I’m not worried about dependency on content from threads. I’m primarily concerned with facebook’s data harvesting. I have a Facebook account, but I only touch it when I have to. All other aspects of my social life are pretty much divorced from Facebook. I fear that with federating, my activity will populate on their servers and they will feel completely entitled to all of it to train their AI and create advertising profiles without any consent. All of our activity will be free use for their profit.
I’d actually feel better if the process of federating required an EULA or something where the instance seeking federation must deny any right to use community content without explicit, signed permission from individual users.
If you have enabled option "Show top bar" then "Magazines" will not be displayed at the top of the page between "People" and "Collections" and you will have to click "All magazines" at the end of top bar to go to the magazine search.
Lots of people here worried about Meta destroying their space, and rightly so.
But I see this from another lens. This is what success for the fediverse looks like. The fediverse was never going to compete with the big players in social media. But it can influence them to be less shitty.
Is this a threat to the fediverse as we know it? Absolutely. But we have the opportunity to make things better for several orders of magnitude more people than are currently here. To me that is a risk worth taking and fighting for.
I’m not saying everyone should roll over and do whatever Meta wants. There’s going to be tension and we are going to need to fight them tooth and nail on many things. But let’s at least participate.
Absolutely agreed. I came here to escape proprietary corpo bullshit, and if we don't defederate, I'll just stop using kbin altogether. I love it here, but that will change if Meta's grimy tentacles are able to take hold of the place.
Open source, non-corporate instances should be able to grow, and that growth will be stunted if most people who want to interact with the fediverse are deciding to go to corporate, profit-driven instances.
The issue is, how does defederating not promote leaving for Threads or instances that federate with Threads?
I think it's a good argument against Threads federating at all, but a poor one for defederating from Threads.
If Threads produces 95% of content in the fediverse, and your instance defederates from them, then your instance just doesn't have access to those 95% of content. Threads and its friends will be a lot more attractive then because it has 19x the content of what you have access to on your instance.
I think this will still lead to people leaving for the threads fediverse.
Also, I get the argument for Mastodon, but does /kbin actually have anything at all to fear here? Sure, the user numbers and content would be way higher than the rest of the fediverse. But Threads is a Twitter contender, not Reddit like /kbin and Lemmy. We will only see their content in the microblog tab.
Is the microblog tab actually that important to most people, that the instance could become dependent on Threads for dominating it? I honestly don't see it happen, I feel like this is an imported issue from microblogging platforms that's just repeated here despite being a non-issue for us.
I assume that 99.99% of that 95% from threads will not be missed and the other .01% will be linked by someone from a non-threads instance just like how tiktok and other social media currently gets linked.
Is the microblog tab actually that important to most people, that the instance could become dependent on Threads for dominating it?
I don't think it could put the entire instance in jeopardy, but personally I think the microblog tab has a lot of potential (there have already been strides to incorporate it more), and I'd feel a lot less positive about its possibilities if it were full of content from Threads.
imo the ui on kbin is wonderful, and very usable on mobile unlike reddit and other sites, and especially preferable compared to lemmy. i dont imagine there will be another exodus from reddit, it was all performative and hardly anyone stuck around.
Thing is, Lemmy has Photon and Alexandrite alternative frontends that are dramatically better than the standard web UI, and a plethora of good mobile apps already, like Boost and Eternity. :\
Is there some A / B testing going on? I still have Magazines in the top bar. Collections as far as I understood is simply a grouping of various communities & magazines that share the same related topics and I guess setting a collection as favorite will act like you subscribed to them (I haven't really used them before).
Check if any userstyle/userscript is hiding it maybe? It's definitely still there for me, and I'm sure @ernest would have said something if he was A/B testing removing it.
The fediverse is an obvious threat to Facebook and any other corporate social media company. If the fediverse wasn’t a threat or has the potential of ever one day becoming a threat … then companies like Facebook would not want anything to do with the fediverse.
The fact that a major social media company like Facebook even remotely wants anything to do with the fediverse means that this new start up is doing something and has the potential of becoming something some day. Otherwise, Facebook would not want anything to do with it.
Besides, Facebook already has a huge market share of the social media pie … they literally control over half the social media content on the internet right now. They already have more than enough of a platform to connect to their userbase … why should we allow them onto our space? We need the content … they don’t.
And like others have said, if you allow a big fish onto your small pond, the big fish will automatically control everything. The big fish will swim around your little pool for a while and kill everything and then leave, leaving an empty pool that nobody wants.
