Meta/Instagram launched a new product called Threads today (working title project92). It adds a new interface for creating text posts and replying to them, using your Instagram account. Of note, Meta has stated that Threads plans to support ActivityPub in the future, and allow federation with ActivityPub services. If you actually look at your Threads profile page in the app your username has a threads.net tag next to it - presumably to support future federation.
Per the link, a number of fediverse communities are pledging to block any Meta-directed instances that should exist in the future. Thus instance content would not be federated to Meta instances, and Meta users would not be able to interact with instance content.
I’m curious what the opinions on this here are. I personally feel like Meta has shown time and time again that they are not very good citizens of the Internet; beyond concerns of an Eternal September triggered by federated Instagram, I worry that bringing their massive userbase to the fediverse would allow them to influence it to negative effect.
I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place, and I’m eager to hear more opinions. What do you think?
Playing devil’s advocate a bit here:
Considering that I rate Facebook as evil as Google, would you support “defederating” Google Mail from other mail services?
In my opinion, the fediverse/ActivityHub is just the underlying protocol to enable people to connect to each other just like SMTP and whether I want to contact someone using a service provider that I don’t like is my choice and should not be the choice of my service provider…
My understanding is that the main problem is allowing them to get any foot in the door in the first place. They are not in it to be nice, they are in it to beat out and absorb the competition for their gain. The fediverse is about giving users a place to go that’s not full of ads and algorithms. They only see us as untapped revenue streams.
While that’s true, other instances will eventually also need to find a way to make money. And unless you’re on the Facebook instance you shouldn’t see their ads (unless they inject those ads as posts).
The Facebook crowd can only assimilate us when we switch to their instance. I see a point where new users would prefer a bigger, i.e. Facebookey instance over smaller ones when they don’t know anything about the fediverse.
If they get large enough, they will be able to force protocol changes.
No. I disagree. They already used to keep tracking metadata on non-users (admittedly, I’m beyond sketchy on the details here), they’re not at all welcome here.
They already know too much about me
That’s fair but there’s a difference between getting donation money to keep the server running (Wikipedia) and trying to get every cent you can from user data and targeted ads.
Sure, if you hate it so much. Join a service that’s excluded.
The people here now largely don’t care about content from Meta. I don’t even care personally if people don’t want to switch from Meta to the fediverse.
I get being able to keep access to friends and their content, but a big draw of having this account is not being tied to me at all beyond my content and comments being semi publicly known to be from the same person.
The idea of federating to me seems to be being able to have one account with access to everything. That’s not necessarily a benefit.
If the fediverse gets big enough it won’t matter if they’re able to access Meta content. The grass gets too green here to feel like you’re missing out.
I don’t even think them being cut off from the 'verse completely is the intent either. I personally don’t want to be attached to them, so like I said, if this instance decides to that’s fine. I will move to one that’s not for myself. It doesn’t have to be that big of a thing.
Just like your example, of you personally don’t want to connect with Gmail, you join a network that’s not connected. Everybody’s happy.
I don’t want to touch their content, and I feel like I’m large part the people that have moved here already mostly agree in not seeing value in a connection to Meta.
This will not always be the case, and for them that’s fine.
I’m starting to get rant-y here, so I’ll cut it off.
But back to the original point- if you don’t want Google stuff, then yes, join a place without it. That’s ok, and kind of the design of this setup.
I really believe the content here will surpass anything they can possibly contribute, and then making an account over on this side shouldn’t be an impossible hurdle.
Not OP, but yes. They have entirely too much control over email traffic. You have to play ball with Alphabet or not at all if you want to host an email server today - I don’t want that to be the fate of the fediverse as well.
Don’t you see how that would make e-mail worse for everyone that uses e-mail?
Imagine having an e-mail address but you couldn’t send an e-mail to your friend because for whatever reason your e-mail server decided to not block Gmail. That makes e-mail worse for everyone.
It’s the same here, we’re trying to get away from social media silos and move towards a protocol that lets everyone participate. The kneejerk reaction here is to just create a new silo that has different owners instead of just being part of a network that shares a protocol.