Context

There have been a lot of posts and comments recently about Facebook entering the fediverse, and how different instances will handle it. Many people have asked me to commit to pre-emptively defederating from Threads before they even implement ActivityPub.

The lemm.ee federation policy states that it’s not a goal for lemm.ee to curate content for our users, but we will certainly defederate any server which aims to systematically break our rules. I want to point out here that Facebook makes essentially all of its money from advertising, and lemm.ee has a no advertising rule - basically, Facebook has a built-in financial incentive to break our rules. ActivityPub has no protections against advertising, so it’s likely we will end up having to eventually defederate from Threads just for this reason alone.

However, I would still like to get a feel for how many people in our instance are actually excited for potential federation with Threads. While personally I feel that any theoretical pros are by far outweighed by cons, I do want to use this opportunity to see how much of the community disagrees with me. I am not intending to run this instance as a democracy (sorry if anybody is disappointed by that), but I would still like to have a clear picture of user feedback for potentially major decisions such as this one. This is why I am asking every user who wants lemm.ee to federate with Facebook to please downvote this post.

Here are some reasons why I personally believe that Threads will have a negative effect on the fediverse

  • As mentioned above, Facebook is completely driven by ad revenue. There is nothing stopping them from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores, which would ensure that their ads end up on the “all” page of federated servers.
  • Threads already has more users than all Lemmy instances combined. Even if their algorithms don’t apply to the rest of the fediverse directly, they can still completely dictate what the “all” page will look like for all instances by simply controlling what their own users see and vote on.
  • Moderation does not seem to be a priority for Threads so far, meaning that they would create massive moderation workloads for smaller instances.
  • In general, Facebook has shown countless times that they don’t have their users best interests in mind. They view users as something to exploit for revenue. There are probably ways they are already thinking about hurting the fediverse that we can’t even imagine yet.

By the way, we’re not really in any rush today with our decision regarding federation

  • Threads does not have ActivityPub support yet today
  • Even if they add ActivityPub support, their UX is geared towards Mastodon-like usage - it seems unlikely that there would ever be proper interoperability between Threads and Lemmy
  • We don’t really know what to defederate from - it’s completely possible that “threads.net” will not be their ActivityPub domain at all.

So go ahead and downvote if you feel defederation would be a mistake, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! It would be super helpful to me if folks who are in favor of federating with Threads could leave a comment explaining their reasoning.

Update:

By now, it’s clear that there is a group of users who are in favor of federating with Threads. The breakdown is like this (based on downvotes):

  • lemm.ee users: 136 in favor of federating with Threads
  • Others: 288 in favor of federating with Threads

While it seems to be a minority, it’s still quite a few users. There is no way to please all users in this situation - any decision I make will certainly inconvenience some of you, and I apologize for that.

A big thanks to everybody who has shared opinions and arguments in comments so far. I think there are several well written comments that have been unfairly downvoted, but I have personally read all comments and tried to respond to several as well. I will keep reading them as they come in.

The main facts I am working with right now are as follows:

  • The majority of lemm.ee users are strongly opposed to immediately federating with Threads
  • Facebook has a proven track record of exploiting users (and a built-in financial incentive to do so)
  • We currently lack proper federation/moderation tools to allow us to properly handle rule breaking content from Facebook

Considering all of the above, I believe the initial approach for lemm.ee should be to defederate Threads, and then monitor the situation for a period of time to determine if federating with them in the future is a realistic option

In order to federate with them, the following conditions would need to be fulfilled:

  • There needs to be actual interoperability between Threads and Lemmy
  • Threads needs to prove that they are not flooding instances with rule-breaking content (mainly ads and bigotry for lemm.ee)
  • There needs to be a mechanism to prevent feed manipulation by Threads algorithms (potentially this means discarding all incoming votes from Threads)

Note: this is an initial list, subject to change as we learn more about Threads.

Again, I realize this approach won’t please everybody, but I really believe it’s the best approach on a whole for now. Please feel free to keep adding comments and keep the discussion going if you think there is something I have not considered.

  • user_already_exists@lemm.ee
    380·
    1 year ago

    Please follow lemmy.ml and stand up to the big guys and defederate in whatever form it comes. This is a chance to finally stand alone from the Mega corps and have some peace and quiet.

  • burrp@burrp.xyz
    213·
    1 year ago

    I’m not a lemm.ee user, but I support defederation should Meta decide to permit access to Lemmy instances. We’re here to escape Silicon Valley, not look for opportunities to invite them to dinner.

    • user_already_exists@lemm.ee
      27·
      1 year ago

      Lemm.ee is a great instance if you ever want to ride shotgun on the long road trip of the fediverse but what I love the most about this experience is exactly this…create your own server, instances, communities. We are getting an early chance to build and customize our own user experience here. The idea of keeping out what we are fighting against makes sense to me and wouldn’t it be cool if @sunaurus did it early in the game like the 2nd largest instance did and beat .world to it? (if they follow suit, which I can’t predict)

    • FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee
      14·
      1 year ago

      First of all did you make your own instance for your profile?

