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.
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.
Peace and quiet is so rare in social media these days, that is so not obvious that we somehow have it here
Exactly we’re here and doing all this work on our own dime so we can have a social media site that won’t turn out like every corporate social media site ever. It’s already working the way we want it to without any help from Facebook, so logically giving them a seat at the table can only not help.
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.
Amen
Agreed. I want this place to remain completely free from corporate fuckery.
“Peace and quiet” is very well put.
I’m not a lemm.ee user, but I support defederation should Meta decide to permit access to Lemmy instances. We’re here to escape Silicon Valley, not look for opportunities to invite them to dinner.
Lemm.ee is a great instance if you ever want to ride shotgun on the long road trip of the fediverse but what I love the most about this experience is exactly this…create your own server, instances, communities. We are getting an early chance to build and customize our own user experience here. The idea of keeping out what we are fighting against makes sense to me and wouldn’t it be cool if @sunaurus did it early in the game like the 2nd largest instance did and beat .world to it? (if they follow suit, which I can’t predict)
First of all did you make your own instance for your profile?
Second of all and more importantly I think you’re right. Even if you aren’t part of a server and they decide to federate it indirectly screws us over in the short term and we get probably get totally messed up in the long term
Some said it’s the Star Trek borg and I’m not a fan but it’s a great parallel
Yes, I spun up my own instance. Partly for fun, but also to have control over my own federation should conflict affect an instance someone else operates.
That’s nice. I would do it myself but thinking my 3 brain cells sad lol and compared to some people I’m not very tech savvy
What are the benefits of spinning up an instance yourself? And what are you hosting it on?
I host it on a very small VPS. A huge benefit is c/all never contains communities I have no interest in. Therefore, communities I subscribe to are “favorites”. c/all is a superset of my favorites plus communities I check less frequently.
I’m here to escape Sillicon Valley, not to cut off contact with anyone who’s chosen not to.
If you don’t defederate we might as well go back to reddit. I don’t want to see posts from instagram accounts
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.
100% get that shit out of here
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.
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.
Hell no. I came to Lemmy to get AWAY from the corporate overlords.
Fuck Zuck and fuck Meta
fuckfuck
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.
It won’t matter to you if you’re using ActivityPub, because they can’t mine any of your data that isn’t publically available through scraping anyway.
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.
I think like a lot of people the reason I’m putting up with the growing pains of a decentralized network, the fragmentation of communities that come with it, and sync issues across instances is because we want to try something that isn’t run by corporations that views users as something to sell off to the highest bidder. If I wanted to deal with a centralized large user base why wouldn’t I just skip this whole fediverse thing and go straight to Meta or reddit or Twitter or tiktok that is way more user friendly? I’m not here because I want another reddit clone that ends up being run or is influenced by another billionaire asshole down the line.
No Federation with Corporations.
We should make a “No Federation With Corporation” sticker
Now now now friend it sounds to me like you haven’t had your brain washing! Don’t you know Meta has our best interest when it comes to delivering high quality ads. They even collect all your data and manipulate what you see because they care so much that you’re seeing ads that might interest you in an extremely invasive way
Ok in all seriousness we cannot associate with meta becuase I’m sure they’ll make a ton of big communities and non meta users will join because of the sheer size and then close it off and go “if you want your community you gotta get the meta app” the whole embrace extend exterminate thing
Sounds like a good recipe for failure. Let’s block all instance we don’t like for whatever reason. Let’s fragment the fediverae till nobody uses it because it’s a mess of instances that don’t talk to each other for a slew of reason.
Oh stop being hyperbolic. That’s not what I said at all. Big companies like Meta will ruin this place given half the chance. They don’t want a Fediverse, they want access to the users here so that they might one day absorb them. Federation with corporations will ruin the Fediverse, it’s that simple.
Go make a threads account if you want to look at ads so badly.
Already made an account to see that it was all about. So how big is too big? Who do we block after meta?
