I would like to know if I can feel safe here, or if I should pack it up and start looking elsewhere sooner rather than later.
If the kbin staff have already made there intentions clear, please let me know.
I would like to know if I can feel safe here, or if I should pack it up and start looking elsewhere sooner rather than later.
If the kbin staff have already made there intentions clear, please let me know.
With this I agree. 1.2bn users is way more noise than I want to experience and I will, personally block the domain. As a kbin user, you’ll have the tools available for that as well.
To think that the big companies that base their business models solely on datamining users already haven’t been mining the shit out of our data is a bit naive, I think. They don’t have to exploit vulnerabilities, make their presence known or launch huge products for it. All they (or anyone!) need is a $20/month linux VPS and a Mastodon installation. The fediverse does not have data privacy controls for content (beyond masking account e-mails/originator IPs).
I agree. Threads got 10M signups yesterday and they haven’t even launched officially yet. They’re already larger than the entire fediverse.
Many people will switch to their app. And at some point, they will most likely make interoperability hard (so we have to adapt to their “bugs” instead of it being the other way around).
I just want to make clear that I’m in the “Defederate the shit out of them”-camp, but I also don’t think the fediverse is a place that puts privacy first - if privacy is your concern, then my advice is to stay away from fedi. For now.
Blocking the domain will not block the users, so in that regard there is nothing you can do about 1.2bn users coming here.
If 1.2 bn users join Threads, and only get content from Threads, they’re just going to go back to Instagram. Facebook doesn’t have an unlimited budget for this. If Threads doesn’t gain traction, it’ll be killed off as unprofitable.
That’s the ideal scenario for the fediverse. Threads isn’t able to federate with anyone else from the start, users don’t see the point, Threads isn’t profitable, Threads gets abandoned.
Right…
BUT -
You aren’t going to see ANY of those 1.2bn users, until someone on THIS server follows someone on THAT server. That’s the point of federation. It isn’t like Twitter - you don’t just see everything that everyone over there posts. It’s no different on Mastodon - there has to be a social connection before posts start showing up here.
Put another way, if hateful stuff starts showing up on the Fediverse from meta users, it is because someone on the Fediverse is following the people posting hateful stuff.
When meta eventually starts federating - you aren’t going to see posts from @asjmcguire until someone here is following my account.
As for if meta makes changes that makes federating hard, that’s not our problem. If they make changes that make federating with THEM hard, that’s their problem. There is no reason the rest of the fediverse needs to follow what changes meta make. It doesn’t hurt us if they break federation with the rest of the fediverse. Meta is in reality no different to mastodon in that regard, it’s just another platform - but for example Pixelfed isn’t going to bend over backward to make life easier for meta.
But if you go to https://kbin.social/d/threads.net (obviously doesn’t work yet), then you can block the whole instance, yourself, for your own account. It has the same effect as the server defederating, but it only affects you.
The only reason why that solution wouldn’t be acceptable is if you believe so strongly against the very concept of Threads that you want to make that choice for everyone else. You want to forcibly hit that button on everyone’s account and push your beliefs and opinions onto others.
If you simply don’t like Meta, that’s fine - I get it. I want to use FOSS stuff to see my friends. I want my friends to appear in my feed, and I want their hashtags to be sorted into my magazines. My wish to see my friends is just as valid as your wish to not see anyone from Threads. While Threads has some questionable people, they aren’t the majority. It’s much better for me to block the individual accounts that cause problems than it is for me to lose the ability to talk to all my friends.
Kbin gives you the power to go to the domain and block it yourself; this isn’t Lemmy. Why do you want to take that choice away from everyone who is okay with people from Threads in their feed?
I don’t want to take away that choice. I personally don’t have a problem with meta joining the fediverse, and in fact today I downloaded the app and created my account. I’m excited by the possibilities of being able to speak to my friends from my Mastodon account.
My point was more for the people who think that suddenly 1.2bn users are going to be showing up in this kbin instance.
That’s fair, reading it again I see I misunderstood you. :)
I apologize if I seemed hostile; I just get frustrated with people wanting to block whole instances here without cause (like the instance being primarily trolls or hate speech). On Lemmy it makes sense since only the admins can block domains (and it applies to everyone), but Kbin allows domain-level blocking on an individual level so it makes a lot less sense here.
what you (and other likeminded people) haven’t understood is that these 2 are 2 different topics. Defederating with meta is not because people don’t want to be near the users of meta. It is because meta is a huge corp and it is not here to promote the idea of a federated network. It is here to make profit and to exploit the network. Allowing them to be part of the same network will just cause harm to the network itself in the end.
