For anyone wondering if Threads and Facebook at large will be a fine neighbor in the space and compatible with other apps/services in the fediverse: they’re already automatically hiding comments that mention Pixelfed https://mastodon.social/@dansup/112126250737482807
lemm.ee is already defederated. Didn’t even have to do anything. I think I chose the right instance.
Edit: defederated not federated
What’s the point of planning to integrate with activitypub if they do shit like this?
Divide & Conquer
Stage 1 of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
This only hides content locally for Threads users, it doesn’t affect visibility from any other fedi platform. It’s not that different from a Lemmy instance downvoting a comment to the point of being auto-hidden; it still exists but requires an extra click to see from your instance, and the rest of the fediverse can access it normally.
The point isn’t for other fedi users. It’s to deter Threads users from becoming proper fedi users. It used to be those popups only appeared when something genuinely touchy came up. Now they’re used for anything the parent company doesn’t like as a scare tactic but people don’t realise it. Google does this too with Play Protect.
youre not going to get anywhere with this crowd. they are so overtly butthurt over the fact meta does anything with the activitypub protocol theres this fetish of ‘how dare you communicate with that corporate run instance’
dont bother with the logic that EmbraceExtendExtinguish only works if the rest of the verse adopts proprietary shit
just dont bother.
To overrule it
The short version is that Meta see any type of competitors has a treat to its capital. It will do whatever is needed to fight it and destroy it. They introduced stories for Snapchat, reels for TikTok, etc. With the fediverse, they federate to extinguish it.
Does this mean that if we always mention
pixelfedor@pixelfedwe can effectively block Meta from leveraging our contributions to the Fediverse?… Or you know, just go to an instance that defederates from Threads if you don’t want you content there?
Some of us are not savy and don’t know how to do that.
your instance is already defederated from threads
Thank you! I thought it was but then I have been seeing toots from instances that I’m not supposed to be able to see (or so I thought) so I wasn’t so sure I understood the whole thing anymore. Also, I don’t understand the difference between defederated and fedipact 😬
Fedipact is people who’ve signed some thing pledging to never federate with threads, whereas all the other ones have just defederated them without signing the pact. In reality there’s not really any difference at all.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply! I apologize for having a “knot in my brain” about this. I have now had the time to read most of this whole exchange and understand better. Also I realized that what was confusing me was not on a Lemmy server. I was under the impression that the fedipact meant that my other server (Neuro different.me) will not federate with thread but will also defederate from servers who federate with Thread. But that doesn’t seem to be the case so what I don’t understand now is: if my server defederated Thread but remains federated with a server that didn’t defederate Thread… My data could still land on a Thread server?
If my server defederated Thread but remains federated with a server that didn’t defederate Thread… My data could still land on a Thread server?
if your instance defeds threads then it blocks any information being sent to threads at all so they wont receive anything that you post, not even your upvotes on posts will federate with threads.
The only case where this gets kind of weird is if you’re on an instance that federates via an allow list of approved instances instead of using the normal method of federating with everyone by default then blocking selected bad instances (the only large instance that uses this method for federation though is hexbear as far as im aware so its not really that important).
I followed the link to the mastodon post and saw this edit
“Edit: As mentioned below, it appears to be a bug, not intentional!”
Of course it was. 🙄
I wish I could go back to a Lemmy thread showing how Mastodon and other Fediverse instances were blocking Meta ahead of it’s integration, where people went “Oh you’re just being paranoid, why would they do that?” And when given examples of companies taking open standards and either making themselves the biggest source of users or killing it (Microsoft, Google, Apple) they either went “Well that happened in 2006, it’s 2023!”
I know the bootlickers wouldn’t actually change their mind, but jesus christ. It’s frustrating for groups of advocates to be ignored and proven right each time. Cassandra syndrome is real.
what exactly is meta doing thats different than every other fedinstance moderating inbound content?
cuz its nothing. nothing beyond that. but hey, get your meta-hate fetish on.
What are these examples and how do they relate to what Meta is doing?
I just feel like this strategy won’t work for activitypub. The whole idea is to make interoperable web platforms. If meta tries to damage that then I don’t see why activitypub developers would cooperate when it’s against the whole purpose of the project.
