There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

dejected_warp_core ,

Does this mean that if we always mention pixelfed or @pixelfed we can effectively block Meta from leveraging our contributions to the Fediverse?

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

… Or you know, just go to an instance that defederates from Threads if you don’t want you content there?

DoryTheFish , (edited )

Some of us are not savy and don’t know how to do that.

RoseTintedGlasses ,
@RoseTintedGlasses@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

your instance is already defederated from threads

DoryTheFish ,

Thank you! I thought it was but then I have been seeing toots from instances that I’m not supposed to be able to see (or so I thought) so I wasn’t so sure I understood the whole thing anymore. Also, I don’t understand the difference between defederated and fedipact 😬

RoseTintedGlasses ,
@RoseTintedGlasses@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Fedipact is people who’ve signed some thing pledging to never federate with threads, whereas all the other ones have just defederated them without signing the pact. In reality there’s not really any difference at all.

DoryTheFish ,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply! I apologize for having a “knot in my brain” about this. I have now had the time to read most of this whole exchange and understand better. Also I realized that what was confusing me was not on a Lemmy server. I was under the impression that the fedipact meant that my other server (Neuro different.me) will not federate with thread but will also defederate from servers who federate with Thread. But that doesn’t seem to be the case so what I don’t understand now is: if my server defederated Thread but remains federated with a server that didn’t defederate Thread… My data could still land on a Thread server?

RoseTintedGlasses ,
@RoseTintedGlasses@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

If my server defederated Thread but remains federated with a server that didn’t defederate Thread… My data could still land on a Thread server?

if your instance defeds threads then it blocks any information being sent to threads at all so they wont receive anything that you post, not even your upvotes on posts will federate with threads.

The only case where this gets kind of weird is if you’re on an instance that federates via an allow list of approved instances instead of using the normal method of federating with everyone by default then blocking selected bad instances (the only large instance that uses this method for federation though is hexbear as far as im aware so its not really that important).

DoryTheFish ,

Thank you for your explanations!

henfredemars ,

Repeat after me: I will not federate with any Meta products.

DaCrazyJamez ,

I will not federate with any meta products.

FiniteBanjo ,

I will not federate with any meta products.

Breezy ,

I will not federate with any meta products.

AceFuzzLord ,

I will not federate with any meta products

Zink ,
@Zink@pawb.social avatar

I will not federate with any meta products

pineapplelover ,

I will not federate with any meta products

dabster291 ,
@dabster291@lemmy.zip avatar

I will not federate with any meta products

Kalysta ,

I will not federate with any meta products

LEDZeppelin ,

Serious question: how do we - the end users - stop federating with Meta?

chrisbit ,
@chrisbit@leminal.space avatar

Move to an instance that won’t.

ArmokGoB ,

Burying your head in the sand doesn’t change the fact that whatever LW does will affect all of Lemmy. They’re too big.

techt ,

This is a strange response for me because de-federating is an active step on behalf of its admin, usually after a vote amongst its users, at creating a virtual boundary between the two entities. How is that burying your head in the sand? And yeah, lemmy.world is big, but aside from the obvious loss of content/users, what other effect will that have on the mass of de-federated instances?

admin , (edited )
@admin@lemmy.my-box.dev avatar

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that since LW will federate with them, any content they host, will end up on meta.

For example, this discussion we’re having right now is on !technology. So it doesn’t matter whether our own instances have defederated meta - our posts and comments here will bring them value. Directly, in the form of content. And indirectly, in the form of processable data for machine learning, shadow profiles, etc.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

but my understanding is that since LW will federate with them, any content they host, will end up on meta

Your understanding is wrong. Instances don’t forward stuff from other instances to other instances. Instances only send their own content directly to the instances they federate with.

admin ,
@admin@lemmy.my-box.dev avatar

Thanks!

SeekPie ,

So on a different instance that’s not federated with Meta I can see LW content but not Metas?

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Yes

FiniteBanjo ,

That sounds like a problem for instances federated with Meta. Empathy is cool but they are not our problem.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

whatever LW does will affect all of Lemmy

Uuuh no it won’t? The fact that they federate with Threads doesn’t mean that my instance does. How does it affect me?

admin , (edited )
@admin@lemmy.my-box.dev avatar

You posted this to a LW community, so your content and data will end up in Meta’s hands as well.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

No, that’s not how federation works. My instance sends my content directly to everything my instance federates with. No instance takes content from other instances and sends it further - that is not a thing. I sent my content to lemmy.world and it is free to be there. Lemmy.world will not forward that to Threads.

henfredemars ,

Migrate away from instances that embrace Meta to those that do not. Choose an instance that aligns with you.

