Project92 and the Fediverse - A Smarter Battle Plan to Protect the Open Social Web
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With the upcoming #meta #Project92 Fediverse service, there has been a, well, robust discussion of how to avoid threats looming. Those advocating mass-preemptive defederation make three cases for it. ➡️ To avoid data mining … However, defederation does virtually zero to avoid any big tech entity scraping all the Fediverse public social graph today - Want proof? See here: is.gd/q8U2pv But what if they merge that Fediverse data with their own internal data from IG isn’t that worse than just scraped data?

It is expected to be 2-3 months before Threads is ready to federate (see link). There will, inevitably, be five different reactions from instances:

  1. Federate regardless (mostly the toxic instances everyone else blocks)

  2. Federate with extreme caution and good preparation (some instances with the resources and remit from their users)

  3. Defederate (wait and see)

  4. Defederate with the intention of staying defederated

  5. Defederate with all Threads-federated instances too

It’s all good. Instances should do what works best for them and people should make their home with the instances that have the moderation policies they want.

In the interests of instances which choose options 2 or 3, perhaps we could start to build a pre-emptive block list for known bad actors on Threads?

I’m not on it but I think a fair few people are? And there are various commentaries which name some of the obvious offenders.

  • @[email protected]English
    18•1 year ago

    Defederating is a one-way transaction. Any instance that defederates from Threads will only stop themselves from receiving data from it, but Threads will still be able to pull data directly from any and all instances.

    • IllecorsEnglish
      4•1 year ago

      With enough instances not federating threads thr data they can get will become spotty.

      I understand it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s nothing on threads I want to receive.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•1 year ago

        I don’t think that’s true. Unless it’s a server side server denial rather than defederation, all posts on Lemmy are public. This means Threads will directly receive updates even from defederated instances.

        • IllecorsEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          Posts are public, yes, but you won’t be able to see a post from an instance you’re not federated with on your own instance. Yes, you can just load the instance url directly, but that’s just web scraping. All voting interactions, views, etc are not available in those cases.

          I understand that if we have a setup like this:

              Threads
  /         X
A ----------- B

          then interactions from instance B on a post on instance A will, in fact, be available to Threads. But nothing happening on B will.

          Interactions on posts/communities on instance B coming from instance A will not be seen by Threads.

          Overall, I think Threads will not actually ever enable federation to begin with, and even if it does - Lemmy is a bit of a different beast compared to Mastodon.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•1 year ago

      CMV: The people who want to receive data from Threads should just…make a freaking Threads account. The whole argument to connect with them at all is weird. It’s like recording a Disney movie to your DVR box and setting up streaming from your smart TV to your tablet so you can now enjoy the movie you recorded in bed…when you could’ve just downloaded the freaking Disney+ app.

      It’s also (somehow) like when you’re already in shorts and a t-shirt but still a little warm and someone else wants to turn the A/C off cause they’re cold. They can put on more clothes and be totally comfy, I cannot (politely) take any more clothes off.

      • @[email protected]English
        3•1 year ago

        Accessing threads from mastodon is significantly more private than downloading the official app.