Threads is automatically hiding comments that mention Pixelfed

Nix@merv.news to Technology@lemmy.world – 1281 points – dansup (@dansup@mastodon.social)
mastodon.social

For anyone wondering if Threads and Facebook at large will be a fine neighbor in the space and compatible with other apps/services in the fediverse: they’re already automatically hiding comments that mention Pixelfed https://mastodon.social/@dansup/112126250737482807

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Repeat after me: I will not federate with any Meta products.

I will not federate with any meta products.

I will not federate with any meta products.

I will not federate with any meta products.

Serious question: how do we - the end users - stop federating with Meta?

Move to an instance that won't.

Burying your head in the sand doesn't change the fact that whatever LW does will affect all of Lemmy. They're too big.

That sounds like a problem for instances federated with Meta. Empathy is cool but they are not our problem.

This is a strange response for me because de-federating is an active step on behalf of its admin, usually after a vote amongst its users, at creating a virtual boundary between the two entities. How is that burying your head in the sand? And yeah, lemmy.world is big, but aside from the obvious loss of content/users, what other effect will that have on the mass of de-federated instances?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that since LW will federate with them, any content they host, will end up on meta.

For example, this discussion we're having right now is on !technology@lemmy.world. So it doesn't matter whether our own instances have defederated meta - our posts and comments here will bring them value. Directly, in the form of content. And indirectly, in the form of processable data for machine learning, shadow profiles, etc.

but my understanding is that since LW will federate with them, any content they host, will end up on meta

Your understanding is wrong. Instances don't forward stuff from other instances to other instances. Instances only send their own content directly to the instances they federate with.

So on a different instance that's not federated with Meta I can see LW content but not Metas?

whatever LW does will affect all of Lemmy

Uuuh no it won't? The fact that they federate with Threads doesn't mean that my instance does. How does it affect me?

You posted this to a LW community, so your content and data will end up in Meta's hands as well.

No, that's not how federation works. My instance sends my content directly to everything my instance federates with. No instance takes content from other instances and sends it further - that is not a thing. I sent my content to lemmy.world and it is free to be there. Lemmy.world will not forward that to Threads.

Migrate away from instances that embrace Meta to those that do not. Choose an instance that aligns with you.

Or in the extreme case, if you're the first who can't find such an instance and you're technically inclined, there's your room for a new instance. It's how the fediverse works and partly why Meta is so intent on destroying it.

How does one find a list of instances that aren't federated with meta?

Replied in another comment, but here is is again. https://fedipact.veganism.social/

What's the difference between blocked and fedipact?

The tooltip for fedipact says: "Agreed to block all communications (their blocklist is private)"

To me that says, they've agreed but it's not confirmed that they've gone through with it because the blocklist is private. Blocked on the other hand says "All communications are blocked"

I think fedipact actually sign the pack to block and the others just blocked.

Appreciate the link! Glad to see that both my mastodon and lemmy instances have already blocked their content.

Thanks for this. Looking to make an account on a better server now

I don't know, but you can check individual instances by going to the /instances subdomain and searching for threads.

shjw and blahaj are defederated, world isn't.
This can always change, but I have confidence in my admins.

Edit: Thanks to Canyon201@lemmy.world for this link

Not sure anyone posted this in direct reply to you - https://fedipact.veganism.social/

You can search/filter for your instance there. As an example, if you search lemmy.world you'll see they currently do federate with meta.

I’m kind of stupid and more here just because it tends to be better discussion than Reddit: what does “federate with” mean in this context??

Thanks!

@Minotaur @henfredemars @technology You are using an account on lemm.ee to reply to someone commenting from an account on infosec.pub in a community hosted on lemmy.world.

Those are all running Lemmy software, but I am replying from an account on social.goodanser.com, which is running Mastodon software.

That's federation. We're all using different service providers, sometimes even different software, but we can talk to each other because they speak the same protocol, called ActivityPub. Threads.net has announced plans to support ActivityPub and conducted some limited trials, which they're in the process of expanding. They claim they intend to support it fully, but only for users who opt in to it.

Servers can block, or "defederate from" other servers, and many have chosen to preemptively defederate from Threads.

Very interesting. Appreciate the response. Didn’t know big companies like meta had any interest in the whole “federation” gig, seeing that it seems a little “opposed” to the kind of big revenue that supports tech companies like that

And now I'm commenting from a lemmy.world account because Lemmy from Mastodon has some rough edges like the need to tag the community in my comment above to ensure it actually reaches the lemmy.world server.

