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Threads is also testing federation, it supposedly is close to being enabled. Interesting dynamic is that Mastodon's community is such a sour bunch that likely

Threads is also testing federation, it supposedly is close to being enabled. Interesting dynamic is that Mastodon's community is such a sour bunch that likely most instance owners will block federation with Threads at the domain level. Because "Meta evil". This takes away choice at the user level. Normal people that just want to connect with people and content no matter where it is hosted, which is the very purpose of ActivityPub, have no choice but to move to instances that do federate. ...which will be the large instances, like mastodon.social. It's already the default instance and by far the largest. For maximum connectivity and the biggest chance that it doesn't go under, it is the primary choice for most users. So this dynamic of too much instance-level moderation effectively undermines the idea of the fediverse. There will always be tiny for-purpose instances, but the idea that many small instances will grow the fediverse to Big Tech scale is invalidated. Come to think of it, one might as well create a Threads account. It's a community almost a 100 times larger than all of Mastodon combined. So if you just want to connect to people and find content, Mastodon offers few tangible benefits to normies.

SiempreViernes 3y ago
What do you mean it "takes away choice"? Did you mean "imposes annoying bureaucracy"? Because I have a hard time seeing how forcing people to make a choice is taking away choice. Also, the people who have accounts away from the big instances have actively declined to use them, so they are clearly more likely to move to some other mid scale instance if they need to migrate than to head for the big ones.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  When your instance moderator makes the choice to block Threads at domain level, you're fully blocked from seeing any Threads content or interacting with any Threads user. It could be that as an instance user you like this decision, but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    > but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself. Or you just create a different account on any one of the several Mastodon instances out there. Mastodon doesn't have the ability to ban you from all of the fediverse. It doesn't take away choice, it simply gives an additional option to the instance admin. Don't like it? Start your own instance.
    - iteratethis 3y ago
      This is the default "just move to another instance" take of Mastodon. It's impractical if not hostile. It masks the reality of the situation which is that instance moderators have too much of a say in what individual users get to see or do. This attitude is exactly why there's a trend towards ever larger instances.
      - wizzwizz4 3y ago
        If the majority of the populace is happy with large, badly-moderated instances, more power to them. That doesn't mean the very real people well-served by small instances with enforced moderation policies should have that taken away from them. We only have problems when large instances get block-happy. There's some weird stuff going on in fedi admin circles, but so far, it hasn't been as harmful as (… think of a non-Facebook example…) Tumblr's centralised moderation decisions. This is mitigated by small instances, where heads are cooler and tensions are lower because you don't have everything to think about all at once, and individual moderation decisions are less impactful.
        iteratethis 3y ago
        Nothing will be taken away from small instances with strong opinions. Saying that the larger instances are poorly moderated is highly subjective. Most social media users want to connect to people and content without limitations.
      - rchaud 3y ago
        > It's impractical if not hostile. On the contrary, decentralization is exactly neutral. It just feels hostile to users who've simply accepted a centralized vendor as the default, and now may need to consider an alternative. Most decentralization in practice is messy: homeschooling, homesteading, private health insurance, or rolling your own email server. That is because the majority of the population will have a preference for not doing things this way.
Zak 3y ago
Threads has (as of late last week) enabled federation for a small set of employee accounts. Here's a federated post; it doesn't look like comments and likes are federating: https://mastodon.world/@mosseri@threads.net/111586615436749207 https://mastodon.world/@mosseri@threads.net/1115866154367492... I don't think most instance owners will block them. The larger servers I've paid attention to don't plan to at this time, though many people have expressed concerns about it being an attempt by Meta to embrace, extend, and extinguish the Fediverse. A few people are very loud about not wanting a Meta presence and are trying to convince others to block them. I think the opportunity outweighs the threat. There's a chance for Mastodon and others to show their software to a mainstream audience which has already shown a willingness to try out new social software by joining threads. Ideally, some projects will have a better pitch than just "we're not corporate".
- iteratethis 3y ago
  I agree that it's a loud minority complaining about Threads but that loud minority is quite powerful in the Mastodon community. I think the "embrace, extend, and extinguish" fear is hilarious. The Fediverse is tiny and useless to Meta. Threads as a really crappy Twitter clone is just launched and many times the size of the Fediverse. By federating, they're losing algorithmic control and monetization possibilities. Honestly, I think it's just a "do good" afterthought for the sake of PR.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Facebook has acquired smaller competitors in the past. Where it hasn't been able to acquire, it's federated: you might remember that Facebook used to federate with MySpace. > I agree that it's a loud minority complaining about Threads but that loud minority is quite powerful in the Mastodon community. That “loud minority” is largely composed of sociopolitical minorities. To the extent that they're powerful on the Fediverse, it's because the Fediverse is a place run by and for them.
kelseyfrog 3y ago
It's less "Meta evil" and more, "We've been burned by 3E countless times." This just looks like the first E. The problem is that the incentives to engage in the two remaining Es still exist, and given the same incentives, we can predict the same behavior. It's Econ101.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  As soon as Meta turns on federation for Threads, they are the largest Activitypub server, about 10 times larger than all of Mastodon combined. At the same time, Meta cannot stop non-Threads instances from organizing as they already do. So I don't see the threat, really.
  - nocoolnametom 3y ago
    The problem comes with "Extend." "We've got this new awesome feature, and we asked nicely if it could be put into the ActivityPub docs but they turned us down/didn't act fast enough. So we're proud to announce MetaPub, a superset of ActivityPub that will still communicate with regular ActivityPub, but to get the best and latest features you'll have to implement MetaPub in your clients. Or just use Threads, where it's already present for all users!" Repeat until you gain enough influence that ActivityPub is seen as inferior. Then comes "Extinguish." Breaking changes to MetaPub reducing federation to only MetaPub clients or give up entirely and turn off federation anyways.
