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Mastodon is going to hit drama very soon which may end in its demise. Meta wants to enter it so they can slurp up everything. You're going to run into the situa

Mastodon is going to hit drama very soon which may end in its demise. Meta wants to enter it so they can slurp up everything. You're going to run into the situation of some server admins going "OK sure, I will federate with Meta" and others going "By the power of Grayskull! I shall block Meta!".

jkubicek 3y ago
Mastodon is all public. If the only thing Meta wants is to ingest people’s posts, is there any reason to implement ActivityPub? They can get it all for free today.
jeroenhd 3y ago
Some smaller sites have indeed blocked Threads. I fail to see the drama in that. Some people seem intent on causing drama, but most actual server admins seem to just ignore Threads until it becomes a problem.
- FalconSensei 3y ago
  and that's the whole point of the federation, right? Each instance can choose who to block or not, and life goes on
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    First a bunch of instances blocked Pawoo and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Gab and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Truth Social and Counter Social and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Journo Host and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they (pre-emptively) blocked Threads and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech… The drama lives on and on. Freedom of Association is just as important and key part of Freedom as Speech, though many, especially Americans, tend to forget that it exists as a related Right. Blocking on Mastodon isn't a bug, it's a feature. Drama from blocking on Mastodon is maybe a bug, but criticism and deliberation and community opinion gathering and consensus building are features (and Freedom of Speech) that sometimes look like drama. People expecting useful criticism and deliberation to "kill" Mastodon because "drama" are missing that process survives iteratively and the process isn't a bug.
rgbrenner 3y ago
Ok, so what? if my email provider blocks gmail, I just leave to a diff provider. At the end of the day, the servers either provide the experience users want, or users leave to a server that does. (But I still don’t think meta is going to enable activitypub)
- Sunspark 3y ago
  If a server admin ragequits and pulls the plug on the server without notice you are going to have trouble getting your data out or migrating.
  - shagie 3y ago
    This is an ongoing issue with one of the Lemmy instances. https://lemmy.world/post/1232070 https://lemmy.world/post/1232070 And a Mastodon instance (mastodon.lol) from a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195 (though there was some warning)
    - crtasm 3y ago
      > https://lemmy.world/post/1232070 https://lemmy.world/post/1232070 The image they're looking for is on Wayback machine, if that's helpful: https://web.archive.org/web/20230614091556/https://vlemmy.net/pictrs/image/928b2f95-a37c-4e94-bd70-bc014c8655d4.jpeg https://web.archive.org/web/20230614091556/https://vlemmy.ne...
  - vidarh 3y ago
    Ability to recover from that is one of the few things of value in the AT protocol (Bluesky) and something I expect will get pilfered in one way or another eventually.
    - Kye 3y ago
      A lot of people only seem to see "portability" as some magic feature without understanding it. So they're going to be surprised when they get suspended from bsky.social or they decide to sunset it and everything is lost because they didn't associate their identity with a domain they control. Everything people found complicated about Mastodon is there in Bluesky in some form.
not2b 3y ago
Threads now has 100 million accounts, Mastodon has about 13 million (2 million daily active users, daily active users on Threads is probably a similar ratio). I don't think they care about slurping up everything. In fact, I think that they won't go through with federation as it isn't in their interest. Why? If they federate, I can follow people who post on Threads, but I get a chronological timeline I control and no ads. They make money on ads. So why should they federate? To "slurp up everything"? They already have much more than Mastodon and the rest of the fediverse have.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > 2 million daily active users c/daily/monthly
- w0m 3y ago
  > Why? If they federate, I can follow people who post on Threads, but I get a chronological timeline I control and no ads. It's kind of their carrot to get good will and PR from the vocal-but-small nerd-crowd though I think. Facebook could outright block people with adblockers; but don't as an example because (people would throw a shitfit). Good PR/Vibes from federating could go far fighting the 'ewe meta' stigma attached to Threads.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Also potentially some "look, we can play nice" signalling to the European Commission; with the DMA on the way this has to be on their minds.
    - Kye 3y ago
      The EU Commission is on the EU Mastodon instance, so they can do better than signal if they federate. They can just @ them. https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission
  - not2b 3y ago
    I think it might have more to do with regulatory concerns, maybe they think that appearing to be more open will make them seem less monopolistic. On the other hand, they aren't launching in Europe because of their troubles there.
some_furry 3y ago
EDIT: Resolved. ~~Can we not do that thing where we mock autistic people throwing a fit? (That's what /\b[Rr][Ee]{2,}\b/ means.)~~
- Sunspark 3y ago
  Fair, taken care of.
  - some_furry 3y ago
    Thanks!
- drcongo 3y ago
  What on earth is this comment about? Is it supposed to be a reply on a different parent?
  - some_furry 3y ago
    I encoded it as a regular expression so as to avoid doing the thing I said not to do. But there was a "reeeeee" in the parent post, which is an Internet meme to mock autistic people. It has since been edited out, so I'm disclosing for context.
shagie 3y ago
