Adam Mosseri:
Second, threads posted by me and a few members of the Threads team will be available on other fediverse platforms like Mastodon starting this week. This test is a small but meaningful step towards making Threads interoperable with other apps using ActivityPub — we’re committed to doing this so that people can find community and engage with the content most relevant to them, no matter what app they use.
And I have moved my mastodon account to an instance who actively defederated Threads. I’m not interested in interacting with anyone on that network.
And I’m fucking sick of the “content relevant for me” thing. I interact with people asking/giving help, discussing and so on. Mindlessly consuming “content” is simply a disease.
Mindlessly consuming “content” is simply a disease.
Agreed. It’s like a lot of other unhealthy addictions.
And I have moved my mastodon account to an instance who actively defederated Threads.
Is that pretty easy to do?
fairly easy. you can export the list of your followers and followed account, block lists, bookmarks and so on, and import them in the new account. the posts you’ve made aren’t moved, though. https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server/
Thanks
It’s great that everyone is able to choose for themselves
I don’t get why Mastodon servers feel the need to fully defederate from Threads. Silencing them is much better. It allows your users to follow Threads accounts without people who don’t know anyone on that side getting overwhelmed by the global timeline, as Threads is about twelve times bigger than the entire rest of the Fediverse combined.
Nobody is moving from Threads to Mastodon because mastodon.zip decided to defederate all you’re doing by blocking them is preventing the users with friends who use Threads from using your site correctly.
Of course some platforms, like Lemmy and Kbin, don’t support moderation features like silencing, it makes sense to fully defederate in those cases, but only because of technical restrictions, really.
why wont threads friends go to mastodon
Same reason why Telegram friends won’t go to Signal: they don’t care about the platform they use, and you end up being that friend if you ask them to change their habits for you.
Once Threads support federation in both direction, the need to move disappears completely. Why would you move to a server run by volunteers that sometimes goes down when Elon says something stupid, especially if your Mastodon friends can interact with your account like normal. That’s ActivityPub working and doing what it’s supposed to do.
How many reasons does Meta have to give before distrust is the default?
“Hey, admin, why can’t I follow my mom on threads from your instance?”
“Because Meta facilitated genocide in Myanmar.”
While Facebook’s recommendation algorithm definitely plays a part here, most of this analysis could have "Facebook " replaced by “the internet” without changing any of the meaning. The same hate speech is also spread across WhatsApp (which caused WhatsApp to put a limit on the amount of times you can forward a message) and every other messenger.
Facebook’s automatic hate speech removal system may be pitifully ineffective, at least they have one. Here on the Fediverse, we have a slur filter, just sometimes, and even fewer moderators per user than Facebook has.
And, despite Facebook’s role in helping spread hate speech as a large platform and refusing to proactively go after such speech, here’s how the rest of your conversation will go:
“Hey, admin, why can’t I follow my mom on threads from your instance?”
“Because Meta facilitated genocide in Myanmar.”
“Aw, that’s bad. Anyway, I’ll just create a Threads account I guess, my mom is sharing my niece’s baby pictures.”
Fuck threads
Anyone who doesn’t understand that connecting in any way to Facebook is not a good thing … is either very naive, or complicit to wanting to take down the fediverse.
Facebook already has enough content and enough of a platform on their own – they literally control half of the worldwide social media network. Why do they want to spread into this new space?
The only reason they want to be on this side is to conquer or destroy.
This perspective of “Either you agree with me or you’re complicit in a conspiracy against me” is incredibly childish and immature.
Sometimes people have different opinions than you. Try to find a way to deal with it.
To me it’s like warning someone to not stand in the middle of the highway, and having some guy go “don’t tell me what to do, I have the right to disagree with you”.
There are idiots in the world and their opinions are actually idiotic. :)
It’s 100% super obvious that Meta wants to control the fediverse, and that’s why they are coming for it.
Can you explain how it’s 100% super obvious? I thought a popular platform with many users entering the fediverse might be good for exposure but it seems like the consensus here is that it’s actually bad. Help me understand how it’s bad?
- Most people using a service don’t want it to suddenly explode with new users who might not behave in the way that old users like
- Facebook don’t want to just be another instance and have a lovely time with everyone, at best they want to seek profit, and based on every other way they seek profit it will be by tightly controlling the experience, filling it with ads, and selling off user data (i.e. all things that most of us came here to escape from)
In summary we know everything Facebook does is pretty evil, it’s “super obvious” that this will therefore be pretty evil too, right?
Ok yeah make sense! I’m definitely not a fan of Facebook’s and Meta’s data policies either.
But how is anyone going to control a decentralised platform tho? What you’re describing seems like it would only apply to users on instances controlled by Meta, i.e. on threads itself. Or maybe I still don’t understand how the fediverse works.
