Transitive defederation -- defederating from instances that federate with Threads as well as defederating from Threads -- isn't likely to be an all-or-nothing thing in the free fediverses. Tradeoffs are different for different people and instances. This is one of the strengths of the fediverse, so however much transitive defederation there winds up being, I see it as overall as a positive thing -- although also messy and complicated.

The recommendation here is for instances to consider #TransitiveDefederation: discuss, and decide what to do. I've also got some thoughts on how to have the discussion -- and the strategic aspects.

(Part 7 of Strategies for the free fediverses )

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

you got the righteous indignation part down pat.

its work to block instances. im not going to operate like that. im treating AP like email. i dont block facebooks SMTP, i dont block Nestle email.. im not going to block their AP.

i am providing assistance to humans wanting to leave the walled garden. you are not capable of that, apparently.

but you do you. thats what its all about.

edit: btw none of this is technical in nature. its just political. i stand by the fact there is no technical reason to not federate.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

The fact that you equate vulnerable communities blocking instances that house hate movements that target them with righteous indignation is genuinely scary...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I’m not sure I understand your issue with the term here. “Righteous indignation” word for word means “indignation that’s justified”, so I don’t want to jump to conclusions, and I’m thinking I may be having yet another of my English second language speaker moments.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Indignation implies that it's about being offended or upset.

The specific term you used usually carries an implication of pettiness, and of making a big deal out of nothing. The "righteous" part is normally meant in an ironic or sarcastic way.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I’m not the same person you were initially talking to. I’m not sure calling it indignation is necessarily dismissive - indignation can perfectly be justified. I’m really surprised it carries this subtext. I can’t seem to find any reference or definifion supporting neither this nor the expression itself though, but I may be looking in the wrong place…

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I think it's another one of those things where words and phrases change meaning over time.

Righteous is equal to justifiable. Indignant is equal to showing anger.

Logically, it should mean justifiably angry. Often times, people will just ignore and skip over the first word and will only properly read "indignant".

I think it's similar to when people say words like "irregardless". They use it to mean "regardless". If you break the word down, the double negative makes it a positive. It looks like it should read as being the same as "regarding", but people had other ideas lol

Another fun one: "eggcorn" has been added to some dictionaries as a synonym for "acorn".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

That’s what I meant. I’m perfectly open to believe it, but it’s also the very first time I hear « righteous indignation » carries this particular pejorative subtext, and I can’t seem to find a source substantiating the idea that it means petty anger.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What can a hate group do when Meta’s federated to an instance with vulnerable people in it, that they can’t do when Meta’s not federated with that instance?

[–] Carighan 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah people never explain that. As if people get stopped by this. It just makes the tech behind the federation actually useless just for some imaginary hypothetical threat that it wouldn't stop anyways!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

will hate groups spend extra time making fediverse account when previously didn’t

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So there's a difficulty barrier. They will have access to comments. What is the attack they would then perform?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

is worse than having access to comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

righteous indignation

This is minimising a problem you'd rather not think about or address "too much". For many it's a real problem, both morally or in the abstract, and practically.

Here's a good article outlining an "anti-threads" position (https://erinkissane.com/untangling-threads) that may answer both the "righteous indignation" point and some of your "technical" points too.

All of which gets to arguing that, yes, as my initial reply to you stated, there are "existent" problems and preemptively acting can make sense.

You want to be an off-ramp, and have your finger on the defed button ... that's cool (genuinely)! But dismissing urgency as illogical or something is, I think, out of line.

Your arguments strike me as either dismissive ("zero reason ... righteous indignation"), straw man ("resource use", "overtake the ap protocol") or excuses, frankly ("It's work to block instances" ... threads is like one instance).

Avoiding whatever unmoderated garbage threads is like to have (meta has a long track record here) or already has makes a lot of sense.
Avoiding assisting their business model makes sense.
Avoiding any remote appearance that a giant shitty company, after all of the mega-corp-social shit can still just waltz into a new (and probably fragile) open/free garden without the risk of being shuttered out unless they do everything possible to indicate that they're trying to "be good" this time ... makes sense.
Not waiting to find out what "technical" shit they may end up pulling down the line ... makes sense

eg, how sure are you that flow of users between the fedi and Threads will be net positive for the fedi ... how do you know Threads won't actually end up sucking up users from the fedi? How convinced are you that they won't bend the de facto standard usage of the protocol (where mastodon is already doing this) to their own ends and then reform what the "big mainstream" idea of the fediverse actually means to most people?

Wanting to send a message that the fedi is done with massive corps and their evil shit ... makes sense.
But, also, IMO ... wanting to provide an off-ramp for Threads users also makes sense ... I'm glad to hear your intentions on this.