Fediverse

Not the solution I was hoping for but it's an extremely reasonable compromise. I've never heard of selective authorized fetch. Pretty sure he just invented it.

For the lazy:

After some careful consideration, I have decided to block threads.net on pixelfed.social and .art by default

However, users will have the ability to unblock the domain

Soon we will be selectively enforcing authorized fetch for accounts with domain blocks so as to provide the best of both worlds.

(I'm also shipping a command for :pixelfed: admins to easily add user domain blocks for all local users)

I'm eager to hear your feedback!

PR: https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/pull/4834

That's a good solution. Keeps the all feed clear of threads content while allowing users to opt in

Jerry Bell did it first!

https://infosec.exchange/@jerry/111591446262881196

Did Dan ever get the messaging service Sup going? Tried to look it up, but his name being Dansup is throwing a wrench in my Googlefu.

Unless you want content and more people to interact with.

Like, people keep saying "oh yeah you can jump instances" as if that wasn't possible on Reddit. You could go to different subs or make your own. But what good were most of them? As long as there's a "default", a main "hub", people will go there, and that's where everything will be happening. The alternatives and smaller instances will be starved out.

Centralization is not about the software, it's about the people. Users centralize where others are. So when the big hubs are allowing threads to poison the well, it's poisoning the thing most people want to drink from, and the thing new visitors will be most likely to drink from.

Threads represents something that a lot of people came to the fetiverse to escape. If threads wants to join, fine, but I believe it is in the best interest of all of us if there is a large alternative "cluster" that is separate from it rather than being tied up with it.

A separate galaxy in the fediverse, that says in big red neon lights, "Get your corporate bullshit away from us. This is our space, for people, not for you to make money." And if we let them in immediately, it becomes increasingly difficult for that galaxy to retain that identity.

And I'll just gently point out that once Threads joins, separating from it will not be easy because you will have Threads users here actively pushing back on the separation.

Essentially, Facebook's Twitter competitor Threads is gearing up to join the fediverse by integrating ActivityPub into their platform. Don't take my word too much on this but I believe this is due to the European Commission's Digital Markets Act which requires interoperability (similar to how iOS now requires sideloading in the EU). This is essentially their cheap way of complying.

The fediverse has a strong hatred of Facebook, for various reasons (from petty things like "embrace, extend, extinguish" to much more serious things like Facebook's compliance in the Myanmar genocide) and a "pact" was enacted of fediverse instances that are simply outright blocking Threads. Part of it is the fear that Facebook will federate its moderation problem and cause a headache (which, in my opinion, would be better dealt with by limiting Threads to followers only - Mastodon and Pleroma allow this).

Opponents of the Fedipact are optimistic this will help a more mainstream audience warm up to the fediverse. The fediverse has a reputation of being unwieldy and complicated to newcomers, and having a major platform like Threads integrating ActivityPub might help bring them in and see what it's like. Toxicity is cited as a reason for defederating Threads, but IMO I see more toxicity towards newcomers and outsiders coming from the people already on the fediverse, so I've been quite apathetic to the Threads thing.

The controversy you are referring to is regarding specifically .world defederating Hexbear "preemptively" before the latter could federate with anyone, out of fear that the "annoying tankies" may overrun everyone else. Since Hexbear is a relatively small platform run by volunteers like .world is, and the basis on which the defederation was justified was shaky at best, a lot of users raised an eyebrow. There was a similar move by .world later on where they defederated from Lemmygrad, another "tankie" instance, due to alleged hate speech of which the admins failed to provide a single example, and it was clear as day that .world admins just wanted some excuse to defederate away "the evil communists".

In this case, the situation is different, because it involves a lot more than just .world. A large, for-profit instance Threads, run by Meta, is opening up to ActivityPub, and people are afraid of the reasonable possibility that Meta is attempting to either destroy or absorb the Fediverse as a whole. Besides the shitty corporate attempts in the past, Threads is also overrun by a lot of algorithm induced hate speech and far-right extremism, and there is a legitimate concern that this will spread to instances that federate with Threads.

Hexbear (and others like Lemmygrad) are different in that they are still part of the Fediverse, they are run by volunteers like most instances, and remain federated with other large instances such as lemm.ee. But the fact that hate speech is rampant in Threads yet .world admins want to "wait and see" make the Lemmygrad defederation even clearer and funnier in retrospect, lol. I complained back in the day when Hexbear was defederated that I'd rather let users choose for themselves whether they wanted that or not, and I got told to go to another instance. Now that we are federating with Threads anyway, might as well do that.

Edit: Typos

Hexbear.

It's not. He wants to create a social media that exploits its users without being accused of monopolistic behaviour.

I was looking for recommendations for alternative instances… I’d appreciate anyone actually responding to my comment.

OK.

Largest Lemmy instances blocking Instagram Threads are (according to fedipact.veganism.social) lemmy.ml, lemm.ee, lemmy.ca, Hexbear, feddit.de, Beehaw, Lemmygrad, lemmy.dbzer0.com, lemmy.blahaj.zone, discuss.tchncs.de, sopuli.xyz, aussie.zone, feddit.nl, lemmy.zip, midwest.social, feddit.uk, mander.xyz, ...

Just because Lemmy.world doesn’t agree with about defederating with meta doesn’t make them sell outs. Like you said, you are jumping ship; just like the fediverse intended.

For better or worse, Lemmy.world is intended to be a catch all instance for normies so it makes sense why they would not defederate from meta.

Can’t you block threads yourself once .world updates to 0.19.0?

There are lots of hypotheticals here.

I expect the lemmy.world admins to block servers that are frequent sources of hate and extremism. I don't expect them to speculatively block servers because some people guess they might be. I'm pretty skeptical that a majority of users want preemptive blocking. I don't, and the votes and comments I see in most conversations on the subject suggest that's a position held by a very loud minority.

I'm not sure Threads users will be all that interested in interacting with Lemmy. It's an awkward UX to participate in Lemmy conversations from Mastodon, and I believe Threads has essentially the same format. Threads is likely to have a bigger impact on Mastodon servers, and I don't think any of us can reliably predict what that impact will be yet.

You can always, as a client, block individual instances in your settings