Context

There have been a lot of posts and comments recently about Facebook entering the fediverse, and how different instances will handle it. Many people have asked me to commit to pre-emptively defederating from Threads before they even implement ActivityPub.

The lemm.ee federation policy states that it’s not a goal for lemm.ee to curate content for our users, but we will certainly defederate any server which aims to systematically break our rules. I want to point out here that Facebook makes essentially all of its money from advertising, and lemm.ee has a no advertising rule - basically, Facebook has a built-in financial incentive to break our rules. ActivityPub has no protections against advertising, so it’s likely we will end up having to eventually defederate from Threads just for this reason alone.

However, I would still like to get a feel for how many people in our instance are actually excited for potential federation with Threads. While personally I feel that any theoretical pros are by far outweighed by cons, I do want to use this opportunity to see how much of the community disagrees with me. I am not intending to run this instance as a democracy (sorry if anybody is disappointed by that), but I would still like to have a clear picture of user feedback for potentially major decisions such as this one. This is why I am asking every user who wants lemm.ee to federate with Facebook to please downvote this post.

Here are some reasons why I personally believe that Threads will have a negative effect on the fediverse

  • As mentioned above, Facebook is completely driven by ad revenue. There is nothing stopping them from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores, which would ensure that their ads end up on the “all” page of federated servers.
  • Threads already has more users than all Lemmy instances combined. Even if their algorithms don’t apply to the rest of the fediverse directly, they can still completely dictate what the “all” page will look like for all instances by simply controlling what their own users see and vote on.
  • Moderation does not seem to be a priority for Threads so far, meaning that they would create massive moderation workloads for smaller instances.
  • In general, Facebook has shown countless times that they don’t have their users best interests in mind. They view users as something to exploit for revenue. There are probably ways they are already thinking about hurting the fediverse that we can’t even imagine yet.

By the way, we’re not really in any rush today with our decision regarding federation

  • Threads does not have ActivityPub support yet today
  • Even if they add ActivityPub support, their UX is geared towards Mastodon-like usage - it seems unlikely that there would ever be proper interoperability between Threads and Lemmy
  • We don’t really know what to defederate from - it’s completely possible that “threads.net” will not be their ActivityPub domain at all.

So go ahead and downvote if you feel defederation would be a mistake, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! It would be super helpful to me if folks who are in favor of federating with Threads could leave a comment explaining their reasoning.

Update:

By now, it’s clear that there is a group of users who are in favor of federating with Threads. The breakdown is like this (based on downvotes):

  • lemm.ee users: 136 in favor of federating with Threads
  • Others: 288 in favor of federating with Threads

While it seems to be a minority, it’s still quite a few users. There is no way to please all users in this situation - any decision I make will certainly inconvenience some of you, and I apologize for that.

A big thanks to everybody who has shared opinions and arguments in comments so far. I think there are several well written comments that have been unfairly downvoted, but I have personally read all comments and tried to respond to several as well. I will keep reading them as they come in.

The main facts I am working with right now are as follows:

  • The majority of lemm.ee users are strongly opposed to immediately federating with Threads
  • Facebook has a proven track record of exploiting users (and a built-in financial incentive to do so)
  • We currently lack proper federation/moderation tools to allow us to properly handle rule breaking content from Facebook

Considering all of the above, I believe the initial approach for lemm.ee should be to defederate Threads, and then monitor the situation for a period of time to determine if federating with them in the future is a realistic option

In order to federate with them, the following conditions would need to be fulfilled:

  • There needs to be actual interoperability between Threads and Lemmy
  • Threads needs to prove that they are not flooding instances with rule-breaking content (mainly ads and bigotry for lemm.ee)
  • There needs to be a mechanism to prevent feed manipulation by Threads algorithms (potentially this means discarding all incoming votes from Threads)

Note: this is an initial list, subject to change as we learn more about Threads.

Again, I realize this approach won’t please everybody, but I really believe it’s the best approach on a whole for now. Please feel free to keep adding comments and keep the discussion going if you think there is something I have not considered.

  • user_already_exists@lemm.ee
    244·
    1 year ago

    Please follow lemmy.ml and stand up to the big guys and defederate in whatever form it comes. This is a chance to finally stand alone from the Mega corps and have some peace and quiet.

    • speaker_hat@lemmy.one
      9·
      1 year ago

      Peace and quiet is so rare in social media these days, that is so not obvious that we somehow have it here

    • RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip
      2·
      1 year ago

      Preach! There’s a good opportunity here to keep this space free from the greedy hands of a bunch of rich assholes. People are so eager for there to be a ‘new twitter’ but haven’t even raised one question about whether threads has fundamentally addressed the problem that has lead to the downfall of twitter and Reddit. Meet your new boss, same as the old boss. Why the hell should we keep just hoping that some billionaire ceo will do what’s right. Even if that ceo does the right thing, they will eventually be replaced.

      There can be a place on the internet free from capitalist exploitation for profit. Communities can exist solely for the sake of the community. Not every goddamn thing needs to be monetized. Send a clear message that past tactics will not fly here.