One way I can think of is by being such a big player that they dominate and can thereby exert their will. For example, lemmy.world is the largest lemmy instance and we’ve seen a few communities on other instances dry up in favour of the ones on the big server. Now imagine that server is a hundred times bigger than the next largest and the people in charge have an active financial interest in moving people to their platform - if they play it carefully (and I’m sure they’ll be employing people to think about how to do this) they can shift the existing content into a place they can control it.
Alright I see, thanks a lot for explaining
selling off user data (i.e. all things that most of us came here to escape from)
Since almost everything on the Fediverse is open for all to see, anyone can already be mining the data just by setting up their own instance of Lemmy or Mastodon. This might make it difficult to sell fediverse-generated data for profit.
I’m sure they have a plan (otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it!), maybe it relies on using their app which also has your real name and phone number, maybe it’s for some legal loophole which means all fediverse users technically agree to their terms just by federating. I don’t know what they’re up to, but given their previous behaviour I think it’s safer not to even let them try!
Normally and with very many other issues … I would agree with you … but on this issue I very adamant about what I see and believe.
Think about it … Facebook is a billion dollar corporation and they show interest in your little world and the little things you are doing and they want to join you. This is a company that already has billions invested in systems that already have billions of users and millions of dollars of man power and technological resources. Why do they want to step into what we are doing here? Why do they feel a need to step into our space? Do they need more users? Do they need help from us?
Big corporations are only interested in perpetual growth at all costs. They are also deathly afraid of competition or the potential of future competition. Look at the history of manufacturing, automotive corporations over the past hundred years … it’s a long history of the strong eating the weak.
I agree my argument may sound childish or extreme but in this instance it’s pretty clear … if you let them in, it’s basically the beginning of the end for the fediverse.
It’s the metaphorical Trojan Horse … once it’s inside and firmly established, everything will be lost.
I see you conveniently left out the bit where they said people could also just be naive. Kind of funny how you attempted to take the moral high ground and lecture this person like they were a small child, yet you yourself cherrypicked in bad faith just to have some little takedown moment. One of you certainly came off more childish and immature in this exchange and it wasn’t the other guy.
Sometimes people have different opinions than you.
They’re saying that those opinions are naïve.
Tell that to @Gargron@mastodon.social (the creator of Mastdon, AFAIK). He’s very excited about this. And I can’t honestly understand why.
https://mstdn.social/@Gargron@mastodon.social/111576826633308486
Well he’s not alone … a number of relatively vocal “fedi-advocates” are positive about it too, even those who also acknowledge that meta/facebook are fucked and defederating from them would make sense.
Which reveals, I think, a curious phenomenon about tech culture and where “we” are up to.
From what I can tell, mainstream Silicon Valley tech culture has permeated out fairly effectively over the decades such that there are now groups of people walking around who consider themselves “the good guys” and have generally progressive political views and believe in OSS and the importance of community etc but are also fundamentally interested in building some tech, making it grow in usage and effecting some ideology or agenda through creating “significant” technology. Some of them seem to have money, or tech know-how or a network into such things and some experience working in the tech world. They’re all mostly, to be fair, probably middle aged white cishet men.
When face-to-face with the prospect of having “your thing” accepted by and (technically) grown to the size of Meta/Facebook/IG, these people seem to not be able to even think about resisting. “Growing the protocol” and “growing” mastodon is what they see here and all the rest is noisy nuance.
This may not be the full corporate buy out worth millions, because they’re “the good guys” and don’t work for big-corps, but this is the equivalent in their “ethical-tech” world … the happy embrace of a big-corp on OSS terms.
Which in many ways makes sense, except in the case of social media so much is about culture and values and trust that sheer “growth” might completely miss the point especially if it’s by riding on the back of a giant that would happily eat or crush you at a whim and has done so many times in the past.
And this is where I’m up to on this issue … both sides seem not to be talking about it much.
What is the “emotional”, “social fabric”, “vibes and feelings” factor in all this … that a place, protocol and ecosystem, predicated on remaking the social web with freedom, independence, humanity and fairness at its core, openly embraces the inundation and invasion of the giant for-profit evil big-corp social media entity this place was defined against? How are we all supposed to feel when that just happens … when Zuck and all the people on his platform is literally just here, not with some consternation but the BDFL’s loud gesture of welcoming embrace? I’m betting most will feel off … like something is wrong. The vibe will shift and fall away a bit … passion and senses of ownership will decay and we may even ask ourselves … “what was the point of coming here in the first place?”.
