“DM me on Twitter” perhaps wasn’t the best way to start a post about fediverse, but OK, I got through it…
That article was a hot mess.
First of all, over half of that article was based on misunderstanding of how fedi and ActivityPub works. Meta will not just “push their content” out to the fediverse and drown it - even if they fully adapt and integrate ActivityPub (which was still marked as TBD in the roapmap). ActivityPub is not a broadcast protocol. There is no “global federated feed” that can drown you. Someone actually has to subscribe to users and their posts for them to show up on their instances. Sure, some additional messages will be “discovered” during that (likes and re-posts etc), but it’s not like all of Threads just flows into all fediverse servers automatically.
My timeline is posts from people who I follow. My local timeline are posts from people on my server. My federated timeline is all public posts from people (from other servers) that users on my server follow. It is trivial for me (as an individual) to domain block *.threads.net in my Mastodon user profile and then I will never see any posts from that server.
The chapter about content moderation was also a bit misleading. On fediverse side of things, content moderation is done by instance mods. If and perhaps more likely, when it becomes too much work to deal with, they will simply just defederate or limit Threads.
I’d imagine most smaller server admins and mods will eventually end up doing this, because they simply don’t have resources to moderate the message flow from a server that has hundreds of millions of users - this is already evident with mastodon.social and the other larger servers. Lot of places have defederated them.
But this is all working as intended. Defederation isn’t controversial, it happens all the time.
The actual moderation problem is entirely on Meta’s side. The fedi is full of bad stuff. Really bad, like CSAM. They will have to deal with all those kiddyporn .jp instances. Good luck telling that your shareholders Zuck.
There are some real problems with Threads integration, but none of those were mentioned. I don’t want Threads to monetize my content. If I post something on Mastodon and a person from Threads follows me, I don’t want Threads to show them ads based on what I wrote. But currently there’s no way to prevent that.
Also, if I should follow someone from Threads, there’s nothing preventing Meta from inserting an ad into that persons “Outbox” and therefore serving it to me on Mastodon. Sure, they’d be impersonating that user, but their whole business model is based on showing ads and datamining the clicks, so would be naive to think they wouldn’t enable ads on Threads later on.
Of course the last problem is easy to solve by blocking Threads, but you get my drift…
Glad Flipboard is expanding in the Fediverse, I've been following their various news accounts on Mastodon for a while now. It especially helps the fediverse feel more complete as a social media platform.
Sure, these don't really matter for Lemmy and Kbin, but they are a huge deal for microblogging platforms like mastodon or misskey.
It's not a bad thing, gives you the option to read them on the Fediverse and it proves that the Fediverse could possibly be the future of Social Media. It's good to see other people want to see it grow.
If people don't like it then personally block it, the only reason for blocking a whole instance, instance wide is if it has morals that conflict to much such as a Anti-LGBT instance vs a LGBT one.
Mate I think people are just kinda lazy and don't really care that much about privacy relative to ease of use and the presence of people they're interested in.
@BraveSirZaphod In that case, both of your hunches are right, no matter the Curb-Stomp Battle we indeed are facing in the name of the Internet's future path.
The problem is that Kbin sucks as well. For example, /m/science lacks actual moderators and gets flooded with spam on the regular. And even where there are active moderators, moderation actions often do not get federated.
I was hoping these issues would get fixed soon, but here we are, three months after the Reddit apocalypse, and Kbin is still not a fully functional platform. For example, I filed bug #1102 fifteen days ago, and this has still not been resolved. And bug #570 has been open since early July.
If Kbin wants to become and stay relevant, it needs more hands on deck.
No, the problem is that you're a person who posted 34 diff. items to K.Bin and two bug reports and you think that qualifies you to comment on K.Bin overall. Not for nothing - what qualifies me to speak on this topic is that I've been posting stuff every day to /m/scifi (with time out for vacations and illness). I know there are things wrong with scifi and K.Bin - but I'm putting the time in to make things better. What are you doing? You moderate /m/men and your stated goal is "This magazine is dedicated to discussions of issues that men and boys face, especially disadvantages or discrimination due to their gender, from an egalitarian perspective." People want stuff to read, not people to point at 'the problem.' K.bin is fine for what it is - if you want 'more hands on deck', go be one of those hands.
Jesus H Christ... congrats on being the one millionth person on kbin to say "What are YOU doing?" while talking down their literal list of what they are doing.
a-man-from-earth is right, Kbin is in a sorry state right now. I still get asked to login when I want to comment, despite being logged in, at which point it takes me to the home page. Viewing a reply to your comment is still not pagination-aware.
