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?
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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.
Long story short, it’s a 1:15 pros/cons
Pretty much lol. Given Lemmy’s current community situation there’s really very little reason to ever federate with them.
This is very thorough. Thank you!
The content is facebook-oriented content. Idk if it would even really be the kind of audience that most of the fediverse would be able to sustain.
As it is, reddit was a concern for many people. Facebook? Not a chance.
Besides, large scale defederation discourages Meta from trying to weasel their way into everything like that. Don’t encourage them. They want you excited, but overlooking the massive issues.
That’s true.
They like having no competition, by being friendly at first, then crushing us when we let them access our userbase. Defederate, with no second thoughts. If the Meta users want to experience the fediverse, nothing is stopping them from making a Lemmy account on any instance.
Quality over quantity. Can you say for certain that the massive amount of content will be worth having?
only cons
Anyone that’s upset that there’s not enough people here wouldn’t be able to complain about that anymore,
They will however have all the new people to complain about.
Early adopters that are willing to overcome a small challenge and will work too fill out the empty communities are great friends.
The onslot from Instagram is going to look a lot more like zombies.
Hmn. You have a good point.
Maybe I’m missing something, why would threads show up on Lemmy when it’s more like Twitter or mastadon?
I want Meta’s data without having to give Meta my data. Defederation is a perfectly reasonable action for any single instance but please, don’t try to get all of them to do it.
I don’t want the fediverse to be fragmented and Balkanized. Federate with everyone unless it’s a kiddy porn ring.
Give threads a chance. You can revisit if it turns out problematic
Give the untrustworthy a chance again. Should be fun til they steal all your data to turn much profit, push more ads than taco bell and push your ass to the bottom of the pool, unless you play to their algorithmic beat. I am so in!
You can give them all the chance you want by making an account over there personally without having to inflict that content on the rest of us.
That exact argument works for most communities to defederate from. “Federate with everyone unless I take issue with the community or how it’s run”.
Plenty of other communities will federate with Threads, I don’t have any problem with lemmy.ml opting out.
We’ll get to see if defederating with Threads makes post and discussion quality higher than in communities federated with Threads, or if it only stunts the growth of this instance.