      Second of all and more importantly I think you’re right. Even if you aren’t part of a server and they decide to federate it indirectly screws us over in the short term and we get probably get totally messed up in the long term

      Some said it’s the Star Trek borg and I’m not a fan but it’s a great parallel

      • burrp@burrp.xyz
        18·
        1 year ago

        Yes, I spun up my own instance. Partly for fun, but also to have control over my own federation should conflict affect an instance someone else operates.

        • FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee
          11·
          1 year ago

          That’s nice. I would do it myself but thinking my 3 brain cells sad lol and compared to some people I’m not very tech savvy

        • Xer0@lemmy.ml
          1·
          1 year ago

          What are the benefits of spinning up an instance yourself? And what are you hosting it on?

          • burrp@burrp.xyz
            3·
            1 year ago

            I host it on a very small VPS. A huge benefit is c/all never contains communities I have no interest in. Therefore, communities I subscribe to are “favorites”. c/all is a superset of my favorites plus communities I check less frequently.

    • misk@lemm.ee
      4·
      1 year ago

      I’m here to escape Sillicon Valley, not to cut off contact with anyone who’s chosen not to.

  • magnetosphere @beehaw.org
    135·
    1 year ago

    I’m excited by the potential of the fediverse, and I want the fediverse to grow. That means more users. However, the noncommercial nature of the fediverse is why I’m excited by it in the first place. I couldn’t care less if there’s yet another gigantic social network full of ads.

    Allowing any profit-driven interest to influence the fediverse risks destroying what makes the fediverse interesting and special. I’m not willing to risk the fediverse in order to grow it.

    • ziggurism@lemmy.world
      8·
      1 year ago

      First you say you couldn’t care less. Then you say you’re not willing to risk it. Seems like you care a lot?

      • Accursed_Volition@lemmy.world
        52·
        1 year ago

        I think you’re misunderstanding their point. They’re saying they don’t care about another ad-filled, user tracking social media platform (Threads), which is inherently opposite to what Lemmy is. They and myself care enough to not see the influence of Threads / Meta on Lemmy, and the Fediverse as a whole.

        • ziggurism@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          Couldn’t care less about the existence of commercial entities on the fediverse. But also willing to preemptively fracture the fediverse to ensure that no user of this instance can ever choose to see any content from any user of any commercial instance. But seriously other than that couldn’t care less about their existence.

          Have I got it right?

          • kill_dash_nine@lemm.ee
            19·
            1 year ago

            I think what they’re saying is that they don’t care if they are creating their social networks on their own island, on their own networks, but they DO care if they invade on the fediverse.

          • MostlyBirds@lemmy.world
            17·
            1 year ago

            Couldn’t care less about the existence of commercial entities

            Right…

            on the fediverse.

            Nope, you inserted that yourself from absolutely nowhere.

            But also willing to preemptively fracture the fediverse

            Uh, that’s what the fediverse inherently is.

            to ensure that no user of this instance can ever choose to see any content from any user of any commercial instance.

            Again, no. No one is being deprived of the Zucc. If you want to see his dogshit, you can make an account on an instance that federates with it. That’s how all this works.

            • ziggurism@lemmy.world
              3·
              1 year ago

              “Everyone sign up separately for each instance if they want to see it, that’s how the fediverse works”.

              Bro that’s exactly how the non federated internet works. What’s even the point of federating, with this attitude?

              • MostlyBirds@lemmy.world
                12·
                1 year ago

                Now you’re just being incredibly hyperbolic and acting like a drama queen over a complete non-issue.

                If you want to participate in the Zuccfeed, no one is impeding you, nor can they. If you’re genuinely this outraged over the censorship you’re pretending is happening, you can host your own private instance and federate with literally anyone and everyone you want to.

                Likewise, though, you don’t get to decide who other people choose to federate their instances with or not.

                • ziggurism@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  There are definitely some hyperbolic drama queens in this threads. It’s the ones screaming “all corporations are evil and no one should want to view corporate hosted content!”

                  As for me, I am well aware how it works. Many lemmy instances have declared their intent to defederate. I’m looking for one that will not. If I don’t find one I will consider next steps.

              • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
                8·
                1 year ago

                Meta is not just another instance. This isn’t the same as blocking instances for offensive content. This is blocking explicit corporate control.

  • michikade@lemm.ee
    89·
    1 year ago

    Considering Meta mines as much data from as many people as possible just to advertise to them and also they can’t even launch Threads in the EU right now because of how aggressively it tracks literally everything about their users and Threads’ only purpose is to gather more data to sell to more people, I think that alone is worth not letting them play.

