Edit: Poll now closed, results shortly.
Hello all,
I made the decision from the start that Lemmy.zip was an instance for the users and not one that I would push any personal political/social beliefs on to. Therefore in situations like this, I feel it is only right the community makes the decision.
There are many posts detailing the threat that Meta poses to the fediverse, how their strategy is likely to have a negative impact and how user data will be scraped and sold. However, on the flip side Threads is not yet using the ActivityPub protocol so we don’t yet know the impact (if any) that Threads will have on Lemmy instances, given it is more of a Mastadon competitor. Being defederated will mean that users of this instance will not be able to interact with or receive activities from Threads.
So far we’ve not defederated from any instances, instead allowing users to choose what content they want to see and interact with. Unfortunately Lemmy doesnt yet allow users to defederate at user level, which would be the ideal outcome here. So until that feature is implemented, we’ll be looking at an instance wide approach.
Wider discussions (worded far better than anything I can put together) can be found here:
- https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/433248
- https://sopuli.xyz/comment/879382
- https://fedipact.online (warning - very pink)
- https://lemmy.zip/post/266908
- https://lemmy.zip/post/266620
- https://lemmy.zip/comment/524509
Based on this, below is a link to a poll where you can vote for what you would like to see happen. We will leave the poll open for 24 hours after posting this.
I can only stress that this is not a win-win situation and not everybody will be happy with the result. While I’m happy for debate to take place in the comments, personal attacks are never OK. Please don’t make me ban anyone in this instance for the first time.
The poll is as follows:
Should Lemmy.zip defederate from Threads?
- Yes
- No
- Wait and see the impact Threads has on the Fediverse
Please do vote. Before any action is taken, we’ll look at and share the results of the poll and if there is any ambiguity to the outcome we’ll come back to community.
Finally, this vote is not a permanent decision. If we decide to change the outcome of Threxit, we can hold another vote and review what has changed.
Thanks
Demigodrick and Sami.
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100% defederate from Threads. Even if there is no initial impact, Meta has shown their true colours time and time again. They are not to be trusted
Thanks for putting up this poll! I appreciate your approach on voting and distributed decision making.
One suggestion: 24 hours seems a little short for voting to be open. I imagine there could be some users who would like to have a say on issues that do not check Lemmy every day. Is it possible for future polls to be open longer? Or alternatively, for them to be scheduled and pinned a few days ahead of time.
Absolutely, feedback taken on board thank you!
I don’t like defederation in general (and honestly, I didn’t even realize Threads was federated), but I also think a lot of the problems with social media these days (shakes fist at cloud) is because of companies like Meta, Twitter, Reddit, etc. all selling our data and just looking to make a buck.
I think it’s unfair to Lemmy/Mastodon/* and all of the server admins to just bring in the traditional networks without allowing the “federated experiment” to play out first. A lot of people are here right now because they don’t like the traditional networks, and it would certainly sour the experience for me if we were suddenly back in with them.
I agree, I think overall the experience of the federation will just be worse with Meta involved.
Meta pays hundreds or maybe thousands of people to spend 8 hours a day coming up with novel ways to capture and monetize our personal info. It’s too much of a burden to expect any one of us to predict how the fediverse might be exploited, and once that toothpaste is out of the tube, it might not go back in. That’s why I think it makes sense to defederate proactively instead of waiting until we’ve already been exploited by them. We know that’s how they operate, so why wait to see exactly what form it takes?
I think it’s an unfortunate but necessary step. A lot of us moved here to try to get away from the “corporate” social networks.
Also think it would be worth having the poll open longer than 24 hours, but not sure if you can change the time mid vote.
Politics aside, there is a technical risk to consider: The volume of messages and data that Meta will bring can flood the instance and rise the costs.
Even before killing the fediverse by Embrace-Extend-Extinguish, it can kill the fediverse by forcing it to grow to fast.
That’s actually a perspective I haven’t seen anywhere else or thought about it, totally agree with it. We don’t really have the backing of a multi-million dollar company on our backs ourselves. (On that note, thanks dear admins, or whoever, for hosting this awesome instance, y’all rock lol)
This is how Meta will destroy the fediverse: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
I fully agree with everything in that post, but I think we need to be careful around just dropping it into conversation and thinking the EEE analogy speaks for itself
The most common response I have seen to that post across Lemmy is “XMPP was going to die anyway” which means that people are taking the message as “Capitalism kills technology” (“Why shouldn’t the best technology win, go back to lemmy.ml communist”) rather than “Threads will kill community”
We’ve got a nice respectful community, of people who want to see community-driven interaction and sharing succeed - Threads offers nothing we want
Lemmy.ml have defederated. Agree with the concensus so far and think it shoud defederate. Hard to trust any app by Meta given their track record.
First, thank you for the detailed post and taking measured action.
While some people raised some food points about the upsides of threads (mainly user influx helping to round out niche communities), I think we just have to be patient while Lemmy takes off on its own. The potential downside of Meta’s influence is just too large.
I don’t think defederation has to be for ever. We can still play the wait and see approach by defederating now, and if the concerns were false there is still room to undo it (though sadly I doubt it will come to this)
fuck I threads. defederate.
Hey, thank you so much for doing this. It feels good to be part of a community where this type of decision is left up to said community 😊❤️
I enjoy this instance and Im totally in favor of defederating. Threads needs to be killed or atleast isolated early from the main fedeverse because if it gets too big it cant be stopped
I’m so happy to see that this appears to be nearly unanimous in favor of defederating, at least based on the comments. I was worried I’d have to flee to another instance to avoid that corporate influence
I’ll leave this server if it doesn’t distance itself from Facebook. Fuck Facebook.
Edit: I left Facebook a literal decade before I left Reddit… And for much better reasons. Don’t allow Meta the time to astroturf this vote. Say no now, and make the right choice.
I certainly wouldnt mind the expanded userbase and discussion.
But overall, unless sites are truly malicious, defederating seems like it hurts things more than it helps.
