It should come as no surprise that the lemmy.ml admin team took about 2 minutes to decide to pre-emptively block threats / Meta. Their transparent and opportunistic scheme to commodify the fediverse and it’s users will not be allowed to proceed.

We strongly encourage other instance administrators to do the same, given the grave threat they pose to the fediverse.

  • justdoit@lemm.ee
    13·
    1 year ago

    Every time I see a picture of him I think it has to be edited or something. He’s like a walking Snapchat filter.

  • Mikina@programming.dev
    7·
    1 year ago

    I would like to also add this argument into the discussion, since I’ve seen a lot of people who are voting for federating with meta, with the argument that defederating just because we don’t like someone goes against the idea of Fediverse, and interconnected network of diverse servers that is should inclusive and allows people to connect.

    It’s quite the contrary - allowing Meta in goes directly against the idea of Fediverse, and we should fight it as much as possible.

    This is a literal quote from the main header on https://www.fediverse.to/

    The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

    Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

    Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

    Judging by this main selling point of the Fediverse, it sounds to me like Meta shouldn’t be in the Fediverse do begin with, and every instance should defederate from them by default.

    • Beliriel@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Centralisation will always set in due to sheer complacency. I mean it has already happened. The main player in the reddit-like fediverse is lemmy.world
      No other instance comes close to the size of lemmy.world
      I also disagree with Metas method of tracking and monetising every last bit of data (I’m trying to get rid of their platforms myself) but to expect the fediverse to be a balanced mixture of access points is just daydreaming.

      • Mikina@programming.dev
        0·
        1 year ago

        I don’t expect it to be balanced. I also don’t mind that a lot of users are centralized at lemmy.world - because we know the admins, and there isn’t a largescale corporation behind them that would be capable of monetizing and manipulating their userbase. The only kind of balance I want is that there isn’t an instance with multi-billion funding and teams of engineers dedicated to squeezing their userbase and monetizing every character they type. Sure, it will inevitably happen that someone from an instance would try something like this, but that’s an acceptable risk with community-run stuff and may or may not happen - and it probably won’t be as succesfull or large-scale. However, if you let in someone you are certain will do something like that, and has unimaginable amount of resources and manpower to do it, then they will just squeeze it dry while not shying away from exploiting every single privacy mistake there is in the protocol or our implementation.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
      7·
      1 year ago

      o7. We’re out here for yall, and we’re gonna make sure the fediverse stays inoculated from threats.

      • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
        02·
        1 year ago

        Thanks a lot, I was thinking of DMing about it. I am vocal about defederation of Big Tech instances, and any Big Tech elements (Cloudflare, CF/Google captchas). These must be isolated away from Fediverse at all costs.

        For people who read this, I must also tell that WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Zoom, iMessage… all of these “chat” platforms are made upon defederated XMPP. Google used to also maintain a XMPP federated service, and killed XMPP for mass adoption. This is what Western Big Tech does.

        • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          It’s very strange to me that a lot of the pro-facebook views below seem to start with the base assumption that facebook is out to help the fediverse, and have no malicious motives behind all this. Its like inviting a con-man into your home because they super-promised they’ll make you rich.

          Really surprising that some people can’t see through Facebooks opportunism, and are suddenly willing to trust these con-artists.

          • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
            12·
            1 year ago

            The lack of critical thought has done a number on society. Everyone wants bite sized convenient information to parrot around, instead of doing research and being vigilantes of society, as the former is lazy and easy to do. I try a lot, but the discourse gap has widened so much, that many people only bother to talk and listen when they are hurt by these tech giants and big brands.

            Last month, I did make a comment regarding defederating any Twitter/Facebook instances in Fediverse, and I surprisingly received some downvotes. People just do not realise the dangers of wanting growth at all costs. Preventing poisoning of roots is essential.

            • CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
              5·
              1 year ago

              The lack of critical thought has done a number on society.

