this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Because we, the users of Lemmy.world, do not want our data handed over to Facebook
You're posting on public forum. If you don't want Facebook to see it then stop posting. Defederating isn't going to change that. It just stops the content flow from their instance into yours. Not the other way around. For them to get data other than your content and upvotes you need to install Threads app because that's only available to the admins of your instance and Facebook can't get it wether you federate with them or not.
People are demanding for defederation but almost everyone is confused about what it does.
The thing is, if you wanted to interact with someone on Threads and it wasn't federated, you'd have to install the app and hand over your data to Meta to interact with them. If it was federated, you could set up your own Mastodon instance and keep all of the data that you don't want to share.
Installing their app is not the only option. You can also just switch to an instance that federates with them.
Yeah but it will still give them less of an incentive to join the fediverse in the first place. This kneejerk reaction of blocking them is madness. Instead we should be getting big figures to join the fediverse so that if meta ever chooses to leave the fediverse, they'd be removing their userbase from the content.
Yeah I agree that there's possible downsides to it aswell. Ideally every user could individually block instances as they wish instead of it being forced upon us. I'd imagine this feature is eventually coming. Some apps allow it I believe
This data is public and anyone can just write a crawler.
Anyone can do anything; the point is handing it over automatically and neatly into a database and ready for use.
Facebook is known for analyzing your contact list and trying to get as much data as they can on those people as well. You don't have to make life easier for face-eating leopards.
You're confusing something. Defederation by lemmy.ml means that lemmy.ml users cannot see any threads.net content if they wanted or not. Threads.net can still connect to lemmy.ml. That's exactly the situation lemmy.world and beehaw.org are in: beehaw.org blocked lemmy.world and lemmy.world users can see and interact with everything from beehaw.org, just beehaw users don't see any of those interactions. Have a look at https://lemmy.world/c/gaming@beehaw.org as proof.
So many folks on here are jumping on and claiming that decentralization is a one way or that people don’t know anything, but have failed to read the specifications themselves.
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#block-activity-outbox
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/activitypub/
So as I mentioned before, Lemmy.world should be blocking those servers at the instance level, preventing it from sharing any data to any identified Facebook instances.
Sure this doesn’t stop Facebook from spinning up other instances, but that will improve a lot more effort on their side and will quickly be identified and blocked by the communities, just like all their urls for ads, api, etc. have been for years.
It won't be a lot more effort. They'd just have to buy another domain and then suddenly bob is their uncle.
It would not be that simple, considering they’d be running multiple instances and require more effort to aggregate, deduplicate, and stage that data - vs just having a single clean database for it
What the specs say doesn't matter if reality behaves a different way. Fact is that Beehaw blocked Lemmy.world but not the other way around and therefore Lemmy.world users can read everything from Beehaw. Lemmy.world blocking Threads would thereby be at best just a symbolic gesture and at worst actively driving people away towards Threads because that's where they can access all the content. If an e-mail provider blocked all mails from @gmail.com, most of its users would jump ship towards a provider that doesn't do that and perhaps even drive them towards GMail.
It does actually matter, because that is what is happening.
Head over to the gaming@beehaw.org link that you shared as an example and notice that the posts are 3+ days old and all the recent posts are from instances other than beehaw; this clearly shows that Lemmy.world has not been receiving any data from beehaw for some time already.
As for hurting Lemmy and driving people to threads, is a baseless argument; anyone wanting an experience that Threads offers is not coming to Lemmy; they would either already be there or would be coming from Twitter/Mastadon. Lemmy at its core is very far from what Threads/Twitter/Mastadon try to be.
The block is older than three days.
So no need to block them then.
Sounds like you’re really missing the threads experience; why aren’t you there and posting 250 characters at a time?
Same reason I don't use GMail and yet want to keep the option open to receive and send e-mails to GMail users.
Your data is publicly available. Facebook can get it right now, they don’t even need to fire up an instance.
They can get that data by setting up a federated instance that isn’t threads.net
They can also get that data without doing anything because any data they’d get from federating is already public.
Then why are you posting on a public forum? 🤔
You don't speak for everyone, especially when you clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about.
The comments and ratios in this thread are a perfect example of why lemmy.world should not defederate from facebook until given a clear reason. You all are operating on emotion, not logical or rational thought.
Why are you so hard for Zucc?
You've got a bunch of comments defending an app that literally has more data collection than my doctor....
Things might go bad with federation with Meta and Meta is indeed loathsome and has an awful history and present of being a bad actor — but responding to "You all are operating on emotion" with the bad faith emotional ad hominem response "Why are you so hard for Zucc?" is kind of proving the point.
I think there's lots of good arguments around being wary of Meta and defederating (and some good ones in favour of wait and see) but the level of discourse around this issue on here is really not great and too much attacking others (and it's not just you — the post you're responding to as well was rude too with "you clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about"). The absolutist way people are talking and treating people who have other perspectives has made me feel much less positive about the potential for good discourse and community on this platform.
Uhh... what?
I'm defending users being able to make these decisions for themselves. If you want to be on an instance that 'pre-emptively' blocks corporations, lemmy.ml might be better for you than lemmy.world.
This thread is full of children who think that because they don't like something then neither should anyone else.
Oh boy, more 'data collection' nonsense. Hey brother. Have you, personally, ever written a bot? If you did, you'd know how trivial it is for anyone to collect anything posted on lemmy.
This is exactly you. You don't like the idea of blocking Facebook and are being combative and douchey to anyone who disagrees. Your dislikes are in the toilet and you are as free to leave .world as anyone else.
I'm not defending the app. I have friends on Threads and I want to be able to interact with them without handing my life story over to zuck.
You're being bit of a jerk in this thread but you're still right. People are spamming one article and using the same buzzwords from that article to sound smart but the content of their messages demonstrates that almost no one understands how any of this works. People over-estimate the amount of data Facebook can collect from outside instances and they're confused about what defederating actually does.
I don't want anything to do with facebook either but I'm interested in actual solutions for this and not just something that feels good but doesn't do anything.
Yeah. Not a lot of technical knowledge in this thread, lol.
I get that. But instead on Lemmy were freely giving away our data to literally anyone that ask for it. That's the downside of the federated platforms. I guess with the fediverse you're at least not tying things to your actual identity. Not sure if threads allows for anonymous accounts like Twitter.
Reddit did the same until a few weeks ago tbf. Anything you put on the internet is public, unless it is in a discord server or something.