Everywhere I look there are people advocating for defederation from this and that! Do you even understand what you’re suggesting? Do you get what’s the point of decentralized social media and activity pub?
This is supposed to be free and accessible for everyone. We all have brains and can decide who to interact with.
If meta or any other company manages to create a better product it’s just natural that people tend to use it. I won’t use it, you may not use it and it’s totally fine! It’s about having options. Also as Mastodon’s CEO pointed out there’s no privacy concern, everything stays on your instance.
Edit: after reading and responding to many comments, I should point out that I’m not against defederation in general. It’s a great feature if used properly. Problem is General Instances with open sign-ups and tens of thousands of users making decisions on par of users and deciding what they can and can not see.
If you have a niche or small community with shared and agreed upon values, defederating can be great. But I believe individual users are intelligent enough to choose.
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I mean someone from the “outside” might go to lemmy.world and see a page full of poop and beans and argue the same thing. Just saying.
I have no problem with people making educated decisions or ask for change based on facts. Fully agree about quality over quantity as well. My issue is FUD, having no idea what you’re talking about and still trying to convince everyone of that is harmful. When people working day and night on these protocols say there are no privacy concerns and no one can show you ads etc. and yet someone with literally zero understanding of the matter claims otherwise.
I dunno. I just stumbled on a movement to push instance owners to defederate any instance that doesn’t defederate Threads.
This seems very much in the vein of dictatorialism / authoritarianism. It’s honestly just gross. This whole “you’re either with us or against us” tribalism is what has made social media so awful these last several years.
Who is this this dictator/authority you refer to that’s forcing instances to defederate?
Is there a service where you can see who defederation from whom?
Defederation is a feature, not a weakness.
True! Defederation is great sometimes, if you have a niche community and there is some other instance directly opposing your values or if content there is illegal in your jurisdiction etc.
Nagging about every single instance with a few bad actors on the other hand is problematic in my opinion
Nagging about every single instance with a few bad actors…
Yup. Tells the admins to do their jobs and get rid of bad actors.
Too many of y’all are perfectly fine with hate seeping in through the seams. It needs to be stamped out like a smoldering ember before it grows to an uncontrollable wildfire. They aren’t here to engage in constructive conversations. They want to do two things: spread their bullshit, and recruit edgy teenagers. Neither of these things can happen when admins do their duty and smite the hate. And if a federation isn’t doing their duty, cut em off. They can come back when they straighten their shit out.
We are trying to prevent a repeat of Google with xmpp.
This and having a fuckton of scummy users being sent our way by accounts like Libs of TikTok. Harassment will be unbearable and large-scale, especially for tiny instances.
Do you get what’s the point of decentralized social media
Do you?
It certainly doesn’t mean “everything from everywhere can reside on the server I pay for”. Nor does it mean “we can’t vote them off the island if they’re negatively impacting us”.
It means exactly the opposite, in fact. It means we get to say “no” at whatever level we choose, and that includes at the server level.
If you don’t like the choices the admins on your server make, find a new one, or start your own. That is the promise of federation.
Totally get your point. But I think this notion of I’m paying, so I will decide what you can do is not a good mindset. If you’ve started a general instance with tens of thousand of users, you have a responsibility, no one forced you to do this. And with no easy option to migrate accounts, yes this is authoritarian.
The foundation of free speech is that you cannot force someone to say something they do not want to. This is a lot more foundational than the “you can say what you want” aspect of free speech. You can’t force someone to agree with you, you can’t force someone to publish or say something in their name, you can’t force someone to host content on their website.
Similarly, you can’t force an owner of a Lemmy instance to host or say something they don’t want to. If an owner said “you know what, I don’t want to host this” or “I don’t want to federate with X” then you can disagree with them sure, but you can’t force them to say/do something they don’t want to.
Whether this is or isn’t authoritarian, the alternative is that someone can force a Lemmy owner to host things they don’t want in their server. Imagine if some really repugnant communities showed up on your instance and you couldn’t remove them. Now that really would be authoritarianism - it’s removing your freedom to choose what you say… Just because someone can say something, doesn’t mean you as an owner/individual have to listen to it, like it, agree with it, or host it.
The big free instances are running off of good will, they don’t owe you anything, they certainly don’t owe your view a voice unconditionally. If you don’t like it, especially with Lemmy, you can set up your own instance/club and say and not say what you like.
Did anyone talk about forcing instance owners or any other person to do or say something they don’t want?!
Sorry but I think you have not even read the post. I’m talking about all these negativity towards other instances from average users in here. If and instance owner decides to defederate of course I might disagree but there’s not much I can do about it, specially if they can present reasons.
If anyone can prove that some other Instance is harmful it’s just natural that it should be defederated (in most cases)
Again. My issue is talking nonsense about oh that company is trying to destroy us whilst in reality they have hundreds of millions of users and are gaining more each second and we’re sitting here circle jerking about our nice little community.
