Context

The main arguments for people to defederate are

  • “Embrace, extend, and extinguish” strategy: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
  • A potential federation with Threads (should Thread decide to implement it) would overwhelm Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed with millions of users (compared to the 40k monthly current active users), transforming those platforms into a threaded version of Facebook
  • Defederating preventively costs nothing

LW stance: https://lemmy.world/post/1274909?scrollToComments=true

      • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
        441·
        9 days ago

        One concern is that since threads has a massive userbase and similar volume of content, it is basically a full reservoir and when it starts to federate content it will be like the dam bursting. Even if there is a need for a user on lemmy.world to do something to start federating content, like subscribing to communities, but all it would take is a bot that subscribes to a bunch of popular content to both fill the All feed and prompt a massive number of API calls.

        If the hardware is up to the task, the other concern is the threads content overwhelming existing communities, and since a bunch of meta content is bot driven and malicious that would be a crazy amount of moderation that is likely needed to keep it from causing issues and driving away the existing userbase.

        • YeetPics@mander.xyzEnglish
          22·
          7 days ago

          If that means I have to find another federated social media, I guess I don’t have to build a plan to topple dessalines.

          Who am I kidding, he’s toppling himself. What a pro!

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlEnglish
        321·
        9 days ago

        Lemmy is niche and therefore is heavily populated by techies but more specifically lemmy is open source so these techies are specifically the type who like open source stuff. Threads and the corporation responsible for it have a financial incentive to oppose open source projects like this. So the community most ideologically tied to lemmy want nothing to do with it. They want to preserve their space that they have made as free of the influences of capital as possible. The very existence of threads is a threat.

      • DrDystopia@lemy.lolEnglish
        4·
        8 days ago

        There’s lots of things I’ve never witnessed but is against as a matter of principle.

      • nefonous@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        8 days ago

        It’s about literally nothing. People just (rightfully) hate Meta so they cry wolf for no reason. Try looking for Meta users on Mastodon, you won’t find almost any. Most thread users don’t know what the fediverse is, don’t care about it and don’t want to know. Threads has likely already more users than the whole fediverse. Their base is already bigger of what they should theoretically “expand and extinguish”. There is absolutely no reason for them to care about the fediverse more other than some niche PR.

        The EEE case never made sense from the beginning in this context, but people are still repeating it like a mantra. They are taking an emotional approach to a rational issue. Funnily enough, many of them are probably unable to understand how people could vote for Trump…

        Also I don’t understand the problem at all. It’s not like instances can’t defererate later if an issue arise. We were the niche from the start, and they already had all the users they could ever need. And ongoing project was just easier to implement compared to developing a platform from scratch, that’s all.

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.worldEnglish
      201·
      8 days ago

      The best if you don’t have to. If you thought Twitter’s nonexistent moderation was bad, then get ready for Meta’s moderation.

      People can post trans suicide memes, people can post outright hate speech, no action. Call a “moderate conservative” a “mean person”, racist, etc., action within 24 hours, multiple-day ban.

      • Scott M. Stolz@authorship.studio
        13·
        8 days ago

        @ZILtoid1991

        If you thought Twitter’s nonexistent moderation was bad, then get ready for Meta’s moderation.

        To be fair, there is no global moderation on the fediverse. Anyone can start up their own instance with their own rules, or lack thereof. But that is also a plus since you or your server administrator decide how to moderate content, rather than depending on the decisions of some mega company’s moderation team.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      16·
      9 days ago

      I have 2 possible theories on that:

      1. They want the federation to be all encompassing. Like a giant forum for corporations, governments and the common people. Sort of like a FOSS mall with a post office, community center and library included.

      2. They’re ran and/or owned ultimately by a Reddit or Threads type company.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
        112·
        9 days ago

        Someday I will write my master list of unfounded Fediverse conspiracy theories.

        I was going to say that I didn’t have one for lemmy.world, so that would be a good addition, but I realized that I do: LW is being run by the Russians, as a cheap way to get a solid foothold over a new sector of social media, and that’s why there was that moment in time where Youtube was giving out Russian-language descriptions for all the videos that got posted to LW.

        I have no evidence and it seems hilariously unlikely, but so does “Our Dutch sysadmin decided to host the server in Finland of all places, and then on top of that, Google decided to start handing out Russian-language descriptions when people accessed Youtube from Finland. And then, as soon as we found out about it, Google suddenly fixed it for us.”

        My theory would also explain why the admin team makes certain perplexing decisions like pushing so hard to make a safe space for the disinfo accounts and then forbidding anyone from calling them out.

