Afaik, whenever an Activitypub instance has defederated from another it has always had to do with some combination of bad user behavior, poor moderation, and/or spam. Are the various instance admins who have decided to preemptively block threads.net simply convinced that these traits will be inevitable with it? Is it more of a symbolic move, because we all hate Meta? Or is the idea to just maintain a barrier (albeit a porous one) between us and the part of the Internet inhabited by our chuddy relatives?

(For my part, I’m working on setting up my own Lemmy and/or Pixelfed instance(s) and I do not currently intend to defederate.)

  • Kill_joy@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    From what I have read, I think it’s all of the above.

    • a space is wanted free from corps, ads, data perversion

    • people are fearful that 30 million people joining threads has automatically made it the largest instance. Once it integrates with ActivityPub and can federate, it will dominate the space and produce the majority of the content. People are fearful then meta will retract it/ defederate and take the majority of content and content production with it (EEE). This would effectively kill the fediverse.

    • many believe meta will not act in good faith and is doing this to appease European courts and laws

    Because of all of this people likely believe keeping threads quarantined right off the bat is the best solution to mitigate the amount of damage they can do to what’s already been established.

    Edit: I am adding to this post as I just stumbled across a post from the host of the lemm.ee instance (which I am a big fan of). He has also listed some great cons of Facebook stepping into the fediverse:

    -there is nothing stopping facebook from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores which would ensure they end up on the front page of “all” for federated servers
    -threads already has more users than all of Lemmy’s instances… therefore, they can completely control what the front page looks like by dictating what their users see and vote on
    -moderation does not seem like a priority for threads which would increase workload for smaller instances
    -REVENUE FOCUSED

    I paraphrased a lot of this but as this is getting some traction I wanted to provide additional visibility to the cons of federating with the Facebook.

    • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      People are fearful then meta will retract it/ defederate and take the majority of content with it (EEE). This would effectively kill the fediverse.

      I don’t see how that could possibly happen. It’s not like they can buy the Fediverse. Seems to me far more likely that the Fediverse will be gain interest from people wishing to follow/interact with Meta users without being beholden to Meta and if/when Meta decouples from it again the Fediverse will be larger than before. Sure, some may come and go, but others will find interests outside of Meta.

      Like everyone is pointing out, they already will be the largest instance. They are not going to gain that much by trying to trying to absorb the rest of people who are likely in the Fediverse from dissatisfaction with Big Tech and wanting to break free from their algorithms and restrictions.

      • ZagTheRaccoon@reddthat.com
        0·
        1 year ago
        1. while it will draw more users into the fediverse, nearly all of them will join directly with threads
        2. users who would have joined other instances will be parasited to threads as the safest best supported option
        3. whatever threads does, other instances will be forced to copy or risk losing feature parity with the most important player in the space.
        4. existing users will get accustomed to the content from threads as occupying the dominant super majority of content on the site.

        Threads will essentially be the space, with all currently existing communities left as periphery. Which is very bad on it’s own because the decentralized space is no longer decentralized, and in fact is in the hands of Meta.

        Meta will eventually wall itself off because not having control of your users social graph is an unnecessary threat. And since they are the space, so they will lose very little by walling off. When they do wall off, the fediverse will have it’s communities deeply intermingled with Meta, and when people lose most of their friends and content to meta walling themselves off - most are going to choose to relocate to meta.

        Slowly growing the decentralized space organically is important to avoid this kind of stuff. If we allow someone to become the hyper-dominant instance, the principle of de-federation ceases to matter because they have so much controlling leverage over the users.

        I do still think this is a good thing, but it’s a complicated good thing that could do more damage. I am very worried that they aren’t starting off federated. That also means their internal community norms will develop isolated from what fediverse has tried to establish.

        • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          I am extremely skeptical of 2 and 3, because it means people who already decided to drop mainstream social media platforms will go back on their decision, and it suggests that people want instances to be more like Meta, rather than for it to function in a user driven way that provides things that Meta will never be willing to offer.

          If people can be tempted off of the Fediverse so easily, the problem is not Meta. Keep in mind that right now people are already choosing not to engage with Facebook. I’m not naive to assume that they won’t have appeal and influence and dirty tricks. but seems to me like such a complete lack of faith in the Fediverse to assume that if Meta merely exists alongside the ecosystem, it’s inevitable that everyone will jump ship. That sounds like what they wanted was a Big Tech-driven platform all along.

          I don’t think that’s right.

          Comes to mind also that Mastodon has had many years of headstart. How much of a slow growth does it still need?

    • Venator@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      Just to play devil’s advocate:
      There could be some downsides to defederating it too:

      • threads could be a gateway to bring more people into the rest of the fediverse in a user friendly way.

      • It might cause the rest of the fediverse outside of threads to be more fragmented if some defedarate it and some don’t.

      • Kill_joy@kbin.social
        0·
        1 year ago

        Absolutely agree. The optimist in me wants to be excited for what this means and how this could impact the future of, well, the Internet.

        But then I remember this is Meta we’re taking about. They do not do things that are good for anyone but Meta. As someone who doesn’t use meta products, this brings concern.

        • GONADS125@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 year ago

          This is such a blatantly obvious truth that I’m starting to suspect some users here are astroturfing, peddling this bullshit feigned naivety about the rampant unethical practices of FB/Meta. There’s enough history that we don’t need to question it or give Meta a chance.

          I’ve been working on building the !vans@lemmy.world community, but I may look into moving it to another instance if lemmy.world doesn’t change their mind on federating with Threads.

          Edit: I guess they’ve only stated their plan for Mastodon, which is wait and see.