Plans to pre-emptively defederate from threads? : meta

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I would supprt pre-emptively defederating Facebook / Meta.

Directly relevant history: they allowed their users to talk to third-party XMPP servers as long as it suited their business. With size comes arrogance, so while doing that, they introduced compatibility issues which caused other people much avoidable work. Finally they blocked their users from interacting with third-party messenger apps.

Indirectly relevant history: Facebook has caused damage to society by allowing better manipulation (targeted advertising) and helped fuel conflict (preference for content that makes people click).

A company with their history and ownership model can be expected to behave selfishly to the detriment of others.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yeah, I don't see much point in federating with anything Facebook comes up with.

However, I suspect the planned AP support by Tumblr will be the bigger question. Solarpunk obviously has been always very strong on Tumblr and the current owners of Tumblr are not nearly as bad as Facebook, but it is still a huge corporate run instance if and when it joins the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm glad to hear we won't be federating with threads or any other meta products. As far as Tumblr, things might be a bit more complicated. Chris Trottier, a developer who is the admin for calckey . social , read Meta's latest press release about Threads and it mentions Tumblr as well as Wordpress, which many websites run, who are both owned by a company known as Automattic. His take is that Meta has likely been in discussion with Automattic about Activitypub and that could have a big impact on the Fediverse.

Link to original post

https://calckey.social/notes/9gvjlnajyc0pgyal

Meta press release

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/07/introducing-threads-new-app-text-sharing/

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

I did see that, yes. Indeed I also think this isn't a big nefarious plan of Facebook to kill the Fediverse (we are probably too small for them to care), but the damage will be done by them never the less and we better try our best to limit the damage as good as we can.

For Tumblr I guess we will see in a few months.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Thanks for your input, and all you do around here!

I definitely agree re:Tumblr. A corporate entity for sure, but a seemingly much less malicious and data-hungry one.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

I came here originally cause I think this instance is likely to defederate from Meta (and cause I enjoy the content and want to contribute a bit of course), though I‘m also not the type to raise a big stink if it didn’t, at most I upvote and affirm posts like this.

I really like about the Fediverse that I can basically just move on to another instance which suits me better, if I notice things going a way I don‘t want them to.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I was hoping someone was going to ask this here.

Ultimately, I will support the decision of our gracious host, whose time and money has made this instance possible. But I do not care to interact at all with Threads/Meta and I do not believe their presence on the fediverse is anything other than an attempt to either monetize it or potentially make it obsolete

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Ultimately, I will support the decision of our gracious host, whose time and money has made this instance possible. But I do not care to interact at all with Threads/Meta and I do not believe their presence on the fediverse is anything other than an attempt to either monetize it or potentially make it obsolete

Agreed, 100%. And thanks for putting it more eloquently than I was able to, haha!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

There was the theory behind some EU laws that by joining the Fediverse, they get around some monopoly issues.

So possibly 3 things that are most likely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I will support the decision of our gracious host, whose time and money has made this instance possible.

I mean... he's a developer, not a deity. I appreciate that this is a space he made, and he can do what he wants. But I'm also free to leave if he decides to federate with a Zuckerberg product.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Not trying to be rude or anything, but you're not even here. This isn't kbin. This is a specific meta community for this instance, slrpnk.net.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's, uh... that's a good point you got there. I still get confused by the whole federation thing lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I went and found this thread on kbin.social, and I'm gonna put the blame squarely on them. It was extremely unclear that this thread was on another instance, and really the only way I was able to tell was by looking at the URL.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

Keep corporations off platforms. They have no business peddling their lies and cheap garbage.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

I would support the admins in a decision to block Threads, and would not be abandoning my account if they did

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think pre-emptive defederation is unnecessary, but the platform has been live for like two minutes so I'm reserving the right to change my opinion down the line. I want to see how things play out. My biggest concern is lack of moderation.

I'm not of the camp that wants to keep the Fediverse an exclusive club. I want ActivityPub to become a universally accepted and expected standard like email. I want to break the corporate vendor lock-in on social media so that billionaires are unable to completely control the digital commons. This is ideally the first step on that path.

I've had multiple conversations about this across multiple platforms and I've yet to get an realistic answer on how federation could be harmful to the Fediverse, outside of bad moderation. At which point we take the same action we take on any instance with poor moderation. Everything else has been vague gesturing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'll just direct you to @ProdigalFrog's comment in this thread because I think it responds to your points better than I would be able to. Meta is bad for humanity as a whole, and they shouldn't be allowed to infiltrate an open platform such as ActivityPub.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'm aware that Facebook is a bad company. That's why I refuse to accept their rebranding like most of you already have, because they are relying on that to try and shed some of the bad association with their name.

