Threads is automatically hiding comments that mention Pixelfed

Repeat after me: I will not federate with any Meta products.

I will not federate with any meta products.
- I will not federate with any meta products.
Serious question: how do we - the end users - stop federating with Meta?
- Move to an instance that won't.
- Migrate away from instances that embrace Meta to those that do not. Choose an instance that aligns with you.
  
  Or in the extreme case, if you're the first who can't find such an instance and you're technically inclined, there's your room for a new instance. It's how the fediverse works and partly why Meta is so intent on destroying it.
- Not sure anyone posted this in direct reply to you - https://fedipact.veganism.social/
  
  You can search/filter for your instance there. As an example, if you search lemmy.world you'll see they currently do federate with meta.
I’m kind of stupid and more here just because it tends to be better discussion than Reddit: what does “federate with” mean in this context??

Thanks!
- @Minotaur @henfredemars @technology You are using an account on lemm.ee to reply to someone commenting from an account on infosec.pub in a community hosted on lemmy.world.
  
  Those are all running Lemmy software, but I am replying from an account on social.goodanser.com, which is running Mastodon software.
  
  That's federation. We're all using different service providers, sometimes even different software, but we can talk to each other because they speak the same protocol, called ActivityPub. Threads.net has announced plans to support ActivityPub and conducted some limited trials, which they're in the process of expanding. They claim they intend to support it fully, but only for users who opt in to it.
  
  Servers can block, or "defederate from" other servers, and many have chosen to preemptively defederate from Threads.
I will not mederate with any Feta products.
after me: I will not federate with any Meta products.

mEtA wOnT dEsTrOy ThE fEdIvErSe. wE sHoUlD lEt tHrEaDs In

Let's just give them a chance guys. They haven't done anything bad yet. It will help the fediverse grow. We need their content

wE cAn AlwAyS dEfeDeraTe lAtEr. It dEfinIteLy WoN'T bE tOo LaTe tHeN
Yeah because that's an opinion people have
- Oh no, it was everywhere, and I got into some decent arguments with those lovely people who ask you to show them how it's going to have any effect on the fediverse at all, complete with citations.
  
  WeLl hOw Do YoU KnOw?
- You can search for threads and literally see these comments yourself buddy
- The largest lemmy instance (lemmy,world) is federated with them. I assume their mastodon instance also is.
- Buddy, search for Threads related posts from a few months back. This was seriously in question.
- Had that argument yesterday. It IS an opinion people have.

I was one of those people that said “let’s see if they will be acceptable neighbors” and well, it seems we have an answer.

If it’s true then I now favor defederation.

Edit: it sounds like this wasn’t true.

Yeah I mean who could've seen something like this coming?
- After so many positive experiences with the charming and wholesome company Meta, now this completely out of the blue...
It’s not just true, there’s a history of this mentioned in the replies to the original masto comment. Pixelfed is a direct competitor/alternative to instagram and meta’s has a pretty clear policy of not giving it any airtime on their platforms.

Why, well they dominate the instagram style platform space (and I’d guess it’s their biggest platform ATM and most prospective going forward). Twitter-style platforms are new for them and introduce monopoly issues … so they toy with the fediverse to allay potential issues.

I think all of the schmoozing the likes of Evan, Gargron etc are doing with meta (they have active accounts on Threads AFAIU, for instance) will reveal their true colours (techbro growth mindset just the hipster way) and leave them with egg on their face.
- For sure they saw dollar signs down to road for them when Meta decided to create threads.
I was one of those people that said “let’s see if they will be acceptable neighbors”

Despite how it may sound, I mean this in a non-snarky way. Are you aware of their history as a company?
how Dare that remote instance moderate the content coming into them. hole shit, lets shut down all instances that do that!
- If there are any instances or comms that don't let you mention alternatives, then yes definitely shut them down
- Nobody is saying to shut down any instance, only that we, and others on the platform who think likewise, would like to not have to see those instances. Nobody is saying to shut down Truth Social or Pawoo or Baraag, for instance, despite having severe disagreements with those instances - we just decided, on our instances, not to federated with them. You aren't obligated to agree with us - you can make your own instance with your own rules, as others have said, or switch to an instance accommodating to your beliefs. But at the same time, it doesn't mean the rest of us have to listen. Think of defederation like blocking - I'm sure you have some sort of block list for trolls, spammers and bots. Same thing, but for an instance.

