this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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Ok, so what is actually the main argument people have to preventatively defederate with Threads? I perhaps haven't thought about it much, but I don't personally see the problem if my instances would federate with them. I'm mentally comparing this to email. If I ran my own email service, or used someone else's, why would I want to block Gmail, or icloud, or Hotmail/Outlook?
Of course if they don't have effective admin/moderation policies and actions then, yeah they should be blocked or limited. The same holds true with email federation.
It's honestly kind of irrational. The "embrace, extend, extinguish" stuff is on shaky grounds as a framework as it is, but it wasn't even part of the conversation until people started trying to retroactively justify the knee-jerk rejection to Meta.
So it's mostly "we should grow the "fediverse" into the new universal social tool. No, not like that".
But hey, here we are. I'm on the record saying that I'll mvoe instances if they join to keep them available.
Isn't the entire point of these platforms and the nature of federation is that they get to decide who they federate with and when, and even why?
Sure. And that the users get to pick their instance based on those decisions.
Which is what I'm saying I'll do.
Problem with that train of thought is you always land in weird anarchocapitalist loopholes. Ultimately there is a level of communal decisionmaking that ends up happening and needs some degree of organization, even if the alternatives are also supported on the fringes.
I'm not telling you not to pick your instance, but I was countering your claim that what they are doing is irrational. Because if it's irrational, then the very point of these services is irrational.
I mean, social media sucks. It was a mistake. All of it. This included. So yeah?
But no, a specific choice to defederate can make more or less sense. Not every option is equal. Defederating because some place is too popular and you kinda don't like that it has a bunch of normies in it and is made by a big social media corpo? Kind of irrational. Defederating because disruptive trolls are harassing your users? Yeah, alright.
FWIW, I'm not even saying that an influx of Meta users wouldn't be disruptive. I have a strong suspicion that it would show big gaps on moderation and usability around here if you suddenly added a couple of zeros to the userbase. I still don't think making it a rule that federated services have to be small is the right solution to that.