this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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Fediverse

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A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

Getting started on Fediverse;

founded 5 years ago
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Server indexes of places for newcomers to join can be instrumental for Fediverse adoption. However, sudden rule changes can leave some admins feeling pressure to change policies in order to remain listed.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Meta: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/, https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1320040111, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039

Instance admins: Let's give them a chance guyyyyss!!

Those of you who think the problem is data scraping or whatever are totally missing the point. All profit-motivated social media platforms engage in promoting hate content for engagement, and in doing so have deadly real world consequences. The Fediverse is one of the few online spaces where people can just be themselves naturally without being manipulated by algorithms. Given their history, there's no reason to assume Threads won't be any better about handling their own community, and anything that happens with them will affect the rest of us.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

for real. im new to lemmy but places like hexbear seem really good for trans stuff. i hate how so many trans places are dependent upon facebook or reddit to exist. facebook itself is problematic because those fuckers already assisted a genocide in myanmar, whats to stop them from helping to massacre trans people here?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hexbear is definitely a good place for trans stuff, its just a shame about all of the authoritarians.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

youre starting to really sell me on it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

There is a spectre haunting Lemmy hexbear-specter

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

hexbear seem really good for trans stuff.

HB and blahj are the two explicitly pro-trans instances. Hexbear is strongly oriented towards communism but I would strongly suggest them over blahj just because of their abysmal handling of c/196's noncery. They just don't have as strong of a track record as hexbear.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

hexbear seems way more active in the trans spaces at least. its also nice seeing everyones pronouns and being able to guess what variant of transness someone is talking about when theyre describing their experiences.

im on lemmy cause i saw advice saying that you could access pretty much all the lgbt spots on the fediverse from here, which seems true. ive already seen a bunch of transphobic bullshit on this site and on blahaj so maybe ill just swap to hexbear, idk

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah you should make the jump if not seeing transphobia is your goal. lemmyML is a great omni-instance but as a result you're going to be exposed to a lot of right-wing bullshit. And really, transphobia on blahj? That's extremely disappointing but not all that surprising.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

yeah one of the top trans posts the other day was filled with transphobes. i think blahaj doesnt have very active modding?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

We aggressively remove transphobic/transmisic posts/comments on lemmy.ml. Please report any that you see. But understand that we don’t control the content of other Lemmy instances, so when you select “All” instead of “Subscribed” or “Local,” it’s the wild west.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

i guess the question is more of bans and not just removals. for instance this guy https://lemmy.ml/comment/9833425 seems to regularly go on to write misogynistic and queerphobic screeds, but seems to not have been banned because he is a moderator and has been here for 4 years?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

He’s gotten some temporary bans as well as post/comment removals. Omega_haxor is right about hexbear: it’s explicitly socialist, unlike lemmy.ml, and it’s even more explicitly supportive / aggressively protective of the trans community. Several of the largest instances have defederated from hexbear, so for better or worse, access is more limited.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

no answer? alright jotting that down... ✏

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Okay, let me know how this passive-aggressive pressure tactic works out, person who just just got here. I’ve given you my answer.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

getting all defensive about keeping misogynists around? maybe just ban the misogynist? doesnt take someone being new to realize that youre just inviting reactionaries that will drive people off the service, i had this whole interaction and understanding within three fucking days. people come here to leave reddit, not to find more redditors

i asked, and you did not answer, do you actually enforce your rules with permanent bans? what causes someone to be worthy of a permanent ban? do you simply just like this guy and go to bat for him?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I’m not going to take the time to dispel your presumptions nor explain myself, my motivations, or this Lemmy instance. I’ll just say that I’m not convening a grand jury trial and constitutional convention because one new user (who on first impression is giving Western chauvinism vibes) had one negative interaction with one Global South socialist who has been here over four times longer than me.

Edit to add: Again, please note that this is not an explicitly socialist instance. I won’t elaborate as to why, but it’s no more by accident than the explicitly socialist ones. What is lemmy.ml?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

who on first impression is giving Western chauvinism vibes

🤣 im a communist, dweeb. you dont have to be a communist to think misogyny is bad, in fact, thats the prevailing opinion almost everywhere. the idea that the global south is in some way inherently reactionary is absurd

all youre giving off is chauvinistic reactionary misogynist vibes. jesus christ this place is a shithole, good luck getting anyone that isnt a white guy and/or a techbro here. all im getting is you got a handful of bigoted buddies that you hang out with and are completely uninterested in introspecting on it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

my thing is this guy is a clear misogynist, hes discussed his misogyny for 4 years now. you dont have to be a socialist to think thats unacceptable. are the rules simply never enforced with bans?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

They do have moderators they just care more about PR-washing than actually protecting their trans base. I would stay away from them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You think lemmy doesn't have algorithms?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Verifiable algorithms. Algorithms meant to make using the platform enjoyable, rather than meant to entrap users for profit.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

That's the same thing with a different label.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Maybe I’m just being naive, but this seems like an argument in favor of federating with Threads. One of the reasons Facebook and Instagram are so effective at driving engagement is that users have basically no ability to curate, sort, or filter the content that they see, especially since third-party clients are banned. You can’t even view most things without logging in.

