Post ActwWAedTPb2jPC51U by pyrex@dragon.style
 (DIR) More posts by pyrex@dragon.style
 (DIR) Post #ActwW9E0muhoIXjIsy by pyrex@dragon.style
       2023-12-15T08:38:44Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       In disagreement with the take that there's nothing to do about Threads.Right now Facebook gets a lot of power out of saying "You consented to this," because it's an open protocol and by default Masto will federate with them.There is a solution to the technical problem, which is to block federation with threads.net. Then Facebook has to at least admit they're doing this without consent.That's the tech problem. There's also a people problem.I think that Threads users don't benefit much from being connected to me, but they want things that are totally inconsistent with my happiness. So I see them as purely taking from Masto as it exists.I think infosec.exchange's stance of "we won't decide for you if we federate with Threads" is completely inadequate in the face of this problem because Facebook is introducing a giant coalition of which, presumably, many will want voting rights.I can't see an outcome where people who oppose Facebook aren't marginalized off the instance by a massive, semi-astroturfed coalition of people who think Zuck should have another private beach. The members of this coalition will be a mixture of Threads.net users and infosec.exchange users who have realized they like some Threads users.I expect this to be the outcome for Hachyderm too.My goal is (1) to make it technically possible to express nonconsent to this in an unambiguous way (2) to create implicit social threat against joining the coalition Facebook is trying to create.Specifically, I want to support this in cases where there aren't instance-level blocks on Threads. This is likely to happen a lot in cases where Threads bribes instance admins with money or promises of power.I do not know if this will work. But I hope something does.
       
 (DIR) Post #ActwWAedTPb2jPC51U by pyrex@dragon.style
       2023-12-15T08:41:38Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       It frustrates me because basically, I think the average Threads user has very little stake in what happens to us, but collectively Threads can destroy the platform.I believe Zuck wants this and the average user does not care.It is insane to me that people who nominally support unions on the rest of the timeline are supporting every-man-for-himself style responses to a corporate attack on the platform.If you understand organization you should understand why not organizing won't work.
       
 (DIR) Post #ActwWCGFV3HHiLndI0 by pyrex@dragon.style
       2023-12-15T08:54:48Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       To respond to one specific bad take:I've seen several people say (at various levels of sophistication) that there's probably not a good technical way to completely exclude Meta.Fedi isn't resistant to scraping, so that's kind of true. I have no idea if Threads is going to start scraping all the content from instances that block it.I do know that if they were to resort to scraping instances that block them, or running dummy servers for the purpose of loading content, the messaging to neutral parties would go from "Meta is interoperating, it's an open platform" to "Meta is straight-up terrorizing people."Like, yes, they don't respect our consent, but the appearance of our consent is valuable to them. We may not be able to block them in the long run, but we shouldn't be giving away the appearance of consent for free.Plus: a lot of the ways they could circumvent this have a high chance of killing our servers. I genuinely don't know how they will bypass instance level blocks if they do, but brute scraping would be a very bad idea.