Admit it … Facebook just wants in to kill the fediverse. They don’t want to add it to their service, they don’t want to incorporate it … they want to swallow it whole, let it die and abandon it.
Defederate and don’t let them anywhere near our space. Otherwise, we’ll be signing our own death warrant.
I’m glad you said that you don’t think that privacy is the biggest issue. Our posts are already public and can be scraped easily. I’ve stopped reading posts about privacy issues because they seem misinformed to me.
I don’t know what to think about the rest at this stage, but I’m beyond suspicious of Meta, which has proven itself to be a deeply unethical company.
mod workload increasing to unsustainable levels with the overnight addition of millions of users
meta would be a large enough instance to be considered a monopoly of the entire fediverse
the fediverse goal of putting control of social media back in the hands of users would no longer be possible if companies controlled the majority of the space
Most people probably didn’t consider the internet something that could be monopolised at the start either.
We have the same view on private social media.
IMO we should treat this like any other instance that goes against what we want to see on the fediverse, defed it on all the main instances and if someone wants to access it they can have a threads account or an account on a small instance that is federated with them.
Meta (or any large entity) cannot monopolize or control the fediverse. If their implementation starts drifting from established norms, they will be blocked by most instances or will just be incompatible. The example used to back up this argument is usually XMPP, but people forget that XMPP is still around. It never died; its just a smaller, niche network.
The fediverse is already a small, niche network. So if Meta comes in and tries to control the network, it will then be responsible for maintaining its own "Meta-fediverse" network (that some instances may choose to be a part of) while the remaining instances will remain as a small, niche network. Meta can't force current fediverse servers to implement any Meta-specific features or to change their software in any way.
The mod workload argument is the only one that I see being a real issue, but the target is wrong. Anyone worried about that should be discussing it with fediverse devs to improve mod tools, not trying to force the entire fediverse to stay at their preferred size
Meta (or any large entity) cannot monopolize or control the fediverse. If their implementation starts drifting from established norms, they will be blocked by most instances or will just be incompatible.
Right now, many are already desperate for activity and thus hesitant to defederate. Do you actually think that you'll convince people to defederate once everyone's used to all the content they provide? "Hey guys, Meta's starting to make changes, so we're going to cut the content you're used to seeing by 99%." That's an impossible sell. Once content dependence is established, there is no turning back.
… but people forget that XMPP is still around. It never died; its just a smaller, niche network. The fediverse is already a small, niche network.
Most of us want to see the open fediverse grow into something a bit less small and a bit less niche, but that possibility will be dashed away if we put activity in Meta's hands and then let them take it away from us. Tons of people will leave platforms like Mastodon to go to Threads or otherwise have to live with most of their content being gone and no longer seeing the posts of most of whom they follow. That's lots of people who would have been sold on the fediverse but now see it as dead because of the massive activity drop. Threads coming and going takes the view of our situation from "It could grow a lot," to "It really fell off when Threads left," and the latter will make it impossible to grow again.
If we want a fediverse with the values we care about to grow, we don't need Meta. It's insane to start pretending that this is the case just because Meta is offering to control 99% of the content. Patience will help us in the long run, whereas relying on Meta to carry the fediverse will absolutely hurt us.
Once content dependence is established, there is no turning back.
Everyone who is on the fediverse has already made that choice. They are intentionally on a network with less content because of the other benefits And a huge portion of the discussion of Meta joining the fediverse is made up of ppl who are saying they will block Threads on day 1.
the latter will make it impossible to grow again.
That's what everyone was saying back when the fediverse was even smaller, or even before it existed. "How can you compete with giants like G+, twitter, and facebook?" There will always be groups of people who will not participate in corporate social media. And there will always be people who like the convenience of corporate social media but get fed up with it and seek alternatives. And there will always be people who bounce between services.
Tons of people will leave platforms like Mastodon to go to Threads
They're only here because they left corporate social media. If they were going to leave for Threads, why wouldn't they do it now? They've heard all the warnings about some supposed EEE and assume that Threads won't connect to the fediverse forever so why would Threads adding ActivityPub support suddenly change their mind? Going to threads now puts them in the same state as going to threads later in some hypothetical future where the fediverse is too small to matter.
If we want a fediverse with the values we care about to grow...
I don't care about Meta and I'm not relying on them for anything. When they join the fediverse, individual instance owners will still have all the power. User on the fediverse will still be able to control their own feeds. But there are people who use Threads and being able to communicate with them would be nice. I don't think any of the fears about Meta on the fediverse are justified and I think the fediverse will continue on just like it has for more than a decade.
