Meta/Instagram launched a new product called Threads today (working title project92). It adds a new interface for creating text posts and replying to them, using your Instagram account. Of note, Meta has stated that Threads plans to support ActivityPub in the future, and allow federation with ActivityPub services. If you actually look at your Threads profile page in the app your username has a threads.net tag next to it - presumably to support future federation.

Per the link, a number of fediverse communities are pledging to block any Meta-directed instances that should exist in the future. Thus instance content would not be federated to Meta instances, and Meta users would not be able to interact with instance content.

I’m curious what the opinions on this here are. I personally feel like Meta has shown time and time again that they are not very good citizens of the Internet; beyond concerns of an Eternal September triggered by federated Instagram, I worry that bringing their massive userbase to the fediverse would allow them to influence it to negative effect.
I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place, and I’m eager to hear more opinions. What do you think?

  • Slacking@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3512·
    1 year ago

    I hate Facebook as much as the next guy but I think this whole defederation business just stinks. I left Reddit because they were forcing me to use their app, but now I’m in a community that chooses what I see?

    I’m hoping lemmy sets up a way to ban instances because this should 100% be up to the user.

    There’s also the fact that this place is starving for content, this really feels like a shoot yourself in the foot kind of moment. The userbase is going to completely stall if there’s an alternative with 100x more content that can’t be accessed from our endpoint.

    Its definitely a complicated situation, I know it’s an unpopular opinion so I’ll accept the downvotes.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      151·
      1 year ago

      In this case I kind of agreed that content is content. But I’m pretty sure Threads has no intention of directly federating with anything other than Meta approved ActivityPub apps anyway. At least as far as participation goes. Meta might publish Meta content over like a dedicated read-only bridge instance, but there’s no way in hell they are going to let users from chrisHandomeSexOffender.sk directly interact with branded content by default.