    - threeseed 3y ago
      This ignores the role of regulators e.g. EU. ActivityPub is the first glimpse at a future where social media networks are interoperable over a common standard similar to mail. And from recent history the period we are in is one in where governments are looking for open standards as a hedge against big tech. The idea that Meta would deliberately harm a standard, shut down competition and invite anti-competition investigations is far-fetched.
      - rusk 3y ago
egypturnash 3y ago
Once upon a time you could follow someone's public Facebook posts from any RSS reader you liked, whether or not you had an account. Now the only way to follow someone's Facebook posts is to have an account there. And Facebook will probably only show you a small fraction of the posts by the people you actually follow, sorted by what Meta thinks is most likely to make Meta money. If you trust Meta to not follow a similar playbook with Threads, you are much more optimistic than I am. I run a small Mastodon instance, and have preemptively defederated from Threads because I do not want Meta to suck in my posts for free and use them as something to spread apart Meta ad views. I've informed my users of this and so far everyone with a reply has praised this decision. They have made choices. In fact lately there have been waves of spam from the big open-registration instances. I and a lot of other small instance admins I know have responded by limiting our federation with these instances. This creates a slightly worse experience for our users, in that they're likely to stop seeing media from big-instance accounts they follow. And it creates choice - do they talk to their friends on the big instances and say "hey can I persuade you to move to an instance that isn't a spam gateway?" Does the friend say "yes" and acquire an invitation to a closed-registration instance that's well-federated to their friend network? Eventually we end up with multiple networks all on ActivityPub that have very few connections. And this is fine. Because people can also do things like choose to have multiple accounts on these multiple networks.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  I remember the RSS times. But let's be honest. Even then it was only tech enthusiasts using an RSS reader. Probably the same people now experimenting with the Fediverse. Do I trust Meta regarding federation? No. But I'm thinking it's an afterthought for them. The Fediverse isn't a threat to them at all, just like RSS never was. I totally understand that some instances have strong opinions about this and self-isolate to a degree. And that will cement what Mastodon is: a set of small for-purpose communities. It will not compete with the scale of Big Tech and maybe it shouldn't. Mastodon is to stay in their marginal role, a niche network. For sure exactly those strong-willed instances will agree to that. I'm fine with that as well. I'm just pointing out that an anti-growth mindset produces a small network.
rchaud 3y ago
> Interesting dynamic is that Mastodon's community is such a sour bunch that likely most instance owners will block federation with Threads at the domain level. Because "Meta evil". Isn't this what Gmail and Microsoft do with their approach to spam blocking? If I want to see "what's trending now" on Threads, I'll call them, they don't have to call me.
RandallBrown 3y ago
I don't fully understand what federation means for something like Threads and Mastodon. Will I be able to follow various users across the Fediverse and view all their posts in the Threads app, or will I just be able to sign in to their servers with my threads account?
- Barrin92 3y ago
  >Will I be able to follow various users across the Fediverse and view all their posts in the Threads app If it's going to function like any other Fediverse app, which I assume for now, then yes. You can follow people across instances and have both a local and global feed.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  I suspect Threads will enable it in phases, but assuming a full implementation... Yes, using the Threads app you could then follow somebody from i.e. a Mastodon instance if that instance does not have the Threads domain blocked and the particular instance user also does not have it blocked. So it's going to be hit and miss. And no, I don't think you can log into another server using your Threads account.
pietervdvn 3y ago
Maybe we want it to be a niche place? Also, the effect of Google's presence on XMPP was huge, see https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-netwo...
- apitman 3y ago
  I read the article and in my opinion it fails to present compelling arguments or evidence as to why XMPP is much worse off because Google once implemented it. Sounds like there was massive growth thanks to them coming, and massive loss when they left. Interestingly it sounds like other implementors capitulated to some bad behavior on Google's part to the detriment of others, and there are probably some good lessons to learn there.
calamari4065 3y ago
The present moral outrage is over the Threads ToS stating that if your account interacts with or receives a Threads post in any way, Meta will scrape all available data about your account to build a shadow profile of you for tracking and advertising purposes. I'm not even paraphrasing, they're very explicit about it. Which is exactly the thing people were afraid of when Threads was first announced. But really the core issue is that most people on mastodon are there specifically to avoid corporate social media. They don't want to be tracked, spied on, or advertised to. The vast majority of accounts are pseudonymous and they like it that way. Privacy is a foundational core value of the fediverse in general. Many people see the idea of allowing Meta into the fediverse as the antithesis of every value that the fediverse was built on. Which makes sense, as the fediverse was built specifically as a way to escape Meta, google, and their ilk. There is a very real fear that Meta will attempt to destroy federated social media; what possible reason would they have to not? There's absolutely no incentive for them to allow the status quo, and every incentive to destroy a competitor. But don't downplay the extreme seriousness of the debate. Fediverse users and admins are pretty split on this issue and argument and discussion happens every day. This is not something most people take lightly, and most treat it very, very seriously. Personally, I run my own server because I find the endless debate tiring and distasteful. I'll block the meta domain based on their ToS because I'm on mastodon specifically for privacy and anonymity.
- sigmar 3y ago
  >But don't downplay the extreme seriousness of the debate. If you post a profile publicly on the internet, people/companies can easily scrape it. Regardless of what is in the threads ToS and whether you're federating with threads... am I missing something?
  - exodust 3y ago
    Perhaps it's "all available data" causing concern. All available data includes the stuff that isn't public and can't be scraped, such as your IP address.
  - calamari4065 3y ago
    That doesn't mean it's not still a dick move