I don’t think it matters that much. The users are very different. Most Threads users will be Threads users, regardless of what the fediverse does.
In the contrary, if a Threads user can interact with the fediverse, he/she could change his/her mind at some point because now he/she will be aware of the fediverse (eg Meta starts to put a lot of ads, many users will migrate towards the fediverse instead of paying Meta a fee).
As a consequence, I think Threads will stay « friendly » with its users in fear everyone migrates somewhere else. Otherwise, no one will leave Threads unless there are major issues (like Twitter or Reddit). Not federating because we fear the fediverse will not grow as much as a consequence is, in my opinion, the exact opposite of what will happen.
Just look at YouTube alternatives. People won’t leave the platform for peertube because they would lost all the content. Now, imagine that YouTube was part of it, do you really believe people would stay and endure as much ads ? I believe they would leave and YouTube would be forced to refrain itself in order to keep its users, and peertube would become much more popular.
TL;DR I don’t say we should federate at any cost tough. But I don’t believe the fediverse will grow because it rejects Threads (in fact, I think it will be the opposite). The question is more something like « Do we want the mass to be part of the fediverse ? » (with all the consequences like brands starting to put ads / communicate here, and a bunch of racists & cie that could possibly be impossible to moderate).
People are staying on YouTube and enduring ads right now… Plus if Threads is federated they will be a part of the fedi, so no more reason to change. Why change to another instance, if you get on Threads without doing nothing and already are on the biggest instance ?
For the growing possibilities check what happened to XMPP. Is XMPP growing better now ? I don’t think so…
People won’t leave YouTube because content creators don’t want them to. That’s it.
That’s what I said. People stay on YouTube because the content is locked there. If you could watch YouTube videos from Peertube without ads, I believe people would migrate and YouTube would be forced to be less aggressive with ads. I agree that’s partly because content creators do not post their content elsewhere, but that’s exactly why fediverse is nice : the content is everywhere, you can’t lock it into a single instance.
The reason for switching from Threads to fediverse is the same reason why you already left mainstream social networks. But people not aware of its existence, or locked there because the content and the people they interact with are only accessible from there, they can’t leave. That’s why many people keep a Facebook account, or why people tried Mastodon and came back to X a few weeks later.
In my opinion, if a platform can only be different from the other because of the services it proposes (instead of relying on its own content), people will be able to move easily from one platform to the other (and they will if Threads starts to abuse its position). You are afraid people will never leave Threads, but the truth is that as soon as they will have to suffer ads, they will try to find adblockers or alternatives to eliminate them. The fediverse can be this alternative.
And you really think that Threads in the fedi will means people on the Threads instance will know there is other instances with no ads? And you think they will care?
I mean there are ways to watch YouTube without ads for years. And most people still won’t uses them…
Moving easily won’t happen soon, because it’s not about moving (create a new account isn’t that hard), but it’s about changing habits. Changing a habit needs : to be forced on people (Meta’s way) or to be an act of will.
I don’t say it will be massively the case of course, but closing the door is the best way to prevent such migration.
If I had the opportunity to move from Twitter to Mastodon without loosing any content, I would have done it way sooner (and in fact, it’s more like I had to abandon this content since it does not exist on Mastodon, the people I followed etc).
It’s exactly why people stay inside an ecosystem like Apple, YouTube, Meta Quest or Playstation, because if you leave you lose everything.
I don’t see why more people would go to the fediverse if you prevent everyone access to some content. Just like in the fediverse, if your instance does not federate with the one you want, you are free to migrate towards another instance. It’s not possible if you can’t transfer from one instance to another.
I don’t say they are saints or that we should federate absolutely with them, but I don’t believe that closing the door because we want the fediverse to grow is not a convincing argument.
Yes, it’s just a personal opinion. I don’t like Meta at all, but I don’t think the creators will come here on their own. Besides, I am convinced that what should differentiate the platforms (even for games, movies and music, not just social networks) should be the services offered by every provider, not the content.
Also, I think they are many other arguments against federation (Is fediverse capable to moderate content coming from Threads ? Especially if Meta don’t do its part ?).
Personally, I will likely move with the content. I left Twitter and Reddit because of the ads, but I will give Threads a try as soon as it’s available in my country, and even pay if there is no alternative and the price is “fair” (unless some fediverse accept to federate). I already did it with YouTube, it’s just impossible to find an alternative and I can’t stand the ads anymore :/.
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