Are we defederating from Threads?

Admins are in agreement that we don't want federation with Meta.

I don't see us currently federating with them - https://lemmy.ca/instances

We'll make sure it stays that way! I've added threads.net to our blocklist.

Great to have an official answer. Thank you!
I decided to sign on here because of this stance. Also I missed the company of my fellow Canucks ;)
Good-faith question for you admins to laymen like myself; what do you believe you are protecting yourselves from by blocking Threads? Isn't the nature of the Fediverse resistant, if not immune, to corotate shenanigans? Isn't the only thing you're accomplishing by defederating Theads is that you're just making yourselves invisible to a large userbase who are too lazy to care about their own personal data?
We're all still protected, no?
- Personal take - I don't think it's reasonable to assume the meta will operate in good faith. I don't have confidence that they will moderate their users, and I believe their only interest will be in slurping up 3rd party data to make their platform more appealing and decrease the chance a user will go elsewhere to find things. They don't want you going anywhere else for that juicy ad revenue.
- It's also about the content threads will bring
  Think about all the dimwits, grifters, and douchebags on Instagram. Think about how shitty front page reddit posts were. Do you want that here?

The ideals that led to the Fediverse are antithetical to companies like Meta

The ideals of the Fediverse is an open network.
- The problem is that it only works if the ideal scenario occurs being that we all work together to make things better. Corporate interaction in open source has shown that embrace, extend, extinguish is a very successful strategy.
  Would we be harming the idea of a completely open network? No doubt. The question is whether or not allowing corporations would be better or worse for us in the long run.

A lot of us just left a site because it was ruined by corporate greed. I don't think corporations belong in the fediverse. If there's a vote, I vote for defedding with Threads.

I, for one, vote in support of defederation from Threads. No reason to allow Meta to use our content to boost engagement on their for-profit platform. And pull users away from places like Lemmy at that.

I don't see anyone here arguing that this instance should remain federated with Threads. So far it's unanimous that we should defederate from them. I agree. We should keep this separate.

I vote to block them as well. Don't let Meta get its claws on lemmy.ca content or user info.

You're absolutely right!
Meta is a threat to the privacy of fediverse users, if there are fediverse instances that remain federated with Meta.
Ross Schulman, senior fellow for decentralization at digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that if Threads emerges as a massive player in the fediverse, there could be concerns about what he calls “social graph slurping." Meta will know who all of its users interact with and follow within Threads, and it will also be able to see who its users follow in the broader fediverse. And if Threads builds up anywhere near the reach of other Meta platforms, just this little slice of life would give the company a fairly expansive view of interactions beyond its borders.
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-threads-privacy-decentralization/

+1 for defederating

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What are the objectives of defederating?

To protect our data? They can create stealth instances and get the same data. I think we have to accept and be mindful that the things we share on the fediverse can be exploited by people we don't like.

To exclude their users? I understand they have partnered with Namecheap to offer users customized instances with their own domain. Is it even a technical possibility to exclude all their users' instances?

To make a statement? Okay, but then we need to do more than just defederate.

This article has been circulating around the fediverse and I think it greatly illustrates why it's so important to defederate from large corporations before they can get a foothold. It's about so much more than just them getting our data.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
- In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway.
  Isn't this what actually killed XMPP? XMPP still works, is still viable. But everyone stopped using it. That's got more to do with Facebook than Google, imho.
It's more about protecting ActivityPub protocol than anything.
Before we know it, thread will impose its proprietary protocol and the fediverse will simply die with it.
Honestly, I'm not sure if it will happen. Social media is already pretty much corporate world so we will see what will happen.
- Okay but how does this protect the protocol? What is the difference between us defederating them, and what you describe which is essentially them defederating us? Why would they bother in the first place, then? I don't really think any of this is about us, but rather about Twitter and Google.
  Like, does it endanger the HTTP protocol that we exchange HTTP data with them?

I don't know if we are but I think we should. No interest in interacting with facebook in any capacity.

I'm new to federation as a concept, but isn't the only thing you accomplish from defederating Threads is that this community will miss the opportunity to grow its userbase? Isn't the whole point of the fediverse that anyone can be anywhere and access anything from anywhere else?
If so, the only people who come out behind are the people signing up on Threads specifically, who are granting every piece of personal data to Meta. But people signed up on other instances are protected.
As far as I understand, the existing fediverse is not at risk of anything, correct?
- I guess people are worried about Meta pulling some moves out of Embrace, Expand, Extinguish playbook.
- It is at risk. Meta/Facebook have done this before. They embrace, extend and then extinguish. Eventually they say the only way to be safe as to use their products, force people to switch over as all the content is generated on threads and there goes the fediverse. It's better to get ahead of them and just not allow them to link up. Facebook is a hostile actor in this space and needs to be treated as such.
- I'm of a similar mind.
  My time online is limited, and if Threads ends up having the most interesting stuff then that's where I'll spend my limited time. If I can follow users from Threads over at mstdn.ca then I would very likely stick with the Fediverse to get the best of both worlds. I'm mostly a content consumer so I go where the content is.
  Also, I don't really think Threads and Lemmy are a good match, if Threads is more a Twitter substitute then I think Mastadon is a better match (and all micro-blog class Fediverse platforms). So I suspect not many people will use Lemmy to follow anyone/thing from Threads, defederating them won't have much practical effect.

I want to know what you guys are talking about, and I think a get the gist of it, but my lord, do I feel old and don't understand actually most of those words. Is there a "explain to me like I'm 5" place I could ask what are those federations and threads?