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
            22·
            9 days ago

            Practically the same country. I’m sure they share a ton of the same BGP routes, too, so it would be an incredibly easy thing to get crossed up on, when Google is doing their geolocation logic.

        • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          9 days ago

          One of the admins shadow deletes comments. I called it out and was semi banned? Sometimes things go through and sometimes they don’t when I comment there by accident. Idk, I like a lot of the communities on there. I just don’t partake except for upvotes and downvotes.

          Also, it’s a decent theory.

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
            3·
            9 days ago

            That’s very interesting. Can you DM me some examples?

            I’ve been seeing some strange failures in my own posts there just recently, but I assumed it was perfectly legitimate federation weirdness, which happens sometimes. I didn’t give it a second thought.

            • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              4·
              9 days ago

              It was in my Reddit PTSD days and I just rage quit. I deleted all of my posts and comments for the first few pages, lol. I think it was the reddit community, but it might have been the lemmyworld issues community. I thought it might be fediverse weirdness as well, but it was there and then went away a day later. That’s not how the weirdness works from my experience. I asked him why and he had a cocky answer like reddit admins of old so I rage quit. Which is funny now, it only hurt myself since I miss a lot of those communities. Their 3d printer community is fantastic.

              I saw the admin get called out for it a month or so ago and the leader said that he “does too much for the community” to let go and to email them if you have any issues. That’s the ultimate reddit, meta, x, etc., move to me so I just ignored it. That dude is their fixer imo.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
        1·
        9 days ago

        It’s made with Mermaid.

        If you mean what decision process is behind it, or what the point is, I couldn’t tell you. It just looks weird and alarming to me.

        There’s no money. And it’s not the right way to build a strong and successful community. So why, then, are they doing things in this fashion? The longer you look, the weirder it gets.

        • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukMEnglish
          2·
          9 days ago

          It just looks weird and alarming to me.

          It looks like we haven’t put enough effort into naming things here, at least to me.

          Tech Team Spiffy

          May need work.

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
            4·
            9 days ago

            At the end of the day, any team that’s trying to accomplish a technological task needs:

            • Sysop
            • Genius
            • Head Slapper
            • Business Guy

            As long as you’ve got those four roles covered, you’re probably good. You can have other people assisting, but if any of those isn’t covered, you’re in trouble.

            It looks to me like LW has the first one covered and none of the other three. Their system administration team, whatever else is going on with the place, is killing it.

              • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
                3·
                9 days ago

                Yes, although it’s usually safer to let one person specialize in each. If you try to cross the streams, you can introduce instability. Your head-slapping genius can turn into a megalomaniac over time and drive everyone off the project. Your genius business guy can turn out to be an absolute loony, and persuade everyone to work on a project that makes no sense and will never work. It’s better if everyone picks a lane.

  • Five@slrpnk.netEnglish
    28·
    9 days ago

    Threads.net federation status on major Lemmy instances based on blocklist info:

    Also, in memoriam:

  • Fitik@fedia.io
    13·
    9 days ago

    Thread does not currently federate with link aggregators (Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed)

    It federates with MBin, recently Fedia defederated Threads, but before that I could follow and interact with Threads accounts, and it actually worked

  • AchtungDrempels@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    8 days ago

    Is it really a mystery? Ruud explained why this has not been done, why don’t you add his explanation to the context here? Don’t tell me you have never heard about it.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    125·
    9 days ago

    Its possible to convince me to move to another instance if anybody can recommend one with the following:

    • Anti-Tankie sentiment/rules/regulation (fuck those fake communists flooding the feed with spam 24/7)

    • Fairly active community

    • General use instance, not one with a specific agenda

    But otherwise I guess I’d probably just stop using lemmy altogether when threads hits World.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      162·
      9 days ago

      Sopuli.xyz has blocked both lemmygrad and hexbear. You can block lemmy.ml in your user settings, that should set you up.

      About the active community, not sure what you mean, as exporting and importing your settings would keep you subscribed to the same communities that your current account, and sopuli is large enough to have the same All feed than LW

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        37·
        9 days ago

        “fairly active community” in this context means more than just 100 accounts moderated by 1 guy in a basement with a lot of spiders in it

        No offense intended to that man and his 100 users, just doesn’t seem like a very good longterm solution. Much of the internet today is transient and impermanent.

        • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          9 days ago

          No matter what instance you are on, you are most likely to be subscribed to communities on other instances. For example, when I switched instances due to technical issues I ended up subbing to the same or at least a similar list of communities across instances and blocking the same users after a few weeks.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
            31·
            9 days ago

            Problem is I don’t really do that. I just like to browse the all feed, often Top Hour and Top Day as well.

            • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgOPEnglish
              7·
              9 days ago

              Sopuli.xyz has the same All feed as LW, as they block the same instances, and Sopuli is large enough that people have subscribed to any active community possible

            • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
              11·
              9 days ago

              The easy solution is to just go to an instance and browse their All feed and see if it has the content you like. If I understand correctly you are limited to instance communities if you aren’t signed in so that should give you a good idea about the instance culture.

              For example, if you visit https://startrek.website/ you will see it is pretty much star trek stuff. If you go to hexbear you will just see their hexbear bullshit. Both will give you an idea of what their instance is all about without needing to register.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
          32·
          9 days ago

          Anti-Tankie sentiment/rules/regulation (fuck those fake communists flooding the feed with spam 24/7)

          I’ve been messing around with an automatic troll filter for ponder.cat that auto-blocks the doo doo head accounts regardless of whether the mods are doing their jobs. No Linkerbaan, no UM back when he was around, no MBFC bot. There are around a couple of hundred users that everyone universally dislikes, and with them gone, the place is much nicer.

          I’ve found that just avoiding lemmy.world takes care of 90% of the problem, so I haven’t done much with the programmatic solution, but if you want to browse the bad communities without the bad people I can probably hook you up.

          Fairly active community

          On this count I fail. It’s two guys, no spiders, sometimes a cat, and a pretty uncertain future.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            9 days ago

            Moving to Lemmy.world from Lemmy.today was actually a solution that decreased the tankie activity I saw, interestingly enough.

            • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
              1·
              9 days ago

              Yeah, just doing away with LW in all my subscriptions made so much of the stupidity go away. I’m still on [email protected], but just as of the last day or two, it’s been showing some kind of federation problem, so I think I will let it go as well.

              The niche communities with responsible moderators on LW are still great. The stuff that flows out of that big planned-economy org chart has some kind of rot going on with it that you don’t even realize the extent of, until you remove it from your Lemmy.

            • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
              4·
              9 days ago

              He’s got an account on sh.itjust.works, too.

              I’m not sure what’s the moderation philosophy that’s welcoming him to these instances. It’s possible that because he hasn’t caused a problem yet on the new accounts, there’s no harm done, but I would be saddened and surprised if the more up-to-speed places were as lenient with him as LW was.

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
      32·
      8 days ago

      PieFed.social, Mbin, or use one of Sync or Connect that can actually block tankie users (edit: to be clear I mean users from known tankie instances, so that you don’t have to identify and block people slowly one by one) - Lemmy’s “block” doesn’t block hardly anything at all, as you still see them, they can downvote you, generate notifications, etc. Read more here.

      You may also want to block certain news and political communities in favor of better ones that are not so filled with toxicity and misinformation regardless of whether the content comes from certain instances.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        I have been blocking people on Jerboa (which as far as I guess is just normal Lemmy blocking) and I don’t get notifications or see people I’ve blocked.

        • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          8 days ago

          Correct: user blocking is quite strong. Community blocking similarly does exactly as you would want - i.e. those posts no longer show up not only in your Subscribed feed, but the All one as well.

          However, instance blocking does not block the vast majority of content from the instance - i.e. it’s nowhere close to either a personal defederation (as people begged for and were told to wait for Lemmy version 0.19 for it to be added - in contrast, most instances now are on 0.19.5 and 0.19.6 is being tested on a few) - nor is it even as strong as user blocking.

          Plus it has been actively weakened over time, i.e. somewhere between 0.19.3 and 0.19.5 users from that instance can now trigger a Notification to you by replying. I note that this is what almost made me quit Lemmy altogether, when I replied to a comment in a post in [email protected], and then did similarly somewhere in lemmygrad.ml. Each time those replies kept coming for literally WEEKS and WEEKS, long after I had stopped responding to them - and each time from a new person, at which point how do I stop them all!? They spam-bombed me, not for writing a post, but replying to a comment that I encountered by browsing All. And not from a hexbear.net account - i.e. where I could expect to have read through their quite special rules, but on Lemmy proper that have rules like “remember the human” - unless the person’s account is on hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml I suppose, which is why Lemmy.world has defederated from them. However, my much smaller instance (StarTrek.website) had not, and unlike the desktop the mobile site lacks the description of the community rules (PieFed does this, as well as instance “labels”, and tags, and community categories and so much more, and I think that’s amazing! It really helps clarify any potential misunderstandings, e.g. if you reply to a post on beehaw then you should make extra certain to not be a dick, or you should expect your content to be removed, and possibly be banned as a result - i.e. if you refuse to control yourself then they will do it for you, to give their own users the experience that they desire in their community on their instance as they see fit).