SiempreViernes 3y ago

What do you mean it "takes away choice"? Did you mean "imposes annoying bureaucracy"? Because I have a hard time seeing how forcing people to make a choice is taking away choice. Also, the people who have accounts away from the big instances have actively declined to use them, so they are clearly more likely to move to some other mid scale instance if they need to migrate than to head for the big ones.

iteratethis 3y ago
When your instance moderator makes the choice to block Threads at domain level, you're fully blocked from seeing any Threads content or interacting with any Threads user. It could be that as an instance user you like this decision, but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself.
- rchaud 3y ago
  > but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself. Or you just create a different account on any one of the several Mastodon instances out there. Mastodon doesn't have the ability to ban you from all of the fediverse. It doesn't take away choice, it simply gives an additional option to the instance admin. Don't like it? Start your own instance.
  - iteratethis 3y ago
    This is the default "just move to another instance" take of Mastodon. It's impractical if not hostile. It masks the reality of the situation which is that instance moderators have too much of a say in what individual users get to see or do. This attitude is exactly why there's a trend towards ever larger instances.
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      If the majority of the populace is happy with large, badly-moderated instances, more power to them. That doesn't mean the very real people well-served by small instances with enforced moderation policies should have that taken away from them. We only have problems when large instances get block-happy. There's some weird stuff going on in fedi admin circles, but so far, it hasn't been as harmful as (… think of a non-Facebook example…) Tumblr's centralised moderation decisions. This is mitigated by small instances, where heads are cooler and tensions are lower because you don't have everything to think about all at once, and individual moderation decisions are less impactful.
      - iteratethis 3y ago
        Nothing will be taken away from small instances with strong opinions. Saying that the larger instances are poorly moderated is highly subjective. Most social media users want to connect to people and content without limitations.
    - rchaud 3y ago
      > It's impractical if not hostile. On the contrary, decentralization is exactly neutral. It just feels hostile to users who've simply accepted a centralized vendor as the default, and now may need to consider an alternative. Most decentralization in practice is messy: homeschooling, homesteading, private health insurance, or rolling your own email server. That is because the majority of the population will have a preference for not doing things this way.