Or in the extreme case, if you’re the first who can’t find such an instance and you’re technically inclined, there’s your room for a new instance. It’s how the fediverse works and partly why Meta is so intent on destroying it.

bonobi ,

How does one find a list of instances that aren’t federated with meta?

henfredemars , (edited )

EDIT: removed comment due to outdated and inaccurate information.

cyber_admin ,

Replied in another comment, but here is is again. fedipact.veganism.social

Shdwdrgn ,

Appreciate the link! Glad to see that both my mastodon and lemmy instances have already blocked their content.

cyberic ,
@cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

What’s the difference between blocked and fedipact?

cyber_admin ,

I think fedipact actually sign the pack to block and the others just blocked.

Skyhighatrist ,

The tooltip for fedipact says: “Agreed to block all communications (their blocklist is private)”

To me that says, they’ve agreed but it’s not confirmed that they’ve gone through with it because the blocklist is private. Blocked on the other hand says “All communications are blocked”

cyberic ,
@cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Thanks! I was on mobile and couldn’t see the tooltip

Kalysta ,

Thanks for this. Looking to make an account on a better server now

anton , (edited )

I don’t know, but you can check individual instances by going to the /instances subdomain and searching for threads.

shjw and blahaj are defederated, world isn’t.
This can always change, but I have confidence in my admins.

Edit: Thanks to [email protected] for this link

octopus_ink ,

Not sure anyone posted this in direct reply to you - fedipact.veganism.social

You can search/filter for your instance there. As an example, if you search lemmy.world you’ll see they currently do federate with meta.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/7cdf42ea-29be-4a34-8faf-93107bda4d4c.png

Minotaur ,

I’m kind of stupid and more here just because it tends to be better discussion than Reddit: what does “federate with” mean in this context??

Thanks!

zak ,
@zak@social.goodanser.com avatar

@Minotaur @henfredemars @technology You are using an account on lemm.ee to reply to someone commenting from an account on infosec.pub in a community hosted on lemmy.world.

Those are all running Lemmy software, but I am replying from an account on social.goodanser.com, which is running Mastodon software.

That's federation. We're all using different service providers, sometimes even different software, but we can talk to each other because they speak the same protocol, called ActivityPub. Threads.net has announced plans to support ActivityPub and conducted some limited trials, which they're in the process of expanding. They claim they intend to support it fully, but only for users who opt in to it.

Servers can block, or "defederate from" other servers, and many have chosen to preemptively defederate from Threads.

Minotaur ,

Very interesting. Appreciate the response. Didn’t know big companies like meta had any interest in the whole “federation” gig, seeing that it seems a little “opposed” to the kind of big revenue that supports tech companies like that

Uvine_Umbra ,

But it actually isn’t, because the largest driver of growth for platforms like facebook & instagram is the already present userbase.

That userbase will always be there if the programs are all federated together, so creating a new platform is now just making a better site versus that and bringing in the userbase.

Zak ,
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

And now I’m commenting from a lemmy.world account because Lemmy from Mastodon has some rough edges like the need to tag the community in my comment above to ensure it actually reaches the lemmy.world server.

Tumblr and Flickr are also talking about ActivityPub support, but it’s not clear if or when that will actually happen. It would make more sense to me for those services since they’re fairly small and it’s a way to substantially increase the possible audience. It’s not clear what Meta’s motivations are here, though a motivation some have proposed is that they’re trying to get in front of potential regulation. The EU Digital Markets Act, for example requires some services to interoperate with competitors, and having one of its new products join an established standard protocol is a way to say “you don’t need to regulate us, we already do the thing”.

I don’t think their blocking of comments mentioning Pixelfed is intentional. Pixelfed is not popular enough for Meta to care about as a competitor, and blocking mentions of competitors has never been among their tactics.

Minotaur ,

Appreciate this response, it seems to make a lot of sense to me.

I think people on sites like Lemmy and similar can kind of uhh… overestimate how much anyone outside of a very niche crowd care about the whole “federalization” movement, and yeah it seems unlikely to me that Threads is going out of its way to shadowban a (comparatively) niche competitor like Pixelfed

Zak ,
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

I’m about 99% sure Threads uses automated spam/abuse filtering based on uncommon words present in posts that have recently been flagged as abusive. Somebody, perhaps several somebodies probably posted “follow my porn account on Pixelfed” or similar that Threads doesn’t like. I’d use something like that if I was making a huge social media thing because you can’t not at that scale.

