Project92 and the Fediverse - A Smarter Battle Plan to Protect the Open Social Web
www.timothychambers.net
With the upcoming #meta #Project92 Fediverse service, there has been a, well, robust discussion of how to avoid threats looming. Those advocating mass-preemptive defederation make three cases for it. ➡️ To avoid data mining … However, defederation does virtually zero to avoid any big tech entity scraping all the Fediverse public social graph today - Want proof? See here: is.gd/q8U2pv But what if they merge that Fediverse data with their own internal data from IG isn’t that worse than just scraped data?

It is expected to be 2-3 months before Threads is ready to federate (see link). There will, inevitably, be five different reactions from instances:

  1. Federate regardless (mostly the toxic instances everyone else blocks)

  2. Federate with extreme caution and good preparation (some instances with the resources and remit from their users)

  3. Defederate (wait and see)

  4. Defederate with the intention of staying defederated

  5. Defederate with all Threads-federated instances too

It’s all good. Instances should do what works best for them and people should make their home with the instances that have the moderation policies they want.

In the interests of instances which choose options 2 or 3, perhaps we could start to build a pre-emptive block list for known bad actors on Threads?

I’m not on it but I think a fair few people are? And there are various commentaries which name some of the obvious offenders.

  • Nine@lemmy.worldEnglish
    202·
    1 year ago

    So why is it important to not federate (or block) with Thread? Asking seriously. I read the article and while those are valid and real concerns. What is the net gain of that action? How does it help the fediverse? I cant see any way that it helps and lots of ways it hurts. At this point it seems like a lot of what ifs.

    Edit:

    If you need the reasons why to block Threads (meta) I think the answers below explain it better than most!

    • OtakuAltair@lemm.eeEnglish
      484·
      1 year ago

      From what I understand, they’re likely trying to kill the fediverse by making it irrelevant (embrace, extend, extinguish) seeing how it’s finally starting to grow, since they can’t just buy it up this time like they’ve always done to competitors.

      Even aside from that though, their algorithms designed to retain user attention by any means necessary are definitely going to seep into and poison the fediverse, at least indirectly, if they’re federated.

      Not to mention they could easily run ads as normal posts and boost them artificially; they are an ad company after all. Wouldn’t put it past them.

      Not federating with them means we don’t have to deal with all that, and the fediverse can just continue to grow naturally as it’s been doing.

      Federating on the other hand means a very real risk of permanently halting the fediverse’s growth in favour of corporations’, like Google did to XMPP

      • Nine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        62·
        1 year ago

        That’s a good point. Would it not make more sense to block/de-federate when they start being bad actors rather than preemptively block? I’m not saying that preparing is bad, I think it’s very much need and valid to assume they will be bad actors. I would like to be wrong and believe that being good hosts is better for their bottom lines. I do not expect them to do anything good because it’s the “right” thing.

        • OtakuAltair@lemm.eeEnglish
          41·
          1 year ago

          If there’s one company you should preemptively block, it’s Facebook. They have a track record of destroying anything and everything they touch and there is zero reason to think it won’t be the same this time. From this post:

          They aren’t some new, bright-eyed group with no track record. They’re a borderline Machiavellian megacorporation with a long and continuing history of extremely hostile actions:

          • Helping enhance genocides in countries
          • Openly and willingly taking part in political manipulation (see Cambridge Analytica)
          • Actively have campaigned against net neutrality and attempted to make “facebook” most of the internet for members of countries with weaker internet infra - directly contributing to their amplification of genocide (see the genocide link for info)
          • Using their users as non-consenting subjects to psychological experiments.
          • Absolutely ludicrous invasions of privacy - even if they aren’t able to do this directly to the Fediverse, it illustrates their attitude.
          • Even now, they’re on-record of attempting to get instance admins to do backdoor discussions and sign NDAs.
          • Nine@lemmy.worldEnglish
            20·
            1 year ago

            This is the best response I’ve seen. Abso-fucking-lutely made it clear why it’s impossible to trust meta in anyway shape or form. Thanks!

    • Illecors@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      192·
      1 year ago

      Once federated, an instance get a ton of data about users and their actions. I am not willing to provide that to facebook.

      • CthuluVoIP@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18·
        1 year ago

        Defederating is a one-way transaction. Any instance that defederates from Threads will only stop themselves from receiving data from it, but Threads will still be able to pull data directly from any and all instances.

        • Illecors@lemmy.cafeEnglish
          51·
          1 year ago

          With enough instances not federating threads thr data they can get will become spotty.

          I understand it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s nothing on threads I want to receive.

          • CthuluVoIP@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            1 year ago

            I don’t think that’s true. Unless it’s a server side server denial rather than defederation, all posts on Lemmy are public. This means Threads will directly receive updates even from defederated instances.

            • Illecors@lemmy.cafeEnglish
              21·
              1 year ago

              Posts are public, yes, but you won’t be able to see a post from an instance you’re not federated with on your own instance. Yes, you can just load the instance url directly, but that’s just web scraping. All voting interactions, views, etc are not available in those cases.