Tumblr and Flickr are also talking about ActivityPub support, but it's not clear if or when that will actually happen. It would make more sense to me for those services since they're fairly small and it's a way to substantially increase the possible audience. It's not clear what Meta's motivations are here, though a motivation some have proposed is that they're trying to get in front of potential regulation. The EU Digital Markets Act, for example requires some services to interoperate with competitors, and having one of its new products join an established standard protocol is a way to say "you don't need to regulate us, we already do the thing".

I don't think their blocking of comments mentioning Pixelfed is intentional. Pixelfed is not popular enough for Meta to care about as a competitor, and blocking mentions of competitors has never been among their tactics.

Youtube was blocking comments mentioning Fediverse and ActivityPub 2 years ago way before all the exposure the Fediverse got last year. Facebook was blocking links to mastodon instances also before all that. There is absolutely no way a very specific word such as Pixelfed would be blocked "accidentally", how do you propose such accidental block would even be possible? Oops, intern smashed his butt against a keyboard and set a filter that happened to catch Pixelfed by accident? Come on.

Appreciate this response, it seems to make a lot of sense to me.

I think people on sites like Lemmy and similar can kind of uhh… overestimate how much anyone outside of a very niche crowd care about the whole “federalization” movement, and yeah it seems unlikely to me that Threads is going out of its way to shadowban a (comparatively) niche competitor like Pixelfed

I'm about 99% sure Threads uses automated spam/abuse filtering based on uncommon words present in posts that have recently been flagged as abusive. Somebody, perhaps several somebodies probably posted "follow my porn account on Pixelfed" or similar that Threads doesn't like. I'd use something like that if I was making a huge social media thing because you can't not at that scale.

That's exactly why Threads is incompatible with the Fediverse. Any huge server that is impossible to moderate for admins is detrimental to the network and failure to properly moderate is the number one reason we should be looking at to defederate from instances.

Automatic "spam" protection is the exact thing which co-opted e-mail. Big corps with the largest e-mail user base use algorithms that automatically assume the worst about any small e-mail server. If you spin up a small server you are assumed to be spam unless unless unless, which ended up with e-mail being centralized in the hands of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple, despite being theoretically decentralized too.

Is that what we want for the Fediverse? 4 or 5 huge instances automatically defederating from all small instances unless they fit some criteria defined by the big corps, which they can change anytime?

That is the goal here. Bookmark this comment and !remindme in 5 years.

You need more training in corporate risk management, grasshopper! AP/AtProto isn't a revenue opportunity, it's a potential front for which they'll need to have a battle-ready product and brand. Ever heard the saying 'engagement is containment'?

But it actually isn't, because the largest driver of growth for platforms like facebook & instagram is the already present userbase.

That userbase will always be there if the programs are all federated together, so creating a new platform is now just making a better site versus that and bringing in the userbase.

Wait did I miss something big? Does Lemmy now federate with Mastodon somehow? How does that work?

Always has. Anything using ActivittPub can interoperate

I was under the impression that it theoretically could but wasn’t set up in a way that made this possible. But perhaps I was mistaken.

How do I access Mastodon content using my account here then?

Threads hasn't had federation enabled until now, but you've always been able to interact with Mastodon... sort of. The Lemmy UI doesn't really have a good way of finding Mastodon posts that don't tag a Lemmy community or of following Mastodon users, but if they do tag a community the Mastodon post will show up as a Lemmy post in that community.

I see. So functionally it doesn’t really work, at least in this direction.

You've had some well-meaning but ultimately not quite accurate answers in this thread so just to clarify:

You can follow, post to and interact with Lemmy communities from Mastodon, because they're treated the same way as a "group" on Mastodon in general.

You can NOT follow and interact with Mastodon users from Lemmy, because Mastodon accounts are individual "users" and Lemmy doesn't have the concept of following and interacting with users, only with communities. If Lemmy ever does add a feature to let us follow other users, then in theory following Mastodon users will also become possible.

You can't use mastodon from Lemmy, but you can from some threadiverse software like Kbin.

@LibertyLizard @technology It always has. They both speak ActivityPub.

The UX can be awkward though. As an example, I had to add the community tag to this comment manually, as it won't federate to lemmy.world otherwise. That's because Mastodon doesn't push replies to every server with users participating in a thread, which I think is a design flaw.

To post to Lemmy from Mastodon, just tag a community. You can load any of the fediverse links shown in the default Lemmy web UI in a Mastodon search box and reply to them. You can also follow a community and receive every subsequent post and comment as a boost (this is a bad UX and I don't recommend it), as well as follow Lemmy users, which you can't do in Lemmy itself. You cannot vote on Lemmy posts/comments from Mastodon.

I find tagging an appropriate Lemmy community from my Mastodon posts to be a good experience. You'll see a few of those from my @zaktakespictures account in @birding, and from @zakreviews in @flashlight.

