I didn't get to chose this instance's policy, but a) I could find another or start my own if I disagreed (Not so different than electing representatives in a liberal democracy), and b) so far I don't disagree with this policy as Facebook is a threat to some basic software freedoms...

Personally I dislike all the -ism labels. Issues are complex with often contradictory stances. It's almost as though labels are used to divide people on otherwise common issues and common ground by oversimplifying policies into tribalism.

Free market is exactly the cause of things such as meta. It's not about consumers having a choice, it's about enabling any scheme to get rich, so the choice is actually to companies to take the ability to choose from the consumers (the market is free, not the people). Thank god the whole point of the fediverse is to not be a market and not treat it's users as consumers Edit : actually fb and ig users aren't the real consumers, they are the product, and other companies who buy their personal data are the actual consumers, but anyway, this is irrelevant to the question, I just wanted to point out another reason to fight them. It's really difficult to escape the grasp of the GAFAM since they basically control the world nowadays (can't not use youtube), but thankfully the fediverse is here as a tool to help us escape meta and the likes, let's not let it be corrupted by capitalism

Couldn't agree more with your last paragraph. That's why I've always hated all political parties. 90 percent of issues are as simple are supporting or being against something

I spent a month getting an instance set up on .world, wearing my account in, putting up with the lag and other constant problems... then I read about this threads™ nonsense and how .world were playing a "wait and see" game with an evil empire. Read this thread (heh!), moved to .ml. Much smoother and more glitch-free experience. Just have to start over again. So far so good!

What's the difference between lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml? Completely different instances? Sorry I'm new and still don't understand everything

Yes but you can access content from both of them from the other. Just browse to it or add the communities from the other to your subscriptions.

Its like one is hotmail and the other is yahoo mail. They are free services/hosts that allow you to access the activityPub protocol. There are hundreds of such providers, and you can even host you own on your own services if you wanted to/were inclined.

Lemmy is a specific layout of the ActivityPub protocol. Continuing the metaphor, you could think of Lemmy like an email newsgroup. All the different lemmy instances display and sort the newsgroups the same way, which is to emulate reddit.

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Awesome. This is great news. I just joined this instance and happy to see this position.

I’m out of the loop what is going on?

Meta is launching a Twitter clone that's supposedly going to be fediverse-compatible eventually. Everyone's panicking now and blocking the domain before it can connect to any instances because zuck sucks

This is the kind of thing that made me choose this instance in the first place. Thanks for making my online social place of choice feel safe.

I'm still grasping the concept of the fediverse, but what is the perk to this? The Facebook mafia can't comment and join communities on lemmy.ml? But they could on say lemmy.world?

I agree with this, cut off the sick limp before the infection spreads.

The fact that limb got changed to limp was a nice touch. I probably shouldn't laugh at the idea of people having legs amputated...

Just like threads became threats in the title.

Burning threads? The Dragon Riders of Pern approve.

Dragon riders will fly when threads are in the sky

Is it possible for meta/threads not to read lemmy.ml posts as well?

Meta could fetch posts, but only read them. Meta won't be able to follow our communities or interact with us.

Good stuff! I definitely chose the right place to make an account.

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How does it even work though? I haven't seen any Mastodon or other fediverse posts on Lemmy. What sub would the Threads posts appear in?

Threads themselves have not federated yet, but the threat is that they could at some point in the future. So, you will not see posts from Threads on any instance right now

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Good thing, i don't want anything to do with Meta's crap either. If someone is complaining he can always do an account somewhere else.

God I can’t wait to stop seeing his face, so much of it lately

Can someone eli5 what’s going on with this?

meta is trash and we don’t want its data getting all snuggly with ours. because ew.

now you’re up to speed.

edit: data privacy concerns are the main issue

If Meta can federate with an instance, it can collect all the available data within that instance. This seems to be what everyone is overlooking on the downsides of Meta federation.

Which is public data, you don't need to run an instance to have it. What am I missing?

As for me this is what I can't follow too, i understand that fackbook cant be trusted, and the federation is based on trust between instance admins to not do something fuckey.

So our data and rights (my country was victim of CA) are unsafe when federated with threads, these are what people are saying.

what is stopping facebook from creating a dummy instance, not disclose it is theirs, and federate with the instances that rejected the known threads instances?

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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.

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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.

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Assumption 1: Meta / Mark Z are objectively untrustworthy

Assumption 2: The Fediverse is a threat to the entire internet advertising machine

Assumption 3: Threads will be a hospitable place for right wing hatemongers. Therefore, federating with it exposes our most vulnerable users and communities to a deluge of (often invisible) hate and harassment.

Assumption 4: Most of the ways that they could use their billions of users and army of programmers to slowly choke us off would go through federation

I think if you believe all four of those assumptions defederation is the clear choice

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

I know we all dream of having all our friends and family on the Fediverse so we can avoid proprietary networks completely. But the Fediverse is not looking for market dominance or profit. The Fediverse is not looking for growth. It is offering a place for freedom. People joining the Fediverse are those looking for freedom. If people are not ready or are not looking for freedom, that’s fine. They have the right to stay on proprietary platforms. We should not force them into the Fediverse. We should not try to include as many people as we can at all cost. We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.