I have to post this again sorry

I remember you from the Reddit post!
- Highly unlikely. I dont post on reddit

But surely meta has good intentions and we should totally trust them guys!!1!

Why is everyone so opposed to ~~cancer~~ Threads coming to the Fediverse?
Big corporations coming to tge fediverse will be epic 420 69! I like my tech, not because how it improves my life, but because HYPE! /s
- Seriously, they were blocking mention of competition (pixelfed) on threads before they launched their first attempt at federation.

It'd be a damn shame if everyone started putting pixelfed at the end of every message to both deny threads content and create a Streisand effect.

Huh, well look at that. Meta being exactly as bad a corporate citizen as one would expect. This is why defederation is wise. I have no patience for the folks who think we're somehow not being fair to poor old Meta.

Support the fedipact.

Push your instance to defederate.

They are not and will never be a positive contributor to the fediverse. It's another thing to exploit, enshittify, and ruin for them, that's all.

https://wedistribute.org/2023/06/fedipact-blocking-meta/

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

Edit: I'll be one more guy posting this link so interested folks can easily check if their instance has defederated, and make a decision from there. https://fedipact.veganism.social/

This is a by-the-book and extremely predictable case of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
- I don't jump right to EEE because more and more folks who weren't alive (or aware) for the early examples of it don't seem to believe it's possible or could happen again. However, I agree with you entirely.
- I think that EEE would not be as impactfull here - I mean, at this stage, without Meta and already at small numbers, if they went through the EEE cycle we'd probably just be in the same position. Meta people came, and then left, nothing really changes. The people who are here are already decided to avoid Meta and other platforms, and they already have features Fediverse doesn't.
  
  My issue is that by Federating, Meta is stealing and monetizing our content we post here, to fill their bullshit Threads with content, which its severely lacking. I hate that and don't want that in the slightest.
Agreed.

For people who wish to know which instances are federated/defederated with Threads check here https://fedipact.veganism.social/
- Permanently Deleted
I'm glad to see my instance is part of the FediPact! Thanks for the link.
- You're welcome!

I wish I could go back to a Lemmy thread showing how Mastodon and other Fediverse instances were blocking Meta ahead of it's integration, where people went "Oh you're just being paranoid, why would they do that?" And when given examples of companies taking open standards and either making themselves the biggest source of users or killing it (Microsoft, Google, Apple) they either went "Well that happened in 2006, it's 2023!"

I know the bootlickers wouldn't actually change their mind, but jesus christ. It's frustrating for groups of advocates to be ignored and proven right each time. Cassandra syndrome is real.

what exactly is meta doing thats different than every other fedinstance moderating inbound content?

cuz its nothing. nothing beyond that. but hey, get your meta-hate fetish on.
What are these examples and how do they relate to what Meta is doing?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish?wprov=sfla1

they're so scared of us you can't even talk about us on their shitty platforms. that should tell you a lot

Who didn't this coming? Seriously, meta will take what they want to increase the capital and makes everything else invisible.

Fediverse isn't here to say yes to everything. We have the freedom to say no and this is the power of the fediverse. It's allowing and denying. And Meta is a threat to the fediverse.

This also could cause a Streisand effect, just like Elon Musk did it with Stonetoss and Hans Kristian Graebener.
- Musk and neonazi artist Stonetoss? Tell me more
Who didn’t this coming?

