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Fediverse @kbin.social vaguerant @kbin.social

Question: Why are some instances defederating instances which don't sign the fedipact?

Something I don't understand currently about the whole Meta/Threads debacle is why I'm seeing talk about instances which choose to federate with Threads themselves being defederated. I have an account on mastodon.social, one of the instances which has not signed the fedipact, and I've had people from other instances warn me that their instances are going to defederate mastodon.social when Threads arrives.

I have no reason to doubt that, so, assuming that they are, why? I don't believe instances behave as any kind of relay system: anybody who wishes to defederate from Threads can do so and their instances will not pull in Threads content, even if they remain federated to another instance which does.

I'm unsure how boosts work in this scenario, perhaps those instances are concerned that they'll see Threads content when mastodon.social or other Threads-federated instances users boost it, or that their content will be boosted to Threads users? The two degrees of separation would presumably prevent that, so I can see that being a reason to double-defederate, assuming that is how boosts work (is it?).

Other than that, perhaps the goal is simply to split the fediverse into essentially two sides, the Threads side and the non-Threads side, in order to insulate the non-Threads side from any embrace, extend, extinguish behavior on Meta's part?

Ultimately, my long term goal is just to use kbin to interact with the blogging side of the fediverse, but there are obviously teething issues currently, like some Mastodon instances simply aren't compatible with kbin. I'm too lazy to move somewhere else only to move to kbin "again" after that, so in the short term I guess I'll just shrug in the general direction of Mastodon.

To be clear, I have a pretty solid understanding of why people want to defederate Threads (and I personally agree that it's a good idea), it's the double-defederation I'm not sure I follow. Is my understanding at all close? Are there other reasons? Thanks for any insight.

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9 comments

  • Some of it comes from privacy/foss fundamentalism that is very prevalent in fediverse (the entire fedi is basically just a huge nerd circle). People don't really think about more than "Meta bad. Defed". It's a bit of a kneejerk reaction...and it's quite normal around here.

    perhaps the goal is simply to split the fediverse into essentially two sides, the Threads side and the non-Threads side

    Yes exactly.

    I'm unsure how boosts work in this scenario, perhaps those instances are concerned that they'll see Threads content when mastodon.social or other Threads-federated instances users boost it, or that their content will be boosted to Threads users?

    Again, spot on.

    Consider this:
    pure.social blocks evil.meta, but doesn’t block mastodon.social.

    A user on pure.social posts something publicly, and since they have a follower on mastodon.social, the pure.social server sends the post to mastodon.social, but doesn’t send it to evil.meta because they're defederated on pure.social.

    A user on mastodon.social sees the post and boosts it, and since that user has a follower on evil,meta, the mastodon.social server sends the boost to evil.meta (because evil.meta is not defederated on mastodon.social), and tells the server about the original post from pure.social.

    evil.meta receives the boost, and downloads the content of the post from pure.social. pure.social allows evil.meta to download the post because it doesn’t know who is asking.

    Beyond the fact that evil.meta was able to see posts from pure.social even though they are defederated, there's also a problem where people on evil.meta start replying to the post - and while the OP on pure.social does not see what they're saying, they might see "half" of the discussion from the replies the user on mastodon.social posts.

    This is of course a bit of a moot point, because the OP on pure.social posted it as "public" - and public things on the Internet... well..

    I personally think Meta should be banned and regulators should tear the whole company apart. So I'm not too sad about people blocking them. I do think it's a bit premature at this point though. We haven't seen their ActivityPub implementation yet as it didn't roll out with the release version. So I am in the "defederate the shit out of them, but wait and see first"-boat.

    • Thanks, this is extremely thorough and easy to understand. Very well put. I can see how for anyone with sufficient distrust of Meta and its users, it makes sense to defederate anybody who might serve as a relay between them.

      In the meantime, I hope kbin can catch up before Threads starts federating, so I can just interact with people from here. Currently, there's people who I can't see/can't see me from kbin, not due to defederation but simple bugs in kbin's current ActivityPub implementation. If/when mastodon.social gets defederated, there's people I won't have any mechanism to speak to without registering a third account somewhere in the fediverse.

      • Yep, a lot of my old friends and co-workers aren't on Mastodon. I'm seeing them pop up on Threads.

        I really want to be able to follow my friends and interact with my friends and - from my perspective - it's this vocal minority loudly saying "YOU DON'T NEED TO TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, LET'S SPLIT THE FEDIVERSE".

        It makes no goddamn sense. If the fedipact holds you're just going to have two separate fediverses now and users are going to fragment. I'd rather interact with my IRL friends than a bunch of nerds talking to each other on Mastodon about the last time they showered. I get that they're trying to avoid "embrace, extend, extinguish" but splitting the fediverse into 2 is actively worse.

        EEE is all about a corporation making a product that (to an average user) is better than the free alternative, and making it hard for the free alternative to keep up and maintain parity. Over time, people will leave the free version and go to the corpo version and the free version will have nothing on it but diehard nerds.

        Defederating from the corpo instances is literally identical. All these people are just going to shoot themselves in the foot. You are giving people the option of "talk to all of your friends and celebrities" or "talk to us, a bunch of overbearing control freaks who jump at shadows". Of course people are going to choose their friends and leave behind the strangers they hardly know. If the fedipact has its way, Mastodon's core users will dwindle and dwindle until it's just the hardcore. Note that this is the exact same outcome as EEE, but Meta didn't have to lift a finger.

        Don't mistake me for someone who likes Meta, mind. I hate the Zuck. Not as much as I hate Elon, but I do not like Zuckerberg. But I'm given the chance to use FOSS stuff to talk to my friends? I can use apps like Fedilab and swap between Threads and Mastodon? I can follow Threads users from here on Kbin? Threads users can subscribe to my magazines and make posts?

        I'd much rather make Facebook work on EEE than do it to ourselves for free.

  • Basically Meta will try to join the fediverse build up a bunch of users and get content. Once they become the biggest instance they will build up a wall to kick all the competition out. It is what google did to XMPP. https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html By signing the anti fedi pact we are esentially preventing a corporation from taking over and ruining it for everyone else.

  • Hmm interesting. I do think it's just as important that we double-defederate unfortunately. Meta/Threads has to be treated as if it's contagious.

    If we stay federated with an instance that has accepted the Embrace, what do we do when the Extend happens? Is that when we defederate? Will we even recognize it?

    EEE only works because it's difficult to see it happening to you. Instances that ally with Meta/Threads will actually present the same threat of EEE, or even a greater threat, because the Extend step may appear to come from non-Meta instances.

    Imagine ActivityPub upgrades developed by a Meta/Threads-ally, let's say improved inter-instance moderator tools. That sounds good right?

    It's basically all the exact same arguments again, but with a middle man.

    • Meta/Threads have different foundational priorities (namely, profit) and real incentives to monopolize.
    • Meta-ally instances have real and implied incentives to accommodate
      Meta/Threads.
    • And we have incentives to accommodate the instances that we federate with, so of course kbin would use the well-developed new mod tools right?
    • Seems crazy not to, even if it was developed by a Meta-ally. Right?
    • Great! Repeat for thousands of tiny changes, that's called Extend.

    That's how accepting EEE works, each little step looks great but big picture we're unknowingly in trouble. We'll have to treat any Meta/Threads-ally as if it is Meta/Threads. (Hell, some of them probably will be lol, the fediverse is just asking for astroturfing lol.)

    We can trust instances that don't have economic incentives. But any instance that shows they can be swayed by money, or that shows they'll accommodate instances driven by profit, well they're showing that they'd consider eating us to become the next reddit.

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