The implementation of ActivityPub in Threads is a strange departure in this context - (federated) Mastodon users can view all of the content Threads has to offer without subjecting themselves to Meta’s arguably predatory curation algorithms. It almost seems like an escape for people who want to use a Meta-sized platform without Meta getting its grubby little fingers all over your mental wellbeing.

If people are worried that Threads will affect likes and comments (and therefore like/comment-based sorting algorithms) on other instances, it should always be possible to exclude Threads’s contribution to those metrics, no?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

f people are worried that Threads will affect likes and comments (and therefore like/comment-based sorting algorithms) on other instances, it should always be possible to exclude Threads’s contribution to those metrics, no?

That's one of the effects of defederating. And you are still ignoring the overall point of the comment 2 layers up from your reply.

Really I think you are losing the forest for the trees. Meta/Facebook/Zuck is a known quantity. They will corrupt and exploit any environment they are a part of via any means they can. We don't need to be able to predict every last detail of how they will do so to know it is true. They have a track record of being awful, anti-consumer corporate citizens. WHY would we want to try to invite them in and try to contain them? Can we make the fediverse invisible to them? Of course we can't, but why would we cooperate in any way?

Folks who don't think this is a problem can use an instance that federates with them, just as I've chosen ( and will always choose) an instance that does not.

There is no reasonable argument for trying to be a good neighbor to Meta, because you can always, always be sure that Meta has no concern for being a good neighbor to you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They will corrupt and exploit any environment they are a part of via any means they can.

Right, unless they can’t, though. Ideally the Fediverse should be resistant to this kind of influence without resorting to defederation. I’m also concerned that defederating from Threads will make more Threads users than Mastodon users.

We don't need to be able to predict every last detail of how they will do so to know it is true.

I mean, some idea of what they might do would be nice.

They have a track record of being awful, anti-consumer corporate citizens. WHY would we want to try to invite them in and try to contain them?

I couldn’t care less about Meta itself. My interest begins and ends with Threads users. There are a ton of people that would never give the Fediverse a try for one silly reason or another—predominantly, I would argue, the fear of the unknown—and this seems like it could be an opportunity to overcome that obstacle if leveraged correctly. The prospect of everyone and our parents using social media that is not completely beholden to Meta is exciting to me.

Again, maybe I’m wrong, but this whole thing is basically an experiment, isn’t it? I’d like to see what happens before reaching any conclusions.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I’m also concerned that defederating from Threads will make more Threads users than Mastodon users.

Already done, and by an order of magnitude at least. (probably many orders, I don't have the numbers at hand)

I mean, some idea of what they might do would be nice.

You can look at their entire history for that. And somewhere in this very discussion some other person has given a very plausible overview of their potential EEE approach. I'll add a link to that comment later when I have time to find it again.

But, I'm starting to realize that no amount of evidence is sufficient for folks who want to federate with Meta, and at the end of the day my freedom ends where yours begins, so although I will continue to advocate for defederation and flee any instance that does not make that choice, I very sincerely encourage you to do you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_controversies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_involving_Meta_Platforms

Here's a couple recent individual ones:

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/26/meta-gaza-censorship-warren-sanders/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/netflix-ad-spend-led-to-facebook-dm-access-end-of-facebook-streaming-biz-lawsuit/

The prospect of everyone and our parents using social media that is not completely beholden to Meta is exciting to me.

I firmly believe that hoping Meta isn't going to be the worst possible company they can this time is not the way to achieve that, and is in fact actively working against that future possibility.

I've been alive, adult, and working in IT for the entirety of the existence of Facebook, so I've had a long time to see everything I needed to see about them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

But, I'm starting to realize that no amount of evidence is sufficient for folks who want to federate with Meta

This is an incorrect assumption, because

And somewhere in this very discussion some other person has given a very plausible overview of their potential EEE approach. I'll add a link to that comment later when I have time to find it again.

I would be very interested to read this! There are definitely limits to my optimism here. I think Meta is a horrible company and I don’t expect them to act in the best interests of the Fediverse; I’m just not yet convinced that them giving up what is essentially free and ad-free API access to one of their platforms cannot be used to our advantage. Threads federation could absolutely be catastrophic, but it’s also possible that it’s a good opportunity; that’s all I’m saying.