I'm pretty sure Lemmy won't make new toplevel posts out of this in those communities since it's a reply, but I'm going to check just to be sure.

As far as I know it's always been this way. At least since I joined during the whole reddit fiasco

How do you access Mastodon content in Lemmy?

It doesn't work so well in that direction. Lemmy doesn't have a concept of content that isn't posted to a community. If a Mastodon post tags a Lemmy community, it's available as a normal Lemmy post, but otherwise it doesn't exist.

FWIW I think this is intentional and a feature, not a bug. By spreading content to communities, you can delegate moderation responsibility much easier.

Content not posted to any community would need something akin to a site-wide moderator or an admin to moderate, and such a moderator wouldn't be as effective. They'd cover a wider array of very different content. Community moderators work better because they can define rules that are only confined to their comm and they know better how to moderate their own community and they also care more about their own community so are more motivated to keep it well-moderated in the fashion they want.

I didn't fully understand what I was talking about when I replied, and for that I apologize. Now that I know a little bit more, this is basically how it works (I think):

We cannot see posts made directly on Mastodon. However, they can see posts made on Lemmy and even comment on them. We are able to see those comments as normal and without doing anything on our end, but again, that's only as long as they're made under Lemmy posts

after me: I will not federate with any Meta products.

mEtA wOnT dEsTrOy ThE fEdIvErSe. wE sHoUlD lEt tHrEaDs In

Let's just give them a chance guys. They haven't done anything bad yet. It will help the fediverse grow. We need their content

wE cAn AlwAyS dEfeDeraTe lAtEr. It dEfinIteLy WoN'T bE tOo LaTe tHeN

Yeah because that's an opinion people have

Oh no, it was everywhere, and I got into some decent arguments with those lovely people who ask you to show them how it's going to have any effect on the fediverse at all, complete with citations.

WeLl hOw Do YoU KnOw?

All anyone has to do is log in to their gmail or fucken m365 email and you'll see the future of corporate federation. Its "the same thing".

You can search for threads and literally see these comments yourself buddy

Buddy, search for Threads related posts from a few months back. This was seriously in question.

It still is. I think more folks percentage-wise are OK now than were then. Had the argument just yesterday. I'm not seeing nearly enough pitchforks, and it worries me.

Had that argument yesterday. It IS an opinion people have.

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I was one of those people that said “let’s see if they will be acceptable neighbors” and well, it seems we have an answer.

If it’s true then I now favor defederation.

Edit: it sounds like this wasn’t true.

Yeah I mean who could've seen something like this coming?

After so many positive experiences with the charming and wholesome company Meta, now this completely out of the blue...

It’s not just true, there’s a history of this mentioned in the replies to the original masto comment. Pixelfed is a direct competitor/alternative to instagram and meta’s has a pretty clear policy of not giving it any airtime on their platforms.

Why, well they dominate the instagram style platform space (and I’d guess it’s their biggest platform ATM and most prospective going forward). Twitter-style platforms are new for them and introduce monopoly issues … so they toy with the fediverse to allay potential issues.

I think all of the schmoozing the likes of Evan, Gargron etc are doing with meta (they have active accounts on Threads AFAIU, for instance) will reveal their true colours (techbro growth mindset just the hipster way) and leave them with egg on their face.

For sure they saw dollar signs down to road for them when Meta decided to create threads.

how Dare that remote instance moderate the content coming into them. hole shit, lets shut down all instances that do that!

If there are any instances or comms that don't let you mention alternatives, then yes definitely shut them down

so fediverse instances must adhere to some global moderation, or else? sounds an awful lot like a walled garden.

you sound exactly like what you hate

One of the cool things about the fediverse is that you are free to run your own instance with whatever rules you do or don't want, and tell the rest of us to fuck right off.

Some instances will defederate from you depending on what those rules are, like those specific relatives we all avoid if we can at holidays, and ignore the rest of the year. They are also free to do so.

IOW, folks might tell your instance (or Meta's) to fuck right off.

That's what freedom looks like. It's not supposed to be just your freedom, it's supposed to be everyone's freedom.

Edit: And by the way, I'm very surprised if a company scrubbing mentions of competitors from its platform isn't a solid anti-trust violation.

exactly! each instance can do its own thing. so its very strange to see people shitting on meta for doing exactly that.

federate/defederate i dont care, but this hate-boner everyone gets from the idea of meta on the 'verse is childish.

each instance can do its own thing. so its very strange to see people shitting on meta for doing exactly that.

You mean scrubbing mentions of a competitor from their platform? That's not OK, and it's an indicator of their future behavior that is very consistent with their past behavior.

this hate-boner everyone gets from the idea of meta on the 'verse is childish.