However, I agree with the person who responded to that comment; I can easily envision benefits, but nobody has been able to describe to me how they can harm us via federation. Every time I've asked it's only been vague gestures. I can see a way for us to inflict harm on them via federation by giving us the ability to siphon users from them without depriving them of connections. I cannot see the opposite happening, because people who are already here have explicitly opted out of their system to begin with. It seems to me that we have everything to gain and nobody can specifically describe what we stand to lose.

I'm not saying we should give them a chance; I'm saying we should use this as a weapon.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Just a reminder that regardless of what kbin.social decides, you can block federated domains for yourself. Go to:
https://kbin.social/d/domainname
So I just blocked Threads and it was:
https://kbin.social/d/threads.net
On the right side, click the "don't" icon (circle with a slash through it). When it's red, that means that domain is blocked.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That's great for kbin users and all, but this community is meta for the slrpnk.net instance, which runs lemmy.

edit: that also seems like it would just make links to said domain invisible. They can see you, but you can't see them. I could be wrong, as I've never used kbin before.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

I’m personally opposed to defederation in all but the most extreme circumstances. I think more people communicating, even through a questionable platform, could be a could thing. A lot of people are speculating that this is some scheme to kill the fediverse but there’s no real evidence of this yet, and frankly, I’m not convinced we’re big enough that Meta would really consider us a threat. If evidence of such a scheme does materialize, then obviously at that point defederation makes sense. But at this point, I think defederation (and denying potentially millions of people from experiencing the fediverse) solely on speculation seems like a bad idea.

I was actually thinking of suggesting a defederation policy be drafted, so that we can have clear circumstances under which we would or would not defederate. That way we can operate off of consensus rather than the whims of admins—well-intentioned as they may be. Curious what the community thinks of that idea, whatever the decision on this particular topic ends up being.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

I get where you're coming from, but honestly, I think Facebook's history is enough evidence.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I did write down some "typical reasons" for de-federation in our Wiki: https://wiki.f-hub.org/books/slrpnknet/page/lemmy-instance

But it is intentionally a bit vague and left open for interpretation as there will be always edge-cases and people trying to game rules. So no, I don't think it will be ever possible to have "clear circumstances under which we would or would not defederate", its always a bit of an individual judgement call related to both our specific community here and the health of the wider Fediverse.

In the specific case of Threads, I think it would probably not matter so much for our specific community here, but the threat to the wider Fediverse is very real and warrants a coordinated attempt to keep them out as best as we can.

And "denying potentially millions of people from experiencing the fediverse" is just not the case. They are free to make an account on another Fediverse server that is not run by a known bad actor like Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I’m glad there is something but I think a clear document has the potential to avoid a lot of potential issues. Such rules would help eliminate or clarify many edge cases and I somewhat doubt that we’ll ever be large enough that instances are deliberately trying to game our specific rules. But if it does we can always revise the document with whatever solution seems most practical.

And sure, people are free to join Lemmy… if they know about it. Which they largely don’t, and perhaps never will if we choose to isolate ourselves from most of the web. But it seems I’m in the minority on this issue so the decision has been made. We will see what the consequences are in time. Given Meta’s past behavior, it may prove wise. But there is also a cost to defederation that we should keep in mind when making these decisions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm personally opposed to defederation in all but the most extreme circumstances.

Can you define 'extreme circumstances'?

Is literal nazi propaganda extreme enough? Because you can already find it on Threads.

I was actually thinking of suggesting a defederation policy be drafted, so that we can have clear circumstances under which we would or would not defederate

That I agree with. Instances should have it layed it out clearly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I mean it depends on how much and how it is being managed. Unfortunately, nazi propaganda is prevalent in many societies, so I don’t think it will be possible to have a platform be completely free from it, excepting very small, isolated communities. I can find it on posters outside my house, but that clearly doesn’t reflect the views of the vast majority of people in my neighborhood. It’s here on Lemmy as well. I don’t think that alone warrants some kind of quarantine policy, if those views are being actively opposed and/or removed. If an instance is operating as a safe haven for those views to fester and spread then that may warrant defederation if it is causing serious harm to federated communities.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I agree with this.

