Adam Mosseri:
Second, threads posted by me and a few members of the Threads team will be available on other fediverse platforms like Mastodon starting this week. This test is a small but meaningful step towards making Threads interoperable with other apps using ActivityPub — we’re committed to doing this so that people can find community and engage with the content most relevant to them, no matter what app they use.
And I have moved my mastodon account to an instance who actively defederated Threads. I’m not interested in interacting with anyone on that network.
And I’m fucking sick of the “content relevant for me” thing. I interact with people asking/giving help, discussing and so on. Mindlessly consuming “content” is simply a disease.
I don’t get why Mastodon servers feel the need to fully defederate from Threads. Silencing them is much better. It allows your users to follow Threads accounts without people who don’t know anyone on that side getting overwhelmed by the global timeline, as Threads is about twelve times bigger than the entire rest of the Fediverse combined.
Nobody is moving from Threads to Mastodon because mastodon.zip decided to defederate all you’re doing by blocking them is preventing the users with friends who use Threads from using your site correctly.
Of course some platforms, like Lemmy and Kbin, don’t support moderation features like silencing, it makes sense to fully defederate in those cases, but only because of technical restrictions, really.
How many reasons does Meta have to give before distrust is the default?
“Hey, admin, why can’t I follow my mom on threads from your instance?”
“Because Meta facilitated genocide in Myanmar.”
While Facebook’s recommendation algorithm definitely plays a part here, most of this analysis could have "Facebook " replaced by “the internet” without changing any of the meaning. The same hate speech is also spread across WhatsApp (which caused WhatsApp to put a limit on the amount of times you can forward a message) and every other messenger.
Facebook’s automatic hate speech removal system may be pitifully ineffective, at least they have one. Here on the Fediverse, we have a slur filter, just sometimes, and even fewer moderators per user than Facebook has.
And, despite Facebook’s role in helping spread hate speech as a large platform and refusing to proactively go after such speech, here’s how the rest of your conversation will go:
“Hey, admin, why can’t I follow my mom on threads from your instance?”
“Because Meta facilitated genocide in Myanmar.”
“Aw, that’s bad. Anyway, I’ll just create a Threads account I guess, my mom is sharing my niece’s baby pictures.”
It’s great that everyone is able to choose for themselves
And I have moved my mastodon account to an instance who actively defederated Threads.
Is that pretty easy to do?
fairly easy. you can export the list of your followers and followed account, block lists, bookmarks and so on, and import them in the new account. the posts you’ve made aren’t moved, though. https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server/
Thanks
the posts you’ve made aren’t moved, though
That’s kind of a fail, and a feature that could be added (with some work).
Anyone who doesn’t understand that connecting in any way to Facebook is not a good thing … is either very naive, or complicit to wanting to take down the fediverse.
Facebook already has enough content and enough of a platform on their own – they literally control half of the worldwide social media network. Why do they want to spread into this new space?
The only reason they want to be on this side is to conquer or destroy.
Tell that to @Gargron@mastodon.social (the creator of Mastdon, AFAIK). He’s very excited about this. And I can’t honestly understand why.
https://mstdn.social/@Gargron@mastodon.social/111576826633308486
Well he’s not alone … a number of relatively vocal “fedi-advocates” are positive about it too, even those who also acknowledge that meta/facebook are fucked and defederating from them would make sense.
Which reveals, I think, a curious phenomenon about tech culture and where “we” are up to.
From what I can tell, mainstream Silicon Valley tech culture has permeated out fairly effectively over the decades such that there are now groups of people walking around who consider themselves “the good guys” and have generally progressive political views and believe in OSS and the importance of community etc but are also fundamentally interested in building some tech, making it grow in usage and effecting some ideology or agenda through creating “significant” technology. Some of them seem to have money, or tech know-how or a network into such things and some experience working in the tech world. They’re all mostly, to be fair, probably middle aged white cishet men.
