At best it’s a ploy to attempt to destabilize and conquer what had already been built. At worst it’s an attempt to outright destroy their competition from the inside.
It can’t be ignored. It’s outlined in the thread privacy policy that any form of interaction with one of their posts, be it upvoting, boosting or commenting, will allow them to create a surveillance profile for your account, and let them associate it with other Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp data they might already have and use it to serve you ads and ‘personalised content’.
Their policies are contagious, meaning that for example if kbin defederates from threads, but lemmy.world doesn’t and they can still see each other, meta can still gather information about you because your posts reach them through lemmy.world.
Fediverse must absolutely block threads and every instance that doesn’t defederate from meta.
This is all on the open web. If they find it useful to create surveillance profiles of fediverse users they will do so, whether we defederate or not. That’s the current price of being on the internet.
May be naive and optimistic of me, but given that Threads has such a narrow focus, that being short text posts or “microblogging”, I’d say it already greatly pales in comparison to the wider array of federated web apps.
Like, there’s Pixelfed (Insta-like), Lemmy & Kbin (Reddit-likes), PeerTube (YouTube-like), Owncast (Twitch/Kick-like), Friendica/Hubzilla/Diaspora (Facebook-like?), Funkwhale (Spotify/SoundCloud-like?), Bookwyrm (Goodreads-like), WriteFreely (Medium-like), and uh…The list just goes on and on. There’s so much more than just microblogging built on ActivityPub, and even totally different protocols that enable federation (Diaspora & Hubzilla aren’t built strictly with ActivityPub, for instance, though certain elements may interface using it).
Tbh I see Threads as more likely to run a rather strict allow list of which sites they federate with, rather than ever openly federating, simply as a means to control the user experience and limit their liability for what their users may be exposed to (I know, that probably sound silly given their track record of exposing folks to awful shit, but they can’t let women’s nipples be seen!).
I think this is a great take that I hadn’t considered. A lot of what I used twitter for was a short blurb and link to a site with more info. So if threads can be a forum to bring people to the fuller content of Lemmy, Kbin, Pixelfed etc, it might be useful.
Even if they go full evil (and we know they will) and try to disconnect into a standalone platform the user base will still be fedi-friendly and might create a Mastadon/Kbin account to keep seeing that content.
My biggest concern is about the vibe-check though. Right now things are super supportive and friendly, Reddit-lurkers (like me) feel safer here. From what little I’m seeing on threads already (second-hand) the early adopters have some seriously problematic personalities amongst them. And I’m watching closely to see if Meta does their typical “shit floats to the top” algorithmic moderation.
I think this is a great take that I hadn’t considered. A lot of what I used twitter for was a short blurb and link to a site with more info. So if threads can be a forum to bring people to the fuller content of Lemmy, Kbin, Pixelfed etc, it might be useful.
I think there may have been a slight misunderstanding here. I don’t see Threads as bringing people to the wider fediverse, and so I don’t see it as necessarily threatening to it or ActivityPub. The concern many have been understandably expressing is that Threads will openly federate to gather even more data on people to sell to advertisers, but for one, they already have billions of people on their platforms and many that are here probably were on there at one time or still know others that remain on their platforms, making the fediverse a drop in the bucket for them.
For two, they’re beholden to advertisers, so it honestly doesn’t make sense to openly federate with other sites/instances. After all, many folks around here are here because their kind of content didn’t jive with advertisers. Meta could try to wave that away as not being from their users, but if they’re showing ads next to federated posts of stuff advertisers don’t like, that’s probably not gonna fly. Given this, I think Meta’s more likely to only federate with a select few instances that either they “buy out” (i.e. pay for access, & in return admins/mods start basically enforcing Meta’s rules/guidelines to continue to be paid) or otherwise recognize as “advertiser friendly”.
Folks that don’t wanna put up with that will simply leave those instances for the same reasons they left corporate social media to begin with. After all, if you’re not on Meta’s platforms, why would you ever want to be on a front for Meta?
