I’m getting really tired of trying to run away from big tech, only to be ensnared again by the greed and/or naivety of sites who ultimately cave to the whims of big tech.
Mastodon has already caved, and the silence of lemmy’s and kbin’s developers over this matter isn’t exactly reassuring. Since I more or less still have my bags packed from leaving reddit, what are some other communities I could try that would be more resilient to corporate encroachment?
This is way too dramatic. Mastodon hasn’t caved. The mastodon.social instance might federate with META, but it is not said it will. The kbin developer is a tad busy with keeping kbin.social instance running and fixing kbin software. So the silence doesn’t mean anything.
Host your own instance and do whatever you want. That way you can be sure what will happen.Yeah, there’s a list of instances that have agreed to defederate any Meta instance. Even if mastodon.social federates with them, there’s still plenty of places to jump ship to.
Could you please link this list? Asking for a friend.
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I don’t know of a list, personally, but if you search the hashtag #FediPact you might find some instance admins that have pledged to defederate.
@ADHDefy @zhaosima Someone made this one, not sure how it’s maintained. https://fedipact.veganism.social/
I am glad the instance of Mastodon I use will defederate from meta.
The two biggest instances at the moment as far as I know is kbin social and lemmy world if one allows meta I will just use the other one. Though I recommend any instance that has signed the anti meta pact.
This shows a list of instances that signed it I would pick one of those.deleted by creator
Users can de-federate client side already
Factually untrue
It’s true in Kbin in the sense that you can block instances as a user preference. You can also block any other domain as well, which means what a post links to. Theoretically you can block Facebook itself, Instagram, Imgur, etc.
Blocking a domain through kbin only blocks threads from appearing on your feed. You still see users from that domain and their comments, and they see you and anything you post since it gets sent to their server. It is also a feature only available on kbin so tough luck for lemmies.
Good point, I hadn’t thought about users and comments.
Thanks for the info!
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You can stop your comments from being sent to specific instances? Client-side filters just hide incoming traffic but AP is still doing its own thing in the background afaik, but do correct me if I’m wrong. At least I couldn’t find anything to suggest otherwise, and client-side does kinda imply that it’s just a visual alteration on the client’s side.
But I was mostly talking about kbin/lemmy, sorry about that. I dont have that much experience with mastodon yet.
Owners of an instance can do whatever they want. That’s the whole point of the fediverse. If you don’t like it, then change to an instance that does what you like or create your own. It’s that simple.
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Being allowed to do what you want doesn’t mean it justified. That’s not what I said. Move to an instance with nicer mods or make your own. Really, that’s all there is to it. You’re looking for something to be annoyed with.
Individuals are forgiven for certain things purely because their influence doesn’t threaten the entire Fediverse.
We’re talking about the fediverse as a whole. The whole thing is threatened by meta.
in this case we don’t talk about users who want to block users of another instance. The problem is not the users of meta. The problem is meta itself and all the problems it will bring to the federated network. Whoever cannot see that their intentions are not to promote federated networks but to exploit and extinguish them, is just naive.
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it depends what you consider as consequence. For me, setting up a clear boundary between what is now known as fediverse and whatever it is this that meta will create is not consequence but choice.
Yeah, it seems like their idea of consequences is the fediverse not becoming mainstream. But, the draw of the fediverse to me is that it can be an anti corporate space where power is more in the hands of individuals than corporations. A huge community of millions like Facebook or Reddit isn’t the reason I’m here. Seems like centralization is what they really want, which doesn’t need the fediverse to begin with.
I agree. The mass influx of users from reddit have brought here people who are not familiar with the core principles behind such projects. They literally see it as a free social media that could potentially be in the place of lets say facebook. They don’t understand that the mainstream social media are what they are today because of decisions that have been taken based only on their profit. And this is something that we don’t want to copy here
Isn’t the whole draw of the fediverse that people aren’t stuck to being in one instance and can leave for one that matches their own? Each instance having the autonomy to do what they want while choosing how much they stay connected or not is a pro to me. This isn’t reddit or facebook. You can even run your own instance for those who don’t want decisions to be made on their behalf.