When face-to-face with the prospect of having “your thing” accepted by and (technically) grown to the size of Meta/Facebook/IG, these people seem to not be able to even think about resisting. “Growing the protocol” and “growing” mastodon is what they see here and all the rest is noisy nuance.
This may not be the full corporate buy out worth millions, because they’re “the good guys” and don’t work for big-corps, but this is the equivalent in their “ethical-tech” world … the happy embrace of a big-corp on OSS terms.
Which in many ways makes sense, except in the case of social media so much is about culture and values and trust that sheer “growth” might completely miss the point especially if it’s by riding on the back of a giant that would happily eat or crush you at a whim and has done so many times in the past.
And this is where I’m up to on this issue … both sides seem not to be talking about it much.
What is the “emotional”, “social fabric”, “vibes and feelings” factor in all this … that a place, protocol and ecosystem, predicated on remaking the social web with freedom, independence, humanity and fairness at its core, openly embraces the inundation and invasion of the giant for-profit evil big-corp social media entity this place was defined against? How are we all supposed to feel when that just happens … when Zuck and all the people on his platform is literally just here, not with some consternation but the BDFL’s loud gesture of welcoming embrace? I’m betting most will feel off … like something is wrong. The vibe will shift and fall away a bit … passion and senses of ownership will decay and we may even ask ourselves … “what was the point of coming here in the first place?”.
Now, to be real, it’s not like a big-corp connecting over AP can be prevented, it’s an open protocol after all. But the whole thing would be different if there were open discussions and acknowledgement from the top about the cultural feeling of the disproportionate sizes and power here and the possibilities that it won’t be completely allowed without a more decentralised model. Maybe Threads would have to create their own open source platform which people could run instances of themselves? Or maybe Mastodon could wait until the user sizes are more equal (though that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, which is kinda the point here in many ways right? … that Mastodon is kinda giving up and saying it’d rather be a parasite on a big-corp in order to be significant than just own its niche status?)
Eitherway, it seems clear that many of the power brokers over on mastodon are there to create their own form of influence and this sort of deal with the devil is exactly the poison they’re willing to drink for their ends.
For my purposes … I don’t think I’ll want to hang around mastodon much after Threads federation happens … the embrace from the BDFL and a number of users is just off putting and the platform is too crappy to care about it … I’d rather just go back to twitter than suffer through that swampy egotistical place.
The communities you like, are shielded by those OSS terms: if Meta does something to the tech that the communities don’t like, they’re free to show Meta the finger. The tech is not, and can never be, controlled by Meta; the communities are not, and can never be, bound by Meta.
Meanwhile, having a company like Meta collaborate on developing and testing the tech, is something positive.
Not that I care much about Mastodon either way, but you had me up to “Go back to Twitter” 😳
Nothing can be that bad, and even if it was, that doesn’t magically make Twitter any less of a teeming shithole, surely?! 🤯
Fuck threads
Mark Zuckerturds destroys everything he touches, and now he wants to touch you.
Elon Musk: “Hold my beer”
The difference is twitter is just another big social media platform. Elon Musk isn’t potentially trying to ruin an open source federated alternative that fixes a lot of the problems with social media. He’s just messing around with and tanking a big corpo social media site.
So I honesty don’t really care about twitter as it will get us more users if he burns it down, if the Zuck doesn’t ruin us first.
Basically twitter isn’t a threat to us and could actually be a big help.
Threads could ruin everything we’ve worked for.
Sick, I get tons of more interesting content while being with a Mastodon instance I trust, a nice FOSS client to explore the content, and keep my privacy! If this actually bothered me, I could simply click the three dots and block the instance, so surely that shouldn’t be a big deal, right?
It sounds a bit sarcastic, not sure if you mean it that way. One question: what privacy are you talking about with services that are meant to be entirely open? App analytics?
