Meta just announced that they are trying to integrate Threads with ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.). We need to defederate them if we want to avoid them pushing their crap into fediverse.
If you’re a server admin, please defederate Meta’s domain “threads.net”
If you don’t run your own server, please ask your server admin to defederate “threads.net”.
Millions of Facebook users outnumbering previous users 100 to 1 will kill it. Oh, there’ll be more activity than ever, but it will be a sanitised corporate safe space for advertisers, where millions of normies argue about politics, with misinformation and ads sprinkled throughout.
Okay, and as inevitable as that seems, how about instances wait until that happens, and THEN defederate? The preemptive defederation is disappointing to see. My home instance has done it. I’ll have to wait and see who DOESN’T defederate so I can make an alt account and see for myself what happens.
Meta is a known bad actor right up to the point of knowing they were facilitating a genocide and choosing not to do anything about it because “growth”.
“Yes, he’s murdered people before in cold blood, but maybe he won’t this time. There’s no excuse for banning John Wayne Gacy from the party!”
I’m well aware and deleted my Facebook long long ago.
And yet, despite “knowing” that Meta is a known bad actor, you’re fine with “wait and see” when John Wayne Gacy wants to come to the block party.
Yes, because they aren’t in control of the platform. We are. We can observe and decide, and they can’t stop us. The choice here isn’t “meta or not meta”, but rather “act based upon evidence or not” - meta and their handling of their own platforms where that had absolute control is not what we have here. This is a new situation. But here’s the thing, we will see the data, regardless. Some instances will choose to not defederate immediately, and we will still all benefit from the observation.
Meta has no control over elections but has had definitive negative impact on the same. Meta has no control over Myanmar’s government nor Buddhist institutions yet had had definitive negative impact (to the tune of tens of thousands of bodies and millions of displaced people) on that nation.
This one fact alone should give you pause about letting Meta stink up the fediverse: Threads’ userbase is so large that the entire fediverse, all platforms, is a rounding error by comparison.
So federating with Threads means federating with a userbase that has been algorithmically-conditioned to doomscroll and rage (because that causes “engagement” by which Meta means “ad revenue”) for well over a decade and letting them loose in the fediverse at large.
Fuck that noise.
Let Meta stay in its own smelly shack with the faecal discharge coating the floor, the walls, and the windows. I don’t want that here.
You imagine the doomsctollers aren’t present here already?
They’re here, sure, because they’re everywhere. But the platform doesn’t amplify their addiction via careful rage-baiting algorithmic feeds.
So you’re saying you Want your experience here to be dominated by ads, lies, and propaganda?
You’re almost as good at it as them, the way you put words in the mouths of others.
How about you wait until you have aids, and THEN use a condom?
wouldn’t Facebook/Threads users be the ones getting the ads?
Not all ads are marked as ads
So, companies will create Threads accounts and use them to post ads as regular Threads posts, then? Because that’s what the block button is for.
There’s also nothing that stops any company from doing exactly this in any instance that currently exists, including spinning up their own instance.
If we’re talking ads that Threads will be inserting into the feeds on their site, what does it matter? Either they are a user making a regular post treated like any other user or they are something that Threads can only push on their own site.
Posts on threads might be, but they can’t force their standards onto posts or users on other servers. That’s kinda the point of federation.
So, posts from Threads users will have to meet Threads “safe space” rules (because they are Threads users and Threads can require whatever it wants of them), but this means nothing for your posts on any other server. Worst case, Threads blocks you from visibility on Threads.
Threads has no power to push their ads onto any federated server. They can show whatever ads they want on Threads, but those ads don’t appear to anyone else and likewise they couldn’t do anything to artificially make their content show up higher on any other server.
Federation on Threads will be opt-in, you’ll be able to see posts only from people who actively decided to be available on the Fediverse. So it’s not going to be a 100 to 1 situation.
That’s called growth. Or do you want to keep Lemmy exclusive for marginals?