What does defederating from Meta's Threads.net actually accomplish?

From what I have read, I think it's all of the above.

a space is wanted free from corps, ads, data perversion
people are fearful that 30 million people joining threads has automatically made it the largest instance. Once it integrates with ActivityPub and can federate, it will dominate the space and produce the majority of the content. People are fearful then meta will retract it/ defederate and take the majority of content and content production with it (EEE). This would effectively kill the fediverse.
many believe meta will not act in good faith and is doing this to appease European courts and laws

Because of all of this people likely believe keeping threads quarantined right off the bat is the best solution to mitigate the amount of damage they can do to what's already been established.

Edit: I am adding to this post as I just stumbled across a post from the host of the lemm.ee instance (which I am a big fan of). He has also listed some great cons of Facebook stepping into the fediverse:

there is nothing stopping facebook from sending out ads as posts/comments with artificially inflated scores which would ensure they end up on the front page of "all" for federated servers
threads already has more users than all of Lemmy's instances... therefore, they can completely control what the front page looks like by dictating what their users see and vote on
moderation does not seem like a priority for threads which would increase workload for smaller instances
REVENUE FOCUSED

I paraphrased a lot of this but as this is getting some traction I wanted to provide additional visibility to the cons of federating with the Facebook.

Pretty much this, and I'd like to emphasize the part where Threads userbase outnumber the Fediverse 30 to 1 after only one day.
Lemmy is evolving into a very nice place so far because of the type of users it's attracted, and the fear is that the atmosphere would shift on a dime when the voices here get drowned out by hundreds of millions of commenters from Instagram and Facebook.
- A few years ago, Reddit strategically banned two terrible subreddits during one of their shitstorms (the whole AMA firing scandal), just as Voat was getting popular. It turned from a decent community that was starting to grow and challenge Reddit's presence, to a right-wing extremist cesspool overnight.
  You also see this sort of thing happen to subreddits all the time. Some of them go from a good community, and either slowly or quickly, shifts into a much more terrible version of itself. Russian bots/ops have transformed subs to push their own agenda.
  The community matters, and how that community evolves matters a great deal. Communities can live or die from massive migrations like this.
- I started a community to track the H5N1 global outbreak but I do NOT want to moderate it long term; if it picks up, the anti-vax/Plandemic people are going to start showing up (they already do sometimes in the subreddit for it). I feel like opening the doors to Threads is going to hasten that.
Meta taking their ball and going home some time a ways down the road is much less an issue than them dominating content by being there in the first place. They will have their own moderation and content rules that will shape the content that flows out from them, which will shape each community that interacts with it. Considering the very mercenary approach they have to that, it means that content will be far more monetized and monetizable. Which means both sanitization and pandering, neither of which benefits freedom of thought and discussion.
Considering the huge influx of people coming to places like Lemmy or Kbin to escape that kind of situation (reddit), it may mean the death of the community that has grown so far, before Meta even considers leaving.
Just to play devil's advocate:
There could be some downsides to defederating it too:
threads could be a gateway to bring more people into the rest of the fediverse in a user friendly way.
It might cause the rest of the fediverse outside of threads to be more fragmented if some defedarate it and some don't.
- Absolutely agree. The optimist in me wants to be excited for what this means and how this could impact the future of, well, the Internet.
  But then I remember this is Meta we're taking about. They do not do things that are good for anyone but Meta. As someone who doesn't use meta products, this brings concern.
In addition to what you said, I think additional aspects to consider are the open standards and protocols Facebook/Meta have already abandoned once it became convenient to do so:
XMPP access for Messenger/Chat
RSS feeds for any newsfeed source. They even continued to use the RSS badge (which is unofficial as far as I'm aware) for their follow icon even after they removed RSS feeds.
The bare minimum price of Meta's integration into the Fediverse should be nothing less than the return of those standards, and honestly even that may not be enough.
People are fearful then meta will retract it/ defederate and take the majority of content with it (EEE). This would effectively kill the fediverse.
I don't see how that could possibly happen. It's not like they can buy the Fediverse. Seems to me far more likely that the Fediverse will be gain interest from people wishing to follow/interact with Meta users without being beholden to Meta and if/when Meta decouples from it again the Fediverse will be larger than before. Sure, some may come and go, but others will find interests outside of Meta.
Like everyone is pointing out, they already will be the largest instance. They are not going to gain that much by trying to trying to absorb the rest of people who are likely in the Fediverse from dissatisfaction with Big Tech and wanting to break free from their algorithms and restrictions.
- I think you're underestimating evil.
  Competition is for losers.
- while it will draw more users into the fediverse, nearly all of them will join directly with threads
  users who would have joined other instances will be parasited to threads as the safest best supported option
  whatever threads does, other instances will be forced to copy or risk losing feature parity with the most important player in the space.
  existing users will get accustomed to the content from threads as occupying the dominant super majority of content on the site.
  Threads will essentially be the space, with all currently existing communities left as periphery. Which is very bad on it's own because the decentralized space is no longer decentralized, and in fact is in the hands of Meta.
  Meta will eventually wall itself off because not having control of your users social graph is an unnecessary threat. And since they are the space, so they will lose very little by walling off. When they do wall off, the fediverse will have it's communities deeply intermingled with Meta, and when people lose most of their friends and content to meta walling themselves off - most are going to choose to relocate to meta.
  Slowly growing the decentralized space organically is important to avoid this kind of stuff. If we allow someone to become the hyper-dominant instance, the principle of de-federation ceases to matter because they have so much controlling leverage over the users.
  I do still think this is a good thing, but it's a complicated good thing that could do more damage. I am very worried that they aren't starting off federated. That also means their internal community norms will develop isolated from what fediverse has tried to establish.
- . It's not like they can buy the Fediverse.
  They don't need to. They only need to buy the admins. And we know that some admins have annouced they are for sale.