Being in control of who sees my post. Lemmy still lacks more granular post visibility like Mastodon does. If I restrict a message to followers on Mastodon, I know just they would see it, and so would their current instances which are much smaller and fragmented. Compared that to any social media where that’s going to easily be tracked on both sides. Federating with threads doesn’t change this. Also as you said, lack of analytics is nice. Privacy could definitely be improved though. Mastodon direct messaging is still weird and really should use e2ee.
DEFEDERATE, PLEASE! Now Meta has the highest presence in the Fediverse, and they can do whatever they want to it.
Firstly, you can choose an instance that doesn’t federate with them. Everyone can choose for themselves. And second you didn’t read it probably, they’re testing it and there a handful of accounts that have activity pub enabled. That certainly doesn’t make them the biggest presence.
They’ll enable it for everyone soon. Meta will force the Fediverse its way, for $$$. Why else do you think they want to be in the Fediverse so badly?
Mark my words.
I think the reason why meta wants to federate is this:
- it helps with anticompetitive arguments, because it’s “open” and not controlled by meta alone
- some will refuse to use anything from meta, and threads users being able to communicate with them adds value
- it won’t hurt meta, because the majority will be using their app anyways
- it helps their image
I don’t think they’re doing it to “get more data” or to “take over the fediverse”. There’s nothing worth taking over for them currently and since most people don’t care about the fediverse I don’t see it growing much either. Although I’d certainly like it if that were the case.
They can probably get the data already, it’s all openly available. Federating it’s basically all upside and no downside for them, but it’s not exactly the biggest priority to implement it, it‘s going to take some time.
I’m not saying it might not have a negative effect or that they care a lot for what’s currently there. They’ll certainly want to monetize threads sooner or later.
They don’t WANT to be in the fediverse, they HAVE to be. I can’t understand why people find this so hard to read.
Meta just launched Threads in Europe, citing “compliance concerns” as the reason for the delay. This happens at the same time they announce their first step towards ActivityPub. The brand new Digital Market Act requires big companies to open their dominant platform and Meta wanted to be on the front foot before launching, and then get ready to laugh as Twitter get into regulatory hot water. If you want to run in Europe and be a dominant platform, you HAVE to be open.
And Meta just disconnected FB and Instagram from each other citing the DMA. Meta will stop at nothing to trap users in their platforms.
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And nothing of value was gained
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This is gross. Meta/ threads / Facebook / Instagram are evil and I hope everyone will block / defederate them
i love how excited adam mosseri is about activitypub; it’s a win win for the protocol.
being able to follow the mainstream people on threads as well as the niche people on mastodon through a foss client like megalodon and the move from threads to another instance if i get sick of it will be fantastic and will help both mastodon and threads grow in the implosion of twitter.
Yes yes, encouraging EEE is totally a win-win…
Just like how Facebook Chat federating over XMPP (Jabber) was a win win for that protocol? https://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/02/12/0158223/facebook-now-supports-jabberxmpp
A lot of clueless users will get on Threads and attract attention to it. Then governments, public institutions and other organizations will join it too due to the attention. Open fediverse users will protest against their choice of Threads, but will be pushed back, citing the federated nature of threads. Finally without any recourse, open fediverse users will start following these Threads accounts for important updates. And then fine morning, meta will announce that they’re cutting the federation due to ‘spam from the open fediverse’. And the open fediverse users will be left high and dry without updates from these important accounts. Many will resist it and stay on the fediverse. But a huge population without such strong moral stances, will abandon the fediverse and move to Threads to retain their access to the important updates. And the fediverse will become a shadow of its former self. The end!
Fortunately, Lemmy just launched the ability for every individual to block instances they don’t like.
I think people should know those are just mutes
its like that on mastodon too, user domain blocks won’t actually protect you from harassment or your data being vacuumed
Still, if people don’t interact with Threads content, that effectively keeps them separate.
