Technology

Good.

Every instance should block Threads.

For the Meta apologists, I have a reality check for you:

Threads was immediately subject to mass amounts of radicalizing, extremist content, and there have also been instances of users having personal information doxxed on Threads due to Meta's information-harvesting practices. [1]

Threads was marketed to be open to 'free speech' (read: hate speech and misinformation) and encouraged the Far-Right movement to join, who have spread extremism, hate, and harassment on Threads already. [2] Threads has been a hotbed of Israel-Palestine misinformation/propaganda. [3] They also fired fact-checkers just prior to Threads' launch. [1]

As already established, Meta also assisted in genocide! [4]

Meta/FB/Instagram also have a strong history of facilitating the spread of misinformation and extremism, which contributed to the January 6th insurrection attempt. [5], [6]

This really should be obvious by now.. but Meta mines and sells their user's information.[7] Just look at the permissions you have to grant them for Threads...

FB users have to agree to all sorts of unethical things in the TOS, including giving Meta permission to run unethical experiments on their users without informed consent. [8] Their first published research was where they manipulated users' feeds with positive or negative information, in order to see if it affected their mood. It did, and they successfully induced depression in many of their users!

I will now turn to an article that surmises well the core practices of Meta as a company:

• Elevates disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories from the extremist fringes into the mainstream, fostering, among other effects, the resurgent anti-vaccination movement, broad-based questioning of basic public health measures in response to COVID-19, and the proliferation of the Big Lie of 2020—that the presidential election was stolen through voter fraud [16];

• Empowers bullies of every size, from cyber-bullying in schools, to dictators who use the platform to spread disinformation, censor their critics, perpetuate violence, and instigate genocide;

• Defrauds both advertisers and newsrooms, systematically and globally, with falsified video engagement and user activity statistics;

• Reflects an apparent political agenda espoused by a small core of corporate leaders, who actively impede or overrule the adoption of good governance;

• Brandishes its monopolistic power to preserve a social media landscape absent meaningful regulatory oversight, privacy protections, safety measures, or corporate citizenship; and

• Disrupts intellectual and civil discourse, at scale and by design. [9]

@hedge I dislike Facebook, so that's why I am here. But if the only way to stay in touch with people I know irl is on Threads, so be it. Either my server federates with Threads, or there's one more Threads user in this world.

Well, at least that's what many people would choose, imo. On the flip side, if Facebook itself would be federated and my server would federate with it, I would simply delete my Facebook account. Period.

I get that Meta is an outrageous organization, but people seem to forget the purpose of these platforms altogether - which is communication. And communications happen when other people use the same platform as well. And okay, let's say I have a managed Fedi server (which is the most hassle-free option of self-hosting, leaving money and legal stuff aside). What am I gonna do if, e.g. I get a Tinder match and the girl is asking me for my Facebook or Insta? Should I say something like "hey, I don't have either, but make an account on this random-ass website where only a few hundred people are there as well, and you don't know anyone of them personally"?

If people want to get people to leave the Meta platforms for Fedi and whatnot, then federating with Threads and educating people this way would actually be a better option imo.

“I don’t think it’s nice to federate with a company that has been cited in multiple independent reports of massacres/genocides,”

And I don't think it's nice to take the choice away from users. I can block threads all on my own -- I don't need a nanny who doesn't even cite their sources.

That's just mad. Instances should have the free choice to choose. I am pro-threadseration

Well, it's a list of "well maintained/moderated servers

Any server that federates with threads, a product of Meta a company known for their low quality moderation and lack of ethics, is clearly not a well maintained/moderated one.

It's not a new rule. The admin is just applying the sites rules as they are, instead of making exception for threads as many of the techbro admins that are getting their servers excluded have been doing.

Cliff and his co-admin Kyle Reddoch are now working on their own alternative index, that doesn’t include this requirement. It’s a massive undertaking, and requires vetting communities asking permission for inclusion, and regularly checking in on community developments. Still, they’re optimistic.

“[We] are making a list on our Wiki of instance that both federate and defederate from Threads,” Kyle writes, “we feel people [should] have the choice themselves and not have someone else choose for them.”

I kind of think that it'd be nice if there were support for various instances claiming that they support various collections of policies, as it'd be an easier way to identify how instances work and choosing one.

Like, right now it involves manually reading through each instance's sidebar, but if it were published in a standard way, it could be used to filter instances on lemmyverse.net, to help a user find an instance that they like.

And one instance could commit to multiple sets of (compatible) policies, doesn't need to be just one.

From a user standpoint, when the first step in entering the Threadiverse is a huge number of instances and manually reading through lots of individual instance policies, that can be a bit overwhelming.

Federating with Threads only hurts Meta. It does not help them in any way. You are not doing them any favors. If you are concerned about reports of genocide attributed to Meta, then you should federate.

Users who create accounts on Threads because they actually want to communicate with people they've heard of helps Meta. Defederating helps Meta.

This is proof to me that the federated model has failed. I was so hopeful early on in the fediverse, I thought it was all we needed. I no longer feel that way. It's not a network of users, its a network of power tripping fiefdoms.

Client relay network topology is the future of social networking. Check out Nostr (and ignore all the bitcoiners, see the network for what it is).

Fedi Garden to users: "You may need to find an alternative to us"