Fuck facebook and fuck everything that has to do with it! Defederate!
Strongly in favour of defederating. Firstly because I don’t want advertising or big businesses taking over feeds, but the point you made about moderation is critical. The sheer amount of content that instance admins will have to deal with will be unmanageable.
I don’t believe that federating with Threads will be completely apocalyptic, and I actually believe that the commercialization of the Fediverse is the way it will take over the internet. You can’t run the entire internet on a crowdfunded and volunteer-only basis, after all. The beauty of the Fediverse is that competition is easy and enshittification is difficult due to how easy it’ll be to simply take your activity somewhere else, meaning that companies like Meta won’t be able to do the type of things they’re known for.
That being said, I believe that for technical reasons, as well as the fact that it’d be very easy for Meta to strangle their competition in the cradle if we (Referring to the Fediverse as a whole, as this isn’t even my instance) cooperated with them, nobody should federate with Threads until the Fediverse is large, resilient, and technologically matured enough to survive a hostile takeover attempt by a corporation like Meta. Basically, defederate from them for now, and reconsider at a later date when the Fediverse has had time to establish itself. I think in the future, the Fediverse will be able to easily deal with Threads being popular and enshittifying itself, but I simply don’t think we’re there yet.
You can’t run the entire internet on a crowdfunded and volunteer-only basis, after all.
Actually…
Every single website or app on the internet is at least partially built on free software. The internet as we know couldn’t exist without the crowdfunded and volunteer-only work of open-source folks.
Most content on the internet is produced for free by users. Websites like Reddit can’t exist without the free work of their moderators.
So what is left to finance in order to free us from vampire companies? Hosting fees? That’s cheap compared to the other costs…
The beauty of the Fediverse is that competition is easy and enshittification is difficult due to how easy it’ll be to simply take your activity somewhere else,
Not sure about that, see how the migration from Twitter, Reddit and other shitty platforms takes time? You can’t just leave if the people you like to interact with stay on the other side. That’s how they got us. The main selling point of Thread today: “come, many people you know are already there!”
meaning that companies like Meta won’t be able to do the type of things they’re known for.
They wouldn’t get into it without a plan to monetize it, that’s the type of things they’re known for…
Overall, I think people over-estimate the cost of running things on the internet. We already “paying” most of it just by producing meaningful content. We don’t need tech companies to take their share in the process, we only need time and brain work to make the Fediverse easier to use so that our friends on the other side decide to join us here.
Every single website or app on the internet is at least partially built on free software. The internet as we know couldn’t exist without the crowdfunded and volunteer-only work of open-source folks.
Doesn’t disprove my point at all. You can say that some innovation and upkeep is done by volunteers, but paid labor does way more innovation and way more upkeep on the Internet. For example, the day-to-day maintenance of things like Youtube, a cornerstone of many people’s lives, is done for profit by paid workers.
So what is left to finance in order to free us from vampire companies? Hosting fees? That’s cheap compared to the other costs…
Well, the thing is, some hosting fees are higher than others, and people do not like paying for things. This is why YouTube has had to get so predatory with its advertising, if they switched to relying on donations to cover the astronomical upkeep costs of being the go-to video hosting service, they’d go under within a week. Websites like Wikipedia, which mostly hosts letters and images, are way more affordable, and the limited number of people who donate are enough to keep it up.
Not sure about that, see how the migration from Twitter, Reddit and other shitty platforms takes time? You can’t just leave if the people you like to interact with stay on the other side.
I thought the entire point of the Fediverse was that you can interact with people from different instances as long as those two instances are federated with eachother. Using another instance allows you to keep interacting with the original instance’s userbase while avoiding most of the ads or poor moderation that comes with it.
They wouldn’t get into it without a plan to monetize it, that’s the type of things they’re known for…
I wasn’t referring to nor do I care about monetization, I’m mostly referring to enshittification and monopolization.
I don’t understand why anyone wants to have Facebook of all companies here. Really? Why is this even a question.
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.