Mastodawn

clifff Jan 10, 2025

Shakedown folks (and only Shakedown folks please) - let's talk defederating with threads.net. Meta's recent policy changes explicitly allow homophobic, sexist and transphobic content https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/7/24338471/meta-hate-speech-hateful-conduct-policy-moderation

This makes their moderation policies directly contradictory to ours. Normally we'd handle this by blocking the server in question, and I don't see any reason why Threads would be different.

Does this move make sense to people? Any arguments for staying connected?

#stateOfShakedown

Here are some of the horrible things that you can now say on Instagram and Facebook

Meta’s policy changes around hate speech have sharply changed the content that’s banned or allowed when it’s based on gender, sexual orientation, and the coronavirus.

The Verge

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Chop Jan 10, 2025

@clifff I differ from the opinions of others here. I think you harm Shakedown users who are looking for avenues to more mainstream content way more than you harm Threads. I’d rather see us take a wait-and-see approach on whether Threads toxicity penetrates our server. Then if it does, block without remorse.

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Nate PHedi Jan 10, 2025

@chopaganda @clifff I’m inclined to agree. Wait and see. My thought: it feels more like a symbolic gesture than one of substance. And if it drives away good people to threads who might otherwise stay here, it seems to do more harm than good. But if threads becomes problematic, we can always kill the bridge later.

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clifff Jan 10, 2025

@NatePHedi @chopaganda I do think it's fair to say defederating would be more of a moral than practical move at this point - I've never seen a report for a specific post from Threads that violates our rules. TBH I'm not sure I've ever seen a Threads account interact with a Shakedown account, but I don't follow very many so maybe that's why.

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Chop Jan 10, 2025

@clifff @NatePHedi I don’t even know if they can on this side is the wall. Their federation is very limited.

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John B

@chopaganda @clifff @NatePHedi I'm all for nuking Meta, but if it seems likely that their policy changes aren't going to cause problems for the admins here and immediate defederation would be a problem for some users, I'll step back from my position to cut them off based solely on their policy change.

I'm not following anyone on Threads, so don't expect problems showing up in my feed, anyway. My position to defederate now is philosophical and out of concern for extra moderation work.