Mastodon's CEO, apparently.
- Will Meta embrace-extend-extinguish the ActivityPub protocol? There are comparisons to be made between Meta adopting ActivityPub for its new social media platform and Meta adopting XMPP for its Messenger service a decade ago. There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
  
  That is a stunning display of naïveté.
treat

I assume you meant threat. Otherwise I misunderstood the rest of your comment dramatically :D

What's a pixelfed?

If I am not mistaken, it's an open source Instagram alternative.
- Ah I see. I am now suitably enraged.
  
  (/s I hate Meta vehemently of course)
I didn't know either so I looked it up for you.

https://pixelfed.org/
- Hey, that actually looks neat!
In my experience it's like Instagram but with no one to follow or to react to your posts.

I just..

I just do not get the twitter framework for social media. Like I appreciate you mastodon bros, but what the hell is actually going on over there. I had the same issue with twitter. What the hell even is this?

It's an convenient way to post about some trending topic, without creating a whole new community for something temporary. For example the eurovision sing festival, or some natural disaster that happened.

And on the other hand, it works for expressing some personal thoughts or memes without having to adhere to a specific topic. But with random strangers instead of only your facebook friends.

I think for these kind of needs, no other social media framework would comply better.
- I guess I get it, but like, sorting by all or new kind of does the same thing..
  
  I do see that it is popular, but the 'feel' is just that its a bunch of people shouting at each other across a cafeteria.
I never really got the Twitter model either. Following a specific individual is a weird one for me; I’d rather follow an idea or a topic instead (Reddit/lemmy/forums). I honestly don’t care enough about any individual user to the point where I want to know what they have to say about… anything, really.
- twitter was made for famous people to spew short thoughts at the masses in a long term plan of selling advertising.
I really valued twitter for the ability of an individual person or groups of people to share their experiences of world events happening in real time. This is less about following individual people and more about being able to get meaningful analytics out of the mass of posts in order to spotlight "things" -- a political movement, an earthquake, a lawyer who cant turn off zoom filters -- whatever. But, it did always have a lot of noise. I usually ended up there when somebody linked to a post.

I tested this and I did not got blocked or anything. https://www.threads.net/@mogoh_viol/post/C4xsvpKMZb8 So I assume, this was just an accident.

I know everybody loves to hate meta, I am am not a fan either, but I find it hard to belive that they outright ban the word pixelfed.

So something changed between then and now. Wish the picture had absolute timestamps instead of the relative ones. I'm on mobile so I'm not about to try to dive into EXIF to find out when that was happening.
- Does it matter though if Threads actually did this now? Something like this WILL happen in the future, it is the only kind of behavior large corporations are capable of when they interact with a commons they have the incentive to enclose.
- Or maybe the original post was simply muted for a different reason.

I pray to God (or whoever I have to) that the .world admins rethink their federation decision.

Stop praying and just move to an instance that defederates with Threads. It's really not hard.
Permanently Deleted
- for better or worse LW is the largest instance, so joining another instance always poses the 'risk' of being defederated.
  
  the federation model definitely has some weaknesses
Why lemmy isn't really compatible with thread. Is it ?
- Lemmy integrates Activitypub and Threads plans to as well, sooner or later.

What a weak thing for such a big company to do. Censor the mention of an open source competitor that almost no one uses.

It's like combat, companies like this see it as necessary to take every protective step possible, they have an inferior product so manipulation is the only way to maintain their monopoly
I think it's a lot more common than most people would realize. Capitalism hates talking about things that let's normal people do things for free.

That's why we as regular people need to spread the word as effectively as possible.
If something is not on the radar it doesn't exists. That's why MSM doesn't want to talk about some topics.

Pixelfed pixelfed pixelfed

Gottem

TIL about Pixelfed :) I will be signing up.

Yay! Love that Streisand effect.
- TIL about Barbara Streisand :) I will be listening.
Is it like Instagram? I don't get it. I might be too old.
- Yes it's a fediverse platform mainly focused on sharing pictures.

