Meta/Instagram launched a new product called Threads today (working title project92). It adds a new interface for creating text posts and replying to them, using your Instagram account. Of note, Meta has stated that Threads plans to support ActivityPub in the future, and allow federation with ActivityPub services. If you actually look at your Threads profile page in the app your username has a threads.net tag next to it - presumably to support future federation.
Per the link, a number of fediverse communities are pledging to block any Meta-directed instances that should exist in the future. Thus instance content would not be federated to Meta instances, and Meta users would not be able to interact with instance content.
I'm curious what the opinions on this here are. I personally feel like Meta has shown time and time again that they are not very good citizens of the Internet; beyond concerns of an Eternal September triggered by federated Instagram, I worry that bringing their massive userbase to the fediverse would allow them to influence it to negative effect.
I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place, and I'm eager to hear more opinions. What do you think?
I'll put it this way:
Or, to translate for those of us who don't speak "asshole":
There are good arguments for blocking Facebook as a whole on the web, such as cookie tracking. I don't like Facebook, but I guess I would consider any people who have made the jump to federated platforms as potentially missing out on interacting with their forever-facebooked-friends. Seriously, why can't people just try another thing alongside Facebook? Why do they have to be ride or die facebook-fiends? I digress..
I don't think the comparison to react makes a ton of sense - Facebook created react as an open source project, but once you download react, you have a copy of it for yourself and you don't need to check in with Facebook any further. They don't own your react app or its data.
I may be misunderstanding, but it sounds like threads will not be like that: they will be using an open standard that they did not create for a social network that will track you and gather your data every time you use it.
(I am for defederation)
They would need to make some big changes to ActivityPub to allow the kind of third party tracking they do with facebook. One thing to consider is that defederating just means you can't interact with facebook users and they can't interact with you. If privacy is your concern, you should get off public forums like lemmy. Facebook can and may already be data mining from the fediverse, and you would never know it. Even after defederating, your data can and will still be mined.
The only way to prevent facebook or any company from doing that is to block the IP addresses of every server and proxy they could ever use. That isn't going to happen, that info isn't even completely public.
As far as react goes, facebook uses react, as do other developers. ActivityPub usage would work similarly. Keep in mind Facebook has already implemented other standards on the web already, such as http, tls/ssl, email, xmpp and lots more.
I just don't want people thinking that defederating will somehow protect people from the prying eyes of facebook.. it will not. Facebook was the company who decided to track everywhere you go by way of you having a login to facebook a simply visiting sites which request the "like on facebook" button from facebook's servers.
I think we would be safer being on the fediverse in an app like lemmy and consuming facebook content via ActivityPub than we would be the other way around: to use facebook as a gateway to access the fediverse. When we interact with facebook via lemmy, we do so more or less on our (or rather the admin's) terms. Facebook gets the same data as other instances would. But, if we were to decide that facebook is dope as hell and we should consume lemmy content on facebook via ActivityPub, we would be subjecting ourselves to viewing the fediverse the way facebook wants us to. Ultimately, we trust the maker of the app, not unlike how email clients work with the open standard of email.
I don't care about federating or defederating. If the entire fediverse wants to defederate and make facebook look like the shit fediverse client, I like the sound of that. If some people want to connect with their forever facebook friends via federation, I like the sound of that too. At least in that case the forever facebook friends might learn there is more to the net than facebook (but that may not be relevant if facebook brings that part of the internet to you).
In my experience people do try things alongside Facebook. People actually actively use things alongside Facebook, but FB kind of became like a first point of contact for people. Like me and my closest circle of friends use a different messaging platform. The last time we messaged each other on Messenger was yeeears ago. And we're pretty active, text each other everyday. But if I meet someone new or just an acquaintance? I'm not inviting them that level of access to me. They can just be on messenger, which I check less frequently and I don't allow notifications from on my phone. Same goes for family, I have my parents on another messaging platform, but my cousins and other extended family? Nah... The tough part is when people transition from acquaintance to really good friend. Can't really change messaging platforms that easily. Happens less often with age, though...