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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".

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[-] Creatortray@lemmy.world 43 points 10 months ago

Okay. I’ve seen stuff like this on both mastodon, and here, but i haven’t heard about them doing anything that would actually harm the fediverse. I guess i don’t know what the problem is. I know they’ve got a negative reputation, and for good reason, but isn’t that the awesome part of threads being federated? We can follow and connect to people there without being part of their system, and therefor not susceptible to their bs? If I’m missing something please fill me in.

[-] Cypher@lemmy.world 78 points 10 months ago

It is inevitable that Meta will try to kill the fediverse while chasing profits, there is no other possibility in their endgame.

If that is pushing ads into other instances or killing those instances entirely we don’t know yet but it will happen.

It has to because the shareholders must always have more.

[-] danc4498@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

I just don’t think it’s possible for something to kill the fediverse. And if it is possible, then it is a flaw in the design of the fediverse and needs to be fixed.

[-] Dieinahole@kbin.social 24 points 10 months ago

Are you planning to pay for the extra bandwith to deal with all the additional traffic?

Meta will.

And then when they own the servers amd all the traffic, lemmy will be quietly murdered.

Quietly, because they'll control the traffic, and therefore the narrative

[-] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

All activity pub needed to do was create a user rights guidelines that prevents profiting off the data. Meta wouldn't have touched the Fediverse with the 10-foot pole, if that were the case.

[-] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

Lololol and what legal mechanism are you going to use to enforce that?

[-] ttmrichter@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

ActivityPub is a protocol, not a fucking organization. It literally has no agency.

[-] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago
[-] ttmrichter@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

ActivityPub can't license anything. When you identify actual human beings in this conversation, perhaps you might have a point. So far you don't.

[-] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

First off, calm the hell down. You're being needlessly antagonistic.

Secondly, it seems like the W3C is the publisher of the activity pub standard seems like they ducats what is an isnt compliant.

Seems like of was specifically authored by a team including Evan Prodromou according to the wiki.

If they wanted too, but like literally and open source software, it could have been given licencing requirements

Specifically, my research has turned up that implementations of these protocols can be licensed. Threads' version of ActivityPub likely has its own licence. I think it would be safe to say that the creators of Lemmy and Mastodon specifically could have privacy rights dictated within their license implementation. That would nullify threads legal capabilities.

[-] ttmrichter@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

You don't "implement" a license. For fuck's sake could you at least learn the terminology of a domain before spouting opinions on it?!

[-] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 months ago

People have been writing about this ad nauseum. It's the embrace, extend, extinguish strategy. Join fediverse, extend the spec with so that not all clients are compatible with all features, repeat as necessary until everyone is using your client, finally drop compatibility with other clients.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 0 points 10 months ago

My sweet summer child.

With a network that big, they have to be very careful, and really try, if they don't want our servers to just go kaboom.

Or we just defederate from any of those attempts.

[-] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 46 points 10 months ago
[-] Creatortray@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

This is an excellent point. Thanks!

in that case considering meta is saying that it would take nearly a year to federate the platform we probably should defederate them.

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[-] Dieinahole@kbin.social 40 points 10 months ago

Just think:

Meta has literal billions of users.

The entire fediverse has about 1.5 million.

Less than a fraction of a percent.

Why in THE FUCK would meta notice, or care, at fucking all? The entire fediverse of traffic ported over to meta wouldn't budge their advertising bottom line.

But, it's a comparatively small group of smart people, having conversations, and profiles they don't have tabs and near total control over.

There's news about cop city and gaza I have seen here that I've seen NOWHERE else.

Don't let them control the narrative here

[-] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 months ago

The fediverse is an emerging threat. It's not ready yet, but it's on the right trajectory. Every time there's angst on some other platform, the fediverse get's a bump. Fediverse is not a real competitor yet, perhaps it never will be, but for meta it's sensible to establish a presence here in the short term, because it may be much more difficult later.

[-] ttmrichter@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Why in THE FUCK would meta notice, or care, at fucking all?

Why do people ask rhetorical questions without following through?!

This is a question that should be asked. If, indeed, the fediverse is so unimportant WHY THE FLYING FUCK IS META INTERESTED IN FEDERATING WITH IT!?!? THAT is the question people should be asking, given that Meta does nothing that isn't designed to add more money to Zuck the Fuck's portfolio.

And yet … most people (for clarity, I don't mean you here!) don't ask that question. They don't take that question you ask and wonder beyond that first kneejerk level. Use that question instead as a "LOL Meta doesn't care about the fediverse" piece of evidence.

And this is why we can't have nice things.

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[-] APassenger@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago

Meta will be okay making money off lemmy indirectly for a while. Then, if they grow, they'll want more than a toehold.