GreatDong3000 ,

That’s exactly why Threads is incompatible with the Fediverse. Any huge server that is impossible to moderate for admins is detrimental to the network and failure to properly moderate is the number one reason we should be looking at to defederate from instances.

Automatic “spam” protection is the exact thing which co-opted e-mail. Big corps with the largest e-mail user base use algorithms that automatically assume the worst about any small e-mail server. If you spin up a small server you are assumed to be spam unless unless unless, which ended up with e-mail being centralized in the hands of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple, despite being theoretically decentralized too.

Is that what we want for the Fediverse? 4 or 5 huge instances automatically defederating from all small instances unless they fit some criteria defined by the big corps, which they can change anytime?

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

That is the goal here. Bookmark this comment and !remindme in 5 years.

GreatDong3000 ,

Youtube was blocking comments mentioning Fediverse and ActivityPub 2 years ago way before all the exposure the Fediverse got last year. Facebook was blocking links to mastodon instances also before all that. There is absolutely no way a very specific word such as Pixelfed would be blocked “accidentally”, how do you propose such accidental block would even be possible? Oops, intern smashed his butt against a keyboard and set a filter that happened to catch Pixelfed by accident? Come on.

fosstulate ,
@fosstulate@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

You need more training in corporate risk management, grasshopper! AP/AtProto isn’t a revenue opportunity, it’s a potential front for which they’ll need to have a battle-ready product and brand. Ever heard the saying ‘engagement is containment’?

LibertyLizard ,

Wait did I miss something big? Does Lemmy now federate with Mastodon somehow? How does that work?

DesolateMood ,

As far as I know it’s always been this way. At least since I joined during the whole reddit fiasco

LibertyLizard ,

How do you access Mastodon content in Lemmy?

Zak ,
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

It doesn’t work so well in that direction. Lemmy doesn’t have a concept of content that isn’t posted to a community. If a Mastodon post tags a Lemmy community, it’s available as a normal Lemmy post, but otherwise it doesn’t exist.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

FWIW I think this is intentional and a feature, not a bug. By spreading content to communities, you can delegate moderation responsibility much easier.

Content not posted to any community would need something akin to a site-wide moderator or an admin to moderate, and such a moderator wouldn’t be as effective. They’d cover a wider array of very different content. Community moderators work better because they can define rules that are only confined to their comm and they know better how to moderate their own community and they also care more about their own community so are more motivated to keep it well-moderated in the fashion they want.

DesolateMood ,

I didn’t fully understand what I was talking about when I replied, and for that I apologize. Now that I know a little bit more, this is basically how it works (I think):

We cannot see posts made directly on Mastodon. However, they can see posts made on Lemmy and even comment on them. We are able to see those comments as normal and without doing anything on our end, but again, that’s only as long as they’re made under Lemmy posts

4am ,

Always has. Anything using ActivittPub can interoperate

LibertyLizard ,

I was under the impression that it theoretically could but wasn’t set up in a way that made this possible. But perhaps I was mistaken.

How do I access Mastodon content using my account here then?

zephr_c ,

Threads hasn’t had federation enabled until now, but you’ve always been able to interact with Mastodon… sort of. The Lemmy UI doesn’t really have a good way of finding Mastodon posts that don’t tag a Lemmy community or of following Mastodon users, but if they do tag a community the Mastodon post will show up as a Lemmy post in that community.

LibertyLizard ,

I see. So functionally it doesn’t really work, at least in this direction.

thegiddystitcher ,
@thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee avatar

You’ve had some well-meaning but ultimately not quite accurate answers in this thread so just to clarify:

You can follow, post to and interact with Lemmy communities from Mastodon, because they’re treated the same way as a “group” on Mastodon in general.

You can NOT follow and interact with Mastodon users from Lemmy, because Mastodon accounts are individual “users” and Lemmy doesn’t have the concept of following and interacting with users, only with communities. If Lemmy ever does add a feature to let us follow other users, then in theory following Mastodon users will also become possible.

midnight ,
@midnight@kbin.social avatar

You can't use mastodon from Lemmy, but you can from some threadiverse software like Kbin.

zak ,
@zak@social.goodanser.com avatar

@LibertyLizard @technology It always has. They both speak ActivityPub.

The UX can be awkward though. As an example, I had to add the community tag to this comment manually, as it won't federate to lemmy.world otherwise. That's because Mastodon doesn't push replies to every server with users participating in a thread, which I think is a design flaw.