You are entitled to your opinion. (And so are the folks you think are being childish.)

Nobody is saying to shut down any instance, only that we, and others on the platform who think likewise, would like to not have to see those instances. Nobody is saying to shut down Truth Social or Pawoo or Baraag, for instance, despite having severe disagreements with those instances - we just decided, on our instances, not to federated with them. You aren't obligated to agree with us - you can make your own instance with your own rules, as others have said, or switch to an instance accommodating to your beliefs. But at the same time, it doesn't mean the rest of us have to listen. Think of defederation like blocking - I'm sure you have some sort of block list for trolls, spammers and bots. Same thing, but for an instance.

But surely meta has good intentions and we should totally trust them guys!!1!

Why is everyone so opposed to cancer Threads coming to the Fediverse?

Big corporations coming to tge fediverse will be epic 420 69! I like my tech, not because how it improves my life, but because HYPE! /s

Seriously, they were blocking mention of competition (pixelfed) on threads before they launched their first attempt at federation.

It'd be a damn shame if everyone started putting pixelfed at the end of every message to both deny threads content and create a Streisand effect.

Huh, well look at that. Meta being exactly as bad a corporate citizen as one would expect. This is why defederation is wise. I have no patience for the folks who think we're somehow not being fair to poor old Meta.

Support the fedipact.

Push your instance to defederate.

They are not and will never be a positive contributor to the fediverse. It's another thing to exploit, enshittify, and ruin for them, that's all.

https://wedistribute.org/2023/06/fedipact-blocking-meta/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_controversies

Edit: I'll be one more guy posting this link so interested folks can easily check if their instance has defederated, and make a decision from there. https://fedipact.veganism.social/

This is a by-the-book and extremely predictable case of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

I don't jump right to EEE because more and more folks who weren't alive (or aware) for the early examples of it don't seem to believe it's possible or could happen again. However, I agree with you entirely.

Unfortunately some people do not want to acknowledge that our large businesses are downright evil. For those who doubt this, consider the pharmaceutical companies that raised insulin prices up to hundreds of dollars a month. They did not give a single shit that people would die, so long as they increased profit from their captive audience. If big business doesn't even care whether you live or die, why would they care about the much smaller stakes involved in the federated ActivityPub space?

I think that EEE would not be as impactfull here - I mean, at this stage, without Meta and already at small numbers, if they went through the EEE cycle we'd probably just be in the same position. Meta people came, and then left, nothing really changes. The people who are here are already decided to avoid Meta and other platforms, and they already have features Fediverse doesn't.

My issue is that by Federating, Meta is stealing and monetizing our content we post here, to fill their bullshit Threads with content, which its severely lacking. I hate that and don't want that in the slightest.

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I wish I could go back to a Lemmy thread showing how Mastodon and other Fediverse instances were blocking Meta ahead of it's integration, where people went "Oh you're just being paranoid, why would they do that?" And when given examples of companies taking open standards and either making themselves the biggest source of users or killing it (Microsoft, Google, Apple) they either went "Well that happened in 2006, it's 2023!"

I know the bootlickers wouldn't actually change their mind, but jesus christ. It's frustrating for groups of advocates to be ignored and proven right each time. Cassandra syndrome is real.

what exactly is meta doing thats different than every other fedinstance moderating inbound content?

cuz its nothing. nothing beyond that. but hey, get your meta-hate fetish on.

What are these examples and how do they relate to what Meta is doing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish?wprov=sfla1

I just feel like this strategy won’t work for activitypub. The whole idea is to make interoperable web platforms. If meta tries to damage that then I don’t see why activitypub developers would cooperate when it’s against the whole purpose of the project.

I don't think you have to know how the poison works to know the snake bite will kill you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_controversies

They will come here (edit: They HAVE come here) with a goal of exploiting and controlling the fediverse. You and I don't have to know how they will do that in order for it to be true. Scrubbing links to a product that competes with Instagram from threads seems like a decent start though.

I mean I am completely unsurprised by their misbehavior, I’m just slightly more optimistic about our ability to resist them.

That said, the one danger I can see is Meta gaining more authority over the activitypub developers. That is probably something worth being vigilant about.

I’m just slightly more optimistic about our ability to resist them.

What form would such resistance take if not advocating loudly for defederation?

it will not, but theres a hate-fetish for meta on lemmy and logic has nothing to do with it.

its all 'but they are bad actors' but never 'this is the technical way they will extend the protocol to weaken it' because there isnt anything.

threads is just another instance moderating inbound content. somehow thats going to kill thousands of independent pieces of software.

they're so scared of us you can't even talk about us on their shitty platforms. that should tell you a lot

Who didn't this coming? Seriously, meta will take what they want to increase the capital and makes everything else invisible.

