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inline poll: should SocialCoop be one of the signatories of the [[Fedipact]] effort to *preemptively defederate* with Threads.net?

loomio.com/d/AZcJK6y2 is an ongoing Loomio discussion about this but I wanted to see some in-instance discussion ideally.

LoomioDiscussion: Support the Anti-Meta Fedi PactFor some time, there have been rumors that Meta (Facebook) has plans to impose itself on the Fediverse. These rumors have recently been confirmed, with the news that Meta is developing a clone of Mastodon, referred to as "Project 92", "Barcelona", or "Threads", and that it has had a meeting with the administrators of several large Mastodon instances, possibly including Eugen Rochko, while silencing them with a non-disclosure agreement.Meta is an oligopoly that has aggressively sought to control social media, through absorption of other social media companies, and through policies of "embrace, extend, and extinguish", as with the RSS and XMPP protocols. Meta, through Facebook, is infamous for condoning the spread of far right ideology and of dangerous misinformation.There have been calls for pre-emptively blocking Meta's project. In particular, @vantablack@beach.city, administrator of a small Mastodon instance, beach.city, has proposed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact.https://fedipact.online/I see our best hope in collective resistance.Therefore, I would like us to discuss whether we should support this move, and if so, how best to do so. As a starting point for discussion, I suggest the following:<br>Social.Coop commits to blocking any Fediverse instances that Meta creates.<br>We, as a body, sign the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact.<br>We follow up by collectively drafting and issuing a public statement.<br>(As I have not been active in Social.Coop discussions, I hope that the way I am presenting this is appropriate, and I welcome constructive criticism.)

@flancian I thinking "limit" option is the best choice for us, and I think that prevents us from being a signatory.

@ntnsndr thanks for your input -- I think I agree!

@flancian @ntnsndr I'm curious: are you unaware of the huge volumes of content on Threads which is against the social.coop rules / code of conduct? or do you think Facebook deserves an exception to defederation for some reason?

@3wordchant @ntnsndr thank you so much for raising this point!

I am unaware of the fraction involved, and you're right I should be made aware. I am also unaware in detail of the position of [[threads]] w.r.t. blocking well-defined subsets of users en masse, which is the direction I think we should go in in the general case of very large instances that cater to large diverse populations while maintaining a reasonable approximation of a rational pro-social ethical stance in the case of conflicts.

@3wordchant @ntnsndr in general I just want to try to think first, as a community, of the large number of *people* who are in [[threads]] because that's where they friends are, for example -- and how to help them onboard to the as well as we can!

I would rather their first contact is with friendly open people and groups like those at

@3wordchant @ntnsndr of course no tolerance for fascists goes without saying?

@flancian @3wordchant Unfortunately I think there is need for treating Threads a bit differently than other instances, given that is so large and varied. Despite its failures of enforcement and policy, there is at least a bare-bones policy against hate speech, which distinguishes it from platforms that actively encourage such things. help.instagram.com/47743410562

The problems it poses should be weighed against the benefits, esp. enabling our members to reach a larger network of people.

@flancian @3wordchant I don't think we have much leverage against Threads by refusal to federate with our few hundred members. In contrast, being visible on threads could help more people there see the option of doing social media cooperatively.

Unlike a space like Gab, most people are joining Threads simply by default, and are not directly associating with the accounts you mention.

I think limiting, is an appropriate compromise.

@ntnsndr I don't see how the implication that we'd federate with Gab if it had a few million more non-bigoted users is in line with s.c's Federation Abuse Policy.

Folks who want to do outreach to Threads (or Gab) users are completely able to sign up for accounts on those platforms if they like; going back to "balance" it seems obvious that s.c users' safety is more important than making life slightly more convenient for that subset of users who want to evangelise in that way (1/2)

@flancian

@3wordchant What do we gain in safety by defederating that we wouldn’t gain by limiting?

If we limit, then we will not see any Threads posts in the federated TL. If SC users decide to follow individual Threads accounts and boost any toxic bigotry into local, they’ll be in violation of our own internal codes of behavior and will be dealt with.