Now, to be real, it’s not like a big-corp connecting over AP can be prevented, it’s an open protocol after all. But the whole thing would be different if there were open discussions and acknowledgement from the top about the cultural feeling of the disproportionate sizes and power here and the possibilities that it won’t be completely allowed without a more decentralised model. Maybe Threads would have to create their own open source platform which people could run instances of themselves? Or maybe Mastodon could wait until the user sizes are more equal (though that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, which is kinda the point here in many ways right? … that Mastodon is kinda giving up and saying it’d rather be a parasite on a big-corp in order to be significant than just own its niche status?)
Eitherway, it seems clear that many of the power brokers over on mastodon are there to create their own form of influence and this sort of deal with the devil is exactly the poison they’re willing to drink for their ends.
For my purposes … I don’t think I’ll want to hang around mastodon much after Threads federation happens … the embrace from the BDFL and a number of users is just off putting and the platform is too crappy to care about it … I’d rather just go back to twitter than suffer through that swampy egotistical place.
Yea I was really confused to read that. I’m on Kbin / Lemmy significantly more than I log in to Mastadon (I think I’ve opened that app 5 times in the past year), so now I guess I’ll just delete Mastadon.
I bet he’s getting a big bag of money.
Are you truly incapable of imagining that someone might have a different opinion than you without being bribed?
“Everyone who disagrees with me must be getting paid” is not the mature take you think it is.
Are you truly incapable of acknowledging that large bags of money motivate people to do unpopular things sometimes?
I really don’t care about Mastadon as I haven’t used it much, but I couldn’t really think of a good reason for federating with Meta.
So you have evidence of bribes?
That’s cool. Please share with the class.
You have evidence that I’m wrong, correct?
LMAO… “bribes”… no, I have no evidence of “bribes.” I don’t have any evidence of a financial incentive either, as very clearly evident by my phrasing starting with “I bet…” I’m simply relying on 40 years of not having my head completely up my own ass to make some inferences about things, and if I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. I think you’re being intentionally obtuse. None of this really is impactful, but you sure seem to have an agenda.
Well a good reason could be that it brings federation to the masses. You know, like everyone who uses federated networks wants it to be. This isn’t some exclusive club and wider adoption is a good thing.
If only to prove that it can work.
I wouldn’t call that a good reason to team up with Meta, but I would call it a plausible. Everyone does not want to federate with the largest social media company in the world, I can promise you that. If you like federation, you’d probably like it to not be engulfed by megacorps (unless you stand to profit from it).
Yeah, there’s a good chance he’s either a naïve moron that thinks Meta has good intentions, or a techbro that soyfaces at any proprietary technology that has incorporated a trendy technology.
The fediverse means all of them. Mastodon users post to Lemmy and Kbin. We’ll see threads here.
Just migrate your account to a different instance, if you plan to use it. It’s not difficult and many of them already defederate from Threads (mstdn.social, for instance).
I think I’ve logged in for a collective 15 minutes. I deleted it about 45 minutes ago.
Let’s apply Occam’s Razor. We all created these juggernaut social media vampires in the 2000s as an alternative to isolated forums and the first federation attempts with Webrings. When it started, Facebook was a good thing.
He could simply be repeating the same mistake the entire internet did by embracing monolithic social media sites in the first place.
Mark Zuckerturds destroys everything he touches, and now he wants to touch you.
He can touch deeznuts
You do not want the lizard prince to touch your nuts.
Nard Zuckerballs
If this is the level of maturity that’s going to represent the Fediverse, I’m almost inclined to believe they actually do have pure intentions, because there’s no way this shit is financially valuable.
There’s a large number of people here that have a deeply emotional hatred for anything related to Meta and I get that. But these dull comments don’t make for a fun discussion. They don’t add anything. They won’t affect anything. They’re just boring comments wasting everyone’s time.
is for profit company
Elon Musk: “Hold my beer”
I can follow him on kbin.
https://kbin.social/u/@mosseri@threads.net/posts
Interoperability was the purpose of activitypub. I’m not oppossed to Meta , Tumblr and wordpress joining the fediverse.
As long as I can use an open source community platform.Let’s hope this isn’t the first step of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Although in reality it probably is.
deleted by creator
Most of those communities preemptively blocked threads months ago.
Yes it is, but people are sheep. Wolf’s come to get dinner.
Lol, as if Facebook cares about the Fediverse. With its 141 million users, Threads is already ten times bigger than the Fediverse ever was.
ActivityPub isn’t a threat to their business, Bluesky is.
They do. Their business model is to take out upstarts with growing popularity trends. By the time they actually get big, it’s too late.
With several organisations making the move to the fediverse, it is something they want to deal with.
Isn’t Bluesky much smaller than Mastodon?
At the moment, because it’s almost impossible to get in without knowing someone who’s already in. Currently, after about 10 months, Bluesky has about 2 million users (a sixth of the Fediverse). However, those 12 million Fediverse users have accumulated over seven years. Based on the statistics of fediverse.observer, the majority of those accounts seem to be inactive as well. Mastodon shows growth (about 100k per month) but other parts of the Fediverse are shrinking in activity.