Fediverse isn't here to say yes to everything. We have the freedom to say no and this is the power of the fediverse. It's allowing and denying. And Meta is a threat to the fediverse.

This also could cause a Streisand effect, just like Elon Musk did it with Stonetoss and Hans Kristian Graebener.

Musk and neonazi artist Stonetoss? Tell me more

  1. After a lot of data-diving, people doxx Stonetoss. They found two live recordings, which confirm he was RedPanels. On gab, he used an email starting with hgraebener, then further data diving confirms his name.

  2. While it wasn't 100% sure to this point, he begun blocking any leftist accounts he could, then beg Elon to "protect free speech", which pretty much confirms it.

  3. Extreme crackdown on doxxing begin. People reported timeouts just for posting the name, or the link to Know Your Meme about Stonetoss, which now contains the doxx, as well the memes related to it.

Who didn’t this coming?

Mastodon's CEO, apparently.

Will Meta embrace-extend-extinguish the ActivityPub protocol? There are comparisons to be made between Meta adopting ActivityPub for its new social media platform and Meta adopting XMPP for its Messenger service a decade ago. There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.

That is a stunning display of naïveté.

Can you give more I go on what you think will happen instead? I don't doubt it's naive, but it was my first impression. However, trying to extend skepticism to this, I guess the scenario is that threads federates, uses existing community to grow, becomes significantly larger, then starts creating proprietary protocols to draw users to its own app then enshittifies it.

treat

I assume you meant threat. Otherwise I misunderstood the rest of your comment dramatically :D

What's a pixelfed?

In my experience it's like Instagram but with no one to follow or to react to your posts.

I just..

I just do not get the twitter framework for social media. Like I appreciate you mastodon bros, but what the hell is actually going on over there. I had the same issue with twitter. What the hell even is this?

It's an convenient way to post about some trending topic, without creating a whole new community for something temporary. For example the eurovision sing festival, or some natural disaster that happened.

And on the other hand, it works for expressing some personal thoughts or memes without having to adhere to a specific topic. But with random strangers instead of only your facebook friends.

I think for these kind of needs, no other social media framework would comply better.

I guess I get it, but like, sorting by all or new kind of does the same thing..

I do see that it is popular, but the 'feel' is just that its a bunch of people shouting at each other across a cafeteria.

This is basically how I feel about Instagram. I just can't understand why people use the platform, or even how they do.

Every time I try to use the app, I just end up closing it in frustration a couple of minutes later. What's the point in following people when the algorithm is just going to show me a randomized assortment of their posts from the past week where every one is followed by a "suggested" post from somebody I don't follow and then a "sponsored" post (ad). And then it stops after like 20 posts and refuses to load any more because "You're all caught up from the past 3 days!", even if I haven't opened it in 5 months.

I guess following people whose content you're interested in has gone out of style in favor of consuming whatever the algorithm vomits up in front of you. I feel like even Tik Tok does a better job of letting you see content from people you're following, and that thing is basically all algorithm.

And now I sound like my parents in the 2010s trying to figure out why people use Facebook...

It's not. You have the "explore" tab which is more like "today's viral toots" (which tend to be a lot more varied than Lemmy's "All/Top 24h" since Lemmy is a link aggregator and doesn't really lend itself to jotting down thoughts or diatribes), and you have your personal timeline which is people you actively follow. It's not a cafeteria, it's your RSS feed.

Where it gets shouty is in replies, especially as those get federated weirdly. But that's only a problem for the few percent of users who are making content, not for consumers.

diatribes

I learned a new word today

Yet another day where I get to use the "sound cleverer than I am" cheat code by just randomly inserting French words in my English.

You don't like a bunch of people shouting at each other across a cafeteria? It kind of explains why I never got twitter either.

I never really got the Twitter model either. Following a specific individual is a weird one for me; I’d rather follow an idea or a topic instead (Reddit/lemmy/forums). I honestly don’t care enough about any individual user to the point where I want to know what they have to say about… anything, really.

twitter was made for famous people to spew short thoughts at the masses in a long term plan of selling advertising.

I really valued twitter for the ability of an individual person or groups of people to share their experiences of world events happening in real time. This is less about following individual people and more about being able to get meaningful analytics out of the mass of posts in order to spotlight "things" -- a political movement, an earthquake, a lawyer who cant turn off zoom filters -- whatever. But, it did always have a lot of noise. I usually ended up there when somebody linked to a post.

I tested this and I did not got blocked or anything. https://www.threads.net/@mogoh_viol/post/C4xsvpKMZb8 So I assume, this was just an accident.

I know everybody loves to hate meta, I am am not a fan either, but I find it hard to belive that they outright ban the word pixelfed.

