I see many people purporting that users blocking Threads on an individual basis as a solution, but it’s not… Blocking Threads will not prevent Threads users’ comments in federated instances from showing up.
Even if you block Threads, you will still see hateful, harassing, and extremist content and misinformation.
Furthermore, even if it did block Threads engagement entirely on an individual blocking basis, it is still a failure on the instance admins to adequately protect their users and cultivate a healthy community.
.world admins defederated with exploding heads due to hate, harassment, and extremism/misinformation. Why would they then federate with Threads which harbors the same toxic users?
It’s a move to bring more users into the Fediverse, but it comes with costs and risks that do not justify the short-sighted gain of more users and inching towards becoming mainstream.
Threads has been subject to mass amounts of radicalizing, extremist content, and there have also been instances of users having personal information doxxed on Threads due to Meta’s information-harvesting practices. [1]
Threads was marketed to be open to ‘free speech’ (read: hate speech and misinformation) and encouraged the Far-Right movement to join, who have spread extremism, hate, and harassment on Threads already. [2] Threads has been a hotbed of Israel-Palestine misinformation/propaganda. [3]
They fired fact-checkers just prior to Threads’ launch [1], however they claim they will have 3rd party fact-checkers next year. [4]
Meta/FB/Instagram has a rampant history of illegal and unethical practices, including running experiments on their users which affected their moods and induced depression in many uninformed, non-consenting subjects. [5] Such unethical experiments could affect federated users as well.
(Edit: As @massive_bereavement reminded me, Meta also assisted in genocide! [6])
Meta/FB/Instagram also have a strong history of facilitating the spread of misinformation and extremism, which contributed to the January 6th insurrection attempt. [7]
If exploding heads was defederated with because of this sort of toxic extremism, why would they want to federate with a platform plagued by that same content? One known for shortcomings moderating it? And one which comes from a company with a long history of unethical and illegal practices regarding users?
Due to these issues and Meta’s rampant history of unethical and illegal business practices, there should be no federation with Threads for the well-being of the users in this instance.
I have donated to the .world instance since my first week here, but should they continue with federating with Threads, I will be cancelling my donations and finding an instance that won’t undermine the safety and well-being of their users for a boost of (largely toxic) new users and an inch towards being mainstream.
The gains are immediate but minimal, and come at great costs which do not warrant federating with Threads (IMO).
Your honor, I would also like to present their role in Myanmar’s genocide
Ugh, we’re federated with threads? There goes the neighborhood
What the actual fuck?
What an infuriating UI design, red for federated and green for blocked?
Either way, thanks for a useful link since my instance admin blocked Threads for whatever reason and I needed to find a new one. Cheers!
Maybe they Chinese? In Chinese stock markets red is up green down.
No. Federated = bad, thus it is red.
Embrace < you are here
Extend
Extinguish
Like mastondon.world admin said, you can always block the threads.net at user level.
The instance itself will wait and see.
Edit: mastodon.world not mastodon.social
“Wait and see” for what though? Meta is already a known bad actor in social media. Why give them the benefit of the doubt?
If anyone is interested in the very long list of unethical and illegal practices of Meta, here’s some of their rampant inexcusable and repeated shitty practices!
Wait a see what they actually do. Mad idea, I know.
Man, I can’t believe the hot stove burned me, again!
Maybe next time will be different…
Zuckerberg: I don’t know why. Zuckerberg: They “trust me” Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks
I forgot about that quote haha. That’s such a great retort to this “wait and see” approach.
Pay attention @Ruud, this is what Mark Zuckerberg thinks of you.
Zuckerberg requesting and being given the your intimate personal information, isn’t really the same as s Zuckerberg plan to make information on a Meta social network readable from another social network, but sure. I’m not saying Meta is trustworthy, I’m saying let’s see what they do. Having a way for people to interact with people on Threads, without having to join Threads could be quite useful.
There’s no reason to wait.
Look right now, and see that there’s enough justification to say no to federating with Threads.
It’s a bit of polemic that suggests that the main reason for blocking Threads is that is full off appalling hateful content. I haven’t used Threads since in initially signing up, so I had a quick look and it wasn’t particularly toxic, as far as I can see. If it is - and that content comes across, that is of course good reason for instances to block it - and I’m sure they will. Meanwhile I was amused to see on Threads the same debate been handled from the opposite direction:
There’s plenty of justification not to federate beyond the extremism, from the unethical experiments they conduct on their users to their aiding in genocide.
Lol dumb nerds are the worst. In our company they hired bunch of devs who built the app before the deadline thinking they will get promoted and now most of them are redundant and one works in support.🤣🤣
This does not stop user comments from Threads. They will still be visible throughout .world/federated instances, where they can spread more misinformation and radicalism.
Lol so funny- will wait and see…🤣🤣🤣
Wait and see is what I wrote. I added the text from the original toot.
Can someone ELI5 here. So Lemmy.world is a Reddit like site, Threads is a Twitter like site. What does it mean when they’re federated?
Content and data is shared between instances.
But what does that mean? How would I see content from one on the other?
Have you never talked to someone on #Mastodon yet? They all use ActivityPub as a protocol.
I’m on Mastodon also. But how do they connect?
I told you already.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
That’s means that I can see your content from lemmy.zip
Your IP, comments, username , liked post, disliked post and other identifiers will be shared with facebook.
With FB and every other instance. Are you vetting who has controlling stake in every instance you federate with?
You do realise that your account on here is public, right? Anyone can collect data like comments, and it’s likely already being used to train AI models just like Reddit data was.
The only way to avoid data being sent to other servers is by having a private account that can’t be viewed while logged out, and never interacting with content from other servers. I don’t think it’s even possible to have a private Lemmy account.
In the short run it probably doesn’t matter. However Threads is do big that it could theoretically crush us
as long as users can block Threads themselves 🤷🏽♂️ it seems there is an intersection between those most interested in blocking Threads and the tech/privacy-savvy portion of the Fediverse.
They’ll probably be able to go through the steps of blocking Threads, which differ in the various services, but on Mastodon is relatively easy.
Eventually it may be necessary to make this process even easier, by prompting the users or something. But rn, it seems enough