Exactly. I don't understand why so many people have this mentality of 'the fediverse must grow, or it's a failure', but I think a lot of them are from the recent reddit exodus (I am too, for the record) and are addicted to the firehose of content that a massive social media platform brings.

I participated less and less on reddit in recent years, after joining in 2007, partly because it became such a behemoth. Nowadays, I am enjoying the modest size of my lemmy instance and the values I've seen espoused throughout. It's like a small(er) get together of like-minded people rather than an open-door rager - the first has always had more appeal to me, personally.

Growth is important to any social media ecosystem because you have to hit a critical mass of users to continue meaningfully existing - particularly, you have to have enough users to convince content creators to leave their current environment, since they're the most likely to be entrenched where they are.

That said, the distinction is that to a corporate/capitalist social media platform, infinite and exponential growth is the goal. To a FOSS social media platform, growth is simply a by-product of the real goal of meeting a public need.

I think the feeling of exclusivity that comes with being early to any scene is neat, but more users means more diversification of instances and communities, and we'll get to see the blossoming of hyper-specific, idiosyncratic, often deranged communities that made up the best part of Reddit. So growth isn't all bad.

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The Zuck is making his own fediverse instance, seems to mostly be a twitter competitor atm.

Admins with good sense are defederating that instance, because we know that they have nothing but bad intentions.

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Great move from lemmy.ml, now I hope other instances follows

Serious question:

Is he sick? That he has no facial features whatsoever?

A welcome move. F**k megacorps polluting everything on internet.

Very good! I sincerely hope all the others will too. If lemm.ee won't, I know where I'll be moving to ;)

Lemm.ee has expressed a very hands off approach to defederation and hasn't even defederated exploding-heads

Oh.. great.. There's one very lukewarm comment the admin made yesterday, but I x-posted the article to the local meta channel with hope they'll make a clear stance on the situation.

Great news! 👏👏👏 Hope other instances do the same.

I am a little new to this. What do you mean by not letting them in, or blocking them? Not allowing them to create a "lemmy.threads" instance or something like that?

Threads will support the same protocol as Lemmy (which is called ActivityHub), meaning Thread-content is accessible in Lemmy (and other services) and the other way around.

By blocking Threads no content from there will arrive here and the other way around.

Meta is a dying company. Let's help they follow their natural course to oblivion

Thank you for taking a stance!

Yes, thank you, I was anxiously looking forward to this.

What's the lowdown and what the treats from meta and thread are?

Completely support .ml defederating. But most Twitter/Reddit exiles want/need a bigger network for the breadth and depth of content they got from those sites. Universal defederation does nothing but hand those users (and their data) to Meta.

I want to get Meta's data without giving them my data. If there are no instances that allow me to do that, I will cry.

"Most twitter/reddit exiles want/need..." Nope. You don't speak for me, I like it here.

"...Does nothing but hand those users (and their data) to Meta" OK? That's their choice to leave then, who cares?

But most Twitter/Reddit exiles want/need a bigger network for the breadth and depth of content they got from those sites. Universal defederation does nothing but hand those users (and their data) to Meta.

And? If they want to run from one corporate overlord to another that's their own prerogative. Most people here are here because they've had it with corporations fucking them. The people here don't need to compromise their worldview for the people who are either indifferent or opposing of their worldview.

I want to get Meta’s data without giving them my data. If there are no instances that allow me to do that, I will cry.

If you care so deeply about it there's a fairly simple solution, make your own instance of Lemmy and don't defederate Threads. If you feel like others also need to have that option make your instance open.

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based

Would anything change on Lemmy, even if you federate with Threads?

You follow communities here on Lemmy, while on Threads you follow people. The only way for a Lemmy user to find a Threads user, would be looking for their username directly in the search bar.

In that sense, what does a Lemmy instance gain from defederating with Meta?

I think it's more that users and administrators don't trust Meta, and for good reason. They're driven by profit and have demonstrated repeatedly a blatant disregard for users. They have virtually unlimited resources at their disposal that could be used to potentially harm the fediverse in a number of ways.

Honestly I am confused by this too. If you don't federate with threads doesn't that just make it easier to grow? Personally I am more curious about Mastodon now because if people I follow on twitter move to threads I can just use mastodon and not twitter or threads...

In my personal opinion, Lemmy should be more focused on content rather than RAPID growth.

Growth is usually related to corporations mindset, which is a "for-profit" mindset, and unfortunately, as we seen in the past it, it comes with "by all means" attitude, results in manipulating users, make users addicted, and more actions at the expense of the users.

You'll see that when Lemmy will pile up more content, the community will naturally grow in a healthy manner.

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So what’s this mean, no one can post links to threads or meta content?