I think that in the long run, if the Fediverse model is successful then a confrontation is inevitable, but i think it makes sense to defederate as a response to Meta doing something specific and deplorable rather than just for joining.

I also like the idea of drafting a defederation policy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Meta doing something specific and deplorable

Does their history not count? Threads doesn't exist in a vacuum.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

That's definitely sufficient if the goal is to cast a judgement on their ethics. But I think the point of defederating isn't to express general disapproval. It's to maintain the best possible experience for the users of the instance. Defederating from Facebook just seems like it's motivated by giving them the middle finger. Which is fine, but as a tool, I don't think that's what federating is for.

I don't feel strongly about this, though. It's an opinion. If the rest of the instance or the admins decided to defed meta I would not care at all.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think considering how incredibly harmful Facebook/Meta has been to society, and that Meta intentionally pushes divisive and hateful content because it creates the most engagement, it makes sense from a pragmatic point of view to simply pre-emptively block them in all ways possible. Their entire history as a company has shown they will make anyone who uses their services, and society as a whole, worse off. Intentional or otherwise. It need not be motivated from a metaphorical middle finger, but as self-defense against a practical certainly of something bad coming from interaction with them.

It takes only a short glance at the 'Facebook papers' leak to see why it makes sense to distance ourselves as much as possible:

The so-called “Facebook Papers” include a mix of presentations, research studies, discussion threads and strategy memos. What the documents reveal about Facebook’s behavior is stark and damning. They show how some of Zuckerberg’s public claims about Facebook’s principles and activities clashed with internal company findings. For example, he once told Congress that Facebook removes 94 percent of the hate speech it finds. But the inverse was true — according to internal estimates, the number was probably less than 5 percent.

Ahead of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Facebook’s efforts to stem the flow of misinformation proliferating on its networks fell short. Company employees were unhappy as far-right groups spread the call to join the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the attack.

“This is not a new problem,” one unnamed employee fumed on Workplace, an internal message system, on Jan. 6. “We have been watching this behavior from politicians like Trump, and the — at best — wishy washy actions of company leadership, for years now. We have been reading the [farewell] posts from trusted, experienced and loved colleagues who write that they simply cannot conscience working for a company that does not do more to mitigate the negative effects on its platform.”

The Facebook Papers also make clear how Zuckerberg prioritized maximum engagement and the company’s bottom line over ethical concerns about safety and best practices. While he espouses a form of free speech maximalism in public in the United States, he has participated in enabling regimes of censorship elsewhere. My colleagues also pointed to a 2019 episode in Vietnam, where Zuckerberg personally decided to comply with demands from the autocratic government in Hanoi to censor dissident voices on his platform.

“Ahead of Vietnam’s party congress in January, Facebook significantly increased censorship of ‘anti-state’ posts, giving the government near-total control over the platform, according to local activists and free speech advocates,” my colleagues reported.

The Facebook Papers “are astonishing for two reasons,” wrote the Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance. “First, because their sheer volume is unbelievable. And second, because these documents leave little room for doubt about Facebook’s crucial role in advancing the cause of authoritarianism in America and around the world. Authoritarianism predates the rise of Facebook, of course. But Facebook makes it much easier for authoritarians to win.”

To assume that some good could come from interacting with Meta is, in my honest opinion, a naive stance. But that's just my two cents.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm sort of tired of talking about this, particularly because it's all academic: they don't offer any federated instance currently to defederate from. But I want to clarify my reasoning.

My point is NOT that we should "gIvE tHeM a ChANce!" We all know they are run by greedy, exploitative, untrustworthy people.

My point is that I think our response should be rooted in causes and effects rather than vibes. If they offered a federated instance that I had friends on, I'd want to be able to see my friends posts and have them see mine. And if Facebook then tried to find ways to push ads to a remote instance, then we'd obviously defederate. Because that's an appropriate tool to correct a specific harm.

That's all I'm saying. Currently, Facebook has no means of affecting my experience on this instance, so I don't care whether we preemptively reject them from federating. The moment that they DO affect my experience, they'll obviously be booted. That's good enough for me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

My point is that I think our response should be rooted in causes and effects rather than vibes.

I gotta be perfectly honest here; if despite all the discussion that's happened in this thread, you can still say something like this, then I really don't think anything we've said has really gotten through to you, and I too "tire of talking about this."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Fair.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Defederating from Facebook just seems like it's motivated by giving them the middle finger.