At best it’s a ploy to attempt to destabilize and conquer what had already been built. At worst it’s an attempt to outright destroy their competition from the inside.
Hopeful the fediverse has enough built-in resilience that Meta’s intention don’t matter and can be safely ignored
It can’t be ignored. It’s outlined in the thread privacy policy that any form of interaction with one of their posts, be it upvoting, boosting or commenting, will allow them to create a surveillance profile for your account, and let them associate it with other Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp data they might already have and use it to serve you ads and ‘personalised content’.
Their policies are contagious, meaning that for example if kbin defederates from threads, but lemmy.world doesn’t and they can still see each other, meta can still gather information about you because your posts reach them through lemmy.world.
Fediverse must absolutely block threads and every instance that doesn’t defederate from meta.
This is all on the open web. If they find it useful to create surveillance profiles of fediverse users they will do so, whether we defederate or not. That’s the current price of being on the internet.
That’s technically a possibility, however it would be very illegal. The punishment for breaking GDPR laws can be very severe.
May be naive and optimistic of me, but given that Threads has such a narrow focus, that being short text posts or “microblogging”, I’d say it already greatly pales in comparison to the wider array of federated web apps.
Like, there’s Pixelfed (Insta-like), Lemmy & Kbin (Reddit-likes), PeerTube (YouTube-like), Owncast (Twitch/Kick-like), Friendica/Hubzilla/Diaspora (Facebook-like?), Funkwhale (Spotify/SoundCloud-like?), Bookwyrm (Goodreads-like), WriteFreely (Medium-like), and uh…The list just goes on and on. There’s so much more than just microblogging built on ActivityPub, and even totally different protocols that enable federation (Diaspora & Hubzilla aren’t built strictly with ActivityPub, for instance, though certain elements may interface using it).
Tbh I see Threads as more likely to run a rather strict allow list of which sites they federate with, rather than ever openly federating, simply as a means to control the user experience and limit their liability for what their users may be exposed to (I know, that probably sound silly given their track record of exposing folks to awful shit, but they can’t let women’s nipples be seen!).
I think this is a great take that I hadn’t considered. A lot of what I used twitter for was a short blurb and link to a site with more info. So if threads can be a forum to bring people to the fuller content of Lemmy, Kbin, Pixelfed etc, it might be useful.
Even if they go full evil (and we know they will) and try to disconnect into a standalone platform the user base will still be fedi-friendly and might create a Mastadon/Kbin account to keep seeing that content.
My biggest concern is about the vibe-check though. Right now things are super supportive and friendly, Reddit-lurkers (like me) feel safer here. From what little I’m seeing on threads already (second-hand) the early adopters have some seriously problematic personalities amongst them. And I’m watching closely to see if Meta does their typical “shit floats to the top” algorithmic moderation.
I think there may have been a slight misunderstanding here. I don’t see Threads as bringing people to the wider fediverse, and so I don’t see it as necessarily threatening to it or ActivityPub. The concern many have been understandably expressing is that Threads will openly federate to gather even more data on people to sell to advertisers, but for one, they already have billions of people on their platforms and many that are here probably were on there at one time or still know others that remain on their platforms, making the fediverse a drop in the bucket for them.
For two, they’re beholden to advertisers, so it honestly doesn’t make sense to openly federate with other sites/instances. After all, many folks around here are here because their kind of content didn’t jive with advertisers. Meta could try to wave that away as not being from their users, but if they’re showing ads next to federated posts of stuff advertisers don’t like, that’s probably not gonna fly. Given this, I think Meta’s more likely to only federate with a select few instances that either they “buy out” (i.e. pay for access, & in return admins/mods start basically enforcing Meta’s rules/guidelines to continue to be paid) or otherwise recognize as “advertiser friendly”.
Folks that don’t wanna put up with that will simply leave those instances for the same reasons they left corporate social media to begin with. After all, if you’re not on Meta’s platforms, why would you ever want to be on a front for Meta?