Remember when Facebook and Google both were using XMPP protocol? They just need fediverse users for now to get free content. They will always delink when they can. That's profit logic for you.

fuck the zuck and all his instances. block the fecesbook and its nine other names

Excuse me for being crass, I sincerely apologize, but fuck Threads.

I'm all for it. Ive heard arguments for and against interacting with meta instances in this way, and I won't pretend to fully understand all the details.

Still, Meta has proven that they aren't trustworthy time and time again. I'd really just prefer to remove myself from them as much as possible.

If any community of the fediverse willing accepts getting into bed with a major, for-profit corporation, then it does not deserve to be a part of the fediverse. There is zero chance that Facebook (they don't get to simply rebrand) is doing this to be a supportive part of the fediverse. They are doing this because we are a threat to their profits and the best way to kill us is from the inside.

"I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place…"

Federating with Meta is different from federating with individuals. It's like letting corporations be treated the same as natural persons for the purposes of voting in political elections and exercising other civic participation rights.

Natural persons may have a variety of motivations for federating. Corporations have only one: to increase profit.

And please don't say "federate now, revisit later if needed." Recall the fable about the scorpion and the rabbit facing a raging flood. Said the scorpion, "oh please, rabbit, let me ride on your back as you swim across." Rabbit said "no, you'll sting me and I'll die." Scorpion said "no I won't; we're both in danger; I have children at home; we both want to live." Rabbit said "okay, if you promise not to sting me." So scorpion climbed onto rabbit's back, and halfway across the flood, scorpion gave rabbit a lethal sting. Rabbit asked why, and scorpion shrugged; "you knew what I was when you let me onto your back."

While I'm generally opposed to defederation as a general rule, I'm also old enough to have suffered through Microsoft's Embrace Extend Extinguish paradigm. Never again. Absolutely no federation with megacorp instances.

Don't federate, they are a terrible company.

I have a lot of feelings about this matter. But my main concern is that I value the idea of privacy, anonimity and the right to reveal as much of yourself online as you are willing to do so. And Meta has shown time and time again that they are actively against the very concept of letting people be.
Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but they will find a way to ruin this for everyone if it helps their bottom line.

On top of that, it's opening the floodgates to a stream of content that will most likely drown out the individuality of our communities. We're still growing and building, I would love for us to have our own place before the Meta masses join.

edited: spelling

For me, being on the fediverse is an escape from big social. That’s the whole reason I’m here. Conversations are more organic, less restrictive, and generally better. Plus, it has an awesome DIY feel to it.

I don’t want to lose that to Meta’s insatiable hunger for data.

Politics aside (I'm strongly against federating with corps for reasons already expressed here), can the instance even support federation with a multimillion user federation? Just look at the fedilags recently.

Meta's interests as a corporate entity are inherently incompatible with the goals behind the creation of a decentralized and federated service. I do not believe they are able or willing to act in good faith, and I don't think their presence should be tolerated. Personally, I did not jump ship from Reddit to be reconnected with the likes of Facebook or Instagram. The entire effort feels to me like a panic response to the notion that there are people like myself not being shown what Meta wants seen, and they can stay mad about it.

Addendum:

On the other hand, I think people should be the arbiters of the content they view. I don't get the notion of browsing /all and then being upset at what you find there, it's just a raw firehose of what people are up to on the internet. There is a value in letting people consume the content they want, where and how they want it. I'm sure someone would be happy to be linked in to this larger ecosystem. There's a lemmy instance dedicated to mirroring reddit content and I don't see the appeal of that, but more power to the people who get use from it.

The nature of the fediverse and activitypub is that we can't stop Meta from making use of this platform. We're going to have to handle this situation by proving that we have something different and perhaps better than anything Meta can offer. But I won't stay in a space where their size and influence is permitted to dominate all conversation, it's already slightly jarring to hear people talk as if lemmy.world were the de-facto center of the lemmyverse.

I don't have any firm opinions yet. I definitely feel the knee-jerk temptation to not federate with them, but on the other hand I guess federated Facebook products is pretty much what I want from them.

I don't care about Threads very much (at least yet), but I know a lot of people where my only way to get in contact with them is Facebook Messenger. So if I could contact them without needing to have a facebook account myself, I'd be quite happy.

Personally I'll support instances that choose to tell Zuckybags to fuck right off, and I think the fediverse is pretty well set up to be able to do that.

But I guess the bigger question how is how we protect our information, since it seems like everything that happens here is pretty wide open.

The big companies will all come for places like this and trawl for "genuine human input" to feed their AI cashbabies, and what we create has value. Maybe even the shitposts. So how do we protect that?