I saw in the posts recently how Metas thread grew rapidly in a span of just a day. I understand that since threads posts a privacy nightmare (no surprises there) I’m leaning towards de-federating with them.

But I am also cautiously excited about the massive amount of content if we federated instead.

So for purposes of discussion, may I know the pros and cons of federating with threads?

  • empireOfLove@lemmy.oneEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    As I’ve heard Threads is not yet ActivityPub federation enabled- meta is going walled garden for the foreseeable future.

    Benefits of federation would be:

    • Massive available content boost for Lemmy, making user retention and growth easier.
    • Much wider general user awareness of Lemmy and the Fediverse via federated content titles showing off instance names. May drive more natural user growth.

    Cons of federation would be:

    • Data security. it’s Meta. Any and all user information, including admin data, naturally exposed by federated services instantly gets sucked into the Zuck data vacuum to build a user profile. Right now, we’re still reasonably insulated from them.
    • Spam. Threads is already massive by virtue of sucking in all the Instagram users. They would COMPLETELY drown any natural Lemmy content in their sheer volume of posts and votes, meaning lemmy native communities will struggle to gain any widespread traction over their Threads counterpart.
    • Content manipulation. Anything Meta chooses to promote via their “algorithm” will end up on the top of every federated instance, meaning they can now effectively manipulate all Lemmy content by simply bombarding federated instances with whatever they want.
    • Moderation. I’m not gonna sugar coat it, the average Instagram user is really dumb and it brings in all the shitty people with it too. Moderation of small instances will become impossible by sheer volume while federated with Threads.
    • Principle. Meta’s practices of extensive monetization and monopolization goes against every principle the fediverse was founded upon (freedom, decentralization, and emphasis on the user rather than the advertiser). By federating with Threads, you are giving Meta a free license to monetize the content you are paying to host on your own independent instance, for free. That just fucking stinks.
    • fidodo@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m wondering if they will even decide to try to federate. They’re bootstrapping threads with Instagram that already had 2+billion users. That’s insanely big compared to the fediverse. What do they even benefit from enabling it?

      • TeddE@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        They crush a potential rival in its infancy. That’s literally all. It all reads to me as textbook embrace, extend, extinguish.

        If the federated web were a company, they’d just buy them out if they got big enough. But it’s not, so they can’t, and that worries them. But they see the open part of open source as a vulnerability, so they put on a smile, pretend the game is ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ and then sabotage the protocol in a million ways from the inside while convincing users that your app is clearly the best way to experience the federated web.

      • empireOfLove@lemmy.oneEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Pretty much lol. Given Lemmy’s current community situation there’s really very little reason to ever federate with them.

  • webghost0101@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Pros: millions of users can interact with your instance

    Cons: This is a super blatant attempt to consume all data. They have been doing this for years. “Log in with facebook” They see the value of the fediverse and aim to become the mainstream place for new accounts. Those users can then interact with any kind off community they want. Meta is not responsible for content on other instances. But they are harvesting all of it trough millions of clueless spies.

      • webghost0101@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        As a lemmy user i can click your name and scroll trough a list of all posts and comments you have made. Thats your data and its currently free for the taking to any corporation.

        Eventually instances may develop ways to protect their users from this for example make posts only visible to verified human members that are members of a community. Now imagine a user joining such community from the meta threads apps. It wouldn’t be beneath them to fulltime record the app screen and ocr all the text the user sees.