To post to Lemmy from Mastodon, just tag a community. You can load any of the fediverse links shown in the default Lemmy web UI in a Mastodon search box and reply to them. You can also follow a community and receive every subsequent post and comment as a boost (this is a bad UX and I don't recommend it), as well as follow Lemmy users, which you can't do in Lemmy itself. You cannot vote on Lemmy posts/comments from Mastodon.

I find tagging an appropriate Lemmy community from my Mastodon posts to be a good experience. You'll see a few of those from my @zaktakespictures account in @birding, and from @zakreviews in @flashlight.

I'm pretty sure Lemmy won't make new toplevel posts out of this in those communities since it's a reply, but I'm going to check just to be sure.

CommunityLinkFixer Bot ,

Hi there! Your text contains links to other Lemmy communities, here are correct links for Lemmy users: !birding, !flashlight

state_electrician ,

I will not mederate with any Feta products.

notfromhere ,

after me: I will not federate with any Meta products.

wagoner ,

I followed the link to the mastodon post and saw this edit

“Edit: As mentioned below, it appears to be a bug, not intentional!”

nul9o9 ,

Of course it was. 🙄

PerogiBoi ,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

What a weak thing for such a big company to do. Censor the mention of an open source competitor that almost no one uses.

tocopherol ,
@tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

It’s like combat, companies like this see it as necessary to take every protective step possible, they have an inferior product so manipulation is the only way to maintain their monopoly

VirtualOdour ,

I think it’s a lot more common than most people would realize. Capitalism hates talking about things that let’s normal people do things for free.

That’s why we as regular people need to spread the word as effectively as possible.

bufalo1973 ,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

If something is not on the radar it doesn’t exists. That’s why MSM doesn’t want to talk about some topics.

Churbleyimyam ,

I’m actually quite glad about this. Currently Pixelfed is absolutely beautiful, without me having to do any blocking at all. I don’t want spammy low-key commercial posts to start showing up on it, turning me cynical and sour trying to work out who is legit on it. The whole culture of mainstream social media is based on people commodifying themselves, whereas Pixelfed is about artistic expression for its own sake. That’s my own take on it anyway. For me, Pixelfed is the best thing on the internet at the moment and I feel protective of it!

pedroapero ,

The Pixelfed team stated (mastodon.social/) that users were not able to reproduce the issue, so this is most likely a fake news.

flango ,

We can’t federate with something that’s completely against our ideia of “social”. I mean, meta wants a monopoly of the public space. Meta is a shopping center, the Federation ( Mastodon, Lemmy, and stuff) should be like a public square.

ToxicWaste ,

“We can’t federate” is not really an option… Sure, every instance can add threads to the blocked list. But to keep big corporations out of ‘our public square’ ActivityPub would have to be twisted into a grotesque version of itself.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

What makes you say that? Why is defederation not good enough?

ToxicWaste ,

Small businesses can individually refuse to do business with the big shopping mall -> add threads to the block list (‘defederate’ them)

The big shopping mall is not allowed to put their building at the public square -> threads is not allowed to use ActivityPub

The first statement is totally ok and a lot of instances do this. However, similar like shopping malls it can pose a challenge for small businesses to stay competitive, while categorically refusing business with the big actor. The second statement would require the towns construction committee to not give the shopping mall a license to build. However, this construction committee is a centralised power and not in the design of ActivityPub.

I do not like threads and see them as a potential threat to what we have here. Exactly because it could become harder to stay competitive while refusing them. But i don’t see much that we can actively do.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Thanks, that added some good context to your position. I think it’s a legitimate worry but I think we have a chance, unlike the shopping mall scenario.

RoseTintedGlasses , (edited )
@RoseTintedGlasses@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

it’s almost as if a company that helped incite an ethnic cleansing just a few years ago, hosts far right stochastic terrorists like libs of tiktok (despite the owner repeatedly breaking meta’s own rules) and actively suppressed the voices of Palestinians and posts that criticised Israel doesn’t make for a good instance to federate with.

it was immensely irresponsible for any instance to federate with them, let alone the largest one.

nix OP ,
@nix@merv.news avatar

Im surprised no one has copy pasted libs of tiktok posts with info of mark zuckerberg, elon, etc to see if that breaks TOS and yell free speech and right wing censorship if the accounts are taken down

VirtualOdour ,

I know everyone loves having biases confirmed but we’re also not stupid, we know how the internet and evidence works. A random comment getting spam canned means almost nothing.

If this is true it’ll be incredibly easy to make a really good case for it which would be a potential news story - however I suspect that it’s just a glitch

Rinna , (edited )
@Rinna@lemm.ee avatar

Ironically I wouldn’t have heard of it if it werent for this, so Streisand effect in action.