Anything that lands on Meta's servers is open for Meta's use, however they see fit. Providing free training data for their algorithms just isn't something everyone here is ok with.

Many of us are here consciously because we're anti-corporate exploitation, not merely because our previous hangout spot fucked around, and Meta is king shit of corporate exploitation, and we want nothing to do with anything that's helping them.

If by algorithms you mean things like GPT, all data on the fediverse is effectively public and arguably even easier to be collected than the likes of reddit, and is almost definitely going to be used to train models whenever or not the fediverse federates with threads.
There's still significance in defederating though, specially when it comes to preventing "Embrace, extend, and extinguish"
- Being publicly viewable doesn't make it public domain. We each maintain our copyright. Our posts are our personal intellectual property.
  We can't stop them from using them, but that doesn't make them theirs, and it doesn't mean we should just hand them over freely.
  If they're going to use them, they can at least make the effort to take them.
Providing free training data for their algorithms just isn't something everyone here is ok with.
Defederating from Meta changes nothing in this regard.
- They can take. That doesn't mean we need be ok with giving. Just because they're ok with theft IP doesn't mean we need to be ok with them doing it.
Isn’t it subject to the same GDPR rules that the whole of fediverse pretends they don’t exist? All it takes is asking facebook what they have on you and unlike some “depersonalized” identifier you can ask for your data based on the activitypub id. It's actually much easier to go after a big corp with such a request as opposed to some random mastodon or lemmy instance.
- There's a reason Meta can't operate Threads in Europe. They don't abide by the GDPR.
- meta abide privacy laws
  you funny

It is mostly tracking, privacy, and FOSS related. Most of us are here because of a centralized asshat CEO's actions. The last thing we're interested in is a guy with a much bigger hat.

I would add as most important: psychologically unhealthy behaviour their algorithms are promoting.
It starts normally, but algorithm is rewording unhealthy posts and soon whole network is full of it, it happens since they are just hunting "engagement", click, time in the app and basically addiction.
- The Algorithm only happens in their app, though. They aren't forcing it on every Mastodon server, and definitely not on anything Lemmy.
  And, yes, The Algorithm is truly awful.
Unless Vermin Supreme decides to host his own instance on the fedi, I wholeheartedly agree.
As far as privacy and tracking go, can you unpack that a little more? Isn't everything you post on the fediverse totally public to begin with- isn't even already likely that they have spun up servers to test ActivityPub integration with, that have already pulled your fediverse posts? This just seems like a symbolic gesture more than anything.
- Yes, my posts can be scraped easily, but not my IP, dwell time, what I voted for and how, what I read or didn't, who I've blocked, the communities I follow, where I came from, what else I am doing, where I went next, fingerprinting my connection, my device sensors, and especially the way I react to suggested content and echo chamber manipulation. All they can do is scrape me saying things like:
  "Targeted or general advertising for any product indicates to me that the company paying for the ad makes a low quality product that is over priced to pay for spam marketing. I will always seek out the better priced or better quality alternatives that do not fund advertising like this. I have never click or followed direct marketed advertising, except when it interrupts me in an annoying way. Then I will duplicate the tab, click the ad, go the the landing page, let it load, click a link on the page, and let it sit in the background while I use the old tab to go about my day. I close their tab and automatically wipe all cookies at the end of every browsing session or after leaving the tab open for a few minutes to ensure it costs an order of magnitude more than the ad impression did. I will make sure I cost them a full ad click for pissing me off. I never use my browsing/social media devices to make purchases. They are not even on the same network and VPN."
  Data miners are more than welcome to scrape this post, and show it to all of their advertisers please.