I say we should be open to new experiments. I am not saying defederation is bad, I am not saying instance owners should be forced to do anything
If meta or any other company manages to create a better product it’s just natural that people tend to use it. … It’s about having options
We can’t rely on the illusion of an even playing field to limit the influence of predatory capital like zukerberg’s. Big social media products are designed around the chemistry of decision making in the brain - they can win using an inferior, exploitative product with the worst user experience that could possibly bear profits.
I’m not necessarily in favor of defed-ing anything that zuck’s claws are in, but I think it’s very important to be wary of what opening the door for one of the world’s most genocide-encouraging social media companies could mean.
But what do you do when a known Dictator walks in?
Meta is going to establish itself, and go back to old habits once it’s on top in the fediverse.
Defederating “from this and that” is actually sometimes problematic here. It’s about instance admins finding balance between freedom and usability (limiting spam and hate). Beehaw.org defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, lemmy.world defederated from exploding-heads.com etc. These decisions were controversial, but they weren’t bold. On the contrary, much thought and care went into these and that can be seen in communities’ support for them (in case of Beehaw, along with hopeful awaiting of refederation by users and admins alike).
But that seems not to be the main issue you’re presenting. Defederating from Threads specifically is an entirely different matter. And people who advocate for it, including myself, have more arguments for it than just privacy.
Though it's not the main point of my comment, I'm gonna list some such arguments, simply to back my words.
- The EEE. Meta could (and quite probably will) try to federate with its millions of users, then use extended protocols putting pressure on Fediverse to adapt, in order to satisfy Meta’s users. They can make it difficult to keep up (e.g. by providing purposely flawed documentation) and the users will grow tired of stuff not working here but working there. Once users register with Meta (since it’s a part of the Fediverse after all, right?), they’ll cut the rest of us loose.
- Badly moderated content. Facebook is already full of it.
- Meta has a history of terrible actions and should not be supported.
Thanks for this great comment! Yes, I totally agree with your arguments and personally hate meta. My problem is posts like this and misinformation about underlying tech (like privacy and ads). Meta will do anything to be the sole winner, but as I’ve pointed here it’s a dilemma and defederating can actually encourage more users to stop using Fediverse to begin with!
We have a unique opportunity. Hitching ourselves to the same corporate social media we’re trying to avoid is counterproductive.
We don’t need everyone and their cousin to be federated. There’s plenty of other social media if you want that experience.
Defederation is an important tool and is part of what makes the fediverse work. In my experience, people who are strongly defederation averse are mostly either quite new to the fediverse or have the relative privilege of never having to really deal with bad actors especially en masse.
I’m not new to this, though usually not very active poster. so yes I have not experienced much harassment tbh.
Part of being free and accessible for everyone is allowing defederation.
If an instance you’re in defederates, just start your own. Why complain about what people want to do in their instances? Just find another one.
Yes, that’s exactly how you sound.
But I literally said the opposite!
Glad you said this. People demanding large instances like this one defederate from stuff they don’t personally like are, frankly, very mislead and trying to be little dictators. That’s not their decision to make.
Copying this from another comment I made. Defederating would pretty much cut off a lot of potential new users that want to see posts on Threads while also not wanting to have a Meta account and all the issues that come with it. People here need to realize that they are in an echo chamber. Mastodon and Lemmy needs users and content. Cutting a big portion of that would kill it in the long run. There would be nothing to “extinguish” in the first place in their complaints of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
I had a minor debate here re: Usenet, where OP said we basically had an “easy to use” internet 30+ years ago, and AOL won by blanketing people with CDs.
I’m a techie who first got online with a 2400baud modem and I am fully aware that nothing I do can be extrapolated to the general population. Now that I work in the field, designing for “normies” is how and why services grow. The winners are the most usable services, not the most ideologically righteous ones.
(Also normies is a ridiculous elitist term, users of lemmy and mastodon are not special or smart…in this moment in time we’re primarily idealists with strong opinions on centralized tech that most people couldn’t care less about lol)
Also normies is a ridiculous elitist term
I just think it acknowledges that we’re abnormal in how we’re approaching all of this.
Defederating would pretty much cut off a lot of potential new users that want to see posts on Threads while also not wanting to have a Meta account and all the issues that come with it.
Kinda the point, no? Kill Threads in the cradle by denying it access to the fediverse.
Exactly, I have a lot of normie friends that use threads, I don’t want to use it but would love to interact with them. Best of both worlds
if you interact with them, you’re “using” threads
Can you elaborate?
I would have phrased it as “supporting” Threads. If you don’t defederate, Threads will take over your instance. Either directly through the sheer amount of posts, or indirectly by colluding with your instance admins. Or both. It’s how they operate. And then the ads and data harvesting and walled gardens will come.
The general public does not understand federation. When Threads makes content that I have created via kbin.social visible on Threads, very many people are going to think that that content was created on Threads. And Meta then takes that content, aggregated with all the other non-Threads initiated fediverse content, and monetizes it. They are using “not their content” to enhance the desirability of their portal, and certainly placing ads in its vicinity. As with any instance, they can also curate that content to promote their chosen agenda, which is surely in part “increasing engagement.”