Panurge987 ,

wouldn’t have

queue ,
@queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I wish I could go back to a Lemmy thread showing how Mastodon and other Fediverse instances were blocking Meta ahead of it’s integration, where people went “Oh you’re just being paranoid, why would they do that?” And when given examples of companies taking open standards and either making themselves the biggest source of users or killing it (Microsoft, Google, Apple) they either went “Well that happened in 2006, it’s 2023!”

I know the bootlickers wouldn’t actually change their mind, but jesus christ. It’s frustrating for groups of advocates to be ignored and proven right each time. Cassandra syndrome is real.

LibertyLizard ,

What are these examples and how do they relate to what Meta is doing?

rickyrigatoni ,

en.wikipedia.org/…/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extin…

LibertyLizard ,

I just feel like this strategy won’t work for activitypub. The whole idea is to make interoperable web platforms. If meta tries to damage that then I don’t see why activitypub developers would cooperate when it’s against the whole purpose of the project.

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

it will not, but theres a hate-fetish for meta on lemmy and logic has nothing to do with it.

its all 'but they are bad actors' but never 'this is the technical way they will extend the protocol to weaken it' because there isnt anything.

threads is just another instance moderating inbound content. somehow thats going to kill thousands of independent pieces of software.

octopus_ink , (edited )

I don’t think you have to know how the poison works to know the snake bite will kill you.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_con…

They will come here (edit: They HAVE come here) with a goal of exploiting and controlling the fediverse. You and I don’t have to know how they will do that in order for it to be true. Scrubbing links to a product that competes with Instagram from threads seems like a decent start though.

LibertyLizard ,

I mean I am completely unsurprised by their misbehavior, I’m just slightly more optimistic about our ability to resist them.

That said, the one danger I can see is Meta gaining more authority over the activitypub developers. That is probably something worth being vigilant about.

octopus_ink ,

I’m just slightly more optimistic about our ability to resist them.

What form would such resistance take if not advocating loudly for defederation?

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

what exactly is meta doing thats different than every other fedinstance moderating inbound content?

cuz its nothing. nothing beyond that. but hey, get your meta-hate fetish on.

wdsouth ,

Choosing a defederated instance might be a good idea…I just signed up here but I’ll consider it.

I could also just block the threads.net domain, no? Or would my data still get shipped off to Meta? I’m a little fuzzy on how detailed user account level federation works still.

kobra ,

Your lemmy data is on the public internet. Whether threads is federated with your instance or not, meta can still get all of your posts/comments.

wdsouth ,

A fair point!

dumpsterlid , (edited )

The issue is less Facebook getting your data and more Facebook getting invited to the party when they have ruined every other party they were invited to.

We can’t really stop Facebook from peering into the window to the party, but we can slam the door in Facebook’s face when they knock and try to come in, as we should.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

But realistically they won’t and at least we make it harder for them. Don’t make defederation sound like it’s a lost cause when it isn’t.

Draconic_NEO ,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world avatar

I could also just block the threads.net domain, no?

Nope domain blocking in Lemmy only does anything for communities. Plus blocking on Lemmy isn’t even really blocking, it’s a more extreme mute function that is deceptively called “block”.

Syrc ,

I pray to God (or whoever I have to) that the .world admins rethink their federation decision.

Elliot ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Syrc ,

    Lemmy integrates Activitypub and Threads plans to as well, sooner or later.

    Elliot ,

    I know i was talking about how lemmy doesn’t integrates even mastodon as good as kbin or mbin

    ZILtoid1991 ,

    Threads does it on a preliminary stage already with developer accounts, but likely just to get around of EU regulations.

    SorteKanin ,
    @SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

    Stop praying and just move to an instance that defederates with Threads. It’s really not hard.

    Zuberi ,
    @Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Why even federate w/ the LW bot-fest anyway?

    laverabe ,

    for better or worse LW is the largest instance, so joining another instance always poses the ‘risk’ of being defederated.

    the federation model definitely has some weaknesses

    Kbin_space_program ,

    But surely meta has good intentions and we should totally trust them guys!!1!

    SharkAttak ,
    @SharkAttak@kbin.social avatar

    Why is everyone so opposed to cancer Threads coming to the Fediverse?

    ZILtoid1991 ,

    Big corporations coming to tge fediverse will be epic 420 69! I like my tech, not because how it improves my life, but because HYPE! /s

    Kbin_space_program ,

    Seriously, they were blocking mention of competition (pixelfed) on threads before they launched their first attempt at federation.

    fossilesque ,
    @fossilesque@mander.xyz avatar

    And this thread goes straight to my Masto admin circle. Ta.

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