When it's Facebook, trust that greed and power are the goals.

[-] Sanyanov@lemmy.world 28 points 10 months ago

People are concerned because there were examples of such things going horribly wrong, most notably with Google and XMPP.

Way back in the day, Google announced that its Talk messenger will support XMPP, which made decentralization fans very happy - finally, they can communicate with everyone from the comfort of their decentralized instance!..oh.

Google started implementing features in Talk that are incompatible with XMPP, and then dropped XMPP support altogether, ending up deprecating Talk in favor of Google-only Hangouts. This forced many XMPP users to get into Google's ecosystem, since the people they contacted through XMPP were mostly just using Google Talk, and they couldn't be contacted through XMPP any more. As a result, XMPP became worse off than it started and got practically forgotten by all but 1,5 nerds who keep it alive.

now most of their contacts were in defederated Google to which they now didn't have access.

[-] MrSilkworm@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

this ☝️. Those of us who remember what happened then, understand the potential dangers of federating with a juggernaut like META.

We should tread lightly!

[-] Lucia@eviltoast.org 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

As a result, XMPP became worse off than it started and got practically forgotten by all but 1,5 nerds who keep it alive.

Is it even true? I doubt XMPP was ever popular outside of google's talk.

[-] Dieinahole@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago

Xmpp's popularity isn't the point.

The point is google intentionally killed it

[-] Lucia@eviltoast.org 3 points 10 months ago

How do you define if a communication protocol is dead? I use XMPP everyday, it works just well.

[-] nakal@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago

Also, I doubt that Google wanted to destroy XMPP. They simply needed a chat then noticed it's crap for mobile devices. They wanted to offer their users seemless migration to the new proprietary protocol.

I was sad that Google stopped to use an official standard, but there are many better free options left.

[-] kpw@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago

XMPP works great on mobile devices today. Google could have easily developed and published such extensions themselves.

[-] Spuddlesv2@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago

Not even a little bit. XMPP was rubbish.

[-] kpw@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago

Why? It works great for me and my contacts. I use it for all my personal messaging.

[-] Spuddlesv2@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago

When Google started using XMPP in Talk, 20 years ago, it was crap. I haven’t used it in probably 15 years but it wasn’t great then either.

[-] kpw@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Then it must have gotten a lot better in the meantime then. I discovered it ~2020 while searching for alternatives to WhatsApp and realizing that other walled gardens cannot be the answer since they have the same problem as WhatsApp. I think we should revive the idea of an universal internet standard for instant messaging.

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

No it's not in the least bit, but because people keep reposting that angry blog post by someone who was personally involved and wanted someone to blame so they blamed Google (as if XMPP needed any outside help to fail to catch on, they could do it on their own perfectly fine), people believe that narrative and then get sold on Meta wanting to the same with the Fediverse. As if they could give a flying fart (just like with Google and XMPP).

[-] Lucia@eviltoast.org 4 points 10 months ago

If they don't care about Fediverse they wouldn't join it in the first place. It isn't just meaningless but actually harmful - people can gain access to the content on their service without being subject to their extensive surveillance and ads. Add to this all the regular problems with federation.

As for Google and XMPP, back in the days it was happening Google were playing good guys - they had infamous "don't be evil" motto, supported various open standards and open-source projects (they still do so to some extend of course). I think for them it wasn't really an intent to 'kill' XMPP, it just XMPP was too dependant on google so they suffered a lot when the company decided to stop federation.

[-] Nelfan@mastodon.zaclys.com 11 points 10 months ago

@Creatortray
You've just written it : their negative reputation for easaly understandable reasons. We can already foresee Threads will very soon be used to spread the most toxic campaigns on the net and that will undoubtably harm the Fediverse. One of the most valuable trait of the Fediverse is its decentralization and consequently, the potential accountability of any server administrator. Why should we take those risks when it's so easy to avoid it? #BlockThreadsOut
@mypasswordis1234

[-] boiglenoight@universeodon.com 0 points 10 months ago

@Nelfan @Creatortray @mypasswordis1234 if my server federates with #Threads and it creates a problem, I’ll stop supporting it and move to one that doesn’t.

[-] dsfgs@mastodon.sdf.org 1 points 10 months ago

@boiglenoight @Nelfan @Creatortray @mypasswordis1234
Great toot, Nelfaneor, but to use the word 'risk' with respect to the probability of #falseBook creating harm in the #fediverse network, is a mistake — it is a "certainty".

Boiglenoight if you value the free and open web we have news for you, your instance is having its HTTPS intercepted by Cloud(G)lare (change 'G' to 'F'). Move to a different one, if you want us to continue dialog with you.

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this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
978 points (79.1% liked)

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