We’ve seen how “increasing engagement” has been done by Meta and other companies already: ragebaiting and misinformation. While there is no way to completely prevent this, I want to avoid content that I have created from being used in that way. If there was a way for me to individually defederate from Threads, so that Threads could not see my content, I would turn that switch on in an instant. So far as I know, the only way for my content to be excluded from being viewed via Threads is for the instance my account is on to defederate. I’m not in any way asking for kbin.social to defed from Threads, just noting that that is currently the only functional way to accomplish the stated goal.
I do understand that there are already instances that have done that very thing, and I am certainly able to jump over and use one of those instead. I may do that at some point, but I am pleased with the interface at kbin.social, and developer of kbin’s work. For the moment, I want to watch and see how things play out, becoming more informed before I make a decision about how I interact with the fediverse.
You realize that defederating prevents you from seeing their content but not the other way around right? Meta will see your content regardless. So many people are confused about this
Aren’t the people demanding that no instance ever defederate for any reason and that defederation shouldn’t be allowed the ones who have an inner dictator that needs to be tamed? I thought the entire point of things being decentralized is that individual instances can operate the way they want, including choosing which other instances to federate with. But for some reason, this freedom shouldn’t be allowed? Am I missing something here?
If you cared enough to read my post (or comments under maybe) you would’ve seen that I have no problem with defederation in general. My issue is defederation of general instances with 10s of thousands of users for literally no reason but FUD. If you can prove that some other instance is harmful, you should definitely consider defederating
I read your post, which equated calls for defederation to being a dictator.
no instance ever defederate for any reason
did I say this?!
Also advocating for defederation (censorship) on an instance with 100K users is dictatorship. specially when you can’t prove that said instance is harmful.
Dictatorship would be one single authority over all instances telling each instance what they can, cannot, and must do. Individual instances choosing who to federate or defederate with when people are free to choose whichever instance they want to be a part of (including being a part if multiple instances simultaneously with different accounts) is nothing at all like a dictatorship. It’s not even censorship like you claim. Nothing is stopping you from joining an instance that still federated with instances that another instance has defederate from. Or starting your own instance and making these decisions for yourself.
Why did I say “no instance defederate for any reason”? Because instances that have defederate have given reasons, and they naysayers like you are not only saying they shouldn’t be allowed to do that, but that doing so is “censorship” and “dictatorship”. I think you need a dictionary because you don’t seem to know what certain words mean.
No one is stopping you to migrate from an authoritarian country either (most of the time) and yet they’re called authoritarian. Also, I’m not saying instances “shouldn’t be allowed to defederate”, I’m saying advocating for this on a general instance with 100K users is wrong. If this was a niche or small community with agreed upon and shared values (like beehaw for example) that would be understandable.
Saying things like “Oh, But You Can Run Your Instance” is dismissive of the issue, There’s literally no option to migrate accounts and expecting average users to deal with this mess is beyond me.
Did you really just equate trying to leave an authoritarian country with signing up for a different federated instance? Every post you make just further confirms that you don’t know what the words “dictator” and “authoritarian.”
Also, I’m not saying instances “shouldn’t be allowed to defederate”, I’m saying advocating for this on a general instance with 100K users is wrong. If this was a niche or small community with agreed upon and shared values (like beehaw for example) that would be understandable.
First of all, this is probably some nuance you should have provided in your original post where you only say that calling for defederation makes you a “dictator” and in no way indicate that there are situation where you think defederation is appropriate. I don’t have time to read your entire posting history just to determine where you’re actually coming from. You could have probably included this nuance in your original post and avoided some of the backlash you are getting.
But second of all, how would you enforce what you are proposing? If larger instances were prevented somehow from defederating, wouldn’t that require some sort of “authority” making that decision for those instance? That doesn’t seem to align with your values based on what you’ve posted.
Did you really just equate trying to leave an authoritarian country with signing up for a different federated instance?
Yes I am, you are suggesting I don’t know the meaning of these words, so I’ve provided an example of the exact same situation (importance doesn’t change meaning of words here, does it?)
If you censor me, you have censored me! The fact that you’re a government or admin of instance doesn’t change word’s meaning.
this is probably some nuance you should have provided in your original post where you only say that calling for defederation makes you a “dictator” and in no way indicate that there are situation where you think defederation is appropriate.
In hindsight, I should’ve but in response to most comments I’ve acknowledged that it’s fine in a lot of situations
But second of all, how would you enforce what you are proposing? If larger instances were prevented somehow from defederating, wouldn’t that require some sort of “authority” making that decision for those instance? That doesn’t seem to align with your values based on what you’ve posted.
May I ask what made you think I’m looking for enforcement here? I believe in human coordination and freedom of choice. If I join a general instance, I don’t expect admins to decide who I can interact with, that’s all!