I don’t think you have to know how the poison works to know the snake bite will kill you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_controversies
They will come here (edit: They HAVE come here) with a goal of exploiting and controlling the fediverse. You and I don’t have to know how they will do that in order for it to be true. Scrubbing links to a product that competes with Instagram from threads seems like a decent start though.
I mean I am completely unsurprised by their misbehavior, I’m just slightly more optimistic about our ability to resist them.
That said, the one danger I can see is Meta gaining more authority over the activitypub developers. That is probably something worth being vigilant about.
I’m just slightly more optimistic about our ability to resist them.
What form would such resistance take if not advocating loudly for defederation?
it will not, but theres a hate-fetish for meta on lemmy and logic has nothing to do with it.
its all ‘but they are bad actors’ but never ‘this is the technical way they will extend the protocol to weaken it’ because there isnt anything.
threads is just another instance moderating inbound content. somehow thats going to kill thousands of independent pieces of software.
TIL about Pixelfed :) I will be signing up.
Is it like Instagram? I don’t get it. I might be too old.
Yes it’s a fediverse platform mainly focused on sharing pictures.
Yay! Love that Streisand effect.
TIL about Barbara Streisand :) I will be listening.
Repeat after me: I will not federate with any Meta products.
I’m kind of stupid and more here just because it tends to be better discussion than Reddit: what does “federate with” mean in this context??
Thanks!
@Minotaur @henfredemars @technology You are using an account on lemm.ee to reply to someone commenting from an account on infosec.pub in a community hosted on lemmy.world.
Those are all running Lemmy software, but I am replying from an account on social.goodanser.com, which is running Mastodon software.
That’s federation. We’re all using different service providers, sometimes even different software, but we can talk to each other because they speak the same protocol, called ActivityPub. Threads.net has announced plans to support ActivityPub and conducted some limited trials, which they’re in the process of expanding. They claim they intend to support it fully, but only for users who opt in to it.
Servers can block, or “defederate from” other servers, and many have chosen to preemptively defederate from Threads.
Wait did I miss something big? Does Lemmy now federate with Mastodon somehow? How does that work?
Always has. Anything using ActivittPub can interoperate
I was under the impression that it theoretically could but wasn’t set up in a way that made this possible. But perhaps I was mistaken.
How do I access Mastodon content using my account here then?
Threads hasn’t had federation enabled until now, but you’ve always been able to interact with Mastodon… sort of. The Lemmy UI doesn’t really have a good way of finding Mastodon posts that don’t tag a Lemmy community or of following Mastodon users, but if they do tag a community the Mastodon post will show up as a Lemmy post in that community.
I see. So functionally it doesn’t really work, at least in this direction.
You can’t use mastodon from Lemmy, but you can from some threadiverse software like Kbin.
You’ve had some well-meaning but ultimately not quite accurate answers in this thread so just to clarify:
You can follow, post to and interact with Lemmy communities from Mastodon, because they’re treated the same way as a “group” on Mastodon in general.
You can NOT follow and interact with Mastodon users from Lemmy, because Mastodon accounts are individual “users” and Lemmy doesn’t have the concept of following and interacting with users, only with communities. If Lemmy ever does add a feature to let us follow other users, then in theory following Mastodon users will also become possible.
@LibertyLizard @technology It always has. They both speak ActivityPub.
The UX can be awkward though. As an example, I had to add the community tag to this comment manually, as it won’t federate to lemmy.world otherwise. That’s because Mastodon doesn’t push replies to every server with users participating in a thread, which I think is a design flaw.
To post to Lemmy from Mastodon, just tag a community. You can load any of the fediverse links shown in the default Lemmy web UI in a Mastodon search box and reply to them. You can also follow a community and receive every subsequent post and comment as a boost (this is a bad UX and I don’t recommend it), as well as follow Lemmy users, which you can’t do in Lemmy itself. You cannot vote on Lemmy posts/comments from Mastodon.
I find tagging an appropriate Lemmy community from my Mastodon posts to be a good experience. You’ll see a few of those from my @zaktakespictures account in @birding, and from @zakreviews in @flashlight.
