this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Fediverse

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Something I don't understand currently about the whole Meta/Threads debacle is why I'm seeing talk about instances which choose to federate with Threads themselves being defederated. I have an account on mastodon.social, one of the instances which has not signed the fedipact, and I've had people from other instances warn me that their instances are going to defederate mastodon.social when Threads arrives.

I have no reason to doubt that, so, assuming that they are, why? I don't believe instances behave as any kind of relay system: anybody who wishes to defederate from Threads can do so and their instances will not pull in Threads content, even if they remain federated to another instance which does.

I'm unsure how boosts work in this scenario, perhaps those instances are concerned that they'll see Threads content when mastodon.social or other Threads-federated instances users boost it, or that their content will be boosted to Threads users? The two degrees of separation would presumably prevent that, so I can see that being a reason to double-defederate, assuming that is how boosts work (is it?).

Other than that, perhaps the goal is simply to split the fediverse into essentially two sides, the Threads side and the non-Threads side, in order to insulate the non-Threads side from any embrace, extend, extinguish behavior on Meta's part?

Ultimately, my long term goal is just to use kbin to interact with the blogging side of the fediverse, but there are obviously teething issues currently, like some Mastodon instances simply aren't compatible with kbin. I'm too lazy to move somewhere else only to move to kbin "again" after that, so in the short term I guess I'll just shrug in the general direction of Mastodon.

To be clear, I have a pretty solid understanding of why people want to defederate Threads (and I personally agree that it's a good idea), it's the double-defederation I'm not sure I follow. Is my understanding at all close? Are there other reasons? Thanks for any insight.

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[–] asjmcguire@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I mean I find it quite ironic really that The fediverse has been screaming about how threads/meta will destroy the fediverse, but in reality - it is the fediverse destroying itself from the inside with this nonsense take.

And really - who wants to be part of that, it's actually batshit when you take a step back and think about what is being said:

"I don't want anything to do with X and I don't want anything to do with anyone else who has anything to do with X either"

OK, right now it's meta. But let's talk about lemmy, there are people on the fediverse who think the creators of lemmy are problematic - so what happens when we get "I don't want to associate with lemmy.world but also I don't want to associate with anyone else who does associate with lemmy.world"

Some instances defeded mastodon.social for problematic moderation, but they did not defed other instances that do still federate with mastodon.social.

It seems like an extreme reaction, and if the fediverse does die, it will be the fediverse itself that implodes rather than being destroyed from any company on the outside.

[–] wagesj45@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

it is the fediverse destroying itself from the inside

welcome to the fediverse :3

[–] ImaginaryFox@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I see this fediverse thing as anticorporate, so it's why I don't find the association with companies like META alluring. There's a reason why I try to avoid META services, and don't have accounts on places like facebook or instagram. If an instance is part of META then I'd be asking myself what's the difference from me having an account with META?

I find corporate take over more troubling than the personal politics of some users, since that's the type presence that can completely change the reason for a platform's existence. Regardless of individual beliefs I think lot of people on the fediverse see corporations as the main enemy, and with any conflict between each other becoming secondary should and when META make a move. This includes instances that want to defederate from each other, since META is like some world ending big boss enemy everyone is in danger of.

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

lemmy never asked for an NDA, facebook asked for an NDA. This is your difference right there.

fedi admins meeting with Meta under NDAs is shit, that's what it is. It's effectively giving Meta power over fedi, by giving Meta power over what fedi admins can and cannot share with their communities.

Why did they sign an NDA, tell us!