Meta threads will open federation to the fediverse soon, and while this is mainly to mastodon it will still affect lemmy. They are acting like they won't be evil, but let's be real this is Facebook when have they ever done that.
This article which has been trending lately explains some of the issues. https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
This comment here is a simple analogy if you can't be bothered reading the article. https://lemmy.ca/comment/5702922
@lodion@aussie.zone
Meta don't deserve any chances, I'm here to get away from that toxic bull and would much prefer it to be blocked from any instance I interact with.
For completeness there was a discussion (outdated) a few months back on this for anyone interested: https://aussie.zone/post/401165
I presume this will be the case, but don’t think there’s been any official announcement yet. The majority of current servers have planned to resist by defederating.
This seems like a very important discussion but let me tell you how I came across it. It's possible many others on Aussie Zone fall into a similar boat as mine. If not please ignore.
I only use Voyager to interact with Lemmy regularly. Occasionally I check out Aussie Zone via a browser but that's very rare.
I think the 'Default feed' for Voyager is 'Home' which are the coms I've subbed to. I didn't even know what 'Local' was until I looked it up just now (while trying to find out if Voyager can list all the coms of an instance like the coms page in a desktop browser, which I don't think it does).
So I was surprised not to see this discussion earlier after seeing it pop up more broadly across the lemmyverse. Turns out that's because I never selected the Local feed to see what everyone is talking about and because I wasn't subbed to Meta (as in the Aussie Zone com, not the company) until now.
If my ignorance is unusual for Aussie Zone folk then please ignore this comment. If it's possible that lots of other active or semi-active local users are not seeing this discussion is there any way to highlight it across the instance?
I've cross posted to Australia, locked and pinned which should get some attention from other users in your boat
it can get pinned by an admin, but i dont think thats nessarcery . you should subscribe to !meta@aussie.zone if you want to see posts about the instance itself.
I know you've worked it out now but here is my own personal take.
I'm not subscribed to any aussie.zone communities. I just use 'Local' and 'New' ('New Comments' also helps) to browse them all in one go after first looking at 'Home' in Voyager.
It's why instance shopping by interest is important for some, using 'Local' becomes your community. Mastodon is similar, you join an instance that is related to you and 'Local' becomes another browsing tool. I am on aus.social so every now and again I use 'Local' to find posts from Aussies that weren't hashtagged properly (knowing full well there are other australian instances that I'm missing).
If you were on lemmy.world, 'Local' would be waste. Too many posts.
Hey that New Comments tip is great. I think I might test out your method of not subbing local coms and using Local to check what's happening and also subbing to fedded coms so they come up in Home. Cheers.
I posted this link in a reply but I'll put it here just incase. According to this part of the threads TOS by interacting with a threads user they will collect your data and send targeted ads.
https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/111585528118111249
Someone has misunderstood my previous comments on this topic: https://aussie.zone/post/298893
Damn, what's the point of a pact if people are being included without signing or even being notified? Makes me question the accuracy of the entire list.
All I want to say is please do not let Facebook destroy us. It has destroyed democracies and got away with it because it has the money and nobody can touch it. We don't know what their plan is but please be on the safe side. If they try to destroy us , we sure can't do anything and will be scrambling for help at the last moment will he stupid AF. Better safe than sorry so there's no point of "wait and see". If all instances starts defederating then that'll surely send them a message and they might stop wasting money on threads.net like they did with their VR bullshit.
Ik. Sometimes I forget the instance by accident and add it back later
A few points to make on this topic:
- There is presently nobody to defederate from: They aren't in the fediverse yet, and while we can guess they'll use threads.net as their domain, that's all it would be - a guess. There is no point preemptively defederating from that domain when we don't even know it's what they'll use in federation.
- Defederating is trivial from the instance level. Just type their domain to the "blocked instances" setting and it's done for everyone. This move can be made at any time in under a minute.
- A change to the behaviour of aussie.zone this large will likely be passed by the users in some way. It's not a thing to undertake lightly.
- The new Lemmy allows users to block instances for them personally. If you don't want to personally interract with Threads, just add them to your block list and it's done. You won't see anything from that instance. It'll also mean you won't see replies to their comments made from here. *
* You can't actually defederate from them yet, as the "block instance" UI searches for federated domains and won't permit you to add threads.net as that domain is not federated. You'll need to do this if/when they actually federate with the rest of us.
This is how I think about this.Edit - this is what comes to mind when I think about this
*removed externally hosted image*
I'm deeply conflicted about this, I want federation with big services, I think that is part of the raison d'etre of #activitypub.
But I know the risks, I'm old enough to remember #Microsoft embracing and extinguishing the browser, #Goggle defederating from #XMPP and #Facebook predatory tactics.
Also, I'm starting to think that federation with the big players is unstoppable. The protocol is open and there is no way to get every instance operator on board with the #fedipact . If people want to see the big players' content they'll move to an instance that federates with them. And defederating from those that connect to threads sounds like a Zealot's suicide pact.
Ideally we'd need some kind of legal protection, that makes big services accoutable for what they do with open protocols, but the best we can hope is that the threat of such legislation being enacted will scare the bigs ones into playing fair.
In the mean while there are no technical measures that I can think of and the social measures are unlikely to work. The only thing we can do is to enter into this with open eyes, aware of our history and hope for the best.
I wonder if there is some way that ActivityPub could be patented with license granted to all software licensed under the AGPL so all servers, clients would need to be source-available
You could think of some mad version of the AGPL that requires software that interoperates with yours to open its source, but I doubt it would fly in court.
Patenting an open standard (like activity pub) sound like an oxymoron.
I think it's really worth watching this Flipboard interview/podcast with Eugen Rochko, the creator of Mastodon.
https://flipboard.video/w/cTBu4HusskGTuPBahqm6WY
He sees it as a good thing, and I'm inclined to trust his judgement - it lets us share our ideals and culture with a broader audience, it lets us engage with a larger amount of content (if we want to), and we still have the power to block it at any point if we decide it's a bad thing. Pre-emptive defederation takes the power out of users hands, only grants more power to large silicon valley corporations, and is self-defeating if the goal is to try to move to a federated web.
Also, their federation is likely to have a near non-existent impact on aussie.zone, given we're a link-aggregation platform and not a microblog like Mastodon or Kbin.