I suggest you reading this article https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html which is the story of how google killed XMPP, written by one of the XMPP core developers. I believe you will see the similarities.
@asjmcguire
I think misunderstand. I do understand that. I used XMPP. I’ve read that article.
My argument is that the fedipact, if executed as desired by the people running it, will defederate from Meta and anywhere that federates with Meta.
So now you have 2 fediverses, completely separated from one another. One side has Meta; the other doesn’t. If I want to post something and I want people to see it and react to it, I will post it to the side with more people. If I want to scroll endlessly without needing to stop and refresh or wait because the feed is stale, I will look at the side with more people.
The other side - the fedipact side - will slowly become stale and niche. There will always be hardcore users - people still use XMPP - but it will fade into what it was in 2020 and 2021. My Lemmy account - @EnglishMobster - is from 2020. My original Mastodon account is even older. I’ve seen this place grow and blossom into what it is now, and the fedipact is threatening that growth. People will leave the side of the fedipact and join the side without it… which is to say, the side dominated by Meta.
Instead of a big wide fediverse with open source projects living alongside random PeerTube creators living alongside movie stars… we have 1 niche one and 1 dominated by a large corporation. It’s literally the same result as if Meta went through with Embrace, Extend, Extinguish… but done without the “extend” or “extinguish”, a massive “own goal” by the FOSS community.
And worse - it doesn’t stop Facebook from going through with “extend” or “extinguish” later. It literally just destroys communities for no reason, leaving us in the exact same situation that XMPP is in today.
I am fine with an instance saying “we won’t federate with Threads”. I’d rather it not be Kbin, of course, but I will move to an instance that does federate because my friends are important to me.
I am not fine with me being held hostage for that. I don’t want to join Threads directly if I can avoid it; I’d rather use my Kbin account. But the fedipact is trying to make that impossible by saying “we will defederate anywhere that federates with Threads”.
i’m sorry but you’re naive.
do you know how FB or instagram work? Do you think that when you post, your post reaches your whole audience? I believe you know how they work but for some reason you chose to ignore now.
So, you’ve read the history of XMPP. Did you understand what google practically did? Simply put, meta will create new features on top of activity pub. Open source activity pub developers will be in a constant race to adapt their own projects in a way that will be compatible with meta’s project. They will have no voice but to follow whatever meta decides. Users will start getting fed up that their open source instance is not behaving as well as their friend’s meta instance. People will jump project and/or when users are polarised, meta will decide that they had enough with activity pub. It doesn’t cover their needs and they move to another completely closed project. Users again are forces to choose side and the open source community is just left with the project which they adapted in favour of meta, but now meta is gone because they were never in the same boat actually.
Staying away from meta is a decision in the basis of protecting the whole project. It is not because people don’t want to be close to the users of meta. It is because meta is not here to promote the federated networks. It is here to make profit of it and they may even destroy it if they believe that this is the way to make profit. Siding with them is naive and will never bring value in the network itself.
None of that addresses the objection that has been raised though.
If instances want to defederate from meta that is perfectly fine, the Fediverse is supposed to be about choice.
Instances should not however be able to dictate what OTHER people on other instances are able to do.
By doing so - that part of the fediverse is behaving in exactly the same way that they fear that meta will behave eventually.
Of course not. But it doesn’t on Mastodon either. Or Kbin. Or even Lemmy.
If someone is on vacation when I make my post on Mastodon, there is a good chance they will never see it. The post isn’t going to be recommended to them - the feed is chronological. They would have to specifically search me out and scroll way back to see my posts.
If my post doesn’t make it to “Hot” on Kbin or Lemmy, by default it dies. The only ones who will see it are those sorting by “New”. That’s a fraction of the complete audience. That’s just how algorithms work.
Facebook and Twitter have their own recommendation algorithm of some kind. Threads does too, from what I’ve seen of it. While I wouldn’t expect my stuff to go viral, frankly my friends are more likely to care and react to a post I make there. I don’t use Facebook anymore, but I had plenty of interactions when I did use it. You will never reach your entire audience unless your entire audience reaches out for you - but on average the people I know are more likely to care about me than some strangers on my Mastodon instance. So I’d rather post where they can see it.
Yes, that was… like, my entire point. Everything you just described will happen with or without the fedipact. If Meta has plans to go through with EEE, they will do it no matter what. Even if everyone defederated from them, they’d still build on ActivityPub in weird ways and break the protocol over time.
But we know that not everywhere will defederate with them. So what will happen is you’re going to have a splinter group defederated anywhere that federates with Meta (or federates with somewhere that federates with Meta) and you’re going to have… well, everyone else.
