Someone has initiated a social.coop vote about defederating from #Threads. I’m voting not to.
I considered making my vote a blocking vote since there’s a good chance I will leave social.coop if it passes, but I’m not sure I can make a compelling case it’s against our core principles, per se. Just not what I want from my server. I will be pretty bummed if it comes to that.
https://www.loomio.com/p/Kwl1mPCi/shall-we-defederate-from-meta-s-threads-net-
Here’s what I wrote:
If threads.net becomes a way that my friends use the Fediverse, which I think is likely, I would probably leave social.coop if I couldn’t interact with them. I would be pretty sad about that—I’ve been here since 2017!
Separately, while I share the skepticism of Meta, I find something distasteful about excluding Meta’s users, who are numerous and imo more diverse than the Fediverse currently.
I am less afraid of EEE than others. I think we’re quite resilient against it.
It feels like under the principle of anti-corporatism we're reenacting the same tech nerd gatekeeping that pervades Hacker News, open source communities, certain subreddits, etc.
Non-fedi people I talk to see Mastodon as "just for nerds" and it feels like our community is doing everything in its power to keep it that way. This is our best opportunity I've seen to make the Fediverse something for *everyone.*
Interestingly this particular style of RCV has created some perverse incentives in a way I've never seen so visibly. The top three options are very close and there's only 58 votes so far.
My top choice is "Federate w Threads, don't create conditions" but it's clearly losing globally. My second choice "Federate w Thread, create conditions for defederation" was in third place globally, but by making it my top choice I bumped it up a percentage point to second.
@harris much like "safe spaces," every honest conversation about being "inclusive" has to specify *for whom*. no space is safe for everyone. no space includes everyone.
I don't have a stake in social.coop, so I don't have an opinion about what's correct there, but it sounds like that's the fundamental disagreement. is it worth some current users feeling less safe to make some potential new users feel more safe?
@relsqui I suppose that's true. I think *mostly* people's expressed opposition is to Meta the company, not Meta's users—and you can't block one but not the other. But not infrequently I feel like I also hear a subtext of "I don't want those corporate social media users here."
"Meta users" is a much more diverse group than social.coop or the Fediverse generally. So it makes me feel like I'm in a safe space the same way a gated community is a safe space—like we're keeping the riff raff out.
@harris The problem is that Threads is likely to be very large - perhaps larger than the rest of the Fediverse combined. With such a large userbase, and likely with contributions to the ActivityPub protocol, Meta will have a large amount of sway over the platform(s) as a whole.
If instances were more united and coordinated, I would agree that we are resistance to E³. However, we aren't, and because of that we do not have a large say in how things progress.
@harris It's never really a direct line. It would be more like a "death by a thousand cuts" as Meta influences and changes the Fediverse.
I don't personally think blocking is the answer, mind you. I think banding together and collectively coordinating responses is.
Users have the ability to block servers themselves if they don't want to integrate with Threads or any other server on the Fediverse.
The authoritarian "we know what's best for you and dissenting opinions won't be tolerated" attitude that so many instances have is harmful to Mastodon as a whole and a turn off for a lot of people because it just ends up creating a lot of fiefdoms that are echo chambers.
Harris Lapiroff
relsqui
David C
Fenn Martyn
c3141mtd