As I understand it, the "federate and slurp data" isn't something that can be prevented. Deciding to federate means accepting content from that other site. A mastodon instance federating with Threads would mean that Threads content would be visible on that instance. However, if an instance decides to not federate with Threads, Threads can still get the data from the instance. With the permisivity of the protocol, Meta (and anyone) can consume any ActivityPub data they want. Compare this to email. A mail server can block incoming mail from some other mail server (e.g. a known spam farm). However, mail servers don't block people who have email accounts on their servers from sending mail to abuse@spammy.mail.server Trying to change it so that federated content only goes out to pre-approved sites (because face it - if threads.meta.com is blocked it is would be trivial to spin up notthreads.notmeta.com and consume the same data) would fracture the fediverse and make small sites difficult to federate with... and lead to very much what we currently see with email - you can't stand up your own email server and send mail to gmail... which is very much what federation is supposed to not be about.
- nightpool 3y ago
  > With the permisivity of the protocol, Meta (and anyone) can consume any ActivityPub data they want. Well, in practice it's pretty easy to block Facebook-range IP addresses at the firewall level, and then there's no other way for Facebook to get (authenticated) information about posts/users. "Will admins end up going that far" is an open question, but it's not like Facebook is going to be renting out residential IPs and forging user-agents to get around these types of bans.
  - shagie 3y ago
    If all they are after is the data inbound, spinning up something to federate, consume, and forward as a relay on AWS or another cloud host is similarly easy and anonymous - it is exactly the same way that many small instances are hosted. Trying to prevent Meta from being able to consume ActivityPub content is an arms race that Meta would win with the collateral damage being every small instance of an ActivityPub application. That collateral damage would be inflicted by other ActivityPub instances rather than Meta itself.
nimbius 3y ago
hard not to see "threads" as a desperate last gasp by Facebook/Meta. any opportunism you'd get by trying to eat Twitters lunch should have happened a year ago while Musk was busy dragging a sink through the lobby he eventually locked himself out of. Many people started jumping ship in the first month due to the sites instability or his unbanning of troves of toxic users after he fired the entire moderation team. Younger audiences jumped to Mastodon because its not the convalescence home they visit their grandparents on called Facebook. de-federation puts the power directly in the communities hands. if Meta wants to join with out EEE tactics, theyll need to first prove anyone on Mastodon sees value in a facebook presence.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  As a fairly heavy Twitter consumer, this doesn't match my experience at all. Most people I follow (mostly tech, authors, journalists) didn't set up Mastodon accounts, most of those that did aren't really active. Threads is a entirely different kettle of fish. A significant number of the people I follow are ALREADY more active, or just as active, on Threads as Twitter. A fair number have stopped posting on Twitter entirely.
  - TX81Z 3y ago
    And people are happier! I’m amazed at the pure joy you see on Threads. I’m not a huge fan, bit too normie for my taste, but to see the internet are people happy for a change is great.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    The exact same thing happened with Mastodon, maybe not at quite the same scale, but a lot of people moved over and a portion moved back or dialled back their use of Mastodon, but we're still seeing activity increase with each new wave (whenever Elon rocks the boat) and the low water mark rising.
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    I can't tell if anyone I follow is more active on Threads, because all I see are algorithm provided posts by people I don't follow.
acomjean 3y ago
Our Mastodon instance had a poll about what to do. I don't see this as a huge deal. Those of use old enough remember the drama when AOL users were set free on the internet, with email and web access...
sundarurfriend 3y ago
That kind of drama is not new for Mastodon at all. They've had it with Gab and other places before, people will probably fall on the same lines as before.
rvz 3y ago
Well Meta is already at risk (now more than before) of lessening user choice and competition with the release of Threads. If they don't federate, then the regulators will come after them and break them up. Meta doesn't want that. It's also funny how folks here don't realize that this is all related to the Digital Services Act in the EU which gatekeepers like Meta have to interoperate with other open protocols such as ActivityPub to allow users to move off of their platforms and to not incentivise lock-in. Meta would not risk not doing so especially with a new platform that has just captured 100M users in less than a week. So yes. Meta is serious about federation [0], especially when they sent the NDAs to the admins of the largest Mastodon instances which haven't denied federating with Meta. Contrary to the denial I've seen in the comments here on HN. [0] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2023Jul/0032.html https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2023Jul/00...
syntheweave 3y ago
That already happened. Everyone who wants their own standard of moderation doesn't want to tangle with Meta's standards. Thus essentially everyone who preferences moderation over scale elected to defederate. The end.

jkubicek 3y ago

Mastodon is all public. If the only thing Meta wants is to ingest people’s posts, is there any reason to implement ActivityPub? They can get it all for free today.

jeroenhd 3y ago

Some smaller sites have indeed blocked Threads. I fail to see the drama in that. Some people seem intent on causing drama, but most actual server admins seem to just ignore Threads until it becomes a problem.