Zak 3y ago

Threads has (as of late last week) enabled federation for a small set of employee accounts. Here's a federated post; it doesn't look like comments and likes are federating: https://mastodon.world/@mosseri@threads.net/111586615436749207 https://mastodon.world/@mosseri@threads.net/1115866154367492... I don't think most instance owners will block them. The larger servers I've paid attention to don't plan to at this time, though many people have expressed concerns about it being an attempt by Meta to embrace, extend, and extinguish the Fediverse. A few people are very loud about not wanting a Meta presence and are trying to convince others to block them. I think the opportunity outweighs the threat. There's a chance for Mastodon and others to show their software to a mainstream audience which has already shown a willingness to try out new social software by joining threads. Ideally, some projects will have a better pitch than just "we're not corporate".

iteratethis 3y ago
I agree that it's a loud minority complaining about Threads but that loud minority is quite powerful in the Mastodon community. I think the "embrace, extend, and extinguish" fear is hilarious. The Fediverse is tiny and useless to Meta. Threads as a really crappy Twitter clone is just launched and many times the size of the Fediverse. By federating, they're losing algorithmic control and monetization possibilities. Honestly, I think it's just a "do good" afterthought for the sake of PR.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  Facebook has acquired smaller competitors in the past. Where it hasn't been able to acquire, it's federated: you might remember that Facebook used to federate with MySpace. > I agree that it's a loud minority complaining about Threads but that loud minority is quite powerful in the Mastodon community. That “loud minority” is largely composed of sociopolitical minorities. To the extent that they're powerful on the Fediverse, it's because the Fediverse is a place run by and for them.

kelseyfrog 3y ago

It's less "Meta evil" and more, "We've been burned by 3E countless times." This just looks like the first E. The problem is that the incentives to engage in the two remaining Es still exist, and given the same incentives, we can predict the same behavior. It's Econ101.

iteratethis 3y ago
As soon as Meta turns on federation for Threads, they are the largest Activitypub server, about 10 times larger than all of Mastodon combined. At the same time, Meta cannot stop non-Threads instances from organizing as they already do. So I don't see the threat, really.
- nocoolnametom 3y ago
  The problem comes with "Extend." "We've got this new awesome feature, and we asked nicely if it could be put into the ActivityPub docs but they turned us down/didn't act fast enough. So we're proud to announce MetaPub, a superset of ActivityPub that will still communicate with regular ActivityPub, but to get the best and latest features you'll have to implement MetaPub in your clients. Or just use Threads, where it's already present for all users!" Repeat until you gain enough influence that ActivityPub is seen as inferior. Then comes "Extinguish." Breaking changes to MetaPub reducing federation to only MetaPub clients or give up entirely and turn off federation anyways.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    This ignores the role of regulators e.g. EU. ActivityPub is the first glimpse at a future where social media networks are interoperable over a common standard similar to mail. And from recent history the period we are in is one in where governments are looking for open standards as a hedge against big tech. The idea that Meta would deliberately harm a standard, shut down competition and invite anti-competition investigations is far-fetched.
    - rusk 3y ago

egypturnash 3y ago

Once upon a time you could follow someone's public Facebook posts from any RSS reader you liked, whether or not you had an account. Now the only way to follow someone's Facebook posts is to have an account there. And Facebook will probably only show you a small fraction of the posts by the people you actually follow, sorted by what Meta thinks is most likely to make Meta money. If you trust Meta to not follow a similar playbook with Threads, you are much more optimistic than I am. I run a small Mastodon instance, and have preemptively defederated from Threads because I do not want Meta to suck in my posts for free and use them as something to spread apart Meta ad views. I've informed my users of this and so far everyone with a reply has praised this decision. They have made choices. In fact lately there have been waves of spam from the big open-registration instances. I and a lot of other small instance admins I know have responded by limiting our federation with these instances. This creates a slightly worse experience for our users, in that they're likely to stop seeing media from big-instance accounts they follow. And it creates choice - do they talk to their friends on the big instances and say "hey can I persuade you to move to an instance that isn't a spam gateway?" Does the friend say "yes" and acquire an invitation to a closed-registration instance that's well-federated to their friend network? Eventually we end up with multiple networks all on ActivityPub that have very few connections. And this is fine. Because people can also do things like choose to have multiple accounts on these multiple networks.