    • stoiclime@lemm.ee
      3·
      1 year ago

      It won’t matter to you if you’re using ActivityPub, because they can’t mine any of your data that isn’t publically available through scraping anyway.

  • Ballistic86@lemm.ee
    79·
    1 year ago

    Staying as far away from Meta has been my goal since leaving Facebook 8 years ago. I really like this instance, it meets all of my needs for my Reddit replacement.

    I don’t see a reason to federate with a corporation unless they were able to deliver something I’m not currently getting and their corporate support would greatly improve performance/sustainability for this instance. But based on previous experience, a company entering a space usually makes it worse.

      • portalsentinel@sh.itjust.works
        8·
        1 year ago

        The thing with VR is that non-bigcorp alternatives cost a fortune, as Meta takes the loss on the hardware. Standalone VR is also impossible without bigcorp interference (as of now!)

      • Ballistic86@lemm.ee
        5·
        1 year ago

        I still have an Instagram account, when a company gets so big they get hard to avoid. But Instagram, for the time being, has a lot of content I can’t find elsewhere.

        But I feel like this vote is an easy nay.

        • theangryseal@lemmy.world
          8·
          1 year ago

          Dude mentioned staying away from meta…

          Who makes the quest 2?

          “There are two types of people in the world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.”

        • theangryseal@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          Dude mentioned staying away from meta…

          Who makes the quest 2?

          “ There are two types of people in the world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.”

  • NightOwl
    73·
    1 year ago

    I think like a lot of people the reason I’m putting up with the growing pains of a decentralized network, the fragmentation of communities that come with it, and sync issues across instances is because we want to try something that isn’t run by corporations that views users as something to sell off to the highest bidder. If I wanted to deal with a centralized large user base why wouldn’t I just skip this whole fediverse thing and go straight to Meta or reddit or Twitter or tiktok that is way more user friendly? I’m not here because I want another reddit clone that ends up being run or is influenced by another billionaire asshole down the line.

  • backshift0022@lemm.ee
    56·
    1 year ago

    Strongly in favour of defederating. Firstly because I don’t want advertising or big businesses taking over feeds, but the point you made about moderation is critical. The sheer amount of content that instance admins will have to deal with will be unmanageable.

    • gressen@lemmy.world
      15·
      1 year ago

      On a side note the whole fediverse desperately needs solid moderation tools to handle it’s growth.

  • Ghostc1212@sopuli.xyz
    56·
    1 year ago

    I don’t believe that federating with Threads will be completely apocalyptic, and I actually believe that the commercialization of the Fediverse is the way it will take over the internet. You can’t run the entire internet on a crowdfunded and volunteer-only basis, after all. The beauty of the Fediverse is that competition is easy and enshittification is difficult due to how easy it’ll be to simply take your activity somewhere else, meaning that companies like Meta won’t be able to do the type of things they’re known for.

    That being said, I believe that for technical reasons, as well as the fact that it’d be very easy for Meta to strangle their competition in the cradle if we (Referring to the Fediverse as a whole, as this isn’t even my instance) cooperated with them, nobody should federate with Threads until the Fediverse is large, resilient, and technologically matured enough to survive a hostile takeover attempt by a corporation like Meta. Basically, defederate from them for now, and reconsider at a later date when the Fediverse has had time to establish itself. I think in the future, the Fediverse will be able to easily deal with Threads being popular and enshittifying itself, but I simply don’t think we’re there yet.

    • speaker_hat
      25·
      1 year ago

      We should make a “No Federation With Corporation” sticker

    • FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee
      16·
      1 year ago

      Now now now friend it sounds to me like you haven’t had your brain washing! Don’t you know Meta has our best interest when it comes to delivering high quality ads. They even collect all your data and manipulate what you see because they care so much that you’re seeing ads that might interest you in an extremely invasive way

      Ok in all seriousness we cannot associate with meta becuase I’m sure they’ll make a ton of big communities and non meta users will join because of the sheer size and then close it off and go “if you want your community you gotta get the meta app” the whole embrace extend exterminate thing

      • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        1 year ago

        Right, or they’ll set their own technical standards… so lemmy.world can’t interact with threads unless they start doing data mining that threads can scrape. This is almost certainly their conscious and explicit plan.

    • vamp07@lemm.ee
      4·
      1 year ago

      Sounds like a good recipe for failure. Let’s block all instance we don’t like for whatever reason. Let’s fragment the fediverae till nobody uses it because it’s a mess of instances that don’t talk to each other for a slew of reason.

      • OctopusKurwa @lemm.ee
        7·
        1 year ago

        Oh stop being hyperbolic. That’s not what I said at all. Big companies like Meta will ruin this place given half the chance. They don’t want a Fediverse, they want access to the users here so that they might one day absorb them. Federation with corporations will ruin the Fediverse, it’s that simple.

        Go make a threads account if you want to look at ads so badly.