I saw in the posts recently how Metas thread grew rapidly in a span of just a day. I understand that since threads posts a privacy nightmare (no surprises there) I’m leaning towards de-federating with them.
But I am also cautiously excited about the massive amount of content if we federated instead.
So for purposes of discussion, may I know the pros and cons of federating with threads?
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As I’ve heard Threads is not yet ActivityPub federation enabled- meta is going walled garden for the foreseeable future.
Benefits of federation would be:
- Massive available content boost for Lemmy, making user retention and growth easier.
- Much wider general user awareness of Lemmy and the Fediverse via federated content titles showing off instance names. May drive more natural user growth.
Cons of federation would be:
- Data security. it’s Meta. Any and all user information, including admin data, naturally exposed by federated services instantly gets sucked into the Zuck data vacuum to build a user profile. Right now, we’re still reasonably insulated from them.
- Spam. Threads is already massive by virtue of sucking in all the Instagram users. They would COMPLETELY drown any natural Lemmy content in their sheer volume of posts and votes, meaning lemmy native communities will struggle to gain any widespread traction over their Threads counterpart.
- Content manipulation. Anything Meta chooses to promote via their “algorithm” will end up on the top of every federated instance, meaning they can now effectively manipulate all Lemmy content by simply bombarding federated instances with whatever they want.
- Moderation. I’m not gonna sugar coat it, the average Instagram user is really dumb and it brings in all the shitty people with it too. Moderation of small instances will become impossible by sheer volume while federated with Threads.
- Principle. Meta’s practices of extensive monetization and monopolization goes against every principle the fediverse was founded upon (freedom, decentralization, and emphasis on the user rather than the advertiser). By federating with Threads, you are giving Meta a free license to monetize the content you are paying to host on your own independent instance, for free. That just fucking stinks.
Long story short, it’s a 1:15 pros/cons
Pretty much lol. Given Lemmy’s current community situation there’s really very little reason to ever federate with them.
I’m wondering if they will even decide to try to federate. They’re bootstrapping threads with Instagram that already had 2+billion users. That’s insanely big compared to the fediverse. What do they even benefit from enabling it?
They crush a potential rival in its infancy. That’s literally all. It all reads to me as textbook embrace, extend, extinguish.
If the federated web were a company, they’d just buy them out if they got big enough. But it’s not, so they can’t, and that worries them. But they see the open part of open source as a vulnerability, so they put on a smile, pretend the game is ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ and then sabotage the protocol in a million ways from the inside while convincing users that your app is clearly the best way to experience the federated web.
Data security. it’s Meta. Any and all user information, including admin data, naturally exposed by federated services instantly gets sucked into the Zuck data vacuum to build a user profile. Right now, we’re still reasonably insulated from them.
Couldn’t they just run another instance and not tell us the domain name and silently steal all our data anyway? I feel like there is no way to have data security when it is decentralized. All my Lemmy data is on hundreds of other servers already.
Pros: millions of users can interact with your instance
Cons: This is a super blatant attempt to consume all data. They have been doing this for years. “Log in with facebook” They see the value of the fediverse and aim to become the mainstream place for new accounts. Those users can then interact with any kind off community they want. Meta is not responsible for content on other instances. But they are harvesting all of it trough millions of clueless spies.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
But also sell your data.-Meta
At this point, the pro is kinda pointless now because these users are slowly being uninterested and leaving since the algorithm is shit.
I cannot disagree. At first i was worried about how good lemmy could possibly be with just a fraction of the reddit user base. Nowadays i feel like we got to many people already. Centralized under only a few instances no less.
Mastodon does not have any of my data.
As a lemmy user i can click your name and scroll trough a list of all posts and comments you have made. Thats your data and its currently free for the taking to any corporation.
Eventually instances may develop ways to protect their users from this for example make posts only visible to verified human members that are members of a community. Now imagine a user joining such community from the meta threads apps. It wouldn’t be beneath them to fulltime record the app screen and ocr all the text the user sees.