Does this mean that if we always mention pixelfed or @pixelfed we can effectively block Meta from leveraging our contributions to the Fediverse?

... Or you know, just go to an instance that defederates from Threads if you don't want you content there?
- Some of us are not savy and don't know how to do that.

What's the point of planning to integrate with activitypub if they do shit like this?

Stage 1 of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
To overrule it
The short version is that Meta see any type of competitors has a treat to its capital. It will do whatever is needed to fight it and destroy it. They introduced stories for Snapchat, reels for TikTok, etc. With the fediverse, they federate to extinguish it.
Divide & Conquer
This only hides content locally for Threads users, it doesn't affect visibility from any other fedi platform. It's not that different from a Lemmy instance downvoting a comment to the point of being auto-hidden; it still exists but requires an extra click to see from your instance, and the rest of the fediverse can access it normally.
- The point isn't for other fedi users. It's to deter Threads users from becoming proper fedi users. It used to be those popups only appeared when something genuinely touchy came up. Now they're used for anything the parent company doesn't like as a scare tactic but people don't realise it. Google does this too with Play Protect.
- youre not going to get anywhere with this crowd. they are so overtly butthurt over the fact meta does anything with the activitypub protocol theres this fetish of 'how dare you communicate with that corporate run instance'
  
  dont bother with the logic that EmbraceExtendExtinguish only works if the rest of the verse adopts proprietary shit
  
  just dont bother.

Ironically I wouldn't have heard of it if it werent for this, so Streisand effect in action.

wouldn't have

Im SOOOO surprised. /s

The only thing that saved Meta/Web3 from creating a special hell where digital rent seeking pervades all social interaction is that capitalism is too advanced at this point to create a market before trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of it.

We've reached the phase where all new enterprise services come pre-enshittified
- The chicken comes prehatched inside the egg so to speak, but when the chicken hatches it is just a really tiny useless chicken that lays eggs the size of ice cream sprinkles.

Behold unfettered capitalism in all its glory.

"We only stay successful if we hide evidence of alternatives"

We can't federate with something that's completely against our ideia of "social". I mean, meta wants a monopoly of the public space. Meta is a shopping center, the Federation ( Mastodon, Lemmy, and stuff) should be like a public square.

"We can't federate" is not really an option... Sure, every instance can add threads to the blocked list. But to keep big corporations out of 'our public square' ActivityPub would have to be twisted into a grotesque version of itself.
- What makes you say that? Why is defederation not good enough?

is lemmy.world federated with threads?

Yes. You can check who is here https://fedipact.veganism.social.
- mastodon.art blocked 5,805 Admin: Fuck off, Zuck
  
  K. That's my top choice if I relocate.
- Permanently Deleted
- So what's fedipacked mean?
  
  Aussizone is the pink heart
- I am stunned that so many instances think federation with Threads is a good idea.

it's almost as if a company that helped incite an ethnic cleansing just a few years ago, hosts far right stochastic terrorists like libs of tiktok (despite the owner repeatedly breaking meta's own rules) and actively suppressed the voices of Palestinians and posts that criticised Israel doesn't make for a good instance to federate with.

it was immensely irresponsible for any instance to federate with them, let alone the largest one.

Im surprised no one has copy pasted libs of tiktok posts with info of mark zuckerberg, elon, etc to see if that breaks TOS and yell free speech and right wing censorship if the accounts are taken down

Oh damn! If the suckerburg empire is already censoring Pixelfed, wait until they find out about Loops.
Fakebook is not a social media site, it's a place to stalk and scam people, just like the other suckerburg tracking apps.

One of the rarer moments I'm proud of my (previous decision)[https://lemmy.cafe/post/1852188]!

That's why I just moved from lemmy.world to an instance that defederated that Meta shit.

I guess I'm stupid but I don't see where's the evidence. I don't understand anything that's going on in that screenshot. Eli5?