People are going to leave and go to the side that federates with Meta, because that’s where the network effect is strongest. Again, I don’t care that someone on my Mastodon instance got married. I mean, congratulations, I guess… but if my childhood best friend is getting married, I’m more invested. I don’t want to use Meta’s stuff if I have another option; after all, I did quit Instagram and Facebook cold turkey. But I would jump at the ability to have those moments while still keeping Zuck off my computer.
So, like I said, this is going to lead to 2 fediverses. One that federates with Meta, and one that doesn’t. And “normal” non-techie people are going to want to go to where they get the most eyeballs on their stuff - that means somewhere that federates with Meta.
Meta could still start extending and extinguishing. But they could do that anyway. That is a completely separate subject from the fedipact as designed. I agree that it’s a problem, but the fedipact being executed will only speed up the process, bisecting the entire project and turning it back into a niche thing for nerds. You know, like XMPP or IRC.
Staying away from Meta literally has zero impact on what Meta does. Meta will do whatever.
The choice is if Mastodon tries to adapt to be compatible or not. Breaking ActivityPub for compatibility with Meta is a losing proposition, and one that we shouldn’t even start. But that’s the fight we should be having; holding firm if/when Meta stops holding to the standard.
The fedipact is self-defeating and won’t stop Meta from being Meta. The only thing the fedipact will do is ruin the fediverse writ large. The true way to preventing an XMPP situation is by having maintainers hold firm and act just as they did before Meta joined; no feature creep, no goalpost moving. Break EEE at “extend”, not “embrace”.
I’m waiting for the part where you explain the problem.
Just like today the folks who want to interact with the quality of discussion you get on facebook will be able to do so, and those who don’t, won’t.
I have scrolled this thread quickly so maybe I’m misattributing, but I feel like you’ve commented on how you and others will go to instances with “more users” more than once - as if this is some universal success metric.
I will go to the side which has quality discussion, and I’m exceptionally doubtful it’s going to be the part of the fediverse that federates with meta. More users does not equal better discussion. I would argue that past a certain critical mass it almost guarantees lower quality discussion.
The fact that there CAN BE two fediverses seems to me a feature, not a bug.
If you want “quality discussion”, why are you on here and not Tildes? Tildes’ whole purpose is quality discussion. Shouldn’t you go for the place where that’s being optimized for?
Tildes is a great example, actually. They’re small and quiet and want to be quiet. They don’t want to take off. You can get through Tildes in an hour.
That’s why I get bored of Tildes easily. I don’t want to just be one-and-done with a site. I want to constantly be discovering new things. I want to see number go up (to an extent). I want to read a bunch of comments, some insightful, some dumb.
If I’m going to post something, I don’t want to post it to Tildes. I’ll get a slow trickle of comments and replies, people replying to a week-old post with something I’ve long stopped thinking about.
I worry that if defederation comes and severs the fediverse in two, engagement will go down. Mastodon.social isn’t part of the fedipact, and likely won’t be. Everywhere that relies on content from Mastodon.social - which is a lot of them, non-techies don’t want to find a specific instance - will have a lot less content, very suddenly.
People like me who love refreshing feeds will see the torrent of posts slowly… come… to… a… stop. People like me will get bored - where are all the posts? Why can’t I see the creators I really like?
“Well, they’re on a server that federates with a server that federates with Meta.”
So you’ll just be left with those in the fedipact. People who are used to the fast-moving feed (like me) will get frustrated. There’s a reason why I left Mastodon in 2019ish and why I left Lemmy in 2020 - they got boring quickly (well, Lemmy was also full of tankies). I left Tildes because it got boring quickly too.
I’m in this sort of industry. I’m not going to reveal much about what I specifically do, but I know that most people want something that is new and exciting and moves fast. It draws them in and causes them to spend most of their time there.
When that feed slows down, they spend less time on that site. When they have enough experiences of “opening the app just to close it again”, they’ll eventually remove it from their home screen (or bookmarks). Then it gets forgotten about.
When the user forgets about a site, it gets less content. In turn, that makes the content even slower. In turn, that drives more people away, except for the die-hards who love slow discussions (like Tildes or 2019-era Mastodon).
Where are the people who left going to go? Well, they might go to where their creators were - somewhere like Mastodon.social. Or they’ll leave entirely, or they’ll move to Bluesky or Threads.
A lot of those options aren’t healthy for the broader fediverse, so you’ll just have this one branch that is dominated by Meta and the other which slowly dies as people leave due to increasingly stale content. If they were united, they might’ve stood a chance against Meta if/when Meta made an anti-competitive move… but divided they’re a lot easier for Meta to scoop up and slowly extinguish, XMPP-style.