Ernest has said this version of kbin is frozen until he rolls out the next, hopefully the end of September, so by his own admission Kbin as we know and use it is the same pile it was months ago. That said I remain hopeful that the next rollout will be a big improvement.
Back to the topic, if the site isn't easy and intuitive to use, or if it's broken and remains a thorn for a long time, then you can't expect people to go out of their way to do the thing you want them to do. That's not how the world works.
a-man-from-earth has submitted bug fixes to try and improve the site so people might be more willing to stick around and post themselves, while you're just posting content that'll eventually become irrelevant. What are YOU doing? (See? It's asinine right?)
So, I post content (on average once every 3 days, despite my drop in activity this month), I engage in the comments (more than you do, if we're counting), I moderate a community, and I file bug reports in an attempt to make this a better platform.
So yes, I am doing my part, and that does qualify me to comment on the state of Kbin. Suggesting I don't is toxicity we don't need here.
And pretending that Kbin is just fine won't help this platform to become successful. And yes, despite my criticisms, I want this to be a successful Reddit replacement. But it's struggling to become relevant, and I'm frustrated with its lack of progress.
People want stuff to read, not people to point at 'the problem.'
People also want interesting discussions on topics they care about. I know that because for years I was a moderator of a small but active subreddit.
The m/men magazine I moderate used to be the #20 most active one on Kbin, a place you're now proudly proclaiming m/scifi has...
I'm waiting to see if ernest's promised next version of Kbin will actually improve things, especially on the moderation side. Otherwise I have to reconsider where to direct my efforts.
I understand wanting to help the platform grow, but I don't think invalidating the opinions and contributions of a-man-from-earth is a good way to approach it. The holier-than-thou attitude might also have the opposite effect that your original post is attempting to achieve. The lack of active moderators is certainly an issue, along with spam and the existence of various federation issues are problems as well. I get that these things take time, so I'm being patient. The platform still has it's flaws, however I still enjoy kbin and am contributing when I can.
I understand wanting to help the platform grow, but I don't think invalidating the opinions and contributions of a-man-from-earth is a good way to approach it. The holier-than-thou attitude might also have the opposite effect that your original post is attempting to achieve. The lack of active moderators is certainly an issue, along with spam and the existence of various federation issues are problems as well. I get that these things take time, so I'm being patient. That said, I still enjoy kbin and contribute how and when I can.
Honestly, given the ruckus they've been raising for a while now, my feeling is that Beehaw wants to push themselves away from society as a whole. I don't agree with their perspective, which is part of why I never engage with much of their content or users. All I can say is that I wish them only the best for their echo chamber.
I have been unsubscribing from communities on beehaw and finding their siblings on other instances so that if they decide to leave i have already mostly disconnected from them and my home feed wont become a shell of itself.
It’s less an echo chamber and more simply an attempt at creating an Internet community that doesn’t constantly argue or insult people. Where you treat people like they are smart humans and where others return the same assumption. All different opinions are welcomed. I know I hold a few strong differing opinions than the norm on beehaw and have always been treated with decency. Taking those same opinions in to lemmy general I’ve been called names and attempted to be invalidated instead of people trying to see a different opinion. So if anything it seems like lemmy general is becoming an echo chamber and beehaw is trying to be a respectful discourse community.
The impression I get is that Beehaw is trying to seclude itself not to be an echo chamber, but because an admin saw CP get posted and is traumatized by that, and it’s really highlighting the lack of mod tools. They want to moderate the space to ensure it’s nice (and it’s frankly needed. I made a Beehaw account at one point in time. I reported quite a few not-bigoted-but-still-nasty posts) and right now being federated with everyone makes it way too hard because even if 1% of posts are anywhere from “not nice” to “you literally posted child porn,” 1% of 100 is easy but 1% of 100,000 could be a lot of work.
Ah, yes that too. I was thinking of the defederating with lemmy.world and sh.it.works when I was reading that. But Also, yes, they are likely moving because mod tools on the fediverse are a nightmare. Honestly, I see why the US Congress and major lobbyists want to hold service owners accountable for what their users post. Creating a platform for users to post whatever then not moderating it properly should be and I think is illegal in the USA. The fediverse at heart seems to be designed without any moderation in mind.
@stopthatgirl7 This seems like quite the lift and shift. Moving to a new platform would definitely split their user based. I would also thin that any form of aggressive defederation would split their user base as well. From what I can tell, there are not many (if any) fediverse platforms that have the level of moderation tools they they are looking for.
Unfortunately, It just looks like they are in a tight spot. One the could make or break that community.