Well I've found where we disagree! I think defederating from Threads is more of a safeguard of the users of this instance from Meta's predatory data practices, and history of employing the classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy. Personally, I think having zero connection to anything run by Meta is certainly giving the users of the instance the best possible experience.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

I want to point out again that currently, Facebook offers no federated instance to defederate from. They've promised this in the future, and it may never happen, so it's all academic.

Also, I don't feel strongly about any of this. People are free to ignore me.

With that said, if Facebook did offer a federated product I would want to federate so I could see content from friends and family on that instance. Facebook can't harvest data or show me to ads on a different instance. If they tried to do something really stupid, like push ads to me through by posting them on behalf of my grandma, THEN I'd agree we should defederate, and most likely we wouldn't need to hold a vote, because the admins of this instance would just send out an announcement that Facebook is in violation of the instance's guidelines and has refused to correct behavior, so they're being defederated, as dictated by the defederation policy.

I think that's how it should work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

if the goal is to cast a judgement on their ethics

What if the goal is to use knowledge of their past behaviour to make an informed guess about their likely future behaviour?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I guess what’s the specific history you think is relevant here? I’ll admit to not being an extremely close follower of Meta’s various activities. I have a sense that they are vaguely nefarious but that’s about it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It only relates to a single issue with Facebook, but I highly recommend the documentary The Great Hack.

tl;dw: Cambridge Analytica manipulated the 2016 US election, the Brexit vote, Ukraine's 2004 election in which they supported pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich, and various other elections, and they got their data mostly from Facebook, who was complicit, and even cooperative.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't care either way really considering I can already hide a domain on my own. I'm more of a wait and see kind of person. If they're really toxic, defederate, sure. But I don't see any harm in seeing how it even plays out at first.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Have you not seen screenshots yet? Its already become a hive for fascists and Nazi shitposters. Even if that weren't the case they will be spamming everything with ads, its a no brained decision that they need to be defederated. I'll personally leave any instance that doesn't do so.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago

I haven't looked into it at all. I didn't see any reason to. If it is like that, then sure. Like I said, if it's toxic, defederate it. I just have no clue what's on it because I wasn't interested in joining it.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

My understanding is that there's no reach for advertisements off their platform.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I guess I don't understand what you mean by reach. They can and still inject ads into the timeline. You have to at least cultivate a healthy level of skepticism towards their motives for being on the fediverse. There is a reason. Most of us came here to get away from those reasons, if those reasons don't matter to you, then there are a lot of corporate social media platforms that currently exist you can go and be part of, but this one was made in opposition to those others. I won't personally be on any platform that federates with any meta project of any kind. I don't know their motives with any certainty, but I don't trust them and I can guess at a number of possible motives. I know whatever they are doing here relates to data and ads and making money off our work so their investors don't jump ship. There is no way to build an ethical platform on that foundation. I'll jump ship on any platform that thinks the wait and see approach will work. That's what liberals said about Donald Trump and look at how that has been going.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

They can and still inject ads into the timeline.

They can't remotely inject ads into your timeline. Your timeline on any ActivityPub compliant server is built locally. The only way would be to embed them into existing posts that they serve you, which would absolutely get them into severe legal trouble as soon as some ad is injected into a famous person's post making it look like an endorsement.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We are talking about Instagram "influencers" here. They will happily include advertisements in their posts themselves if they get some small preferential treatment by the Threads algorithm out of it, or some minuscule revenue sharing like Google does on Youtube.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sorry for the delayed response, my phone app has been being weird.

I'm sure there will be influencers. But at a certain point it becomes the user's responsibility for who they follow. We are not subject to their algorithm over here, so it's not like their content will be shoved in our face without our express approval.

I don't think we should defederate simply to protect users from themselves, we should do it when a server poses some kind of actual threat, which usually comes down to moderation in most cases. So long as they sufficiently moderate, which remains to be seen and I certainly don't blindly trust them to do that, I can't think of any real harm from federating.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

This is not about protecting users from themselves. This is about protecting the wider Fediverse from corporate takeover. If you wait for them to become entrenched and start causing problems, it is too late IMHO.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I can remotely inject an ad into thw timeline... Its called a post. And they could flood the federated timeline with ads simply by posting ads from various accounts. Its really not a hard thing to imagine and thats only one of many possible issues with allowing threads to federate.

Meta (slrpnk.net)