Those of you not plugged into the Mastodon community may not be aware of the predominant reaction to Instagram Threads. This started when it was merely rumored, reaching a crescendo with reports that Meta had been talking to a few of the larger Mastodon instances under NDA, presumably to encourage them not to “defederate” with Threads when it came online.1 Let me describe that reaction for you, with only mild exaggeration:
This opinion piece is incredible well written in my opinion and touches on defederation more broadly. Relevant stuff.
You have low standards then
“Meta is coming! If Threads is allowed to become part of the Fediverse, it will destroy it! It will steal your data! It will inject ads onto your timeline! It will corrupt Mastodon into being everything you hate about Facebook and Twitter combined!”
Please breakdown your comment because I don’t get what you’re getting at.
The article fails to go over the scenario of fediverse instances falling in line with whatever moderation rules facebook enforces in fear of getting defederated. That is a natural reaction that is really difficult to overcome.
Why would that happen? The majority of instance admins have already said they’ll defederate with Threads. I doubt there are large number of instance who actively want to not only federate with Threads, but want to federate so bad that they’ll change their own moderation practices against their users’ wishes.
Because people suck.
And I’m not talking about defederated instances. Those have made a stance. It’s great we seem to be at the majority here, but new instances will pop up overtime, user counts will shift, policies will change.
Running a fediverse server is notoriously taxing. I don’t see people deciding to start up a node just so they can spend their time enforcing policies they don’t believe in that were handed down from Meta. The large majority of people who decide to start their own instance are probably doing it to gain some level of freedom over their social interactions online and falling in line with a large corporate overlord is antithetical to that
I’m kinda baffled at how little trust people have on the Fediverse. People talk like every single instance is one soft breeze from collapsing and giving into the first Big Tech company to glance their way, and they best that we can hope is to fence it off to ward off the inevitable temptation. If that’s how it is, it doesn’t bode well for the future, regardless of Meta’s presence.
Emotional take and zero technicalitie.
The truly toxic idea, though, is that Mastodon instances should not only refuse to federate with Threads, but they should refuse to federate with other servers that do federate with Threads
It’s really, sincerely not. Facebook is a virus and it’s impossible to interact with it without being infected.
As much as Meta is an awful company, it’s not a biohazard. The crowds of people in it and who interact with its platforms don’t carry it in their bodies like a plague. And this is what it really is about, the people.
I believe defederation is a mistake because this is an opportunity to show people over there, who are possibly freshly out of Twitter and looking for a place to settle in, that there are better platforms to be in.
And the fact is Threads has what, 10M users already? And Mastodon has like 2M? They’re already a success and leeching the 2M off of Mastodon isn’t a big success for them.
My fear was that Threads was going to steal users into their ecosystem but if there’s going to be federation, right now it looks to me like Mastodon actually stands to benefit more than Threads from it (not taking into account EU regulatory systems).
it’s not a biohazard
No, it’s far more malevolent.
The crowds of people in it and who interact with its platforms don’t carry it in their bodies like a plague.
Have you explored any of the research on the neurochemistry of social media? It’s too early to have a strong foundation, but what’s there isn’t good. Facebook is absolutely designing their algorithm to change your brain chemistry to suit their purposes, which means lots of toxicity so they can feed your “engagement” to advertisers. It absolutely physically changes your brain, and it’s not for the better.
And this is what it really is about, the people.
It’s not about the people. It’s about whether you can trust their servers talking to yours. It’s about how much of the community they can split out into terrible “Facebook compatible” servers that they can bully their way into controlling.
There’s no path to federating with anything Facebook owns not being a catastrophe.
There is something to what you are saying, but at this point you are overblowing it and otherizing people just because they participate in a social media platform you don’t approve of. Yes, social media alters people’s neurochemistry, but it doesn’t mean Thread’s users are mind controlled by Mark Zuckerberg.
And it is about the people. However much you don’t like the company itself, and I don’t either, there are millions of people there that are worth engaging with. Treating it as a faceless evil monolith is oversimplifying the matter.
It’s also almost conspiracionist how these discussions have been going. How exactly will they bully their way into controlling a decentralized ecosystem? If you think Meta can just pressure every admin and none of them would resist, not only that is putting no confidence in the Fediverse, what makes you think defederating is going to prevent that from happening? If you start from the assumption that nobody has any principles and corporate influence can’t be resisted, then it’s all for nothing. It would be only a matter of time for the Fediverse to be swallowed.
But as far as motivations and structure goes, I don’t think it is so fragile.
Not sure if corporate ball-washer or incredibly naïve. Facebook (not using their attempt at rebranding) have more than enough resources to research new and innovative ways to screw over federated instances for their gain. Their goal isn’t to win, it’s to completely dominate. But I’m sure a plucky bunch of volunteers stand a chance against a demonstrably malevolent corporation with infinite money.
I’ve had nothing to do with Facebook or its offshoots since 2015. They’ve used their algorithms to pump all sorts of disinformation and manufactured outrage at the expense of society. That alone should be enough for people to defederate. The abusive information gathering is just the shit icing on a turd cake.
I will likely be shifting to an instance that defederates from Facebook. If that makes me “toxic”, that’s a cross I’m willing to bear.