I think part of the problem is that moderation tools, in general, on the threadiverse are extremely weak. It’s easy to share across platforms and instances on kbin and lemmy, but it seems to be a nightmare to moderate across platforms and instances, in a way that it isn’t on other Fediverse sites. I can’t tell if it’s by design or by oversight, but it’s going to only become a bigger problem in the future if it isn’t sorted soon. Beehaw’s issues with moderation seem like the canary in the coal mine.
This I think. Every platform that is not just a mess needs moderation. There are things you just cannot allow especially in a platform that is suppose to be a safe space or at least not a total shit fest. Some of this is the law too, CSAM for example or copyrighted material. The rest is just about not putting up with trolls. When lemmy was 1000 users total this problem is a lot different then 1 million to 10 million or 100 million. It is just that Behaw is a bit more particular on one hand and probably more of a target on the other.
Looking at all the spam on the science community proves you wrong. It’s on lemmy, and the mods smack down all the spam quickly…On Lemmy. But people looking at it on kbin see constant posts of spam and advertising, making the community completely unusable, because the lemmy admins can’t moderate the page on kbin once it’s federated into the kbin server. Likewise, mods on lemmy and kbin might lock comments on a post that’s getting toxic, but that lock doesn’t carry over to kbin, and they can’t do anything about it. That’s the issue I’m talking about.
If the community is on kbin that the kbin mod removes the spam. If the community is on lemmy instance than mod on lemmy instance removes spam.
Isn't that how it works? The mod on the community instances removes the spam and then it gets removed on all sites right?
Likewise, mods on lemmy and kbin might lock comments on a post that’s getting toxic, but that lock doesn’t carry over to kbin, and they can’t do anything about it.
Wouldn't a lock on a thread on that community's site prevent any new comments from coming back to that site over the fediverse?
Yes, but the problem is it doesn’t federate. A lemmy mod can remove spam on their lemmy community, but there’s no one to remove the spam once it federates to be on a kbin server. That’s why the science community seen on kbin is swarming with spam - the mods on lemmy remove it, but there’s no one to remove it on kbin until Ernest removes it, because communities default to him as the moderator of the kbin magazine version, and no way for lemmy mods to make someone on kbin a moderator for it.
Bill D’Agostino is the Media Editor for NewsBusters and Senior Research Analyst for the Media Research Center’s News Analysis division. His work has been featured on Fox News, The Daily Wire, The Mark Levin Show, and many other conservative outlets.
So - counter-example. I'm working with a UK organisation that currently still uses Twitter. I'm trying to persuade them to start their own Mastodon instance instead. Being able to reach Threads users, in addition to Masto uses would clearly be substantial selling point of setting up a Mastodon server - given the size of the Threads userbase - and much preferable to them starting a Threads account.
It would be right now, but the first step of Embrace Extend Extinguish is that: Embrace. Opening up to threads now might be extremely detrimental to the fediverse in the future, in the same way as happened with XMPP.
By this argument nothing should ever interoperate with anything else because clearly that's the first step toward destruction.
I'm writing this on Firefox, which interoperates with Chrome and Edge. Oh no! We need to get these browsers operating on incompatible protocols stat, before they all extend and extinguish each other.
In reality, "embrace extend extinguish" is not a law of nature. XMPP is not ActivityPub. They are separate things with separate circumstances. Did you know that XMPP is actually still functional and open and you can download clients and servers that use it to this day? The stories about how Google "destroyed" it have become wildly distorted folklore at this point.
Maybe on your instance - it's your loss. But admins have a choice - defed from them and lose access to all those users and having actual content worth looking at, or federate with them and actually grow your network into something that has enough going on to make people interested. As it is, I use Threads right now. I strongly prefer it to Mastodon. Kbin comes close, but has less content to idly scroll through. If no Fediverse site I use supports Threads, I'll keep on using it.
A bunch of people are pretty disgusting on the established fediverse as well. It's just that nobody has a way of imposing themselves in your feed.
And I don't use Lemmy, nor will I use Threads. I use services that broadcas information with both - that's different. I made a web site once, that doesn't make me a Google Chrome user. I send emails with Gmail users, but I still don't use Gmail. I just co-exist with people who do.
I'll take a smaller volume of stuff from people who want to engage over the quality of mass produced lowesr common denominator content that will come from Meta products.
The great thing about the Fediverse is that you can choose that even if Threads federates. You pick what you engage with, which communities and instances you subscribe to and which you block.
I want to stay as far away from Facebook as possible, my actual private data is safe because the login stuff doesn’t get federated and there isn’t much of it.
Why can't you do that? Use one of the many non-Threads servers to do it. Like Kbin, the one you're already using. Nothing about it changes if Threads federates.