So something changed between then and now. Wish the picture had absolute timestamps instead of the relative ones. I'm on mobile so I'm not about to try to dive into EXIF to find out when that was happening.

Or maybe the original post was simply muted for a different reason.

Does it matter though if Threads actually did this now? Something like this WILL happen in the future, it is the only kind of behavior large corporations are capable of when they interact with a commons they have the incentive to enclose.

I pray to God (or whoever I have to) that the .world admins rethink their federation decision.

Stop praying and just move to an instance that defederates with Threads. It's really not hard.

Why even federate w/ the LW bot-fest anyway?

for better or worse LW is the largest instance, so joining another instance always poses the 'risk' of being defederated.

the federation model definitely has some weaknesses

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What a weak thing for such a big company to do. Censor the mention of an open source competitor that almost no one uses.

It's like combat, companies like this see it as necessary to take every protective step possible, they have an inferior product so manipulation is the only way to maintain their monopoly

I think it's a lot more common than most people would realize. Capitalism hates talking about things that let's normal people do things for free.

That's why we as regular people need to spread the word as effectively as possible.

If something is not on the radar it doesn't exists. That's why MSM doesn't want to talk about some topics.

TIL about Pixelfed :) I will be signing up.

Does this mean that if we always mention pixelfed or @pixelfed we can effectively block Meta from leveraging our contributions to the Fediverse?

... Or you know, just go to an instance that defederates from Threads if you don't want you content there?

Some of us are not savy and don't know how to do that.

your instance is already defederated from threads

Thank you! I thought it was but then I have been seeing toots from instances that I'm not supposed to be able to see (or so I thought) so I wasn't so sure I understood the whole thing anymore. Also, I don't understand the difference between defederated and fedipact 😬

Fedipact is people who've signed some thing pledging to never federate with threads, whereas all the other ones have just defederated them without signing the pact. In reality there's not really any difference at all.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply! I apologize for having a "knot in my brain" about this. I have now had the time to read most of this whole exchange and understand better. Also I realized that what was confusing me was not on a Lemmy server. I was under the impression that the fedipact meant that my other server (Neuro different.me) will not federate with thread but will also defederate from servers who federate with Thread. But that doesn't seem to be the case so what I don't understand now is: if my server defederated Thread but remains federated with a server that didn't defederate Thread... My data could still land on a Thread server?

If my server defederated Thread but remains federated with a server that didn’t defederate Thread… My data could still land on a Thread server?

if your instance defeds threads then it blocks any information being sent to threads at all so they wont receive anything that you post, not even your upvotes on posts will federate with threads.

The only case where this gets kind of weird is if you're on an instance that federates via an allow list of approved instances instead of using the normal method of federating with everyone by default then blocking selected bad instances (the only large instance that uses this method for federation though is hexbear as far as im aware so its not really that important).

What's the point of planning to integrate with activitypub if they do shit like this?

Stage 1 of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

The short version is that Meta see any type of competitors has a treat to its capital. It will do whatever is needed to fight it and destroy it. They introduced stories for Snapchat, reels for TikTok, etc. With the fediverse, they federate to extinguish it.

This only hides content locally for Threads users, it doesn't affect visibility from any other fedi platform. It's not that different from a Lemmy instance downvoting a comment to the point of being auto-hidden; it still exists but requires an extra click to see from your instance, and the rest of the fediverse can access it normally.

The point isn't for other fedi users. It's to deter Threads users from becoming proper fedi users. It used to be those popups only appeared when something genuinely touchy came up. Now they're used for anything the parent company doesn't like as a scare tactic but people don't realise it. Google does this too with Play Protect.

youre not going to get anywhere with this crowd. they are so overtly butthurt over the fact meta does anything with the activitypub protocol theres this fetish of 'how dare you communicate with that corporate run instance'

dont bother with the logic that EmbraceExtendExtinguish only works if the rest of the verse adopts proprietary shit

just dont bother.

Ironically I wouldn't have heard of it if it werent for this, so Streisand effect in action.

The only thing that saved Meta/Web3 from creating a special hell where digital rent seeking pervades all social interaction is that capitalism is too advanced at this point to create a market before trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of it.

We've reached the phase where all new enterprise services come pre-enshittified

The chicken comes prehatched inside the egg so to speak, but when the chicken hatches it is just a really tiny useless chicken that lays eggs the size of ice cream sprinkles.

We can't federate with something that's completely against our ideia of "social". I mean, meta wants a monopoly of the public space. Meta is a shopping center, the Federation ( Mastodon, Lemmy, and stuff) should be like a public square.