They can, and do, scrape any public data I post regardless. As long as they cannot link it to my name, email address, phone number, bank account, social security number or health records, I don’t care.
At some point meta tried purchasing anonymized patient data from hospitals.
We are also discovering there are many subtle way to identify a person, like grammar, spelling speech patterns (tor specifically warns against this).
Chances are high they already have some data on you, all they need is enough subtle unique things in your data to rule out anyone else. Based on the times your most active and references you might make.
Now i am not a zuck owned superai but to give you my human attempt for an initial culling:
A social security number is the name of the American name of such number. Purposely sounding American is a strategy on itself for non Americans but the act of trying to hide your identity by pretending to be from the us can be an identifier as-well. You also seem to be more on the political left so your your likely part one of 160 mil people (for convenience i am assuming a 50% split in left/right ideology in the us)
In most countries your isp have some of your personal details your isp is also able to see all the internet domains you visit. They cant see what you do on them but because every instance has its own domain they have a timestamped list of all federated instances you visit.
It only takes that info to be leaked/hacked or sold for the big corps to obtain it. Of course if you use a vpn your isp cant see the domain but if you do have a vpn congratulations cause its yet another identifier and they too can be hacked or be selling this data.
The best way and only (still not guaranteed) way to remain anonymous is by using tor browser in windowed mode. Refraining from interacting and if you post to run your speech trough an ai algorithm to generalize/neutralize any personality from it.
The content is facebook-oriented content. Idk if it would even really be the kind of audience that most of the fediverse would be able to sustain.
As it is, reddit was a concern for many people. Facebook? Not a chance.
Besides, large scale defederation discourages Meta from trying to weasel their way into everything like that. Don’t encourage them. They want you excited, but overlooking the massive issues.
That’s true.
Meta’s fine with transphobia. I am not. It can hardly be called a decision at that point, I don’t need Libs of Titkok and their ilk filling my federated feed.
Pros:
Cons: We’re federating with Threads.
Edit: I appreciate the upvotes, but please use your votes to boost @[email protected]’s post with a link to an excellent post enumerating in great detail all the reasons why we should defederate Threads.
Quality over quantity. Can you say for certain that the massive amount of content will be worth having?
Anyone that’s upset that there’s not enough people here wouldn’t be able to complain about that anymore,
They will however have all the new people to complain about.
Early adopters that are willing to overcome a small challenge and will work too fill out the empty communities are great friends.
The onslot from Instagram is going to look a lot more like zombies.
I want Meta’s data without having to give Meta my data. Defederation is a perfectly reasonable action for any single instance but please, don’t try to get all of them to do it.
Is there a place where lemmy users get to vote on whether we eventually fed or defed? Or is that decision decentralised to instances as well.
My point is it will suck if we just have to tag along with whatever decision is made without having a say. Personally I don’t want my experience in Lemmy to have a damn thing to do with Meta or FB…
Also apologies if I’m derailing this thread, let me know and I will make a separate one.
The instance owners are the ones who get the final say. Federation is controlled at the instance level. As a Lemmy user, you are free to leave and go to another instance that doesnt federate, or you can even make your own.
I don’t want the fediverse to be fragmented and Balkanized. Federate with everyone unless it’s a kiddy porn ring.
Give threads a chance. You can revisit if it turns out problematic
Give the untrustworthy a chance again. Should be fun til they steal all your data to turn much profit, push more ads than taco bell and push your ass to the bottom of the pool, unless you play to their algorithmic beat. I am so in!
That exact argument works for most communities to defederate from. “Federate with everyone unless I take issue with the community or how it’s run”.
Plenty of other communities will federate with Threads, I don’t have any problem with lemmy.ml opting out.
We’ll get to see if defederating with Threads makes post and discussion quality higher than in communities federated with Threads, or if it only stunts the growth of this instance.
You can give them all the chance you want by making an account over there personally without having to inflict that content on the rest of us.
