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 )

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the 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.