              I understand that if we have a setup like this:

                  Threads
  /         X
A ----------- B

              then interactions from instance B on a post on instance A will, in fact, be available to Threads. But nothing happening on B will.

              Interactions on posts/communities on instance B coming from instance A will not be seen by Threads.

              Overall, I think Threads will not actually ever enable federation to begin with, and even if it does - Lemmy is a bit of a different beast compared to Mastodon.

        • MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          CMV: The people who want to receive data from Threads should just…make a freaking Threads account. The whole argument to connect with them at all is weird. It’s like recording a Disney movie to your DVR box and setting up streaming from your smart TV to your tablet so you can now enjoy the movie you recorded in bed…when you could’ve just downloaded the freaking Disney+ app.

          It’s also (somehow) like when you’re already in shorts and a t-shirt but still a little warm and someone else wants to turn the A/C off cause they’re cold. They can put on more clothes and be totally comfy, I cannot (politely) take any more clothes off.

          • nave@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Accessing threads from mastodon is significantly more private than downloading the official app.

      • Nine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        That’s something I had not considered, good to know. I think I need to setup an instance in my lab and do a deep dive into it. Thanks!

    • gvsabi@mstdn.social
      102·
      1 year ago

      @ninekeysdown @jocanib i would say its because its meta trying to get a foothold on the fediverse and possibly take people away from here. people might just use threads instead of mastodon or lemmy since they can get the content on threads. my take

      • Nine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        43·
        1 year ago

        Wouldn’t more people using federated software be a good thing? EEE is a valid concern eg XMPP (GTalk). I’m not sure (not saying it’s impossible) how that would happen in this case. I see it being more like email than XMPP for instance. I could be way too idealistic & optimistic as well

        • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          8·
          1 year ago

          Basically my understanding of the fear is this:

          Meta joins.

          Meta makes friends with everyone because they are playing the long con. They act nice to start, play by the rules, etc. nobody thinks they are nefarious.

          Meta develops features that users want on top of the existing framework. These features are things everyone actually wants, not what meta wants because meta is hooking people -give them what they want so they use it, then walk it back later, perhaps silently as a “bug” that just never gets “fixed”- perhaps they suppress aspects of the platform, like make the community/individual finding hide the instance it’s on to make it feel more like centralized social media, perhaps they release entirely new features that enhance the experience. Either way, they make small changes because they can, which lowers the experience of those who interact with it because it’s intentionally buggy with FOSS versions. They likely have FOSS versions running so they can test compatibility to make sure they provide a slightly better experience (why wouldn’t they?)

          Users join the meta instance for the enhanced features because they don’t actually care about how the fediverse works, they want a seamless experience (which currently the fediverse does not really offer, none of us can say otherwise)

          Meta becomes the biggest instances of activity pub, but with enhancements that make other instances super buggy.

          Nobody wants to be on the buggy instances so they switch to meta if they don’t care about privacy.

          Meta pulls plug. Fediverse dies (they hope) or at least goes back to only being used by the small subset of the population that would never consider the giants to be options. They pulled all the people they could from what already existed.

          Now whether or not that’s actually an issue for a platform that actively wants to be “counterculture” (which fedi absolutely does) is yet to be seen… but we already know what meta wants, which is money, and FOSS and money aren’t really compatible. Just on principle. So what meta wants and what they are doing are at odds currently, and I think it’s only a matter of time before they show the hand they have to play.

          But I think that’s what the “defederate immediately” group is hoping to prevent. We all joined because we are sick of the hostile takeovers (even if the media companies technically have every right to do so with their own product) and to prevent being beholden to one of the major players. If everyone defederates immediately, meta won’t be able to actually embrace, because they aren’t being embraced back. At that point all they can really do is fork the software, but they would probably scrap it. It’s not exactly a great platform for a company that has their own.

          Importantly, why else would they adopt it? What value does free and largely unmonotizeable software actually have for meta? If they wanted to for themselves, they could easily build a Twitter clone. They didn’t. They adopted a free open source platform. Why? What value does that hold for them over just making their own, if they don’t feel threatened by the alternative?

          • Pandantic@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            I was thinking, aside from EEE, just getting access to all this free content that they can put their advertisements next to was a major reason for them to join AP.

            • nekat_emanresu@lemmy.mlEnglish
              11·
              1 year ago

              People aren’t noticing that they could just release a new app or mode for threads that’s Lemmy like and take our community info as their starting seed data. Tada! They also killed Reddit with the same move that killed twitter. I think meta would want to destroy this style of program more then copy though, so I’m not convinced they will copy a Lemmy app.

        • gvsabi@mstdn.social
          3·
          1 year ago

          @ninekeysdown just more people using the fediverse isnt the main goal. or at least my goal. its keeping the stuff foss, privacy respecting, and etc. activity pub allows for federation but what is built on top of it can be proprietary as hell. as is the case of threads. im threatened by threads because its taking away peoples privacy.

          • Zaktor@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            I don’t think the Fediverse has privacy as a primary feature. If federating is enough to grab some hidden data, it’s a simple matter to set up a small dummy instance to get that access.

      • DarienGS@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        The whole point of the Fediverse is that people can use whatever platform they like to get content from Mastodon, Lemmy etc.