I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.

Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.

As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:

  1. Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won’t care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
  2. When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won’t care. They will use Threads because its faster.

This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.

Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That’s not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.

My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.

I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.

We couldn’t get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.

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289 points

I’m hoping that ALL admins across the Fediverse will defederate from Meta. At least we get to have our own separate platform then.

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88 points
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They shouldn’t just defederate from Meta, they should defederate from any other instances that federate with Meta. Like a firewall against late stage capitalism

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41 points

But that is a double-edged sword. What if, for example, mastodon.social doesn’t defederate with Meta, but you defederate from mastodon.social? Now you’ve just cut yourself off from a huge portion of the fediverse. Admins should defederate from Meta if their community wants to do that, but defederating from other instances that didn’t do that is going a bit too far, in my opinion.

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18 points

A small price to pay for salvation from Meta.

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3 points

I’ve already blocked mastodon.social.

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16 points
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Why? If you have blocked meta shouldn’t you already be exempt from seeing comments and posts by their users on other instances? Why is this punitive approach needed

Edit: (Alongside downvoting, an explanation might be better suited to change people’s minds, I just eant to know the advantage of this approach since you are excluding yourself from many users and you would have already blocked meta in this scenario)

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4 points

If you have blocked meta shouldn’t you already be exempt from seeing comments and posts by their users on other instances?

Yes, at least that’s how it is explained in How the beehaw defederation affects us, Back then, beehaw.org defederated from lemmy.world.

Why do I see posts/comments from beehaw users on communities outside lemmy.world and beehaw.org?

That’s because the “true” version of those posts is outside beehaw. So we get updates from those posts. And lemmy.world didn’t defederate beehaw, so posts/comments from beehaw users can still come to versions hosted on lemmy.world.

The reverse is not true. Because beehaw defederate lemmy.world, any post/comment from a lemmy.world users will NOT be sent to the beehaw version of the post.

Third instance communities

Finally, we have the example of communities that are on instances that have not been defederated by beehaw.org.

We can see all three of these versions look pretty similar. That’s because for the most part they are. We are identical with lemmy.ml, as lemmy.ml hosts the “true” version, and we get all updates from the “true” version. Beehaw.org will not get posts/comments from us, so beehaw actually doesn’t have the most “true” version of this community.

Translated into the current context:

  • beehaw.org = your instance, which defederates from Threads
  • lemmy.world = Threads (sorry folks, just to eplain the mechanics)
  • lemmy.ml = another instance, which is federated with both, your instance and Threads

Conclusions:

  • You wont see posts or commens from Threads users in that remote community. You also won’t see reactions to those activities from anyone, anywhere. It’s as if comment chains started by Threads users don’t exist.
  • Threads will not see posts and comments from you, even if done in communities from instances which are federated with Threads.

Or what do you think, @amiuhle@feddit.de?

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3 points

You’d see comments and posts from their users on other instances that don’t block Meta.

It’s unclear how many users you would actually exclude, I think a lot of users who are on the fediverse right now don’t want to have anything to do with Meta.

As the fediverse grows, there will be different bubbles with not much interaction between those, mainly because some instances won’t be moderated while others will try to create discrimination free environments.

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1 point

That will just drive many Fedi-users to Meta.

Different instances will make different decisions and users will go to the instances that suit their preferences. That’a how it is supposed to work and the only way it hurts the Fediverse is if we get flooded with threads complaining that other people have different preference, dammit.

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-5 points

I feel like this will just hurt us more then help.

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99 points

I don’t see why this would hurt us. But even if it did, I would rather take the blow than associate with Big Tech again.

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52 points

Meta willingly under-moderated across large swaths of east Asia and Africa, leading to unchecked rumors and tangible acts of genocide. Zuckerberg has compared himself to Augustus Caesar.

I think it’s acceptable to cut off a wildfire before it spreads.

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34 points

Gotta love the fact Meta contributed to how my country got a murderer and the son of a dictator as presidents. Real great and trustworthy company there /s

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-42 points
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Lemmy is run by a bunch of tankies and the entire fediverse is under-moderated.

Cutting off a ton of users and content from the fediverse is stupid and everyone in here just keeps coming up with vague generalities because they’re scared of Meta rather than have actually thought through what will happen and be able to articulate any actual harms.

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36 points
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Growth at any cost is the mindset that not only ruins anything good for profit, it is also the exact issue we are facing now in real life with the right gaining traction in many liberal and multicultural democracies.

Because everyone is being let in, without a second thought on if they even should be there, we now have massive social issues with not at all integrated subcultures in Europe that embrace values diametrically opposed to our tolerant and pluralist societies, in turn empowering the right to ruin any progress made in an effort to throw out the brown people again.

The right question to ask is not “can we accept this new member to our society?”, the right question is “should we accept this new member into our society based on their beliefs and values, based on if they can contribute anything to the existing society?”

And to return to the matter at hand, this is what the fediverse is supposed to be. A bunch of communities and little realms, each with their own rules and interests but united in their belief that self determination and democratic structures make for a better and more fair internet. And then we have the meta intruder we are about to welcome with open arms, without any rules or expectations of him to adopt our values and culture, so they bring their own, corporate, centralized culture and use their money to brute force that culture into every place of importance.

It is not racist or intolerant of societies to expect newcomers to assimilate, and ignoring that fact brought us a re emerging right.

And it is not fearmongering or small minded to be extremely sceptical of Facebook trying to establish themselves in the fediverse, they are literally the OG data and privacy violating corporation, they invented echo chambers and connecting extremists. There is zero value to the fediverse in welcoming meta. The only one who wins if that happens is meta.

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39 points

Exactly. Facebook is a known bad actor. There is absolutely no reason to believe their intentions are anything but evil. Pretending Threads is just another instance is both naive and dangerous. It is a cancer. If allowed to federate, it will metastacize.

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17 points

Well said.

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18 points

How is that any different from what we have now?

Threads has launched, but has federation disabled. So right now Threads is a standalone system, and it and the Fediverse cannot intercommunicate.

If Threads later adds in federation but all the of the Fediverse blocks them, we’re in exactly the situation that exists right this minute. And that doesn’t seem to be hurting the Fediverse at all.

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13 points

Do you really want the Instagram crowd to interact with us…?

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6 points

I’ve been on Instagram for 3 years trying to build up an art profile, sharing my artwork. I think it’s not Us vs Them, all sorts of people are spread out everywhere online.

I’m happy to be here on the fediverse with my fediverse accounts, not threads. I’m extremely despondent about threads existing.

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-6 points

At least there would be people and content to interact with.

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13 points

Yeah, I personally don’t want that. I want to be able to log in to mastodon or lemmy without needing a facebook account and be able to interact with my less tech savvy friends and family, as well as get news from journalists/bands/sports teams/etc.

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7 points

How exactly will it hurt us to not be usurped by an evil megacorp?

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1 point
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How will not federating with them prevent that?

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4 points

I don’t think so; it won’t hurt ‘us’ anymore than we were hurt yesterday, when Threads hadn’t launched yet.

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2 points

I feel different

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2 points

Why would that hurt us? Sorry, I’m pretty new to all this…

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