"We can't federate" is not really an option... Sure, every instance can add threads to the blocked list. But to keep big corporations out of 'our public square' ActivityPub would have to be twisted into a grotesque version of itself.

What makes you say that? Why is defederation not good enough?

Small businesses can individually refuse to do business with the big shopping mall -> add threads to the block list ('defederate' them)

The big shopping mall is not allowed to put their building at the public square -> threads is not allowed to use ActivityPub

The first statement is totally ok and a lot of instances do this. However, similar like shopping malls it can pose a challenge for small businesses to stay competitive, while categorically refusing business with the big actor. The second statement would require the towns construction committee to not give the shopping mall a license to build. However, this construction committee is a centralised power and not in the design of ActivityPub.

I do not like threads and see them as a potential threat to what we have here. Exactly because it could become harder to stay competitive while refusing them. But i don't see much that we can actively do.

Thanks, that added some good context to your position. I think it's a legitimate worry but I think we have a chance, unlike the shopping mall scenario.

is lemmy.world federated with threads?

Yes. You can check who is here https://fedipact.veganism.social.

mastodon.art blocked 5,805 Admin: Fuck off, Zuck

K. That's my top choice if I relocate.

Kind of a drama lightning rod. Fair warning.

The CEO has openly welcomed Threads, saying it'll make mastodon "more attractive", so I'd maybe rethink that decision.

Happy to see that nearly all the biggest Lemmy instances are blocking it, with the glaring exception of lemmy.world, which is the largest by far. lemmy.world is to lemmy as AOL was to the early internet—the default bucket for those who don't know any better.

Well, for non-German speaking europeans it makes sense, last time I checked .world was the only decently-sized English-speaking server in my area.

EDIT: well, apparently that’s no longer the case, good to be wrong I guess

decently-sized

Why does this matter? You can see everything on lemmy.world even if you come from a small instance. Size is not necessarily a benefit here.

A small instance has a higher probability of the owner stopping maintaining it. Obviously this doesn’t apply if the instance is yours, but I’m not tech-savvy enough to do that.

You actually raise a good point: People may not join a smaller instance if you're not confident it's going to hang around.

I might see if I can publish a contingency/continuity plan in our next community update.

True, that's fair. But I'd still join a small server to give it a chance and to keep them afloat. Small servers would maybe stay around more if more people joined :)

Lots of instances are hosted in Europe, maybe even the majority. I know lemm.ee and lemmy.ml are

Lemm.ee still shows up as “private” in the Observer, but I don’t know how I missed .ml being in France (I really doubt they somehow “ moved” the server). Checking again you’re right though, the situation got a lot better over time.

I am stunned that so many instances think federation with Threads is a good idea.

it's almost as if a company that helped incite an ethnic cleansing just a few years ago, hosts far right stochastic terrorists like libs of tiktok (despite the owner repeatedly breaking meta's own rules) and actively suppressed the voices of Palestinians and posts that criticised Israel doesn't make for a good instance to federate with.

it was immensely irresponsible for any instance to federate with them, let alone the largest one.

Im surprised no one has copy pasted libs of tiktok posts with info of mark zuckerberg, elon, etc to see if that breaks TOS and yell free speech and right wing censorship if the accounts are taken down

Oh damn! If the suckerburg empire is already censoring Pixelfed, wait until they find out about Loops.
Fakebook is not a social media site, it's a place to stalk and scam people, just like the other suckerburg tracking apps.

I wonder if this means we can mention any word in their filter and our content will not be scraped by them? Something like a Meta filter signature on every post or comment like follows:

Pixelfed, etc, etc, etc...

Just switch to an instance that doesnt federate with them

Use this to pick one

https://fedipact.veganism.social/

I think my instance isn't federated but I am under the understanding that the federation can still scrape data through other federated instances that mine is connected with. Something along the lines of 'their data doesn't come in but your data is still sent out'.

the federation can still scrape data through other federated instances that mine is connected with

That's not true. If your instance is defederated from Threads, your content will never be sent to Threads. Other instances will not forward content for you to Threads.

Thank you, that's good to know. Would you have a source that details these kinds of technical details so I can do a little more learning?

A quick search leads me to https://fedi.tips/ which has a lot of information. It mostly focuses on Mastodon but it generally applies to Lemmy and any other Fediverse app as well.

You probably won't find any source specifically saying that "content is not forwarded from remote servers to other remote servers" because that's just not how it works. The documentation will probably focus on what it actually does rather than all of the infinite things that it doesn't do.

No it just hides your comment as spam

I thought @dansup already committed to blocking federation with Meta. Why does he care if they're shutting him out, too?