I’m pretty sure Lemmy won’t make new toplevel posts out of this in those communities since it’s a reply, but I’m going to check just to be sure.
Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: [email protected], [email protected]
As far as I know it’s always been this way. At least since I joined during the whole reddit fiasco
How do you access Mastodon content in Lemmy?
It doesn’t work so well in that direction. Lemmy doesn’t have a concept of content that isn’t posted to a community. If a Mastodon post tags a Lemmy community, it’s available as a normal Lemmy post, but otherwise it doesn’t exist.
FWIW I think this is intentional and a feature, not a bug. By spreading content to communities, you can delegate moderation responsibility much easier.
Content not posted to any community would need something akin to a site-wide moderator or an admin to moderate, and such a moderator wouldn’t be as effective. They’d cover a wider array of very different content. Community moderators work better because they can define rules that are only confined to their comm and they know better how to moderate their own community and they also care more about their own community so are more motivated to keep it well-moderated in the fashion they want.
I didn’t fully understand what I was talking about when I replied, and for that I apologize. Now that I know a little bit more, this is basically how it works (I think):
We cannot see posts made directly on Mastodon. However, they can see posts made on Lemmy and even comment on them. We are able to see those comments as normal and without doing anything on our end, but again, that’s only as long as they’re made under Lemmy posts
Very interesting. Appreciate the response. Didn’t know big companies like meta had any interest in the whole “federation” gig, seeing that it seems a little “opposed” to the kind of big revenue that supports tech companies like that
You need more training in corporate risk management, grasshopper! AP/AtProto isn’t a revenue opportunity, it’s a potential front for which they’ll need to have a battle-ready product and brand. Ever heard the saying ‘engagement is containment’?
And now I’m commenting from a lemmy.world account because Lemmy from Mastodon has some rough edges like the need to tag the community in my comment above to ensure it actually reaches the lemmy.world server.
Tumblr and Flickr are also talking about ActivityPub support, but it’s not clear if or when that will actually happen. It would make more sense to me for those services since they’re fairly small and it’s a way to substantially increase the possible audience. It’s not clear what Meta’s motivations are here, though a motivation some have proposed is that they’re trying to get in front of potential regulation. The EU Digital Markets Act, for example requires some services to interoperate with competitors, and having one of its new products join an established standard protocol is a way to say “you don’t need to regulate us, we already do the thing”.
I don’t think their blocking of comments mentioning Pixelfed is intentional. Pixelfed is not popular enough for Meta to care about as a competitor, and blocking mentions of competitors has never been among their tactics.
Youtube was blocking comments mentioning Fediverse and ActivityPub 2 years ago way before all the exposure the Fediverse got last year. Facebook was blocking links to mastodon instances also before all that. There is absolutely no way a very specific word such as Pixelfed would be blocked “accidentally”, how do you propose such accidental block would even be possible? Oops, intern smashed his butt against a keyboard and set a filter that happened to catch Pixelfed by accident? Come on.
Appreciate this response, it seems to make a lot of sense to me.
I think people on sites like Lemmy and similar can kind of uhh… overestimate how much anyone outside of a very niche crowd care about the whole “federalization” movement, and yeah it seems unlikely to me that Threads is going out of its way to shadowban a (comparatively) niche competitor like Pixelfed
I’m about 99% sure Threads uses automated spam/abuse filtering based on uncommon words present in posts that have recently been flagged as abusive. Somebody, perhaps several somebodies probably posted “follow my porn account on Pixelfed” or similar that Threads doesn’t like. I’d use something like that if I was making a huge social media thing because you can’t not at that scale.
That’s exactly why Threads is incompatible with the Fediverse. Any huge server that is impossible to moderate for admins is detrimental to the network and failure to properly moderate is the number one reason we should be looking at to defederate from instances.
Automatic “spam” protection is the exact thing which co-opted e-mail. Big corps with the largest e-mail user base use algorithms that automatically assume the worst about any small e-mail server. If you spin up a small server you are assumed to be spam unless unless unless, which ended up with e-mail being centralized in the hands of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple, despite being theoretically decentralized too.
Is that what we want for the Fediverse? 4 or 5 huge instances automatically defederating from all small instances unless they fit some criteria defined by the big corps, which they can change anytime?
