Context
There have been a lot of posts and comments recently about Facebook entering the fediverse, and how different instances will handle it. Many people have asked me to commit to pre-emptively defederating from Threads before they even implement ActivityPub.
The lemm.ee federation policy states that it's not a goal for lemm.ee to curate content for our users, but we will certainly defederate any server which aims to systematically break our rules. I want to point out here that Facebook makes essentially all of its money from advertising, and lemm.ee has a no advertising rule - basically, Facebook has a built-in financial incentive to break our rules. ActivityPub has no protections against advertising, so it's likely we will end up having to eventually defederate from Threads just for this reason alone.
However, I would still like to get a feel for how many people in our instance are actually excited for potential federation with Threads. While personally I feel that any theoretical pros are by far outweighed by cons, I do want to use this opportunity to see how much of the community disagrees with me. I am not intending to run this instance as a democracy (sorry if anybody is disappointed by that), but I would still like to have a clear picture of user feedback for potentially major decisions such as this one. This is why I am asking every user who wants lemm.ee to federate with Facebook to please downvote this post.
Here are some reasons why I personally believe that Threads will have a negative effect on the fediverse
- As mentioned above, Facebook is completely driven by ad revenue. There is nothing stopping them from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores, which would ensure that their ads end up on the "all" page of federated servers.
- Threads already has more users than all Lemmy instances combined. Even if their algorithms don't apply to the rest of the fediverse directly, they can still completely dictate what the "all" page will look like for all instances by simply controlling what their own users see and vote on.
- Moderation does not seem to be a priority for Threads so far, meaning that they would create massive moderation workloads for smaller instances.
- In general, Facebook has shown countless times that they don't have their users best interests in mind. They view users as something to exploit for revenue. There are probably ways they are already thinking about hurting the fediverse that we can't even imagine yet.
By the way, we're not really in any rush today with our decision regarding federation
- Threads does not have ActivityPub support yet today
- Even if they add ActivityPub support, their UX is geared towards Mastodon-like usage - it seems unlikely that there would ever be proper interoperability between Threads and Lemmy
- We don't really know what to defederate from - it's completely possible that "threads.net" will not be their ActivityPub domain at all.
So go ahead and downvote if you feel defederation would be a mistake, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! It would be super helpful to me if folks who are in favor of federating with Threads could leave a comment explaining their reasoning.
Update:
By now, it's clear that there is a group of users who are in favor of federating with Threads. The breakdown is like this (based on downvotes):
- lemm.ee users: 136 in favor of federating with Threads
- Others: 288 in favor of federating with Threads
While it seems to be a minority, it's still quite a few users. There is no way to please all users in this situation - any decision I make will certainly inconvenience some of you, and I apologize for that.
A big thanks to everybody who has shared opinions and arguments in comments so far. I think there are several well written comments that have been unfairly downvoted, but I have personally read all comments and tried to respond to several as well. I will keep reading them as they come in.
The main facts I am working with right now are as follows:
- The majority of lemm.ee users are strongly opposed to immediately federating with Threads
- Facebook has a proven track record of exploiting users (and a built-in financial incentive to do so)
- We currently lack proper federation/moderation tools to allow us to properly handle rule breaking content from Facebook
Considering all of the above, I believe the initial approach for lemm.ee should be to defederate Threads, and then monitor the situation for a period of time to determine if federating with them in the future is a realistic option
In order to federate with them, the following conditions would need to be fulfilled:
- There needs to be actual interoperability between Threads and Lemmy
- Threads needs to prove that they are not flooding instances with rule-breaking content (mainly ads and bigotry for lemm.ee)
- There needs to be a mechanism to prevent feed manipulation by Threads algorithms (potentially this means discarding all incoming votes from Threads)
Note: this is an initial list, subject to change as we learn more about Threads.
Again, I realize this approach won't please everybody, but I really believe it's the best approach on a whole for now. Please feel free to keep adding comments and keep the discussion going if you think there is something I have not considered.
I despise Facebook and have distanced myself from their products for well over a decade. That being said, I can't support punishment for pre-crime especially when we are the ones pushing for open communication and power of the people. To me, defederating from threads before they do anything wrong is very hypocritical and giving them ammunition against Lemmy, etc. The media isn't going to listen to us, they are going to listen to Meta when they say that they wanted to open up their borders and we slammed the door shut.
In short, defederating immediately means we are the ones breaking federation.
Refusing to hire a babysitter with a history of sexual abuse isn't "punishment for pre-crime". It's just being smart and avoiding extreme risk to your children.
In the same vein, we all know how Meta/Facebook will behave, we know they're going to do everything they can to exert total control over everything they touch. It's practically a legal requirement for them to extract maximum value from the very air we breath.
So giving them the benefit of the doubt is nothing less than reckless. It's like trusting a crack addict with your wallet.
That feels like a poor analogy simply due to the fact that this discussion is about federating with Threads rather than asking everybody to join Threads itself.
But the powers provided by federation specifically disempower monopoly control. Interoperability is the gold standard of breaking up the tech monopoly network effects. If Facebook is simply trying to capitalize as a "first mover/early mover" and is willing to set flames to the old system of control in order to get ahead, let them. Zuck gets to stay relevant for another 10 years, and he sows the seeds of distruction for the rest of them.
Yes there is risk, but it can be easily mitigated by simply keeping an eye on it and using defederating as leverage in that relationship. Worst comes to worst, just defederate anyways.
Ahh yea.... Now it feels just like Reddit.
I'm not here to argue. I was asked for my opinion and I gave it.
With a growing community you should expect an argument to your opinion. What did you expect? Attributing this rebuttal to Reddit doesn't make sense but hey that's just another opinion on here.
Bro spent too much time on Reddit.
Thanks for the comment!
I definitely think that you have a valid point - defederation can make us look bad to potential new users. It might be a bit of a case of shooting ourselves in the foot. On the other hand, sometimes you need to amputate a foot in order to save a patient.
It's certainly a difficult topic for sure. You're absolutely right about amputation but in those cases you make absolutely sure that the infection is indeed a problem.
To me it's also telling that any time and instance on both Lemmy and Mastodon ask their users this question it's invaded by people from other instances that become the strongest vocal opposition. It really makes me feel like there's a very loud minority that is more intent on making others see their way than they are the actual will of the people. That's not to say they don't have valid points but they make it really hard to judge the actual pulse.
Reality is that I'd probably not leave lemm.ee if you defederate immediately because of the UI differences that you mentioned but when it comes to Mastodon I think it's a bigger deal. You've so far shown that you're acting as a great admin so I have trust that you'll make the right call - whatever that is.
Our humble admin is pinning this post only to get a feel for what users think about the idea so all opinions are under consideration. We haven't done any "amputating" yet and may not ever need to. As mentioned in the OP, Threads has not actually federated with anyone yet (as far as I know) and even if they have, Lemmy is fairly insulated from Mastodon at this point.
This is this not a case of "pre-crime". Meta has a proven track record along with similar corporations in how they operate and the ways in which they monopolize their space. There's no doubt the limb is gangrene.
I agree, i dont think there is too much harm in federating for a little while but being very cautious and watching their actions. It seems like a waste to potentially throw away all the interaction from all those 'normie' users who would have otherwise had no interaction with the fediverse or see what its like.