Not sure if this is the right community to post this in, as we don’t have any !main@feddit.ch or similar community, but it seemed the most relevant. Sorry if it doesn’t belong.
I’m sure that at this point it has become common knowledge that , Meta’s alternative to Twitter, is trying to implement ActivityPub into their site. If/when this goes through, this would make Threads an instance admin, giving then full access to all the data that is available to other instance admins. This would include all data that belongs to Lemmy/KBin/Mastodon/etc users.
My main question is, should we let them do this? Should we federate with them if/when they come online, or should we defederate? I know that does not usually defederate with others (we currently only have one instance blocked, bottom of ), but in this case, this is Meta we’re dealing with. They aren’t exactly a big fan of data privacy, which is the whole theme of this instance (our sidebar: “This instance is focused on providing security and privacy for its users”).
It seems that most people on Lemmy/etc. seem to be in favour of pre-emptive defederation and that many other instances have already defederated (Lemmy.ca, dbzer0, Blahaj, Beehaw, Lemm.ee).
There may also be another solution, but I’m not sure whether this applies to Lemmy.
What does everyone else think? Should we stay federated with them? Should we defederate, like other instances have already done? Should we wait and see? I’d love to hear others’ opinions on this.
In general I think everyone should be able to connect to any instance, as I’m a big advocate of a free and unregulated internet.
But as with many principles there are exceptions, and big data harvesting cooperation are my exception. The idea of the Fediverse is to have a decentralized, free (in both ways, does not cost and libre) and privacy respecting place in a world, where more and more governments and companies start to regulate and decide on what the users can do.
When I look back on the history of those companies I neither like nor trust them, and I think it would be not only a needed action but also a statement when instances defedrate them. We can not stop the data harvesting, as this can be done with simple web crawlers. But with gate keeping (and I do not like it when people do it, but here, I think it is necessary), we can maybe bring the Fediverse more into the public eye. Because when we allow the Threads instances to federate, most people will just see it as Threads. They will not understand what the Fediverse is and will not see it as a new way of using the internet. The same kind of happened with Android, most do not know it is Linux and just talk about Android. I think for Android it is not a big problem, but the Fediverse is a movement, a change and statement people are fighting for, and it shall be and stay that, not just another protocol that is used to transfer likes.
At the beginning of this instance, I once asked the admin and if I remember correctly, a defederation of such instances is not seen as an action to take. Maybe we need to mobilize in other communities on feddit.ch to raise our concern.
(Pinned your post, as I think this is an important discussion to have)