There has been significant discussion in recent weeks regarding Meta/Threads. We would like to express our disappointment with the negative and threatening tone of some of these discussions. We kindly ask everyone to engage in civil discourse and remember that not everyone will share the same opinions, which is perfectly acceptable.
When considering whether or not to defederate from Threads, we're looking for a decision based on facts that prioritize your safety. We strive to remain neutral to make an informed choice.
First, there seem to be some misconceptions about how the Fediverse operates based on several posts. We’ve compiled some resource links to help explain the details and address any misunderstandings.
Fed Tips , Fediverse , ActivityPub
Initial Thoughts:
It seems unlikely that Meta will federate with Lemmy. When/if Meta adopts ActivityPub, it will likely affect Mastodon only rather than Lemmy, given Meta's focus on being a Twitter alternative at the moment.
Please note that we have a few months before Threads will even federate with Mastodon, so we have some time to make the right decision.
Factors to Consider:
Factors to consider if Meta federates with Lemmy:
Privacy - While it’s true that Meta's privacy settings for the app are excessive, it’s important to note that these settings only apply to users of the official Threads app and do not impact Lemmy users. It’s worth mentioning that Lemmy does not collect any personal data, and Meta has no means of accessing such data from this platform. In addition, when it comes to scraping data from your post/comments, Meta doesn’t need ActivityPub to do that. Anyone can read your profile and public posts as it is today.
Moderation - If a server hosts a substantial amount of harmful content without performing efficient and comprehensive moderation, it will create an excessive workload for our moderators. Currently, Meta is utilizing its existing Instagram moderation tools. Considering there were 95 million posts on the first day, this becomes worrisome, as it could potentially overwhelm us and serve as a sufficient reason for defederation.
Ads - It’s possible if Meta presents them as posts.
Promoting Posts - It’s possible with millions of users upvoting a post for it to trend.
Embrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE) - We don't think they can. If anyone can explain how they technically would, please let us know. Even if Meta forks Lemmy and gets rid of the original software, Lemmy will survive.
Instance Blocking - Unlike Mastodon, Lemmy does not provide a feature for individual users to block an instance (yet). This creates a dilemma where we must either defederate, disappointing those who desire interaction with Threads, or choose not to defederate, which will let down those who prefer no interaction with Threads.
Blocking Outgoing Federation - There is currently no tool available to block outgoing federation from lemmy.world to other instances. We can only block incoming federation. This means that if we choose to defederate with our current capabilities, Threads will still receive copies of lemmy.world posts. However, only users on Threads will be able to interact with them, while we would not be able to see their interactions. This situation is similar to the one with Beehaw at the moment. Consequently, it leads to significant fragmentation of content, which has real and serious implications.
Conclusion:
From the points discussed above, the possible lack of moderation alone justifies considering defederation from Threads. However, it remains to be seen how Meta will handle moderation on such a large scale. Additionally, the inability of individuals to block an instance means we have to do what is best for the community.
If you have any added points or remarks on the above, please send them to @[email protected].
Agreed EEE doesn't need to be strictly technical (but it certainly could be! See the example of increasingly complicated and quick moving web standards driven largely by Google which makes creating a new browser so hard).
But a UX path could easily look like:
Find the top 500 lemmy communities by size/engagement. Create those communities before the server ever opens up to the public. Pre-poulate with content.
As people join, sort them into these communities based on their FB/Insta/Twitter/Threads profile. Indicate in some way that their existing contacts are into those things too and "may" be there to encourage adoption. Open up to federation.
Voila, f/linux has 200k users in the first month all chatting and posting. People like content, so native lemmy users subscribe and start engaging over there. The UX is great, very polished, etc. Maybe they create an account migration tool.
A while later, BigCorp decides it's time to pull the rug, defederates (for whatever reason, probably moderation issues), and now everyone who's still a Lemmy user is cut off from the communities they followed and the "native" Lemmy communities are tiny and quiet. Lemmy users cry foul, and no one cares because Big Corps get to set the message and for some reason people come out of the woodwork to defend them.
Facebook has no incentive to Federate (seriously for what?), but has insane incentive to kill a federated service before it gets off the ground or ever grows to be anything approaching the size of reddit.
I acknowledge Threads is a bigger problem for Mastodon, but you would be incredibly naive if you think there wasn't a team of people working feverishly at getting a FB owned ActivityPub targeted at a Reddit replacement. It would even integrate with Threads, like Kbin has microblogging.