1. Meta/Facebook has a horrific track record on human rights:
- https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/ethiopia-facebook-algorithms-contributed-human-rights-abuses-against-tigrayans
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-social-media-violence
- https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/18/17587080/mark-zuckerberg-holocaust-denial-kara-swisher-interview
2. Meta/Facebook is trying to join the Fediverse. We need to defederate them.
3. If you're a server admin, please defederate Meta's domain "threads.net" (here's how on Mastodon https://fedi.tips/how-to-defederate-fediblock-a-server-on-mastodon/)
4. If you don't run your own server, please ask your server admin to defederate "threads.net". Your admin is listed on your server website's About page.
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”.
It’s not necessarily about a threat to instances or users. It’s more an issue with how Meta could potentially hijack the protocol the whole thing is built on, and do damage in the long run. There’s a write up here on how similar things have happened in the past;
This is what it’s about, right here. I wish more people would understand this. This is not some loose anti-coporate sentiment or senseless alarm sounding. We have example after example of how corporations like Meta, Microsoft, and Google leverage their power to consume and destroy. To say “we just need to be proactive about stopping them” is naive. We’ve said that so many times, and every time we’ve lost.
The only way to win is not to play their game. We can’t let them in in the first place.
You should look into Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I think the biggest fear is that they have so many users that they will just flood all instances with their stuff. This can, in time, lead to a situation where they can defederate from everything else and bring a lot of people with them, since most of the content will have come from Threads.
They can absorb large numbers of users and communities and after a while close themselves to the outside. Meaning that once people “need” those communities they’ll have no chance other than go threads.
I got a number of answers that sound very weak to me, and basically point to a “fail” of the fediverse in its own nature if threads joins. Kind of disappointing.
To me, the key idea of the fediverse is that it’s federated and should work as a whole, no matter who joins. Most of the answers below support the opposite. They are basically saying that the fediverse should stay within the “fediverse”, which is exactly what non-federated social media are doing. Meh.
Competition and success. They are just paranoid that it’ll be successful and they can’t control where the project goes without including the majority of users and then developers.
Aside from the “moral” argument, can someone ELI5 what harm can a federated threads.net do on other users (like me) and/or instances?
It’s not necessarily about a threat to instances or users. It’s more an issue with how Meta could potentially hijack the protocol the whole thing is built on, and do damage in the long run. There’s a write up here on how similar things have happened in the past;
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
This is what it’s about, right here. I wish more people would understand this. This is not some loose anti-coporate sentiment or senseless alarm sounding. We have example after example of how corporations like Meta, Microsoft, and Google leverage their power to consume and destroy. To say “we just need to be proactive about stopping them” is naive. We’ve said that so many times, and every time we’ve lost.
The only way to win is not to play their game. We can’t let them in in the first place.
Edit: a word
You should look into Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I think the biggest fear is that they have so many users that they will just flood all instances with their stuff. This can, in time, lead to a situation where they can defederate from everything else and bring a lot of people with them, since most of the content will have come from Threads.
They can absorb large numbers of users and communities and after a while close themselves to the outside. Meaning that once people “need” those communities they’ll have no chance other than go threads.
I got a number of answers that sound very weak to me, and basically point to a “fail” of the fediverse in its own nature if threads joins. Kind of disappointing.
To me, the key idea of the fediverse is that it’s federated and should work as a whole, no matter who joins. Most of the answers below support the opposite. They are basically saying that the fediverse should stay within the “fediverse”, which is exactly what non-federated social media are doing. Meh.
Competition and success. They are just paranoid that it’ll be successful and they can’t control where the project goes without including the majority of users and then developers.