This does raise a new Q though. Are we in violation of rules if we quote boost something in order to critique it? Are CWs sufficient?
@ntnsndr @flancian

@jotaemei off top (others with more knowledge of ActivityPub might be able to think of further examples), defederating would prevent Threads users from organising harassment campaigns invisibly in replies to s.c users, and prevent s.c. users' content from reaching unexpected audiences of hate groups on Threads by being boosted (or whatever Threads calls it there).

CC @ntnsndr @flancian

@3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr these are good examples, thank you. Playing devil's advocate here a bit:

- The telephone can be used to organize a harassment campaign. Should numbers not be able to call each other freely because of this? Should the government tap all lines because of this? My gut feel says no to both. Does this intuition not apply here because of speed or some other factor in this particular network? I'm unsure.

@3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr

- On boosts as a danger/weapon: I'm sorry but I don't see how federation makes the problem significantly worse for what amount to public web posts that can already be scraped, etc. Maybe a visibility rule to 'only show to logged in users from instances in a user-kept allowlist' would be needed for such cases?

Essentially user-defined per-post federation allowlists might be needed in the long term.

@flancian "authorized fetch" is part of what you're describing, and I hope its adoption continues to increase.

As for "you can still see the content on the web", sure, but there's a wide zone between "technically impossible" and "absolutely trivial to do" – surely you agree that putting *any* friction in the way of the bigots who demonstrably exist on Threads will reduce the amount of harm caused, even if not to zero?

CC @jotaemei @ntnsndr

@3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr full disclosure: I am currently not into adopting authorized fetch in Social.coop either. IIUC it makes federation significantly more complex to implement, in particular for smaller/new servers (that don't run Mastodon). I'm happy to be shown wrong here though, maybe I am over-estimating the barriers to federation it would add.

In #Flancia we'll meet

@3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr On the principle of minimizing/obstructing harm: this point is of course valuable but it also reminds me of many conversations I've had about scraping the Fediverse. In the end I think there might be a philosophical gap here between camps 'the Fediverse should be part of the open web first' and 'the Fediverse should be a walled garden first' -- a more ethical and federated one, but a walled garden in the end.

@3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr My (surely privileged, tech-bro-influenced position) is currently "open web first", and if someone doesn't want their posts to be seen widely they should use a non-open visibility setting.

This doesn't mean I think we shouldn't defederate with actively fascist instances, or we shouldn't work to improve the paltry visibility settings we have now in Mastodon. We should do both. It's just threads doesn't seem like a fascist/troll instance to me, and I've seen plenty.

@3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr now, if once threads has set up moderation/admin communication channels harmful accounts stay up... then my position about them will change.

You pointed out earlier that this position might be inconsistent/irrational as the onus of work should be on them given their track record. That's fair. I'm still processing this and I might change my default position because of this.

@flancian Exactly. In February, Facebook will celebrate 20 years of having had the opportunity to set up effective moderation. The parent company's 2022 revenue was over $116 billion; Instagram (the business unit of which Threads is a part) had estimated revenue over $50 billion the same year. I think it's very fair to say that they have had a huge opportunity to improve their content standards, if they were going to.

CC @jotaemei @ntnsndr

@3wordchant @flancian @jotaemei I think the basic fact of the matter is that moderation at that scale is a fool's errand. You're always going to be either too restrictive or not restrictive enough for huge numbers of people. That's the beauty of the fediverse—we can be in a global network with more fine-grained moderation choices at the server level.

@ntnsndr while I agree with you about the benefits of decentralisation, I think framing this as a "basic fact" about scale ignores the factors specific to FB's organisational structure, constituency of its investors, business model, and the nature of the (lack of) legal regulation in its country of origin, and many of the countries where it is most popular.

CC @flancian @jotaemei

@flancian

why do we compare the "open web" and "a walled garden" anyway. a walled garden is in principle a nice place to sit and have a tea.

but seriously, the open web without consent is just public space with 1000 cctv cameras pointed at you. what new metaphor can we have here?

authorized fetch is a limited means to implement a form of consent.

@3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr

@decentral1se @3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr interesting to frame authorized fetch as a mechanism for consent -- I'll try to think about it in these terms, thanks.

