I was wondering why I can’t follow people from Threads on Mastodon and found out it’s because the server I’m on has blocked interoperability with Threads.
Wow, so what are my options here? Nag the admins? Switch my account to a different server? What do I lose if I do that? Which one do I switch to? 🤔
https://www.threads.net/@thatadamguy/post/C02Bv7LPmET/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
It sounds like if I switch servers on Mastodon then I’ll lose my post history. Given that I expect I’ll just stop posting on Mastodon when Threads fediverse integration is done and instead will ask Mastodon users to follow my Threads account.
This actually helps consolidate my text-based social media accounts down to one.
@locksmithprime @carnage4life yes, and nobody trusts them. at all. nobody is happy that they intend to hoover up data, produce ads, train AIs and other stuff people abjectly came to masto to avoid.
also, the relationship is one-way. masto can see threads, threads cant see masto.
so moving to threads means losing the ability to interact with your audience entirely.
@Viss @locksmithprime @carnage4life
How is federating making it any easier to Hoover up data? You can view all this without an account.
@Viss @locksmithprime @carnage4life
How sure are we that some of the instances you’re already federated with aren’t just Meta, OpenAI, or Microsoft hovering up data?
Let’s get real - this stuff is all public.
@plasma4045 @locksmithprime @carnage4life because of the thousands of instances that exist, most of them are here expressly to not collect data like meta and google. and just because something is public doesnt instantly mean its trivially accessible or scrapeable, or would even permit that. threads is all public too.
also, look whats happening with ai and scraping of public data, and all the lawsuits.
@WowSuchCyber @plasma4045 @locksmithprime @carnage4life technically, perhaps, depending on their config. but i estimate that once they were found out, a majority of instances would instantly block them outright.
they lied to congress and the senate MULTIPLE TIMES and got away with it. there is zero reason to trust facebook ever again.
@WowSuchCyber @plasma4045 @locksmithprime @carnage4life it is quite possible. from a legal standpoint, getting the firehose from twitter is asking one legal team for permission.
getting the same from mastodon? when every server has a unique admin with their own unique set of rules? good luck. every server is a unique entity with its own terms of service. every server is its own unique legal entity.
trying to do big public scrapes is noisy, burdensome and makes them look really bad.
@WowSuchCyber @plasma4045 @locksmithprime @carnage4life so its in their best interest to get some kind of api level access. which they now have. but even still, they are at the mercy of the existing fleet of servers out there.
this access will allow them to taillor their existing bullshit and disinformation machine to grapple with activitypub.
its going to get ugly and fucked, just like cambrige analytica. its practically guaranteed. they got away with murder, so they'll keep murdering
@carnage4life I don't want to interact with threads bc I'm afraid of embrace-and-extend like Google Chat did to XMPP. I won't follow your account on threads, which makes me sad bc I really enjoy your content.
I realize I'm only one person, but maybe if you hear enough pushback, you'll reconsider. Ultimately, you do you tho. ❤️
@carnage4life i absolutely enjoy your posts, and very much appreciate your point of view, we agree on a lot and disagree on a little.
if you do switch to threads i wish you luck but i will unfortunately miss out on your great insights and inventive wit.
my small (very small) wish is you self host a mastodon instance, i wont block you for federating with threads.. but i most certainly am blocking threads.
(admin of a small instance)
thanks for your contributions
@carnage4life To follow you at your threads address, in much the same way I can follow Mosseri already? Seems like an eminently reasonable move on your part and zero impact to me apart from the change of address.
I won’t be clutching my pearls over this one.
@carnage4life I believe the old posts stick around when you set up the redirect for example from 2018 when I set that up
@carnage4life Hi Dare - @trumpet has posted a thread explaining the reasons for holding back. The position is trying to take a middle ground - a sort of "wait-and-see" approach. So, Mas.to is not rejecting Threads integration but is waiting to see how it plays out. I am not on one side or the other on this and I think this is a good middle ground for the time being. As frustrating as it is.
Here is the post with the arguments:
HELLO THERE! I’m getting a lot of questions about Threads, so here’s a short thread (pun intended) which should provide clarity on our position. We chose many months ago to block Threads because of two primary concerns. Firstly we saw performance issues last November because of explosive growth, and while we have much stronger infrastructure now we are keen to avoid that happening again. We also have concerns as to whether Threads will manage to effectively moderate their users at launch. /1
@carnage4life ultimately if they don't lift the block switching instances is your only option.
Given the limited interoperability right now, I guess the question is if it's worth letting your instance admins know your preferences and waiting to see what they do.
I'm thinking mastodon.social is a safe bet because @Gargron seems pretty psyched about this thing working out. You might start by setting up a test account to check that it's firing on all cylinders
@carnage4life
If you swtich, your posting history on mas.to stays on mas.to. & some of your follows or followers may break, if their instance is blocked by your new server or vice-versa. Also people seem to say that it's a good idea to manually migrate your following list, just in case.
It's not as small a deal as it's commonly made out to be, but it's not earth-shattering.
@carnage4life It is fairly easy to switch. You lose your post history though. All your followers and follows come with though.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-one-server-to-another/
With the sad news that KNZK was shutting down we thought it might be useful for people to have a refresher on the features that Mastodon has built in that make moving instances easy and painless. Backing up Your Data Data export If you are moving to a new instance the first thing you will want to do is to get a backup of all of your data. Thankfully this process is painless with the Data Export tab under the “Import and Export” page. Here you can download your followers list, your muted users list and your blocked users list.
@carnage4life It looks like threads.net is listed here: https://codeberg.org/oliphant/blocklists. Which mas.to seems to base their blocklist off of.
Almost looks like 60-80% of consensus for blocks to appear on that list. Is threads.net already blocked that widely???
I don’t understand how so many people here advocate for the fediverse concept while also blocking servers over literally nothing. threads.net has not fedierated any spam, malicious content or anything negative yet. Way too premature…
@fishcharlie
"I don’t understand how so many people here advocate for the fediverse concept while also blocking servers over literally nothing."
I don't understand why people don't understand this. Federation is about connecting, yes, but also about not connecting with those one doesn't like. You're basically saying "you guys say you like having choices but you chose differently from me, what's up with that?"
Also, premature? How many genocide enablings, political manipulations, labor abuses, and unethical experiments does it take?
@SallyStrange And what federated content have you seen from threads.net that you don’t like? There’s only like a handful of federated accounts.
I view it as extremely premature. They just started federation yesterday. Yesterday!
Overall tho. I don’t have a problem with server admins making this decision if they are transparent about it. However so far I haven’t seen one concrete federated post that warrants blocking the server. I don’t think that is instilling transparency. (1/2)
@fishcharlie @SallyStrange @Mastodon Your posts are not some gold nuggets you hoard.
That's such a toxic mindset.
Microblogging is not blogging, so if you are obsessing about some old post that was hot for a few hours in July 2022, just screenshot it and put it in an actual blog post.
It's unhealthy af, but nobody's stopping you.
@fishcharlie @SallyStrange That same "argument" would apply to instances with names that include slurs, references to child pornography or to violence.
"And what federated content have you seen from map.moe that you don’t like?"
Fuck that. We don't need to wait for obvious bad actors to prove their obvious intentions.
And Meta's intentions are obvious.
@fishcharlie This blocklist is based on a small (and opinionated?) subset of servers, and the consensus is based on server count, not user count. This may not be representative.
@sxpert @carnage4life But by federating with Threads you aren’t agreeing to their T&Cs. You only agree to that if you create an account on Threads.
(Not a lawyer & this isn’t legal advice, so this information might be completely wrong)
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