@kissane thank you for taking the time to write this and for sharing it. I hope it opens some eyes.

@kissane Great fucking post and I'm glad you ended it the way you did because I feel the same way.

@kissane Thank you for putting this together so clearly. #Threads #Fediverse #FediMeta

@kissane This is excellent. I hope everyone reads it.

@kissane [bows]

@kissane As always, but especially now, I am so grateful for your talent and work. I hope you don’t mind that I shared this on Threads, in the “fediverse threads” tag being used there by the enthusiasts, movers and shakers. I hope it gives some of them some pause.

@kissane This is the best summary of this situation yet.

@kissane Oh my goodness this is utterly fantastic. Hands down the best thing I've read on this topic.

@kissane Excellent, valuable writing. Like you I find myself stuck between my unmitigated loathing for Meta and wanting better for those stuck in its leg trap.

@kissane excellently written and argued, thanks for writing this

@kissane
Very thought-provoking write-up, thank you. The remarks about asking admins on policy enforcement are critical. If they're not thinking along these lines yet, they will need to soon.

I've posted a link to this essay on the Essays page of my Free Fediverse wiki. You might find it of use if you ever need to slog again through evidence of Meta's many crimes against humanity (hopefully you don't!)

https://freefediverse.org

@kissane I’ve only read the title but so far it’s brilliant.

@kissane Always appreciate your thoughts. Thank you for sharing

@kissane your writing about all of this has been so clear and so generous. Thank you, I know it’s taken a toll

@kissane this is a great writeup, thank you for doing this

@kissane

This piece is lengthy, but if you’re flummoxed like me by the arcane/passionate technical and partisan debate, it’s a great summary to gain a foothold on what’s at stake and it offers useful advice on how to proceed toward deciding and managing one’s own perspective. Well researched & written.

@kissane Good one thank you! Bookmarking.

@kissane A difficult but essential read. I think I'll go back and revisit parts of it, to let myself breath and process.

I've posted about the simplest practical reasons we've proactively blocked, but this goes deep into so many reasons that are hard to talk about.

Thank you for this!

@kissane as someone who is generally pro-federation, I really appreciate your clarity and honesty in sharing your perspective. You've given me a lot to think about!

@kissane thank you, I can't see the word Meta without thinking Cambridge Analytica.

@kissane

Thank you as ever, Erin - whether I agree or disagree, I always learn something from your writing.

@kissane your claim that "Threads federation gives people on Threads the chance ... if they get disgusted with Meta ... to migrate much more easily to a noncommercial, non-surveillance-based network." seems difficult to support, to me, given that Threads doesn't and likely won't support account migration. They'd have to sign up to a Fedi instance just like everyone else either way, right?

@kissane Almost always a good thing to attempt, understanding others’ trade offs.

@kissane I really appreciate this article, as I have not really followed the Threads federating topic. My view is that this could be like email, or the general Internet at large - that these big companies have such a large influence that it will kill off any independent components. Independent servers might be able to block Threads, but Threads might become so influential that they might make them impossible to be seen in the general Fediverse if they do that. That happened with email.

@kissane
This is a wonderful read.
Well thought out, well reasoned. Provides insights I hadn't even thought about. I have never been a participant in facebook/meta, instagram, xitter, or any of the other commercial social offerings, except indirectly in order to view the feeds coming from Ukraine on Daily Koz. Thanks for the education Erin Kissane.

@kissane thank you so much for writing this by the way ❤️ it really helps clarify a lot of the discussions and grounds things super well. It's an excellent, excellent article

@kissane Thank you so much for this, it's a spectacular run through of threats and challenges in an incredibly thoughtful, detailed and well-written piece.

@kissane Meta is a terrible company for their greedy manipulative practices. But Facebook also facilitates online communication between 3 billion MAUs. Some of them are terrible people. Holding FB responsible for their actions that were also communicated via Facebook is kinda attacking the messenger. Are ISPs and DNS services also responsible for transmitting hate speech in Myanmar? Is Meta supposed to police a failed state's communication, where the government and military commit genocide?

@kissane
Thank you for sharing your thinking so clearly in public! I always learn a lot from you, and I appreciate your perspectives.

