chikorita157 🐰Jul 3, 2023

Yikes, look how much Meta wants to collect from you with their new “Threads" app, which is defederated by most servers.

#threads #meta

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/threads-an-instagram-app/id6446901002

‎Threads, an Instagram app

‎Say more with Threads — Instagram’s text-based conversation app. Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow. Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favorite creator…

App Store
Show threadRagashingo

@chikorita157 Defederation is going to kill Mastodon. Maybe Bluesky or Threads won't gain traction, but something where a handful of admins don't utterly destroy the SOCIAL CONNECTIONS built by their users will come along and be good and this place will cruise along banning each other over increasingly narrow ideals until there is no one left.

Normal users don't want all this crap, they just want to follow friends and have everything work... :(

Jul 4, 2023 at 12:09amWeb
Show threadBraw ☕🏳️‍🌈Jul 4, 2023

@Ragashingo the problem is that companies like meta know you want to keep connections, that's why they take you hostage through them. No doubt they'll start implementing proprietary extensions that other Fedi software won't be able to support and eventually just pull the plug with some dumb reasoning like ‘oh there's so much bad content on fedi that we cannot moderate so we decided to remove federation’. It happened before, it's bound to happen again.

@chikorita157

Show threadRagashingoJul 4, 2023

@brawaru @chikorita157 It's back to: "The Fediverse! We're free and open! (Except when we aren't!)

I, too suspect bad future behavior... but what if it's 10 years away?! I only really used and loved Twitter for 10 years and enjoyed the heck out of it when it was good. It became a real time backbone of the Internet (weather reports, traffic alerts, sensors of all kind) when it was good.

Preemptively defederation is a massive violation of principles! It makes me angry.

Show threadBraw ☕🏳️‍🌈Jul 4, 2023

@Ragashingo it's absolutely not 10 years away, Mastodon didn't make a stable ground yet, so if this is going to happen, it's going to happen really quickly, and not many willing to take such risks.

What Mastodon has is nothing to Meta, but it's still users that they can try to take, because users are their revenue.

Nobody tries to screw anyone over with defederation, Masto admins just trying to protect the users and the network.

@chikorita157

Show threadFahri Reza 🍉Jul 4, 2023

@Ragashingo @brawaru @chikorita157 they are too big to fail by then, you wouldn't be able to imagine the opposition

You'd probably need government level entity to arbitrate by then, like what's happening in Canada and news producers.

Show threadLiteralGrillJul 4, 2023

@Ragashingo @chikorita157 I can understand this fear, it's not impossible.

But the alternatives just aren't for me. I'm starting to think maybe the Fediverse just isn't for "everybody" you know? Not trying to exclude anyone, just that these places have different values.

And to be fair, we've been watching Twitter demolish those social connections too. Either option could implode, but I like what is being built here. It feels like thinking towards the future instead of just caring about the easy things in the now.

Show threadDylan Roskams-EdrisJul 4, 2023

@Ragashingo @chikorita157 I don't like being That Guy but isn't the point that if you don't like what your server is doing you can migrate to another one? Or run one?

In my experience the admin ( @quokka ) and mods for scicomm.xyz did an excellent job laying out the up and downsides of federation with Meta instances, solicited feedback and consultation, then clearly explained their decision.

That isn't infighting and banning.

It's community consultation.

Show threadRagashingoJul 4, 2023

@dylanwre @chikorita157 @quokka Social networks didn’t get popular on the tagline: “It’s great, just run your own server!” That’s inching towards out of touch tech elitism.

I have huge respect for those that do the hard work to make tech happen, but they are and should be the exception. Normal users just want things to work and don’t want to see all their friends vanish with each new ideological threat that they didn’t even know existed.

Show threadDylan Roskams-EdrisJul 4, 2023

@Ragashingo @chikorita157 @quokka
I get that ease is important.
But still, that "i just want it to work without thinking" smacks of the same unreflective consumerism that has led to so much catastrophe in other domains (ubiquitous plastic, surveillance capitalism).

I have to do very little on the instance I'm on other than pay some little attention to emerging issues and occasionally donate to ease the cost. I work a bit harder to find people. It's ok

That seems like a reasonable cost to pay.

Show threadDylan Roskams-EdrisJul 4, 2023

@Ragashingo @chikorita157 @quokka I don't want to get into a flame war about it. Maybe we just want different things. I'm OK with it not being super easy if that's the trade off for avoiding centralized control and therefore centralized power.

Maybe Mastodon won't become 'popular' for a given definition of the word, but that's also OK with me. Having a smaller community where I find cool stuff, talk to cool people, and am not surveiled and the object of constant ads is pretty great.

Show threadΘεία πίτσα 🧀🍕🥓🍅Jul 4, 2023
@Ragashingo @chikorita157 I'm a normal user and I am all pro defederating meta
Show threadRagashingoJul 4, 2023

@Stinpizzamou @chikorita157 Yeah... no. A normal user is someone who just signs up and uses the platform. You're doing advocacy for complex, platform-level technical features vs unannounced upcoming competitor platforms that 99.999% of humanity doesn't even know exists yet. Which is all pretty cool!

Take some darn pride in being awesome! Just don’t pretend your view point is that of the average user. :)

Show threadΘεία πίτσα 🧀🍕🥓🍅Jul 4, 2023
@Ragashingo @chikorita157 I am awesome, and a normal user. I had extensive talks with other normal users about what meta accessing the fediverse would mean and formed my opinion. That's most fediverse users. If they are here, they know more than what you give them credit