EDIT: Not stupid, just blind

Linking this helpful comment for anyone else confused by this.

I wonder if this means we can mention any word in their filter and our content will not be scraped by them? Something like a Meta filter signature on every post or comment like follows:

Pixelfed, etc, etc, etc...

Just switch to an instance that doesnt federate with them

Use this to pick one

https://fedipact.veganism.social/
- I think my instance isn't federated but I am under the understanding that the federation can still scrape data through other federated instances that mine is connected with. Something along the lines of 'their data doesn't come in but your data is still sent out'.
No it just hides your comment as spam
- Database poisoning spam perhaps?

The Pixelfed team stated (https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/112138024510274956) that users were not able to reproduce the issue, so this is most likely a fake news.

Zuck Fuckerberg.

I thought @dansup already committed to blocking federation with Meta. Why does he care if they're shutting him out, too?

People make more complex decisions when they have multiple roles:

As admin of pixelfed.social, dansup may have decided it is best for that community not to federate with Threads, at least at first

As the lead developer of the Pixelfed software, he probably doesn't like anyone censoring discussion of his software

As an individual with an interest in social media, he has a Threads account and is participating in conversations there; he would probably like to be able to talk about the projects he's working on

I'm actually quite glad about this. Currently Pixelfed is absolutely beautiful, without me having to do any blocking at all. I don't want spammy low-key commercial posts to start showing up on it, turning me cynical and sour trying to work out who is legit on it. The whole culture of mainstream social media is based on people commodifying themselves, whereas Pixelfed is about artistic expression for its own sake. That's my own take on it anyway. For me, Pixelfed is the best thing on the internet at the moment and I feel protective of it!

I followed the link to the mastodon post and saw this edit

"Edit: As mentioned below, it appears to be a bug, not intentional!"

Of course it was. 🙄

Choosing a defederated instance might be a good idea...I just signed up here but I'll consider it.

I could also just block the threads.net domain, no? Or would my data still get shipped off to Meta? I'm a little fuzzy on how detailed user account level federation works still.

Your lemmy data is on the public internet. Whether threads is federated with your instance or not, meta can still get all of your posts/comments.
- A fair point!
- But realistically they won't and at least we make it harder for them. Don't make defederation sound like it's a lost cause when it isn't.
I could also just block the threads.net domain, no?

Nope domain blocking in Lemmy only does anything for communities. Plus blocking on Lemmy isn't even really blocking, it's a more extreme mute function that is deceptively called "block".

Stop bullying!

I know everyone loves having biases confirmed but we're also not stupid, we know how the internet and evidence works. A random comment getting spam canned means almost nothing.

If this is true it'll be incredibly easy to make a really good case for it which would be a potential news story - however I suspect that it's just a glitch

And this thread goes straight to my Masto admin circle. Ta.

Do we have a list of instances that have chosen to defederate?

Never mind, found it! Glad to see my Chosen home has blocked them!

lemm.ee is already defederated. Didn't even have to do anything. I think I chose the right instance.

Edit: defederated not federated

thats it, the fediverse is canceled cuz threads is doing stupid shit on their own server. game over. everyone pack up their lemmy and go home.

Obviously not, but the behavior already shows that Meta/Threads isn’t interested in being a good fediverse citizen, and in doing so lends more credibility to the idea that they’re aiming to embrace, extend, and extinguish.
- I'm sorry but the fediverse is full of instances that block other instances. Blocking an instance is not bad behaviour on the fediverse.
  
  If you don't like Threads, don't use it (I'm not using it), and if you want to use an instance that blocks Threads... you're welcome to do that.
  
  But what I don't get is the idea that threads is somehow trying to kill the fediverse. All of the evidence is to the contrary. Meta wants to exist in a federated world. That doesn't mean they will allow access to all content on their corner of the fediverse, nobody wants that. All instances block some other instances and threads has every right to make their own choice about who to block.
but I am home
Here, you dropped this: /s