MrMusAddict @ MrMusAddict @lemmy.world

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

I guess anytime I say "we", I mean people who value freedom, privacy, self-reliance, and decentralization. The kinds of people who the Fediverse purports to attract. I guess my questions mainly stem from a lack of understanding of how blind defederation is supposed to be a tactic to protect people who I've classified as the group "we". We're not going to ever go to threads. Others here may, because they are willing to forfeit their personal data, but not us.

Most of the sentiment I've seen demanding defederation seems to imply that our group and ideologies of freedom/privacy/self-reliance will be undermined by the mere connection with the Threads userbase. You mention that people on Threads will likely stay on Threads. Why would we expect differently for "us" staying on non-corporate Fediverse?

What I do know is that the concept of the Fediverse is very novel for the vast majority of people, even to people who value their freedom (but just hasn't thought to look, or what to look for). That will not be the case much longer now that the big guys have stepped in.

I guess it boils down to pessimism vs optimism. In my optimistic view (even with a pessimistic understanding of corporates greed) there's no harm in establishing the connection and playing it by ear as an opportunity to educate. And if we "wall the garden" for them, I don't see how that would protect the Fediverse, aside from perhaps preventing new flavors of content.

Thanks for taking the time to answer. I did read all of it, and was planning on responding to each individual point, but it all kind of melded into one combined thought.

I guess from what I'm thinking, it's sounding like this is the pessimistic expectation:

• Threads will do all that they can to entice people onto their platform.
• They will go for people with low standards of privacy and high expectations of networking, and try and win them over with features.
• Once they've been won over, they become Meta's product, and once they have enough products they will cut ties and leave us high and dry.

But, if we "make a stand" against it now, because we expect to be a frog in boiled water if we don't, how exactly does that improve the above outlook? We've walled the garden for them. The people with lower standards will be won over by default.

I guess it may just be a difference of opinion, where you think it protects us, but in my view it just makes the decision easier for those individuals since they are forced to choose. I'm thinking that with coexistence comes the opportunity to rip users of similar ideologies over to our side while Threads grows.

I came over as a Reddit refugee, and really like the idea of fostering communities with like-minded individuals. That's why I have founded 5 already, which replicate what I was missing from Reddit.

The last few comments directly before/after this post are the result of continuing my full train of thought, looking for clear answers, in a more visible format than the comments of a lemmy.ca post. From what I understood about the fediverse, I was surprised to see communities blindly defederating when it didn't seem to be fully thought through (although I admittedly am new here, so I may just not understand). But that was the impetus of my questions.

As of me writing this comment, I have not found understandable answers to my questions yet.

Hmm, perhaps. Although if we never federate in the first place, I guess we'll never know. It seems like if we tested the waters, what we could gain could far outweigh what we could lose, and we could always cut the line if we see it clearly isn't working out.

But... if we defederate now, won't we just be trying to create a walled garden of a tiny userbase?

If the goal is to grow the non-corporate Fediverse and encourage privacy and self-hosting, I would imagine that the best way to do that is to connect with the corporate Fediverse and proselytize the benefits of moving off of Threads. In the end, the non-corporate federation will grow immensely, I imagine. Whereas if we cut ourselves off now, I fear we will actually drive people to Threads, and make it nearly impossible to convince people to get off of Threads.

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?

But isn't the core design of the fediverse resistant, if not immune, to those sorts of tactics? Should Threads be allowed in the federation, the only thing they can do is defederate, right? That means we may get used to the increased userbase and become disappointed when a large chunk of their traffic goes dark, but the remaining fediverse will have grown and benefited until then.

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?