I'd love to have/put together a matrix of AF support. A lot of what I find seems to point to it being essentially Mastodon-only, or close to it?

I really don't want to tie the shape of the Fediverse to the Mastodon project if at all possible. But structured/distributed consent does sound like something worth developing further.

@decentral1se @3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr on the open web being public space with cameras pointed at you: fair, presumably any true public space can be made to resemble a panopticon if state and corporate actors want it to act as such.

I still feel it would be hubris not to recognize what the open web has done for the world over the last 20-30y, and still does today, even considering bad actors.

And walled gardens can be nice prisons.

@decentral1se @3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr going back to AF as consent: thinking further about this, I see its value right away, but I feel uneasy about the tradeoff being made at the instance level.

Could you help me steel-person this? Is your position close to "because there are fascists out there, and we want to make it harder for them to see posts, we'll turn AF on and take the hit of removing every post from the web and making it harder for new software to integrate into the Fediverse".

@decentral1se @3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr fedi.tips/authorized-fetch/ says:

> Posts using follower-only or mentions-only visibilities are already protected from unauthorised interaction. Authorized Fetch only makes a difference on public or unlisted posts.

Again, I don't want to put an undue onus on persecuted/oppressed populations, but would it not make sense for people to use "followers only" if they worry about visibility? Ideally pending "authorized only" as a per-post setting.

fedi.tipsAdding user safety through Authorized Fetch on Mastodon | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
More from Fedi.Tips

@flancian @decentral1se @3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr why should vulnerable users miss out on the organic discovery their peers can provide (boosts, etc), but still have to be burdened by known bad actors?

@flancian

i dont even know if i see sharing vast amounts of personal information and social relationships as part of the open web anymore.

and the mechanisms to record those have gotten more powerful, effective and widespread.

@3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr

@flancian Yes, I think a matrix could be helpful. My brain tapped out, for example, upon reading the bullet list at fedi.tips/who-can-see-my-posts for "When do Unlisted posts appear in the Home timeline?," which describes undocumented behavior and utilizes Caps Lock yelling for emphasis... @decentral1se @3wordchant @ntnsndr

fedi.tipsWho can see my posts and replies in Mastodon? How do I choose post visibility settings? How do I send DMs in Mastodon? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
More from Fedi.Tips

@flancian Having read up on authorized fetch and reviewed an explainer of the personal visibility settings that users have at their own disposal, my concerns from yesterday about the block tests for an account with _public posts_ have decreased somewhat.
Rather than talking about if we should sign a pact to defederate from Threads, I think we should be considering authorized fetch on Loomio. And perhaps the CWG can aid users concerned about privacy and safety.
@decentral1se @3wordchant @ntnsndr

@flancian I understand now some of the earlier conversations on this thread that went over my head.
I don't agree that defederating from Threads will create that much friction for stalkers, especially considering that it's possible to take the RSS feeds of public posts for every account here and then create bots to follow, which in turn echo those feeds' entries.
Those concerned about stalkers have to consider not posting publicly regardless of what we decide.
@decentral1se @3wordchant @ntnsndr

@flancian

in general, the level of suspicion that authorized fetch is receiving is the same struggle as "don't use blocklists or defederate, that breaks the network" which all boils back to the hacker ethics?

im starting to internally red flag commitment to opennes in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary as hacker ethics dogma.

@3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr

@decentral1se @3wordchant @jotaemei @ntnsndr interesting, so in the worst case [[hacker ethics dogma]] would be like free speech absolutism with a technical veneer?

I like blocklists/defederation as tools btw, I should clarify; if anything I think they are paltry and insufficient and instance blocking should be federated as a first class activity within AP :)

@flancian while I agree with @decentral1se's position that a "walled garden" is not necessarily a bad thing under current conditions, I also don't agree that authorised fetch, or defederation, add up to one. Facebook is a walled garden because a single, closed, entity controls the entire platform. As long as AF is based on an open standard, and doesn't require signoff from a single central entity, I don't think it's comparable to corporate "walled gardens"

CC @jotaemei @ntnsndr