So Meta’s plan is to make a twitter-alike that spies on its users and manipulates them into being the hate fueled engagement engine, and then inflict that on the fediverse?
What’s to stop everyone from pointing out as often as possible that users can still talk to Zuck’s twits without the spying and manipulation by simply doing so from a non-Meta instance, and then defederating Meta once they are no longer dominant?
Am I just misunderstanding this?
So Meta’s plan is to make a twitter-alike that spies on its users and manipulates them into being the hate fueled engagement engine, and then inflict that on the fediverse?
No one outside their boardroom knows what Meta’s plan is, but I doubt they care much about fedi. They are trying to kill off Twitter and take that marketshare of ~500M users. The fediverse with a total of 9M users (and no advertising revenue) isn’t very important in that scheme.
They are in deep legal trouble with EU privacy regulations and need to show to EU they are “taking things seriously”. ActivityPub was most likely a nice “freebie” they can use and point out they offer interoperability. The whole fediverse bit is just to escape further GDPR trouble with EU.
What’s to stop everyone from pointing out as often as possible that users can still talk to Zuck’s twits without the spying and manipulation by simply doing so from a non-Meta instance, and then defederating Meta once they are no longer dominant?
I’m not sure I understand what you mean? That people would migrate away from Threads if they knew they only knew can access their followers from somewhere else? Why on earth would that ever happen? The opposite is more likely.
Am I just misunderstanding this?
Yes?
That’s an interesting angle that I completely failed to notice. I thought this whole experiment is for Facebook/Meta to get a headstart in a new tech space, like they’re been trying to do with VR and the whole crypto craze.
While I never assumed their intentions were pure with any of this, I clearly was not nearly as cynical as one has to be with these people.
Am I just misunderstanding this?
yes
What’s to stop everyone from pointing out as often as possible that users can still talk to Zuck’s twits without the spying and manipulation by simply doing so from a non-Meta instance
Facebook users are stupid, network effects ensure that most people go to a single provider and then minor incompatibilities between threads and the fediverse slowly cuts off the fediverse and ensures it dies.
What does “dies” mean in this circumstance? We already only have 1% of their users. Are we afraid that access toore content here will cause users to leave for Facebook?
Dies means activity slows to the point that the site isn’t worth using. It’s not dead right now for example. I have people to talk to.
Or worse, Facebook forks activitypub and then once most people are on the forked version they kill it. Or make it part of their walled garden.
I’m hoping the large majority of people here on the fediverse are here because they prefer an outlet away from soul sucking corps like Meta and won’t want to touch their forked version.
I guess the fedipact is a test of that.
What is that, I’m unfamiliar with it.
Ah yes, I’m sure talking about how stupid the average person is what we need to do in order to promote the Fediverse as a positive and welcoming platform.
“Join Kbin! We think you’re an idiot!”
Given the fediverse is pretty open by design, meta doesn’t even need to be part of it to spy if they wanted. It’s the EEE strategy that people are more worried about.
Given the fediverse is pretty open by design, meta doesn’t even need to be part of it to spy if they wanted.
They can’t gather all the same information that they could from a phone app, and we’ve seen what permissions they ask for on that. They also can’t manipulate the feed to drive engagement by fostering hate like they can with their own site/app.
It’s the EEE strategy that people are more worried about.
Hence the “get them off meta and onto other instances and then defederate” thing.
Mastodon has already caved
You’re catastrophising - if course it hasn’t. Eugene is taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude, given that Threads isn’t even federating yet - as I suspect are the others.
If the absolute worst happens then you can simply crank up your own instance of Lemmy or Kbin or Mastodon.
Can’t moralize on kbin.social if you’re running your own instance, though.