          One more thing: some apps - I’ve heard that Connect and Sync do at least - provide their own form of instance blocking, separately from merely turning on the Lemmy poorly-named feature.

          Sorry for the rant, maybe some of it was interesting.:-)

          TLDR: you are correct, and if only the instance blocking would work in the same manner that would have been wonderful! Sadly, it does not.

          • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
            3·
            8 days ago

            You never mentioned instance blocking. Yeah, it’s not a Lemmy thing and because of that it’s a little wonky. Various front ends handle it differently.

            It might be worth editing it into your comment for clarity. When you say “block tankies” it isn’t immediately clear you mean blocking an instance because “tankies” can exist anywhere and “non-tankies” can exist on “tankie instances”.

            (I’m not trying to be a pedantic jerk, either. Sorry if it sounds like that. If it does sound like that then it’s just the stress from the US election getting to me. 💜)

            Also, I’d like to specifically mention that I’m sorry you got harassed. That sucks. 💜

            • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
              1·
              8 days ago

              Thank you - upvoted and edited as suggested.

              I’m not sure what you mean by harassed. If you mean the downvotes, I had to look at the comment from another instance to even see them - my instance defederates from hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml, so downvotes from those sources don’t show up (interestingly, on my instance, I see none at all - i.e. all of the downvoters are from known tankie instances 🤣).

              I want downvotes from people who’s opinion I actually would respect - like if you felt it necessary to add them (which I can tell you didn’t, bc I see none despite being able to talk to you:-) - but yeah, I don’t need it from children (of whatever physical age) who refuse to see how being unkind to people is not the sole strategy that anyone could use in a conversation.

              But if you mean you, then nah you good.:-) First, we all in the same boat there, and second, you explained it well.:-)

  • kryptonidas@lemmings.worldEnglish
    4·
    9 days ago

    Dang it I was on lemmy.wtf and that one has been down for days now. Now you’re telling me this one will get flooded with “tweets”? Do I have to pack up my shit again? We’ll see how bad it will get.

    Edit: it’s up again. It is too unreliable though.

    • Psychodelic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      9 days ago

      I’ve been here a year and I still don’t get how lemmy works. lol

      Apparently I’m on the world one. No idea what impact that has, I just remember it being the easiest to join

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        8 days ago

        It’s like email sort of. I’m on programming.dev. When I post this comment it will be sent to programming.dev. Asynchronously (but still fairly soon) lemmy.world will scrape it from programming.dev (this is called “federation”). When you log into lemmy.world your inbox will show you this message notification.

        You never directly interact with any server other than your home instance.

  • hOrni@lemmy.worldEnglish
    75·
    9 days ago

    A great reminder, that I will never understand how this site works. Isn’t lemmy.world like the main page? That’s what shows up on my Sync app.

    • gila@lemm.eeEnglish
      311·
      9 days ago

      Lemmy is like email, and lemmy.world is like your email provider. Sync is like Outlook

    • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.socialEnglish
      15·
      9 days ago

      No, .world is not anything like a ‘main page’. It’s just the largest “instance”.

      Lemmy isn’t even really a site, it’s more like what email is - a data exchange protocol.

      You see mostly .world content because you share that domain, and they’ve “blocked” a lot of other domains.

      You can make an account at any-other instance and see a lot of other content. Lemmy.world has “blocked” (defederated) with a lot of instances, so you’re not seeing everything.

      Sync is just an app that lets you view your account content (similar to how gmail the app lets you view your email content).

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      11·
      9 days ago

      Different websites show the same content.

      https://lemm.ee/c/[email protected] shows the community we are in from another instance, Lemm.ee.

      There is no “main page”, different instances host different communities and users, but everything is still connected by default (sometimes instance disagree and prefer to block each other)

      • Ardyssian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        6·
        9 days ago

        So if lemmy.world has defederated with many other instances, would that mean that clicking ‘All’ in the example provided won’t show content from those instances if your account comes from lemmy.world?

    • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      9 days ago

      It’s the biggest instance, and the one you signed* up at, so in essence, for you it is. However the content you see there will be made up of not only users and communities from Lemmy.world but also from all the instance they’re federated with. I’m registered elsewhere but you’ll still get this reply.