I'd say the biggest reason is culture and identity. The threadiverse is small at present - about 120k - and the microblogverse is bigger - 8m - but still smaller than the Threads.net 70m already and potential 1bn if meta leverages instagram. Why would a smaller and growing new independent social media platform want to be swamped by a commercial tidal wave? There isn't really a benefit to the independent parts of the Fediverse.

It's better for the independent parts of the fediverse to grow organically, remain independent and grow it's own identity rather than disappear into useless oblivion.

Also if I understand it correctly, the Threads.net is a microblogging site so while they may both use ActivityPub, Lemmy does not support microblog content. For Lemmy, it would mainly be the Lemmy content appearing within Threads.net. Federating with Threads.net is more of an issue for Kbin (which does both Threadiverse and Microblogverse content) and Mastodon (which does Microblogverse content) - the content would be visible in both directions. So for Lemmy it might be a big influx of users so may be manageable, but for Kbin & Mastodon it may also be a flood of content which might not be mangeable. But correct me if I'm wrong on that.

I fully agree. I've seen the XMPP EEE analogy used a lot, but I don't think it is the real objection
We've got a nice respectful community, of people who want to see community-driven interaction and sharing succeed - Threads offers nothing we want or need
You said threadiverse a couple of times when I think you meant fediverse.
- They sad threadiverse to distinguish it from the microblogiverse, both are part of the fediverse.
  Twitter, Instagram, & Mastodon = microblogging.
  Reddit, & Lemmy = threaded discussions.

The biggest threat IMO is being exposed to Meta-curated content. They definitely use their algorithms to push narratives in their interest.

Being exposed to their users is being exposed to them by proxy.

Don't you think we already deal with them a lot afk?

Yeah that's a great post.
My response is a bit shorter.
Fuck Meta and the bits they rode in on. 😁
Thanks. I hadn't seen that one.

The mastodon instance I'm on decided to limit threads instead of banning it (decision made by voting). Threads posts will not show up in our timelines, but if we follow an account on threads we can still see them in home timeline. I think this took care of most of the stuff while still being flexible.

The reality is that it probably won't accomplish anything at all, particularly for lemmy users whose fediverse is structured considerably differently than mastodon.

You don't tend to see people from that side of the fediverse over here.

Yep. On one hand, I'd be super-concerned if Reddit decided they were federating with Lemmy. Reddit would create /c's on their instance for all of their /r's and completely torpedo all of the existing Lemmy communities.
Mastodon is just users though. You don't generally see users in your feed unless you actively follow them -- or if you decide to drink from the firehose and go look at the All feed. And it's not like Meta can "take over" Mastodon hashtags like Reddit could take over communities. Hashtags are server agnostic.
And unless you sign up on their server, I honestly don't see how Meta can pilfer more data than they already can by just scraping public servers.
Just please don't let Meta diddle the ActivityPub protocols. They need to adapt to the protocols. Nobody should be adapting the protocols to them.
- It would still be nice to be able to use the All feed though, and not have it filled with giga-engagement posts from hundreds of millions of Threads users.

Honestly, I feel like the bigger issue is the immense flood of content that's going to pour out of Threads. I'm not sure if many of the self-hosted instances will be able to federate with it and continue to function.

This seems like a more viable argument than much of the EEE stuff, in regards to Threads v Mastodon.
But I simply don't understand the ins-and-outs of how Threads stuff gets federated, and how much toll it would actually put on other servers.
- My (limited) understanding of ActivityPub is that it functions on a publish-subscribe model. If you and I both ran instances and federated with each other, every time a message was posted to my instance I'd send a message to you and vice-versa. Now, let's say a new person comes along with their own instance and they want to federate with us, but they have 1000x more users than we do. If we federate with this new instance, we now both have to handle 1000x more traffic.
  This is effectively a Denial Of Service attack.
  Threads currently (supposedly) has 70 million users. If only 0.001% of those users are interacting with federated content every second, that's still 1000 messages every second. Smaller instances are likely not configured or tuned to handle this level of traffic on top of their existing traffic.
What kind of sever requirements are needed?

They've also carried out experiments manipulating people's feeds to make them happier or depressed...
Not only did they play a crucial role in election misinformation, but they're largely responsible for the radicalization and violence in the alt right.
We know they mine/monetize all your data they can..
Fuck FB/Meta/Threads. People are going to bitch about reddit and them simp for Meta? Give me a break...