Course you can - you can federate and moralise seamlessly in other instances :)
Can we preemptively defederate moralizing instances? /J
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Three, as NSFW content is already almost universally defederated from by every instance.
God I hope the wider fediverse loses its prudishness as a result of this. Corpos hate nsfw stuff, we should be joining forces.
Not being horny all the time is not the same as being a prude.
Corpos hate NSFW stuff because your average person doesn’t generally like it unless they’re explicitly searching for it. It’s not like C Suite execs also all randomly are Puritans.
Corpos don’t like NSFW because advertisers don’t like NSFW.
And advertisers don’t like it because they don’t want their ads assosicated with pornography.
It has very little to do with what users want.
And advertisers don’t want their ads associated with porn because they think it’ll harm their sales, thinking that customers won’t buy from brands associated with porn.
Money always talks at the end of the day, and people buy (non-necessary) things because they want them. If putting McDonald’s ads next to porn would increase sales, they’d do it in a heartbeat.
But they don’t, because in general, people don’t actually want to think about porn outside of very specific and intentional circumstances.
I disagree; there’s a lot of irrationality at the top when it comes to ads and porn. But some of that is fear of legislative reprisal from some of the more conservative governments.
There’s definitely some nuance, and I’m very much not saying that corporations are always perfectly rational or anything. I know payment processors on particular are pretty sensitive to NSFW business out of fear of legal risk for processing child porn.
But I also wouldn’t say it’s completely detached from actual consumer preferences either. These things are usually multi-faceted.
Defederating NSFW instances is a big step up from not being horny all the time.
The end has arrived :( 4chan is the only answer.
A split might be good for us, as it would ensure the survival of the Fediverse. Hell, I’d probably just have accounts on both sides.
You could always host your own instance.
With your own moderation policy.
I think that’s probably the safest option.Threads is just a bad ActivityPub client with ads, tracking and Zuck. I am less worried about it and the federation with it because we will get non of that, no ads, no tracking and we can block Zuck. I am more worried about a general flood of typical instagram users and their love for the most blandest of human interaction.
You raise another good issue; the influx of all those most of us left behind on Reddit, though a slightly different breed.
I’m really enjoying actual conversation here, the posting of actual articles and discussions. I like that my feed isn’t full of memes (I blocked the instances that like that stuff, power to them elsewhere), reposted tiktok videos and tweet screenshots. The fediverse is going to be tainted. Obviously it could happen eventually if this place got more popular, but I was hoping to have a longer grace period…
Ultimately, the important thing is that communities can exist with some amount of independence and can operate by their own preferences.
Sometimes I want serious intellectual conversations. Sometimes I want to talk about trashy reality TV. Sometimes I just want the dumbest memes to ever enter a human mind. None of these have to be mutually exclusive, so long as different communities can manage themselves.
No no, I am not talking about people who enjoy talking about trashy reality tv.
I talk about people who’s main focus in life is posting presumably good looking pictures of their face and body on instagram. Or people whos main focus is to look wealthy on instagram. Like the absolute peak of human blandness.
Forums are the best.
the silence of lemmy’s and kbin’s developers over this matter isn’t exactly reassuring
This isn’t how the Fediverse works. Instance owners can decide who they will/won’t federate with. The developers just develop the software the instance owners use.
uh well, i dont understand… you are able to self host these services. you can self host a Masto instance, a lemmy instance, and a kbin instance. you aren’t tied to big tech just because a large instance has federated with big tech… so i don’t see how “Mastodon has caved”. i am on mstdn.social and the admin is blocking Meta from the start as Threads is not allowed to operate in the EU at the moment (exception is London, right?)
either self host or find an instance that isn’t federating with big tech. you don’t have to run anywhere.
Threads is available in the UK, the UK is not in the EU any more. We theoretically have data protection laws grandfathered in from the EU but they’re not enforced
my American is showing… lol