              Likewise, society (disproportionately affected by the booj and those who serve them) reinforces this lack of critical thought. Someone in the genzedong Matrix server is in the process of translating one of Ho Chi Minh’s works into English and shared this relevant passage:

              The capitalists and imperialists use culture and religion to make the people dumb, use laws to bind the people, use power to scare the people, and use wealth to make the people selfish. They make the people frightened to the bone whenever they hear of the word Revolution. So, Revolution must first start with waking the people up.

  • CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    …the lemmy.ml admin team took about 2 minutes to decide to pre-emptively block threats / Meta.

    When the typo is more accurate than what was intended to be written.

    • @lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Channeling Stallman and referring to the Windows 32 bit Application Programming Interface as lose32 instead of win32.

    • Marxine@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      Congrats on being based as well! I’m not on your server, but thanks for looking out for your users.

  • Lermatroid@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    Gonna go against the grain here a little bit, but why? If they are federated, it will mean that you can move off of threads more easily to other servers and not get locked into a walled garden. Encouraging companies to embrace federation will avoid the shit shows like we’ve seen at twitter and reddit, since users will be easily able to jump ship without much loss. Additionally, apps like threads make federated platforms much more approachable to newcomers and those who do not even know what the fediverse is.

    I’d love someone to explain it to me, but this feels like a massive footgun.

    • EdgeOfToday@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      I agree, threads connecting to the fediverse seems like it would be a positive step for everyone. I’m not sure how meta could kill the fediverse as long as independent servers exist. If meta is flooding the fediverse with spam or other influencer bs, then we can all just defederate.

      I have an alternate theory that threads is never planning to support the fediverse. They are trying to attract users who are looking for a Twitter alternative, and right now the most compelling option is mastodon. But if threads announces activitypub support, then some would-be mastodon users might join threads instead, thinking it will all be connected. But if threads ends up winning all those users anyways, then they’ll just say fuck it, we don’t need activitypub.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      I mean, lemmy.ml explicitly describes itself as a community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts (and I’m reasonably certain it’s run by actual communists) so I’d have been quite surprised if they’d embraced Meta tbh.

    • leastprivilege@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      Exactly what I’m thinking. Also why are server admins choosing what I can do on other instances? Am I missing something here? Why can’t users be in control of who they interact with?

      • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
        0·
        1 year ago

        Yeah this is the point that irks me, each individual should get to decide for themselves, I totally get and respect the arguments for not engaging with Threads, but I don’t want that decision made for me. And unfortunately it seems like most fediverse admins feel the same way, so “just switch instances” isn’t necessarily practical

          • crowsby@lemmy.ml
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yes and suggesting that average users can simply set up a server and then navigate either Docker or Ansible just to maintain consistent content preferences isn’t perhaps realistic. Even for tech-literate folks it’s kind of a big lift, and I have to suspect it’s one of the issues that could keep the Fediverse from enjoying wider adoption.

    • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
      01·
      1 year ago

      I agree with you. I think this is a way to introduce people who aren’t tech-savvy into Activity Pub and Fediverse, which is ultimately a good thing.

      Yes, Meta has a history of being untrustworthy, but I think a place that allows communication between a large population isn’t a bad thing either.

      I would rather wait and see when Threads is full federated and what that means. We just don’t have enough information to make a decision.

      I would rather 70 million people have joined Mastodon but that’s just not how things work and we need to be realistic.

    • BlackKong@lemmy.world
      01·
      1 year ago

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

      Embrace: they embrace the fediverse, bring millions of new users to it and everyone is happy. The fediverse grows and the new meta instance gets a ton of content. Everyone is happy

      Extend: meta begins to add features to their instance which clashes with or is unusable with other instances. These begin to pile up and issues develop.

      Extinguish: meta unfederates from other instances. People are now forced to stay where they were and lose a majority of their friends and content from metas instance. Or switch over. Mass migration away from original instances. These instances die