  • gravityowl@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    EDITED: After initially misreading the post, I’m actually very glad that I just joined an instance where the majority of people is so against Facebook and their scummy business.

    • sunaurus@lemm.eeOP
      5·
      1 year ago

      Hey, are you sure you’re not misinterpreting the votes? There was a small minority of users in favor of federating, but the majority was against it.

      • gravityowl@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I did misread lol thanks for reaching out. The way it was phrased confused my brain…long day at wok haha

    • rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee
      2·
      1 year ago

      Exactly, if we want them in our space why put up with the growing pains of the Fediverse, just go to them and forget Lemmy, Mastodon, etc. We need to be our own space or why exist at all. As said before, if you want their content just go to their sites.

    • NightOwl@lemmy.one
      11·
      1 year ago

      Absolutely on point. If it’s deal with Facebook or deal with Reddit that doesn’t have a partnership with Facebook I would go straight back to Reddit. Fuck Facebook and their rebrand attempt to distance themselves with the Meta shit.

    • focusforte@lemmy.world
      13·
      1 year ago

      Isn’t it pretty simple though, if you don’t want to see those posts, block them personally. Why make it so that none of the users can access them?

  • michikade@lemm.ee
    4·
    1 year ago

    Considering Meta mines as much data from as many people as possible just to advertise to them and also they can’t even launch Threads in the EU right now because of how aggressively it tracks literally everything about their users and Threads’ only purpose is to gather more data to sell to more people, I think that alone is worth not letting them play.

  • Ballistic86@lemm.ee
    3·
    1 year ago

    Staying as far away from Meta has been my goal since leaving Facebook 8 years ago. I really like this instance, it meets all of my needs for my Reddit replacement.

    I don’t see a reason to federate with a corporation unless they were able to deliver something I’m not currently getting and their corporate support would greatly improve performance/sustainability for this instance. But based on previous experience, a company entering a space usually makes it worse.

  • NerfHerder@lemm.ee
    2·
    1 year ago

    Personal feelings: If I ever want to view Meta content, I’ll go to a Meta owned app. I’m enjoying this new frontier and want it to thrive as safe haven away from massive corporate sponsorship.

    • focusforte@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      It would be way safer for you as a user though to have an account on this side and then view content through federation.

      By having an account on a meta-owned app you are giving them vast amounts of data whereas if you have an account here on the Fediverse, All they’re getting is what you choose to be publicly available on your Fediverse account…

      I’d really don’t understand your logic here… Because all of the data on the Fediverse is available to meta by them. They’re going to be able to read all of that data regardless. As far as I can tell the only thing that defederation will accomplish is preventing you from accessing their data.

  • nexussapphire@lemm.ee
    31·
    1 year ago

    This is a community of individuals escaping from corporate manipulation and abuse. As a new platform, we need to support our own and grow a healthy foundation.

    If we give this parasite access to our community, others trapped on meta platforms will never leave their comfort zone to try something new and potentially better(to them).

    When were big and strong like ox and with a name more recognizable than reddit, we can federate and show off our strong community. Or move on due to fading interest in threads like most meta platforms

    • focusforte@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      If there’s one thing that the Fediverse has the capability of doing it is introducing real competition into the social media space though,

      By defederating and cutting off users of that meta platform from the rest of the Fediverse you are strengthening metas monopoly though. You’re making it more difficult for people to leave that platform.

      People choose a social platform based on the people they can communicate with. I still have to maintain a Facebook account because there are people on that platform that I need to stay in contact with. I don’t want to have a Facebook account but I have to because it’s the only way to keep in contact with them.

      If Facebook federated and I could communicate with those people who decide that they want to stay on Facebook I could then get rid of my Facebook account. I could take advantage of the biggest benefit of the Fediverse and enjoy my social media experience on whichever instance I want without cutting myself off from people who’ve chosen to be on a different social media instance of some kind.

      Federating with meta platforms will Make it easier for people to leave meta platforms. Anymore most people are only on Facebook because it is a monopoly and you have to be there in order to talk with everyone that’s there. Giving people an option to talk to people on Facebook without having to be on Facebook yourself makes it easier for people to leave Facebook.

  • Steal Wool@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    If I want to see threads content, I will just make an account on threads…which I doubt I’ll ever do, but who knows.

  • magnetosphere @beehaw.org
    31·
    1 year ago

    I’m excited by the potential of the fediverse, and I want the fediverse to grow. That means more users. However, the noncommercial nature of the fediverse is why I’m excited by it in the first place. I couldn’t care less if there’s yet another gigantic social network full of ads.

    Allowing any profit-driven interest to influence the fediverse risks destroying what makes the fediverse interesting and special. I’m not willing to risk the fediverse in order to grow it.

  • perestroika@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    Remembering what Facebook did with XMPP (initially allowed their users to speak to other messengers’ users, then got sloppy with compatibility, causing great workload to unrelated app developers, and finally, having accumulated enough mass for Messenger, stopped supporting XMPP) - Facebook should be avoided like fire.

    Facebook is also bad for society, allowing manipulation (targeted advertizing), aggregating great amounts of user data (harming privacy) and prioritizing user engagement regardless of the social cost (a hateful conflict generates more clicks than cat photos).