@kissane I fully agree, Meta is not really a part of what I want to be involved in... thank you for your post.

@kissane Great read; thanks for this! (And also, for the Myanmar/Meta pieces; TBH, I still haven't finished reading them, as I need to stop every couple of paragraphs & take a shower, then do anything else for a few days...)

Still making up my mind about what I think about all this, but thoughtful essays like this one are greatly appreciated

@kissane Thank you for this. Thank you very much.

@kissane I really like this point:

"Until now, I haven’t involved myself much in discussions about how Mastodon or other fedi servers should react to Threads’ arrival, mostly because I think the right answer should be really different for different communities, my own revulsion notwithstanding....I don’t think the answers to these questions are going to be—or should be—the same for every server on the fediverse."

Other bits want to think on more; and may have questions on.

@kissane
Thank you for laying out your thought process. It helps the rest of us work through it as well.

@kissane required reading for @Gargron and @mike 😊

@kissane I don't want to include this book recommendation in my mentions because I don't want it to overshadow your work, but I certainly enjoyed it and think you might too. 😊

https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-far-field/

@kissane Excellent and thoughtful article! Great job as always

@kissane I really appreciate all the work and thought you put into this. Thank you.

[EDIT: I’m incorrect about the below. “libsoftiktokofficial” *is* them.]

One thing I’ve been curious about lately — and I know this is a very small thing among a much larger point — is LibsOfTikTok actually on Threads? I can’t find them. I thought they left. “libsoftiktokofficial” seems like an imitator.

@kissane this is an articulate, measured and thoughtful article.

the kind of thing i am fundamentally incapable of writing, because i enjoy anger and hyperbolic analogies far too much.

a great read, presenting the issues in good faith and working through them

@kissane
I often tell people that I am on fedi because that's where the really thoughtful, interesting, smart people are. Reading this confirms that I'm in the right place.

I'm very much in the Meta-as-existential-threat camp. I really hope I'm wrong.

@kissane I would just like to say how happy I am that you are out here writing about this and trying to bring some thoughtfulness and rigor into the conversation around this..

I've not even read it yet but you do that with every subject you've written about and I expect you'll do it here.

@kissane well if it isn't another thoughtful and nuanced take from Erin Kissane. Appreciate you!

@kissane All of this. Thank you so much.

@kissane this was extremely good

@kissane that was excellently done, and I learned a fair bit. Thank you.

@kissane
This is probably the write-up I'll refer people to if I get asked about the Meta-Facebook-Insta-Threads flotilla making a landing here.

It was always an inevitable development, but how the many communities of the fediverse handles the threats it brings is a matter of survival for most these spaces. And might determine the flatness or the diversity of the internet to come.

@kissane Superbly written, all around; your points are well made and well taken.

I have to applaud how carefully you laid out every side and perspective you could find or conceive of, where I otherwise can only sympathize with the white hot passion behind behind your more natural, knee-jerk response

@kissane
This is a very good read, Erin. It helps me think through the problem. Thank you for your efforts.

@kissane Thank you. These are my concerns as well.

There's also a cultural concern: I've just about had it with US mainstream culture. I don't like US based moderation. I don't like the way US culture wars and politics crowd into every space. Heck, I wouldn't want to be "American" - it's not an attractive proposition at all.

Threads? Why, it's very USian to the core. (And no, UK isn't much better, thank you very much)

@kissane I think the main risk is that moderation standards are being suspended for #Threads. They are being federated as a privileged entity, which by proxy is bestowing privileges on fedi to aggressive bigots.

The very least of the fallout from federating with Threads is that other instances will begin to imitate their moderation biases, and resentment will grow.

I believe this will be a disincentive to running fedi instances.

@kissane Flawless victory.

@kissane this was fantastic. Well researched and extremely informative. Thank you for your work! I've been in the "wait and see" camp, listening to people like @Gargron and Mosseri talk. And while it sounds sincere and positive it's really hard to justify the potential benefits considering what kind of company Meta is and it would be naive to believe they wouldn't execute their standard playbook on Threads. So enough waiting, more blocking.

@kissane

Superb piece. Your passion is compelling.