Also, come to think of it, what’s keeping companies from “vacuuming” everyone’s data without actually having a public instance that has users interacting with posts on other instances? Example: Instance A exists. What’s stopping a company that runs Instance B, which doesn’t have any active users on it, from taking all the available data from Instance A? Genuine question, by the way. I haven’t exactly kept up with the technical workings of Lemmy very well.
I have the same question. Lemmy and Mastodon are both public and as of yet, no one was able to tell me what “privacy” actually looks like for data in that context. Other than the fact that Meta will destroy it. It’s public, anyone can access it already.
that is not true, at least in mastodon’s case. Mastodon has unlisted, followers only and direct messages those are visible for the instance admins if your account federates to them. That is concerning. I don’t need Zuck to suck up my private posts
While that’s true, I’m not sure how many people are using Mastodon that way and if that’s actually the main concern. In the end it still is meant to be a public platform. Not on the same level of “private messages and photos” where most people would probably be very concerned.
Seems like there’s already accounts that repost content in an interactable way.
Oh thank god, I’m so sick of blocking furry communities. Damned things multiply like rabbits.
Lemmy just launched it in v0.19 yesterday, so you’ll have to wait for the people running your instance (in your case, the Beehaw mods) to update it. Looks like Beehaw is still running v0.18.4.
So many furries are techies so not really surprised.
Yeah, and to be fair, I have no problem with folks being what makes them happy. But the, uhh… enthusiasm makes it hard to avoid.
I see we’ve hit the first E: Embrace. I’m betting it’ll only be a few months until they’re Extending the protocol. Any wagers on how long until we hit Extinguish? 3 years maybe?
It will depend on how many instances will join the extensions…
I think 3 years is probably about right. I don’t think their modus operandi is quite a classic Microsoft style Embrace/Extend/Extinguish, probably just Embrace/Extinguish, the Extend isn’t really necessary. The point is to leverage an open protocol to build a walled garden; embrace early on so your early adopters have content to interact with from the rest of the community, overcoming network effects of the fediverse having more content than them, and then extinguish once they have critical mass to pull the ladder up and leverage network effects against the fediverse. We’ve seen this happen before with Facebook Chat and XMPP; it took 5 years with XMPP (embrace Feb 2010, extinguish April 2015). Network effects might be slightly greater with chat than with fediverse content, so discounting below 5 years is probably sensible (although it depends on how well fediverse does, and their success of cross-promoting it from Instagram and Facebook to get critical mass).
I have no interest in interacting with Threads myself, but I suppose it’s good news for people who want to be on the fediverse but just can’t manage going without being able to follow @burgerking@threads.net or whatever.
I think this will beneficial for the fediverse overall. Thereads will eventually have to advertise. At which point hopefully other Platforms on the fediverse will become more attractive to some threads users.
Absolutely not, federating with Threads is the first step in the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish process that businesses have used in the past to kill things like the fediverse. This is a win for businesses that want to see the fediverse dead and buried
The wrong kind of users though… The people on Facebook likely to use Threads, are the ones who I’d hate to federate with. Discussions would quickly change to low effort karma grabs and inside jokes.
You’re also likely to get a lot more people doing stealth/viral marketing, more bots, etc
That’s why I use Beehaw honestly… It actually feels like I’m talking to people
Exactly! Look at how well XMPP/Jabber is doing after FB and Google embraced it.
The Wig punched himself through a couple of African backwaters and felt like a shark cruising a swimming pool thick with caviar. Not that any one of those tasty tiny eggs amounted to much, but you could just open wide and scoop, and it was easy and filling and it added up. The Wig worked the Africans for a week, incidentally bringing about the collapse of at least three governments and causing untold human suffering. At the end of his week, fat with the cream of several million laughably tiny bank accounts, he retired. As he was going out, the locusts were coming in; other people had gotten the African idea.
- Count Zero - William Gibson
They just need the data. It’s available, all they need to do is open wide and scoop.