      Edit: i.e. I also use Sync but it says sh.itjust.works

      • SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        I’m a .world user just because it had a lot of users when I signed up, but I’ve seen some hate thrown at it recently. Is there a legit reason I should consider switching to another instance, or is it just hyperbole? If I did, would I be able to migrate my account and its post/comment history (not that I really have much of a history at all, I just lurk mainly) or would that be stuck on .world forever?

        • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          8 days ago

          Your comments and post history cannot be transfered presently. If you’re already there (and fine with Threads potentially appearing) then its fine to stay. Too many communities are hosted there though so if you intend on creating any it would help the user base if you made it elsewhere.

        • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgOPEnglish
          1·
          8 days ago

          Hello,

          This post gives a summary of the issues people have with overcentralization of users and communities on LW: https://lemmy.world/post/14728407

          This is a meme but with some technical explanations why instances like aussie.zone have a 7-days delay with LW, but are up-to-date with all the other instances: https://lemmy.world/post/20575394

          You are able to export your subscriptions and block lists to a new account using your settings (there is an export/import function). You cannot import your posts and comments, but if you use the same username and add your old account in your bio you can still show your past posts that way.

    • fjordbasa@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      9 days ago

      Lemmy.world is one of many lemmy instances. Any Lemmy instance will show posts on their “all” page from instances they’re federated with. Generally, you can subscribe to and comment in federated communities.

      Depending on your viewer/app, you’ll see the instance following an @ sign. For example, username [email protected] means that account is on the sh.itjust.works instance. Similar for communities.

      May have missed some finer points but that’s generally how it works.

    • DrDystopia@lemy.lolEnglish
      11·
      8 days ago

      There was only ever one “main lemmy” instance, back in the days when Lemmy.ml was presented as the official flagship instance on the official lemmy project page by the official developers. And was the biggest instance that absolutely dominated the lemmyverse.

      I don’t miss those days.

  • JoShmoe@ani.socialEnglish
    2·
    9 days ago

    So if Meta continues to share defederated without acknowledgement from the source, wouldn’t that just put lemmy and mastodan on top?

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    514·
    8 days ago

    The threads hate is so fucking stupid. Companies getting involved with Lemmy would be awesome, mostly because it’s a replacement for discord. The whole EEE thing is FUD, open source largely solved that problem. The people with control aren’t just going to give Meta they keys anyway. Some corporate involvement could help solve some real issues with making hosting easier, reducing storage needs, and increasing federation throughput.

    Corporate instances would be awesome to add to my feed for the things I want to see and it would be a way to attract people to get the more niche communities. The tools already exist for the people who don’t want to see that content. If for example steam community discussions became Lemmy communities that would be a huge win for the platform.

    Also threads isn’t even the same federation model as Lemmy anyway and it’s unlikely to ever actually federate to here anyway.

    • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      11·
      8 days ago

      Threads hate isn’t stupid. Consider for a moment the literally dozens of people online without FB or Insta accounts. That is a choice. It’s nice to have somewhere that doesn’t have those users, with that groomed content, pumped for profit. Meta exists to make money - the Zuckdroid wants a finger in the fediverse pie to maximise profit for the share holders; not because he’s gone all in and techno-philanthropy. Having said that, the dilution of quality and nuance his user base “could” bring is the real worry though.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        Federation has much less to do with profit, and more to do with showing the EU that they are attempting to embrace open standards. Everyone slamming the door on them gives them a way to justify keeping their wallet garden.

        • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          5·
          8 days ago

          “Wallet Garden” might just be the most appropriate typo I’ve ever read… Any decision made by Meta is done in consideration of their bottom line and secondly I’m quite happy for the vast majority of their users to stay in a walled (sic) garden. The internet is busy enough as it is - we’d be overwhelmed by pure numbers.

        • Scott M. Stolz@authorship.studio
          1·
          8 days ago

          This is similar to how bridging ActivityPub and AT Protocol would result in more federation for Bluesky, while blocking the bridge would let Bluesky remain (mostly) centralized.

    • PyroNeurosis@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      6·
      8 days ago

      Part of the appeal of lemmy is the distance it keeps from corporate interests. Inviting them would no doubt encourage sponsored content and advertising.

      Yes it can happen anyway, but I refuse to roll out the red carpet for corporate schlock.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        Which can easily be ignored if you want to. You can not subscribe or even block instances you don’t like.