People make more complex decisions when they have multiple roles:

  • As admin of pixelfed.social, dansup may have decided it is best for that community not to federate with Threads, at least at first
  • As the lead developer of the Pixelfed software, he probably doesn't like anyone censoring discussion of his software
  • As an individual with an interest in social media, he has a Threads account and is participating in conversations there; he would probably like to be able to talk about the projects he's working on

I'm actually quite glad about this. Currently Pixelfed is absolutely beautiful, without me having to do any blocking at all. I don't want spammy low-key commercial posts to start showing up on it, turning me cynical and sour trying to work out who is legit on it. The whole culture of mainstream social media is based on people commodifying themselves, whereas Pixelfed is about artistic expression for its own sake. That's my own take on it anyway. For me, Pixelfed is the best thing on the internet at the moment and I feel protective of it!

I followed the link to the mastodon post and saw this edit

"Edit: As mentioned below, it appears to be a bug, not intentional!"

Choosing a defederated instance might be a good idea...I just signed up here but I'll consider it.

I could also just block the threads.net domain, no? Or would my data still get shipped off to Meta? I'm a little fuzzy on how detailed user account level federation works still.

Your lemmy data is on the public internet. Whether threads is federated with your instance or not, meta can still get all of your posts/comments.

A fair point!

The issue is less Facebook getting your data and more Facebook getting invited to the party when they have ruined every other party they were invited to.

We can’t really stop Facebook from peering into the window to the party, but we can slam the door in Facebook’s face when they knock and try to come in, as we should.

But realistically they won't and at least we make it harder for them. Don't make defederation sound like it's a lost cause when it isn't.

I could also just block the threads.net domain, no?

Nope domain blocking in Lemmy only does anything for communities. Plus blocking on Lemmy isn't even really blocking, it's a more extreme mute function that is deceptively called "block".

I know everyone loves having biases confirmed but we're also not stupid, we know how the internet and evidence works. A random comment getting spam canned means almost nothing.

If this is true it'll be incredibly easy to make a really good case for it which would be a potential news story - however I suspect that it's just a glitch

And this thread goes straight to my Masto admin circle. Ta.

lemm.ee is already defederated. Didn't even have to do anything. I think I chose the right instance.

Edit: defederated not federated

thats it, the fediverse is canceled cuz threads is doing stupid shit on their own server. game over. everyone pack up their lemmy and go home.

Obviously not, but the behavior already shows that Meta/Threads isn’t interested in being a good fediverse citizen, and in doing so lends more credibility to the idea that they’re aiming to embrace, extend, and extinguish.

I'm sorry but the fediverse is full of instances that block other instances. Blocking an instance is not bad behaviour on the fediverse.

If you don't like Threads, don't use it (I'm not using it), and if you want to use an instance that blocks Threads... you're welcome to do that.

But what I don't get is the idea that threads is somehow trying to kill the fediverse. All of the evidence is to the contrary. Meta wants to exist in a federated world. That doesn't mean they will allow access to all content on their corner of the fediverse, nobody wants that. All instances block some other instances and threads has every right to make their own choice about who to block.

Honey blocking all mentions of Pixelfed is not at all like blocking one instance, it is blocking the entire platform. It would be the same as blocking all mentions of Lemmy or all mentions of Mastodon, which would not block ONE instance, but ALL INSTANCES.

Meta can only do that on threads though. I don't care, that's really not my business.

Other people care, I certainly don't care if you care or not doe and I didn't ask for that spontaneous bit of information. You don't care? Uh, ok... I guess.

You're missing the point. I don't want you to understand my feelings, I want someone to explain to me what the big deal is. How meta "moderates" their platform has no effect on me, a non-threads user. What is my stake in it?

I'll copy and paste my reply to someone else here:

Any huge server that is impossible to moderate for admins is detrimental to the network and failure to properly moderate is the number one reason we should be looking at to defederate from instances.

Automatic "spam" protection is the exact thing which co-opted e-mail. Big corps with the largest e-mail user base use algorithms that automatically assume the worst about any small e-mail server. If you spin up a small server you are assumed to be spam unless unless unless, which ended up with e-mail being centralized in the hands of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple, despite being theoretically decentralized too.

Is that what we want for the Fediverse? 4 or 5 huge instances automatically defederating from all small instances unless they fit some criteria defined by the big corps, which they can change anytime?

To summarize, how big Threads is and how they decide to moderate the content matters for anyone who doesn't want the Fedi to end up like e-mail.

Automatic “spam” protection is the exact thing which co-opted e-mail.

👆 this

I think it is (or should be) an antitrust issue to scrub all links to a competitor (Pixelfed vs Instagram) from your platform.

I can still find out about Bing from Google or vice versa. People would legitimately be upset if this were not so. I can still use Edge to download Firefox. People would legitimately be upset if this were not so. Etc etc etc.