Maybe I’m not getting something here, but neither Mastodon nor Lemmy are private, you can find everything open for everyone already, so how would federation change something there? Federation doesn’t mean everyone would use their app, so they wouldn’t gain any app usage analytics.
Also I don’t get how your metaphor make sense. The amount of fediverse users is a rounding error next to threads, instagram, WhatsApp and facebook. So there’s not a “lot a tiny things that can add up”, only a small amount of tiny things which don’t really add up to anything.
We’re pretty much agreeing here. I don’t think them federating out makes much of a difference. They get the data from the reverse for free. They only have to scoop, and it’s worth almost noting individually.
But that’s their current game. Has been for a long time. Serving one ad is a tiny thing. But they add up.
However, them wanting to federate indicates they see the fediverse as something worth noting and paying attention to, possibly even joining. That’s not nothing.
They either think:
- The fediverse will grow with or without them, and without them it’s a potential threat, due to loss of control
- The fediverse has potential that they want to water and help grow so they can prune it and shape it to become something valuable to them
- They can “try genuinely” to join the fediverse, and elicit a response that maims it
That response can come in many forms.
If they provoke a backlash of defederation (done), that causes devision and argument. They win by shattering the potential threat before it can grow.
If they are allowed to join and become a large voice and eventually be like gmail to email, big enough to have control and provide the filtering people are already (quietly, carefully) asking for. All they need to do is to offer “spam filters” and a “personal feed” and we have Facebook 2.0 and they don’t even have to foot most of the server bills.
I’m not sure how to win this, but there’s a lot of ways to lose it.
If they are allowed to join and become a large voice and eventually be like gmail to email, big enough to have control and provide the filtering people are already (quietly, carefully) asking for. All they need to do is to offer “spam filters” and a “personal feed” and we have Facebook 2.0 and they don’t even have to foot most of the server bills.
I think this is inevitable, in part because serving is expensive, and now that we might get significant spammer activity, complicated. Carrying the analogy on, though, I have a Proton account and I can give it out in real life just the way I would a Gmail account. There is no such possibility with Twitter. They could try and put up a hard wall once they have enough buy-in, but that didn’t work so well for Yahoo mail, and hopefully it wouldn’t for Threads.
So yeah, I expect I’ll be on a little instance somewhere, and I’ll still be able to participate in the equivalent of the Obama AMA hosted on one of the big ones.
Sry, I‘m still not following. I don’t understand your argument, are you saying they want to federate to gain additional users to grab data from? Because I don’t think that’s going to be a significant amount of people.
Most people don’t care about what makes the fediverse desirable to its current users, all it does is add friction to them and therefore I don’t see it growing much either.
I think the reason why meta wants to federate is this:
- it helps with anticompetitive arguments, because it’s “open” and not controlled by meta alone
- some will refuse to use anything from meta, and threads users being able to communicate with them adds value
- it won’t hurt meta, because the majority will be using their app anyways
- it helps their image
I don’t think they’re doing it to “get more data” or to “take over the fediverse”. There’s nothing worth taking over and they can probably get the data anyways, it’s all openly available. So it’s basically all upside and no downside for them.
What happens if you merge the user base of a small network and a huge network? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect Will the small network gain from the huge one or the other way round? Also there is a lot to gain. The users base of the fediverse and it’s infrastructure grew by 5x in the last two years: https://fedidb.org/ Meta has a big interest in extinguishing a competitor before it profits from the bandwagon effect.
Active users went down, though. I don’t think mastodon is a big competitor for Meta, Twitter and TikTok are.
If they thought the fediverse was insignificant they wouldn’t even bother. Them spending publicly visible time and energy on it means there’s something for them to gain.
But yeah, I’m not entirely sure what yet. Like you said, reading data is freely available, so it’s not just that.
The obvious benefit is that they can at least access potential extra views. Without implementing some kind of ad system though, it’s just eyes…so is this just PR for threads?
