this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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Fight For Privacy

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[DISCUSSION] Federation with Threads? (feddit.ch)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Not sure if this is the right community to post this in, as we don't have any [email protected] or similar community, but it seemed the most relevant. Sorry if it doesn't belong.

I'm sure that at this point it has become common knowledge that , Meta's alternative to Twitter, is trying to implement ActivityPub into their site. If/when this goes through, this would make Threads an instance admin, giving then full access to all the data that is available to other instance admins. This would include all data that belongs to Lemmy/KBin/Mastodon/etc users.

My main question is, should we let them do this? Should we federate with them if/when they come online, or should we defederate? I know that does not usually defederate with others (we currently only have one instance blocked, bottom of ), but in this case, this is Meta we're dealing with. They aren't exactly a big fan of data privacy, which is the whole theme of this instance (our sidebar: "This instance is focused on providing security and privacy for its users").

It seems that most people on Lemmy/etc. seem to be in favour of pre-emptive defederation and that many other instances have already defederated (Lemmy.ca, dbzer0, Blahaj, Beehaw, Lemm.ee).

There may also be another solution, but I'm not sure whether this applies to Lemmy.

What does everyone else think? Should we stay federated with them? Should we defederate, like other instances have already done? Should we wait and see? I'd love to hear others' opinions on this.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I'm deeply conflicted about this, I want federation with big services, I think that is part of the raison d'etre of #activitypub.

But I know the risks, I'm old enough to remember #Microsoft embracing and extinguishing the browser, #Goggle defederating from #XMPP and #Facebook predatory tactics.

Also, I'm starting to think that federation with the big players is unstoppable. The protocol is open and there is no way to get every instance operator on board with the #fedipact . If people want to see the big players' content they'll move to an instance that federates with them. And defederating from those that connect to threads sounds like a Zealot's suicide pact.

Ideally we'd need some kind of legal protection, that makes big services accoutable for what they do with open protocols, but the best we can hope is that the threat of such legislation being enacted will scare the bigs ones into playing fair.

In the mean while there are no technical measures that I can think of and the social measures are unlikely to work. The only thing we can do is to enter into this with open eyes, aware of our history and hope for the best.