iteratethis 3y ago
I remember the RSS times. But let's be honest. Even then it was only tech enthusiasts using an RSS reader. Probably the same people now experimenting with the Fediverse. Do I trust Meta regarding federation? No. But I'm thinking it's an afterthought for them. The Fediverse isn't a threat to them at all, just like RSS never was. I totally understand that some instances have strong opinions about this and self-isolate to a degree. And that will cement what Mastodon is: a set of small for-purpose communities. It will not compete with the scale of Big Tech and maybe it shouldn't. Mastodon is to stay in their marginal role, a niche network. For sure exactly those strong-willed instances will agree to that. I'm fine with that as well. I'm just pointing out that an anti-growth mindset produces a small network.

rchaud 3y ago

> Interesting dynamic is that Mastodon's community is such a sour bunch that likely most instance owners will block federation with Threads at the domain level. Because "Meta evil". Isn't this what Gmail and Microsoft do with their approach to spam blocking? If I want to see "what's trending now" on Threads, I'll call them, they don't have to call me.

RandallBrown 3y ago

I don't fully understand what federation means for something like Threads and Mastodon. Will I be able to follow various users across the Fediverse and view all their posts in the Threads app, or will I just be able to sign in to their servers with my threads account?

Barrin92 3y ago
>Will I be able to follow various users across the Fediverse and view all their posts in the Threads app If it's going to function like any other Fediverse app, which I assume for now, then yes. You can follow people across instances and have both a local and global feed.
iteratethis 3y ago
I suspect Threads will enable it in phases, but assuming a full implementation... Yes, using the Threads app you could then follow somebody from i.e. a Mastodon instance if that instance does not have the Threads domain blocked and the particular instance user also does not have it blocked. So it's going to be hit and miss. And no, I don't think you can log into another server using your Threads account.

pietervdvn 3y ago

Maybe we want it to be a niche place? Also, the effect of Google's presence on XMPP was huge, see https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-netwo...

apitman 3y ago
I read the article and in my opinion it fails to present compelling arguments or evidence as to why XMPP is much worse off because Google once implemented it. Sounds like there was massive growth thanks to them coming, and massive loss when they left. Interestingly it sounds like other implementors capitulated to some bad behavior on Google's part to the detriment of others, and there are probably some good lessons to learn there.

calamari4065 3y ago

The present moral outrage is over the Threads ToS stating that if your account interacts with or receives a Threads post in any way, Meta will scrape all available data about your account to build a shadow profile of you for tracking and advertising purposes. I'm not even paraphrasing, they're very explicit about it. Which is exactly the thing people were afraid of when Threads was first announced. But really the core issue is that most people on mastodon are there specifically to avoid corporate social media. They don't want to be tracked, spied on, or advertised to. The vast majority of accounts are pseudonymous and they like it that way. Privacy is a foundational core value of the fediverse in general. Many people see the idea of allowing Meta into the fediverse as the antithesis of every value that the fediverse was built on. Which makes sense, as the fediverse was built specifically as a way to escape Meta, google, and their ilk. There is a very real fear that Meta will attempt to destroy federated social media; what possible reason would they have to not? There's absolutely no incentive for them to allow the status quo, and every incentive to destroy a competitor. But don't downplay the extreme seriousness of the debate. Fediverse users and admins are pretty split on this issue and argument and discussion happens every day. This is not something most people take lightly, and most treat it very, very seriously. Personally, I run my own server because I find the endless debate tiring and distasteful. I'll block the meta domain based on their ToS because I'm on mastodon specifically for privacy and anonymity.

sigmar 3y ago
>But don't downplay the extreme seriousness of the debate. If you post a profile publicly on the internet, people/companies can easily scrape it. Regardless of what is in the threads ToS and whether you're federating with threads... am I missing something?
- exodust 3y ago
  Perhaps it's "all available data" causing concern. All available data includes the stuff that isn't public and can't be scraped, such as your IP address.
- calamari4065 3y ago
  That doesn't mean it's not still a dick move