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?
Please for the love of Internet connectivity as a whole: block anything remotely attached to Facebook, not just the instance, but in general Internet daily life.
Zuck should die forgotten.
It does not go against the point of the fediverse to do so, either. Why would the ability to do this be baked into the code if it was not the intent to use it in certain situations? This would be a perfect use.
I can see maybe certain instances wanting it for whatever reason, but I'll be packing up and moving to one that blocks it if this one allows it.
Playing devil's advocate a bit here:
Considering that I rate Facebook as evil as Google, would you support "defederating" Google Mail from other mail services?
In my opinion, the fediverse/ActivityHub is just the underlying protocol to enable people to connect to each other just like SMTP and whether I want to contact someone using a service provider that I don't like is my choice and should not be the choice of my service provider...
Adding on to the pile here:
I know many have said, but embrace, extend, extinguish is also a legitimate threat to the fediverse I feel. I think the scenario you've described is already happening, but it's natural compliment: Unless you pay the google/godaddy/squarespace/whomever racket, good luck getting any traffic from your personal, self-hosted email server. Even if it's fully signed from industry standard certificate providers, you still need to effectively pay the big email servers to have your traffic be not marked as defacto spam/malicious. If you run the show, you get to point the protocol and standard operating procedures. Meta has every capability to eat the fediverse more or less, and frankly I don't doubt they will if it is a profitable endeavor. I'm sure y'all have read this by Ploum, but it really articulates the genuine concern that is just as existential as implosion.