If I wanted to use Facebook and subject myself to the community that includes, I’d use that. I prefer a less hostile/more thoughtful place, which Lemmy.world is to me. If Threads becomes accessible to Lemmy.world and brings that community within this sphere, I will very likely move on.

Mostly because I don't like meta and have made a point not to use any of the platforms related to them. I don't respect them and don't want their content or their creators to be a part of my fediverse.

Facebook can bootstrap their product with federated content made by users who are in the fediverse because they don’t want to support a company like Facebook. By not defederating, you would be helping Facebook every time you post a comment or make a post because you would be giving Facebook free content to further their for-profit goals.

Facebook will also be taking fediverse content and displaying it next to ads.

Defederation is one-way. An instance you defederated with still has access to your instances posts.

Meta are performing what is called an EEE attack (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). Basically, it involves a larger corporation creating a thing that hooks into an open standard, artificially inflating it, slowly adding new, proprietary closed-source features that other members of the open standard cannot use, and eventually removing support for the open standard entirely, forcing other users to enter their walled garden because that's where all the people are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,extend,andextinguish

Basically, it involves a larger corporation creating a thing that hooks into an open standard, artificially inflating it, slowly adding new, proprietary closed-source features that other members of the open standard cannot use
While I wish ActivityPub was GPLv3, it is at least under the MPL, and they are going to have a hard time introducing proprietary closed-source features on a communication platform that requires them to share the source code.
Meta are performing what is called an EEE attack (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish).
Large numbers of people are saying that Meta is doing this. And then people are quoting each other saying that, linking to the same article over and over, and whipping themselves up into a frenzy demanding that everyone defederate with anyone who's not defederating with Meta (even though it's not even possible to federate with Meta yet - Threads still hasn't implemented ActivityPub).
It's currently just a big moral panic and I'm awaiting some kind of actual evidence that there's a real problem here.
- I'm wondering what they could possibly even Extend in a way that the Fediverse can't keep up? The most they can do is to gatekeep people who are only in their ecosystem, but... they already do that. Whoever is only on Facebook and Instagram is only on Facebook and Instagram, and it didn't stop the Fediverse from existing.
- Threads still hasn't implemented ActivityPub
  I’m on kbin.social and when I go to /d/threads.net it is very active. I would not be able to go there if they haven’t implemented activitypub and federated.
EEE is definitely the SOP, but I'm not sure how that's supposed to work here. I don't think there are that many users to steal away from Mastodon et al, compared to how they did with XMPP, for example.

Afaik, whenever an Activitypub instance has defederated from another it has always had to do with some combination of bad user behavior, poor moderation, and/or spam.

Nope. It is because the admins of the instance have decided to do so. It might be for the reasons you list, for completely different reasons, or for no reason at all.

Just a reminder that on Mastodon, you can choose "Block domain..." on a post. So an instance federating with meta can be blocked by the user. It would be nice to have that here on Kbin and/or all the other Fedi platforms.

I think some apps allow blocking communities and entire instances. I know Connect does and it gives you a message saying that it was blocked but gives you a button that lets you view the message anyway.

I don't understand why are people so fixated on facebook and twitter, if you want it just go there and have account there.

If we think that lemmygrad is bad, but facebook/instagram is not (even thou there are a lot of research papers showing that those are socian networks worst for psychological health) we are in big problem.

Let them do their thing and let's have some space put of it.

For the user experience, blocking meta just means that we won't have random people who are into baking and casual consumers of social media randomly stumble upon and

"ownership over my audience".
:vomit:
Yes among many many other things I don't want Facebook mouthbreathers ruining the nice open communities we have around here...
Guaranteed there will be an avalanche of spam and hate

I think it might accomplish more to wait a few days or hours for them to do something that egregiously violates community standards, then defederate en masse—and use the defederation as an event to draw media attention to their practices.

Threads is already 30x bigger than Lemmy and many times bigger than even Mastodon. Mass defederation won't be making any sort of large media news outlets. We wouldn't have any sort of significant numbers at that point.
It would be nice if there was some kind of open Internet code of conduct that could be pointed to as a reason for defederating, which journalists could reference in their coverage.
- The code reads: moderate your own instance however you like.

A sense of superiority and seeking approval from the annoyingly vocal fedi community.

Slowly growing the decentralized space organically is important to avoid this kind of stuff. If we allow someone to become the hyper-dominant instance, the principle of de-federation ceases to matter because they have so much controlling leverage over the users.