FalconSensei 3y ago
and that's the whole point of the federation, right? Each instance can choose who to block or not, and life goes on
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  First a bunch of instances blocked Pawoo and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Gab and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Truth Social and Counter Social and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they blocked Journo Host and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech, then they (pre-emptively) blocked Threads and people cried that would end Mastodon and kill free speech… The drama lives on and on. Freedom of Association is just as important and key part of Freedom as Speech, though many, especially Americans, tend to forget that it exists as a related Right. Blocking on Mastodon isn't a bug, it's a feature. Drama from blocking on Mastodon is maybe a bug, but criticism and deliberation and community opinion gathering and consensus building are features (and Freedom of Speech) that sometimes look like drama. People expecting useful criticism and deliberation to "kill" Mastodon because "drama" are missing that process survives iteratively and the process isn't a bug.

rgbrenner 3y ago

Ok, so what? if my email provider blocks gmail, I just leave to a diff provider. At the end of the day, the servers either provide the experience users want, or users leave to a server that does. (But I still don’t think meta is going to enable activitypub)

Sunspark 3y ago
If a server admin ragequits and pulls the plug on the server without notice you are going to have trouble getting your data out or migrating.
- shagie 3y ago
  This is an ongoing issue with one of the Lemmy instances. https://lemmy.world/post/1232070 https://lemmy.world/post/1232070 And a Mastodon instance (mastodon.lol) from a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748195 (though there was some warning)
  - crtasm 3y ago
    > https://lemmy.world/post/1232070 https://lemmy.world/post/1232070 The image they're looking for is on Wayback machine, if that's helpful: https://web.archive.org/web/20230614091556/https://vlemmy.net/pictrs/image/928b2f95-a37c-4e94-bd70-bc014c8655d4.jpeg https://web.archive.org/web/20230614091556/https://vlemmy.ne...
- vidarh 3y ago
  Ability to recover from that is one of the few things of value in the AT protocol (Bluesky) and something I expect will get pilfered in one way or another eventually.
  - Kye 3y ago
    A lot of people only seem to see "portability" as some magic feature without understanding it. So they're going to be surprised when they get suspended from bsky.social or they decide to sunset it and everything is lost because they didn't associate their identity with a domain they control. Everything people found complicated about Mastodon is there in Bluesky in some form.

not2b 3y ago

Threads now has 100 million accounts, Mastodon has about 13 million (2 million daily active users, daily active users on Threads is probably a similar ratio). I don't think they care about slurping up everything. In fact, I think that they won't go through with federation as it isn't in their interest. Why? If they federate, I can follow people who post on Threads, but I get a chronological timeline I control and no ads. They make money on ads. So why should they federate? To "slurp up everything"? They already have much more than Mastodon and the rest of the fediverse have.

lapcat 3y ago
> 2 million daily active users c/daily/monthly
w0m 3y ago
> Why? If they federate, I can follow people who post on Threads, but I get a chronological timeline I control and no ads. It's kind of their carrot to get good will and PR from the vocal-but-small nerd-crowd though I think. Facebook could outright block people with adblockers; but don't as an example because (people would throw a shitfit). Good PR/Vibes from federating could go far fighting the 'ewe meta' stigma attached to Threads.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Also potentially some "look, we can play nice" signalling to the European Commission; with the DMA on the way this has to be on their minds.
  - Kye 3y ago
    The EU Commission is on the EU Mastodon instance, so they can do better than signal if they federate. They can just @ them. https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission
- not2b 3y ago
  I think it might have more to do with regulatory concerns, maybe they think that appearing to be more open will make them seem less monopolistic. On the other hand, they aren't launching in Europe because of their troubles there.

some_furry 3y ago

EDIT: Resolved. ~~Can we not do that thing where we mock autistic people throwing a fit? (That's what /\b[Rr][Ee]{2,}\b/ means.)~~

Sunspark 3y ago
Fair, taken care of.
- some_furry 3y ago
  Thanks!
drcongo 3y ago
What on earth is this comment about? Is it supposed to be a reply on a different parent?
- some_furry 3y ago
  I encoded it as a regular expression so as to avoid doing the thing I said not to do. But there was a "reeeeee" in the parent post, which is an Internet meme to mock autistic people. It has since been edited out, so I'm disclosing for context.