Wikipedia has a graph of Bluesky’s user base growth:
At its current pace, it’ll take over a year and a half for BS to overtake the Fediverse (in total accounts, four or five months when looking at active users), but I expect those numbers jump up when the platform leaves beta. Wait list + current user base on Bluesky already exceeds the reported “active user” count on Fediverse Observer.
My personal anecdata: all the (semi) corporate entities I used to follow are over at Bluesky right now. Some, annoyingly, use it as their primary platform, while others cross post the same way people did when Mastodon gained mainstream attention. A few of the people/organisations I used to follow on Twitter are on Mastodon (almost exclusively people in the tech sector and a government service here or there) but I haven’t seen any growth whatsoever. Various experiments with Mastodon and other fediverse media also seem to have ended, with people leaving the Fediverse for various reasons (Alec from Technology Connections has done nice write-ups of why the Fediverse kind of sucks if you’re “internet famous” right now, and the reactions from Fediverse evangelists below show why that’s going to stay that way for a while).
I want Bluesky to either commit to federation, or for the Fediverse to take over, but neither seem to stand much of a chance against any corporation with VC money right now. Most of the internet doesn’t seem to be interested in federation and even here on Lemmy many people are confused by it (i.e. “I want to send this person a message but when I go to their profile it says I’m not logged in” because they went to the other user’s home instance instead of their own, an easy mistake to make).
It will end up being de facto EEE, the same way it’s become functionally impossible to run your own email server. Sure you technically can, but the handful of big players block everything else and make it impossible to actually email anyone.
It’ll be like that on the fediverse. Big companies like this will dominate the space, refuse to federate with most others except the big players, and people will realize that unless you only want a mastodon instance with like 20 people on it, it won’t be worth the trouble.
That’s not even true, I run my own mailserver for private and a business and it works like expected.
Cannot confirm. I have my own email server setup since years, with dkim, spf, and dmarc all functioning correctly. I score 10/10 on mail tester. My server has never sent spam (I get daily reports of all emails delivered, so I can actually back this statement up), and my emails go directly to spam 100% of the time on all the major platforms.
I send so little email they won’t even tell me why I’m going to spam.
For personal email it’s not such a big deal, I just tell them to check their spam; but for trying to reach customer service in a large corpo for example, it is impossible.
Absolutely, Outlook.com is by far the worst in this regard. I stopped running my own mail server a few years ago because it was just unbearable.
So what do you suggest, out of curiosity? I have the same assessment, it just seems like the only way it could work, long-term and for all users.
I think the cat’s out of the bag. There’s no stopping it at this point. And even if ever person who runs a Mastodon server got together to push back, defederated with Threads and BlueSky, and tried to stay away, it wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar for these big players.
To be honest, I’m not sold on federation in general for social media. I think it’s an answer to the wrong question. We’re asking “how can we make social media better?” and not “why do we need social media at all?”
Federation has shown itself to be extremely problematic. You have people coming and going from other instances that you don’t control and can’t enforce in any way other than to just block the instance. If I have e.g. a Mastodon instance based around a safe, positive space for the queer community, and others have instances based around bigotry, white supremacy, transphobia, etc. (which they do), then I either allow bigots to come and go, or I have to spend an inordinate amount of extra time on moderation. Same goes for Lemmy/kbin/etc.
People are also continuing to think with a limited frame of reference. The idea of federation is still “how can I get all my ‘content’ in one place?” because we’ve been dominated by these monolithic walled gardens for the last decade. Sure it might be annoying to have to have multiple logins for difference services, but I’d rather that over having a single place where Nazis can come and go as they please with few to no tools to stop them.
Hmm. I don’t know if weak moderation tools are intrinsic to federation. You can certainly ban users from other instances, and if that doesn’t already hide their comments on other instances, it could.
People have talked about going back to disconnected forums recently, notably Kurzgesagt, but it is annoying, to the point where it can kill some spaces which are too niche or frivolous to survive alone. I don’t think r/WTFaucet on Reddit could be a standalone forum, for example. I guess if it saves our civilisation like they were saying the I could make that sacrifice.
And nothing of value was gained
I have no interest in interacting with Threads myself, but I suppose it’s good news for people who want to be on the fediverse but just can’t manage going without being able to follow @burgerking@threads.net or whatever.
The obvious benefit is that they can at least access potential extra views. Without implementing some kind of ad system though, it’s just eyes…so is this just PR for threads?
DEFEDERATE, PLEASE! Now Meta has the highest presence in the Fediverse, and they can do whatever they want to it.
I think this will beneficial for the fediverse overall. Thereads will eventually have to advertise. At which point hopefully other Platforms on the fediverse will become more attractive to some threads users.