But it actually isn’t, because the largest driver of growth for platforms like facebook & instagram is the already present userbase.
That userbase will always be there if the programs are all federated together, so creating a new platform is now just making a better site versus that and bringing in the userbase.
I will not mederate with any Feta products.
after me: I will not federate with any Meta products.
I will not federate with any meta products.
I will not federate with any meta products.
I will not federate with any meta products.
I will not federate with any meta products
I will not federate with any meta products
I will not federate with any meta products
I will not federate with any meta products
Serious question: how do we - the end users - stop federating with Meta?
Move to an instance that won’t.
Burying your head in the sand doesn’t change the fact that whatever LW does will affect all of Lemmy. They’re too big.
That sounds like a problem for instances federated with Meta. Empathy is cool but they are not our problem.
This is a strange response for me because de-federating is an active step on behalf of its admin, usually after a vote amongst its users, at creating a virtual boundary between the two entities. How is that burying your head in the sand? And yeah, lemmy.world is big, but aside from the obvious loss of content/users, what other effect will that have on the mass of de-federated instances?
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that since LW will federate with them, any content they host, will end up on meta.For example, this discussion we’re having right now is on [email protected]. So it doesn’t matter whether our own instances have defederated meta - our posts and comments here will bring them value. Directly, in the form of content. And indirectly, in the form of processable data for machine learning, shadow profiles, etc.but my understanding is that since LW will federate with them, any content they host, will end up on meta
Your understanding is wrong. Instances don’t forward stuff from other instances to other instances. Instances only send their own content directly to the instances they federate with.
So on a different instance that’s not federated with Meta I can see LW content but not Metas?
Thanks!
whatever LW does will affect all of Lemmy
Uuuh no it won’t? The fact that they federate with Threads doesn’t mean that my instance does. How does it affect me?
You posted this to a LW community, so your content and data will end up in Meta’s hands as well.No, that’s not how federation works. My instance sends my content directly to everything my instance federates with. No instance takes content from other instances and sends it further - that is not a thing. I sent my content to lemmy.world and it is free to be there. Lemmy.world will not forward that to Threads.
Not sure anyone posted this in direct reply to you - https://fedipact.veganism.social/
You can search/filter for your instance there. As an example, if you search lemmy.world you’ll see they currently do federate with meta.
Migrate away from instances that embrace Meta to those that do not. Choose an instance that aligns with you.
Or in the extreme case, if you’re the first who can’t find such an instance and you’re technically inclined, there’s your room for a new instance. It’s how the fediverse works and partly why Meta is so intent on destroying it.
How does one find a list of instances that aren’t federated with meta?
EDIT: removed comment due to outdated and inaccurate information.
Replied in another comment, but here is is again. https://fedipact.veganism.social/
Appreciate the link! Glad to see that both my mastodon and lemmy instances have already blocked their content.
What’s the difference between blocked and fedipact?
The tooltip for fedipact says: “Agreed to block all communications (their blocklist is private)”
To me that says, they’ve agreed but it’s not confirmed that they’ve gone through with it because the blocklist is private. Blocked on the other hand says “All communications are blocked”
Thanks! I was on mobile and couldn’t see the tooltip
I think fedipact actually sign the pack to block and the others just blocked.
Thanks for this. Looking to make an account on a better server now
I don’t know,but you can check individual instances by going to the/instancessubdomain and searching for threads.shjw and blahaj are defederated, world isn’t.
This can always change, but I have confidence in my admins.Edit: Thanks to [email protected] for this link
Pixelfed pixelfed pixelfed
Gottem
That’s why I just moved from lemmy.world to an instance that defederated that Meta shit.
it’s almost as if a company that helped incite an ethnic cleansing just a few years ago, hosts far right stochastic terrorists like libs of tiktok (despite the owner repeatedly breaking meta’s own rules) and actively suppressed the voices of Palestinians and posts that criticised Israel doesn’t make for a good instance to federate with.
it was immensely irresponsible for any instance to federate with them, let alone the largest one.
Im surprised no one has copy pasted libs of tiktok posts with info of mark zuckerberg, elon, etc to see if that breaks TOS and yell free speech and right wing censorship if the accounts are taken down
Choosing a defederated instance might be a good idea…I just signed up here but I’ll consider it.