shagie 3y ago

As I understand it, the "federate and slurp data" isn't something that can be prevented. Deciding to federate means accepting content from that other site. A mastodon instance federating with Threads would mean that Threads content would be visible on that instance. However, if an instance decides to not federate with Threads, Threads can still get the data from the instance. With the permisivity of the protocol, Meta (and anyone) can consume any ActivityPub data they want. Compare this to email. A mail server can block incoming mail from some other mail server (e.g. a known spam farm). However, mail servers don't block people who have email accounts on their servers from sending mail to abuse@spammy.mail.server Trying to change it so that federated content only goes out to pre-approved sites (because face it - if threads.meta.com is blocked it is would be trivial to spin up notthreads.notmeta.com and consume the same data) would fracture the fediverse and make small sites difficult to federate with... and lead to very much what we currently see with email - you can't stand up your own email server and send mail to gmail... which is very much what federation is supposed to not be about.

nightpool 3y ago
> With the permisivity of the protocol, Meta (and anyone) can consume any ActivityPub data they want. Well, in practice it's pretty easy to block Facebook-range IP addresses at the firewall level, and then there's no other way for Facebook to get (authenticated) information about posts/users. "Will admins end up going that far" is an open question, but it's not like Facebook is going to be renting out residential IPs and forging user-agents to get around these types of bans.
- shagie 3y ago
  If all they are after is the data inbound, spinning up something to federate, consume, and forward as a relay on AWS or another cloud host is similarly easy and anonymous - it is exactly the same way that many small instances are hosted. Trying to prevent Meta from being able to consume ActivityPub content is an arms race that Meta would win with the collateral damage being every small instance of an ActivityPub application. That collateral damage would be inflicted by other ActivityPub instances rather than Meta itself.

nimbius 3y ago

hard not to see "threads" as a desperate last gasp by Facebook/Meta. any opportunism you'd get by trying to eat Twitters lunch should have happened a year ago while Musk was busy dragging a sink through the lobby he eventually locked himself out of. Many people started jumping ship in the first month due to the sites instability or his unbanning of troves of toxic users after he fired the entire moderation team. Younger audiences jumped to Mastodon because its not the convalescence home they visit their grandparents on called Facebook. de-federation puts the power directly in the communities hands. if Meta wants to join with out EEE tactics, theyll need to first prove anyone on Mastodon sees value in a facebook presence.

Ensorceled 3y ago
As a fairly heavy Twitter consumer, this doesn't match my experience at all. Most people I follow (mostly tech, authors, journalists) didn't set up Mastodon accounts, most of those that did aren't really active. Threads is a entirely different kettle of fish. A significant number of the people I follow are ALREADY more active, or just as active, on Threads as Twitter. A fair number have stopped posting on Twitter entirely.
- TX81Z 3y ago
  And people are happier! I’m amazed at the pure joy you see on Threads. I’m not a huge fan, bit too normie for my taste, but to see the internet are people happy for a change is great.
- vidarh 3y ago
  The exact same thing happened with Mastodon, maybe not at quite the same scale, but a lot of people moved over and a portion moved back or dialled back their use of Mastodon, but we're still seeing activity increase with each new wave (whenever Elon rocks the boat) and the low water mark rising.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  I can't tell if anyone I follow is more active on Threads, because all I see are algorithm provided posts by people I don't follow.

acomjean 3y ago

Our Mastodon instance had a poll about what to do. I don't see this as a huge deal. Those of use old enough remember the drama when AOL users were set free on the internet, with email and web access...

sundarurfriend 3y ago

That kind of drama is not new for Mastodon at all. They've had it with Gab and other places before, people will probably fall on the same lines as before.

rvz 3y ago

Well Meta is already at risk (now more than before) of lessening user choice and competition with the release of Threads. If they don't federate, then the regulators will come after them and break them up. Meta doesn't want that. It's also funny how folks here don't realize that this is all related to the Digital Services Act in the EU which gatekeepers like Meta have to interoperate with other open protocols such as ActivityPub to allow users to move off of their platforms and to not incentivise lock-in. Meta would not risk not doing so especially with a new platform that has just captured 100M users in less than a week. So yes. Meta is serious about federation [0], especially when they sent the NDAs to the admins of the largest Mastodon instances which haven't denied federating with Meta. Contrary to the denial I've seen in the comments here on HN. [0] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2023Jul/0032.html https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2023Jul/00...

syntheweave 3y ago

That already happened. Everyone who wants their own standard of moderation doesn't want to tangle with Meta's standards. Thus essentially everyone who preferences moderation over scale elected to defederate. The end.