Lemmy.ml has now blocked Threads.net
The problem with Meta is that they will harm the Fediverse.
I found this article interesting, written by a dev who worked with google during the XMPP EEE and was originally a XMPP dev, thinking that a big company could only mean more success for the FOSS alternative. He was wrong.
I wish even one person could give the actual steps on how Facebook is going to ruin the fediverse instead of just spamming this same one article and throwing around the same buzzwords like XMPP, EEE etc. of which nobody had heard about a week ago.
There’s so many people here right now reading this thinking that defederating is going to prevent Facebook from seeing the content you post here and collecting the little data that’s available to them. It doesn’t. That’s not what defederating does.
It’s not about the data they can collect. As long as we don’t use the Meta app or register in their instance we’re on the clear. The problem is giving them power.
I’m not an evil genius shithead like Zuck, but it could go this way:
- They enter the Fediverse as the biggest instance.
- They artificially slow down connections with other instances. That way, lots of users from smaller intances will migrate to the Meta one. Only the ones concerned about our privacy will remain in independent instances.
- Once most of the userbase of the Fediverse is on their instance, they keep slowing it, or adding “features” only available in their app, effectively building a wall between them and the rest of instances.
- Finally they defederate, leaving the rest of the fediverse weaker than it was.
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There are some key thoughts in this article.
Yeah I really hope they come out with the user’s ability to block instances soon. Would be a great feature addition. There are a couple of instances that I take no issue with and don’t want others to be blocked access too, but I really just don’t want to see them in my feed.
If you use Lemmy Connect, they added the option to block instances like yesterday.
Wait, an app can do this? I thought the devs of Lemmy itself needed to add the feature. I didn’t think that was possible app-side without adding the feature to Lemmy.
How do you block an entire instance in their app?
Edit: Found it! This is interesting. I didn’t know it was possible. Finally I can get the porn off my front page without getting rid of NSFW memes. Thanks!
Edit 2: Weirdly, Connect does not seem to show my newly subscribed communities in my subscriptions even though the other apps do. What a strange bug. Hmm…I think I’ll hold off on using it until things like that work better for me.
If you as user block an instance that doesn’t really solve the problem, Threads is still federated and getting your stuff, it’s just hidden from you