I could also just block the threads.net domain, no? Or would my data still get shipped off to Meta? I’m a little fuzzy on how detailed user account level federation works still.
I could also just block the threads.net domain, no?
Nope domain blocking in Lemmy only does anything for communities. Plus blocking on Lemmy isn’t even really blocking, it’s a more extreme mute function that is deceptively called “block”.
Your lemmy data is on the public internet. Whether threads is federated with your instance or not, meta can still get all of your posts/comments.
But realistically they won’t and at least we make it harder for them. Don’t make defederation sound like it’s a lost cause when it isn’t.
A fair point!
The issue is less Facebook getting your data and more Facebook getting invited to the party when they have ruined every other party they were invited to.
We can’t really stop Facebook from peering into the window to the party, but we can slam the door in Facebook’s face when they knock and try to come in, as we should.
Do we have a list of instances that have chosen to defederate?
Never mind, found it! Glad to see my Chosen home has blocked them!
Link?
Here ya go.
Thanks babe
fedipact.veganism.social
The only thing that saved Meta/Web3 from creating a special hell where digital rent seeking pervades all social interaction is that capitalism is too advanced at this point to create a market before trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of it.
We’ve reached the phase where all new enterprise services come pre-enshittified
The chicken comes prehatched inside the egg so to speak, but when the chicken hatches it is just a really tiny useless chicken that lays eggs the size of ice cream sprinkles.
they’re so scared of us you can’t even talk about us on their shitty platforms. that should tell you a lot
thats it, the fediverse is canceled cuz threads is doing stupid shit on their own server. game over. everyone pack up their lemmy and go home.
Obviously not, but the behavior already shows that Meta/Threads isn’t interested in being a good fediverse citizen, and in doing so lends more credibility to the idea that they’re aiming to embrace, extend, and extinguish.
I’m sorry but the fediverse is full of instances that block other instances. Blocking an instance is not bad behaviour on the fediverse.
If you don’t like Threads, don’t use it (I’m not using it), and if you want to use an instance that blocks Threads… you’re welcome to do that.
But what I don’t get is the idea that threads is somehow trying to kill the fediverse. All of the evidence is to the contrary. Meta wants to exist in a federated world. That doesn’t mean they will allow access to all content on their corner of the fediverse, nobody wants that. All instances block some other instances and threads has every right to make their own choice about who to block.
Honey blocking all mentions of Pixelfed is not at all like blocking one instance, it is blocking the entire platform. It would be the same as blocking all mentions of Lemmy or all mentions of Mastodon, which would not block ONE instance, but ALL INSTANCES.
Meta can only do that on threads though. I don’t care, that’s really not my business.
Other people care, I certainly don’t care if you care or not doe and I didn’t ask for that spontaneous bit of information. You don’t care? Uh, ok… I guess.
You’re missing the point. I don’t want you to understand my feelings, I want someone to explain to me what the big deal is. How meta “moderates” their platform has no effect on me, a non-threads user. What is my stake in it?
I think it is (or should be) an antitrust issue to scrub all links to a competitor (Pixelfed vs Instagram) from your platform.
I can still find out about Bing from Google or vice versa. People would legitimately be upset if this were not so. I can still use Edge to download Firefox. People would legitimately be upset if this were not so. Etc etc etc.
I’ll copy and paste my reply to someone else here:
Any huge server that is impossible to moderate for admins is detrimental to the network and failure to properly moderate is the number one reason we should be looking at to defederate from instances.
Automatic “spam” protection is the exact thing which co-opted e-mail. Big corps with the largest e-mail user base use algorithms that automatically assume the worst about any small e-mail server. If you spin up a small server you are assumed to be spam unless unless unless, which ended up with e-mail being centralized in the hands of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple, despite being theoretically decentralized too.
Is that what we want for the Fediverse? 4 or 5 huge instances automatically defederating from all small instances unless they fit some criteria defined by the big corps, which they can change anytime?
To summarize, how big Threads is and how they decide to moderate the content matters for anyone who doesn’t want the Fedi to end up like e-mail.
but I am home
Here, you dropped this: /s