This post doesn’t address the main “pro-federation” point that I have seen. People who are support of federation aren’t saying that Facebook is a great company, they have great morales or that they aren’t supporting ActivityPub for their own gain. I think there is very little doubt that FB is a shit organization with no morales who thinks that this is a great move to get people back to their sites.
The most common reason that I see people supportive of Threads’ federation is that they believe it will help people move off of Facebook and other proprietary platforms onto more user-friendly ones. If all of your friends use Instagram it is very hard to move to Mastodon. If you want to stay in touch you will at least need two accounts. You can move friends but it is hard because they each need to make that switch and it affects their interaction with others, or they need to manage multiple accounts until most of their friends have switched. If your friends use Threads (and it federates) then you can switch to Mastodon with very little friction, you can still interact with all of your existing friends in more or less the same way. Similarly each friend can easily move without managing multiple accounts during the transition. If all instances have blocked threads.net many people just won’t move, they will stay with FB.
To make a good argument you need to either refute this perceived advantage or argue that it isn’t worth the downsides. Making up a strawman doesn’t convince anyone.
I get what you're saying, I think most people fear that instead FB's septic tank will spill and spread in the Fediverse instead; I already had to deal with some "FREE SPEECH!" guy that wanted it to be a platform where people for example from Hamas and Israel could discuss and "agree to disagree".
All I’ll say is that it’s not much of a “fediverse” if you just preemptively defederate from anyone trying to grow it because you’re scared of what might change. More of a “fediclub” at that point.
Really kills the “it’s like email!” metaphor when you defederaters are constantly trying to break that interoperability by stirring up FUD and blocking instances for theoretical stuff they haven’t even done yet.
It’s like email except your server admin might decide one day they don’t want you to talk to anyone who has an @gmail.com address because they don’t like Google. What fun!
I came to the Threadiverse because Reddit was closing its APIs and building the walls higher around its garden.
I will be supremely disappointed if the Threadiverse collectively turns around and does the same thing.
Instances should be defederated when they do something harmful. Preemptively defederating is counterproductive, it gives Meta no incentive to do things right.
Yep, the Reddit metaphor really backfired. If Reddit joined the fediverse I would happily consume their content. It would actually be a wonderful compromise where reddit wouldn’t have to provide direct app support and instead just publish out via ActivityPub and people could build third party clients through that.
I left Twitter because they killed Tweetbot and I left Reddit because they killed Apollo. I genuinely hate the experience of those sites with their native apps, and I use these kinds of services almost exclusively on my phone.
While I also hate Elon Musk and Spez, I strongly dislike most tech CEOs so while a motivator, it wasn’t the biggest factor for me. It’s important to remember we’re not all here for the same reason, and user-level instance blocking is the real solution here.
You don’t like some fediverse member? Then block them at the user level and move on, or start your own server and block them there. Don’t force everyone else on your server to not even have the option just for you.
I came to the Threadiverse because Reddit was closing its APIs and building the walls higher around its garden. I will be supremely disappointed if the Threadiverse collectively turns around and does the same thing.
So instances on the fediverse have some obligation to let entities who (A) will control 99% of the content, against our values of a decentralized, more evenly distributed fediverse; (B) have zero interest in an open fediverse; and (C) have all the incentive in the world to prevent its growth and get more people on their own platform to ensure profit? As usually hesitant as I am about preemptive defederation, if the fediverse is to preserve its values of openness and ensure its growth, it can't let in for-profit corporations that will control most of the activity and that go directly against those values of openness we care about so much. Just as tolerance doesn't mean letting in those who are intolerant, an unwalled fediverse can and should put its guards up against those who want to take everything for themselves.
it gives Meta no incentive to do things right
Meta already has zero incentive to do things right. In fact, they have negative incentive, as people being on Mastodon or Kbin instead of Threads actively harms them. You will never see Mark Zuckerberg suggest that people spread out to other instances so that no one gains too much control, but you will see him try to get as many people from the other instances on Threads as possible. We are talking about making our activity dependent on a for-profit tech corporation. If we were way larger so that Threads wouldn't control such a massive portion of activity, I wouldn't be as concerned, but as things stand now, we're letting our content pool be dominated by a company that has interests in direct opposition with ours. I can't see a scenario where any of this ends well.
Nothing makes it special. My point is not that I think Facebook will do no wrong, my point is that it's counterproductive to defederate from them before they've done something wrong.
Marketing. The reason it's called a hype train is because everyone wants to get hitched to an engine that's already moving forward. Threads hit the ground running because Meta files it with money. Mastadon is a slow moving beast.
fediverse
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.