very powerful picture - we must not repeat the same mistakes as have been made before! Corporations could not care less about interoperability. All we do is lend them our built community and power, for which they will drop support the moment it suits their interests. Google Hangouts never needed to support XMPP, it was just a convenient tool in order for a decentralized and anticorporate alternative to messaging to be destroyed - when it no longer suited their needs XMPP support was dropped.

Don't let this happen to the Fediverse - corporate, ad-mania, and data harvesting corporations do not share our values and beliefs.

If I wanted a threads account I'd open one

All I want to know about threads on the fedi is which servers they are so I can block the fuckers

It's a good things to see "big company" looking at open standard instead of closed one like BlueSky or X does

But looking stats on fediverse (https://fediverse.observer/stats) there's around ~13,000,000 users on ~22000servers: having the ~140,000,000 users from threads in fediverse will probably generate a huge disorder...

Also, probably most of threads users are ex-twitter users without habits of fediverse
Most of servers admin will probably block thread

Definitely not an easy discussion. Meta as a company deserves all the criticism, and I do not trust them at all.

But … we always advocate for free and open services and protocols. Now that we get them, we say "no, not like that!" This is what we wanted, this is how we get users to interact with the fediverse, how we show them how easy it is to use privacy respecting services, this is how we get them to switch.

Instead we build walls, exclude them, make it difficult and unappealing.

Mastodon really ought to have provided much better information to people regarding losing follows when moderation like this takes place. I have absolutely no idea who I'm about to no longer be in contact with as Threads causes this schism. The onus should never have been on me, the individual. It's a total UX own goal.

edit - I know you have your hands full and I apologize for tagging you out of the blue, but this is such a big deal @Gargron

Just login and see for yourself how bad the content is. This is Instagram only with more words.

This is yet another social network for content and not for discussion.

Mark Zuckerberg ist unable to re invent Social Media!

But it is able to kill #Twitter and #bluesky ...

: looks like I will need to write a post to go with that new picture like I did with

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.

^ploum.net

Harvesting data: if someone’s toots are public Meta (& others) can anyway right? & if someone is not on Threads Meta can’t get more than what is posted
Poor moderation: join an instance that full blocks Threads then. That’s a selling point of the Fediverse
Manipulations: not on their service so what can they manipulate?
Nothing good from their federation: except being able to interact with the millions on Threads

Don’t get me wrong, I hate Meta but fearmongering isn’t going to help

I understand the concern, but there is nothing in the protocol that allows them to harvest data according to the main Mastodon developer. Even displaying images from an Thread user won't give the IP back to Meta as images are copied and cached from instance servers.

It is a post work reading. It alleviated some of my concerns at least.

@Linux_Is_Best I largely disagree. Best defense is always to start communication about something. Not engaging and ignoring something is never effective.

Not thank you for teaching me how I should behave by the way.

Meta can easily harvest ActivityPub federated data without implementing ActivityPub federation in Threads.

The biggest concern is overwhelming moderators in no small part due to the lack of knowledge, planning, and experience one should expect of amateur administrators and moderators to have in dealing with moderation concerns when there’s a sudden 3x (or higher) order of magnitude increase in federated accounts.

That and the inevitability of a huge increase in ads and sponsored and commercially driven content.

📽️ Process:

📦 Sources: https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/viewer/misc__2023-12-14_Don-t-roll-out-the-red-carpet-for-them_by-David-Revoy.html

#Krita #MastoArt

this is all so weird. The primary reason most of us came here, at least between 2018-2022ish, was to specifically GET AWAY FROM facebook, twitter, and other social media systems. Suddenly, instance admins are bragging about connecting us to that, and acting like they have amnesia about the entire affair.

No thanks. I will actively work to make sure I block all accounts and networks connected to this.

https://mastodon.social/@Tertle950/111581350854829744

Tertle950

2023-12-14 23:24:56

Threads federating with the Fediverse means we don't have to (directly) use their garbage platform to talk about Among Us with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

If Facebook tries the Embrace Extend Extinguish crap on us, all we really have to do is hold our ground and stay on our non-corporate instance

Data collection? *Every* instance on the Fediverse, by necessity, shares the posts made on it publicly. They can already do that

I don't think that threads needs to federate in order to harvest mastodon data. They can use the public mastodon APIs to do it.
And there are plenty of federated mastodon servers with spotty moderation.

I don't like meta, but defederation will hurt users, not the company

i agree with the point about moderation, but i find the point about data harvesting misleading, all the data on the fediverse is free for anyone to harvest, federating with meta won't change that.

For moderation, each servers have their policy, we know how to handle that, some server can be cautious about it, others just won't give it a chance — understandably —, and others will be pretty open, we'll see how it goes.

Your artwork is great! How about one from Aesop's fables, featuring the lion taking his "lion's share"?

https://read.gov/aesop/141.html

Those who don't see any problem with Threads joining the Fediverse apparently seem to think that functioning-by-goodwill internet Federations grow on trees, and they aren't any sort of considerable loss if sidelined and subverted by the lions who know everything there is to know about taking their "lion's share".

I don’t think the interoperability in itself is cause for concern.

People signing up to #threads as their first Mastodon server seems more of a threat.

But I will observe with an open minded curiosity.

The Fediverse is essentially public. . . would they not be able to harvest data regardless of whether they did or did not federate?

Also, regarding, "poor moderation and manipulations", that's literally a risk with *every instance*.

You either do want distributed, decentralized social networking, it seems to me, or you do not. It may end up being the case that most instances end up blocking threads, if it ends up too terrible.

But for the most part, people can choose who they follow and don't follow, and can block people they find objectionable.

All the risks cited, are risks for every possible instance in a federated system. What is so special about Threads?

For me - I've been dreading this since it was announced it was on the tables when Threads first became a thing about a year ago!

Even ignoring Meta's terrible history with user data and how they have people engage in a negative way on their platforms: I'm worried about them turning this platform into commercial hellscape with Ads left, right and center! I fear Threads integration will end what I loved about Mastodon, and indeed the Fediverse, so much!