"...watching people who I thought hated centralized social networks because of the harm they do giddily celebrating the entry into the fediverse of a vast, surveillance-centric social media conglomerate..."

What about our lofty fediverse principles of trust and safety? That's why people came here. Let's strengthen our defenses. Build community consensus. Be clear eyed about surveillance and demand protections as a condition of federation.

@kissane
Thanks for writing this! very, very good. I think I land on a somewhat different outcome in the total risk analysis, but these are absolutely the factors to consider carefully.

@kissane Thank you for sharing this thoughtful perspective on the question of whether to allow federation with Threads. My own thought, while not as carefully considered, has been to use federation as a carrot to push for improvement. We control the stick (defederation), but to use it prospectively, rather than in response to specific actions we want them to correct, renders the carrot meaningless. I am perhaps naive and overly simplistic, but that's the best I've been able to come up with.

@kissane another great post. Timely too, as @JohanEmpa has salomonically decided to divide mastodon.green into a Threads-blocking server and a non-Threads blocking one, and the discussion has started. Thanks for your work, if you are ever in Brussels look me up and I will take you out to dinner. #threads

@kissane
Thanks so much!
These two paragraphs <3

"I don’t think the people who are genuinely psyched about Threads on fedi are monsters or fascists, and I don’t think those kinds of characterizations [...] are helping.
[...]

But for me, knowing what I do about the hundreds of opportunities to reduce actual-dead-kids harm that Meta has repeatedly and explicitly turned down, the most triumphant announcements feel like a celebration on a mass grave."

@kissane Thank you so much. This is concise, considerate, and clear.

@kissane incredible writing, thank you.

One point about the baffling issue of troll servers invisibly brigading in replies, the current one way threads set up forces this situation for every threads post. They can't see what we say about them.

And, after reply visibility is implemented, the question of whether threads will block these troll servers or not seems relevant.

I realise it's not the focus of your article and it's too complex even for this post, but it concerns me quite a bit.

@kissane Brilliantly written. You've laid out the issues.

I do feel for folks who's friends and family are still on Facebook and Instagram. I've still got family on there and I choose to leave those networks.

As you point out though there are risks, especially with a lack of moderation, and the person in charge of threads, was in charge during the Rohingya Genocides. Facebook facilitates networks of hate.

Most Fediverse Servers TOS/COC would defed from any server like Threads ATM.

@kissane thank you! That deeper background is extremely useful for my own understanding.

@kissane this is an excellent and extremely valuable post.

I've been critical of admins pre-emptively blocking Threads. I still tend to side on the user choice side of things; but this does provide context on areas I haven't needed to think about.

@kissane I really appreciate you, Erin. 💜💜💜

@kissane I've been in a few conversations here where we touch on some of these points, but you bring it together more comprehensively than I think we managed. Thanks for putting this out there.

@kissane

Thank you for this, Erin.

@kissane Thank you for the thoughtful blog post. I blocked Threads as a user a week or so ago, and mstdn.ca will be enabling AUTHORIZED_FETCH and I’m hoping these will be strong enough measures for now.

@kissane Really nice to read a balanced piece on the whole Threads/Activity Pub discussion. Most of the other things you read about this is very much based on very passionate, but unsourced, feelings towards Meta and their like.

@kissane "And I’d take assertions that people who don’t want to federate with Threads are all irrational losers as useful revelations about the character of the people making them."

Yep.

@kissane thank you for writing this, really helpful

@kissane Thank you for this. Incredibly informative

@kissane Wow, this is absolutely, intensely awful. I had no idea 😳😱

@kissane My position's a little different. I think that Mastodon should start sabotaging Threads, something like include little tidbits injected into each message federated to Threads like, "You are running on a deprecated, unsafe service. Please migrate now."

@kissane and @darius 1 of N 🧵

Would this be a fair distillation of the big set of pros and cons listed here: See if I got these right, want to engage but first want to be sure I grasp it and don’t oversimplify:

I’ll start with the easy and shorter bit the “pro or benefits” section you mentioned.

Pro: users on both sides of the Meta/non-Meta Fediverse could have a larger social graph and connect with friends or accounts they otherwise would miss.