Again, the fedipact is doing Meta’s dirty work for them.
If that’s the case, presumably you’re in the fediverse for other reasons? If audience size is central to you, wouldn’t you be on reddit and insta/facebook?
To an extent, but morality is important to me too.
I don’t use Facebook because they corrupt democracy. I don’t use Twitter because Elon Musk is a wannabe fascist. I don’t use Reddit because they have refused to clamp down on bad actors and have directly insulted their users.
If everyone defederates from Threads, I won’t use Threads, because I don’t use Facebook. My morals are more important to me than audience size.
But… as things stand, once Threads federates with the wider world, I will be able to interact with my friends without letting Zuck near me. In a most ideal world, they’d be able to follow me here on Kbin and I can follow them back. I’d see their posts in the Microblog feed and sorted into magazines, and I can like and comment and boost without logging into Zuck’s website and letting him have my data again.
You can say that’s supporting Facebook. Maybe. But if Threads is truly federated, then Facebook would basically be able to go anywhere regardless; in that sense I’d be supporting Threads whether I was talking to someone directly or not.
And in that sense, I totally see why people say “we shouldn’t federate with Meta, they’re evil and they’re selfish and they’re going to destroy the fediverse.” I can understand why people personally would want to choose somewhere that doesn’t do that. I don’t think this instance should block Meta because it’s large and general-purpose, but somewhere like Beehaw where that sort of thing is part of the mission statement… I get it.
But from my perspective, I am given the chance to talk to a large group of people; people who share the same interests as me; people I know in real life. People who would see my stuff - but (more importantly) I’d also see theirs. And I’m sure most people feel the same way; they’re going to where the people are. This’ll naturally create an audience, one that gives a wide variety of fresh content and also responds to content you give.
I’d much rather have that then return to 2020-era Mastodon where you’d be lucky to get 3 interactions to a Toot, and you’d see everything there is to see in 15 minutes (at most).
I find the other demands going around even scarier to be honest.
“I don’t want to federate with meta, but I also don’t want to federate with anyone else who does federate with meta”
It’s so terrifying that there are whole instances that are now attempting to dictate who the rest of the fediverse is allowed to federate with. And frankly I think it’s a downward spiral if that is allowed. Because if they do it once, they will do it again and again.
How is that dictating anything? A given instance has no inherent right to be federated with, it’s the entire point of federation. The folks who bizarrely want meta getting their claws into the fediverse expecting everyone else to go along feels much more dictatorial to me.
In one example the objecting instances do nothing more than refuse to interact with the instances they choose not to interact with.
In the other example, a smaller number of instances want to tell the entire rest of the fediverse that they MUST interact with them.
No.
Don’t believe for a second that everyone wants to federate with everyone. The fediverse will be a collection of federation not wanting to federate with others, naturally. No gafam will ever federate with anyone.
Take language for example, why would a french instance federate with a polish instance?
Federating means keeping focus, you federate with instances with whom you have common interests. If we don’t keep focus then we will end up with the reddit problem and the race to popular meme content.
Factually untrue, it is not the same at all. It is also a kbin specific feature that someone on lemmy doesn’t have access to, for example.
This thread is specific to Kbin, which is why I mention it.
Lemmy doesn’t integrate well with the rest of the fediverse at all, period. It’s one of the many reasons why I left.
Threads users won’t be able to make articles here on Kbin anyway (IIRC); they’d make microblogs. So blocking them would effectively remove them from your microblogs, and if they reply to anything in here I don’t think you’ll see that either.
Blocking a domain through kbin only blocks threads from appearing on your feed. You still see users from that domain and their comments, and they see you and anything you post since it gets sent to their server.
I think I’ve seen people comment on threads from mastodon, and maybe down the line threads implements… threads… as well, nothing’s stopping them really.
edit: also, as for
We’re all part of the fediverse meaning someone from lemmy might want to participate on kbin magazines too. Not considering them when making decisions like this is a bit selfish.
People from Threads will largely be in the “Microblog” tab, which Lemmy doesn’t have. The only people in the comments section will be people who purposely choose to follow Kbin communities.
It still isn’t a good enough reason to take away that interaction from tens of thousands here on Kbin, though.
If they’re 90-99% of the users/content and people are used to most of their communities being on there, then it becomes increasingly difficult to say “we won’t support their standards”. Allowing a monopoly on the fediverse can cause issues.
AND this is a very succinct explanation of exactly what the “Extend” part of “Embrace/Extend/Extinguish” is!
I can’t imagine how a kbin users would be wanting to watch facebook memes.