I used to think that there would be 1, main ‘Fediverse’ with all of the ‘big instances’ connected to each other. The recent Threads debacle has shown me otherwise.
The point of the Fediverse is that there is no one single entity, or group of entities, dominating it all.
Right now it feels like whatever the big instances do, we kind of have to go along with to be a part of anything. As the Fediverse grows, there will be more options to suit different types of users.
I think it’s fine if big instances federate with Threads and it’s fine if they don’t. People can just join instances that align with what they want. It’s not like defederating means being cut out of the Fediverse, that’s not possible.
Great design. I’m eager to see how it plays out.
The controversy you are referring to is regarding specifically .world defederating Hexbear “preemptively” before the latter could federate with anyone, out of fear that the “annoying tankies” may overrun everyone else. Since Hexbear is a relatively small platform run by volunteers like .world is, and the basis on which the defederation was justified was shaky at best, a lot of users raised an eyebrow. There was a similar move by .world later on where they defederated from Lemmygrad, another “tankie” instance, due to alleged hate speech of which the admins failed to provide a single example, and it was clear as day that .world admins just wanted some excuse to defederate away “the evil communists”.
In this case, the situation is different, because it involves a lot more than just .world. A large, for-profit instance Threads, run by Meta, is opening up to ActivityPub, and people are afraid of the reasonable possibility that Meta is attempting to either destroy or absorb the Fediverse as a whole. Besides the shitty corporate attempts in the past, Threads is also overrun by a lot of algorithm induced hate speech and far-right extremism, and there is a legitimate concern that this will spread to instances that federate with Threads.
Hexbear (and others like Lemmygrad) are different in that they are still part of the Fediverse, they are run by volunteers like most instances, and remain federated with other large instances such as lemm.ee. But the fact that hate speech is rampant in Threads yet .world admins want to “wait and see” make the Lemmygrad defederation even clearer and funnier in retrospect, lol. I complained back in the day when Hexbear was defederated that I’d rather let users choose for themselves whether they wanted that or not, and I got told to go to another instance. Now that we are federating with Threads anyway, might as well do that.
Edit: Typos
You don’t have to look far on hexbear or lemmygrad to find people cheering on the murder of Israelis on October 7th or denying genocides like the Holodomor so I’m not sure what you’re talking about when you say neither instance is hateful. Meanwhileongrad is full of screenshots of ridiculous hateful bullshit.
Edit: I might add that they’re extremely ban happy and yet would cry when their rants were deleted or when they received bans for spamming on other instances. Blatant double standard. Shit, I’ve had comments deleted for “hate speech” from Lemmy.ml for saying that Hamas and Iran are a big part of the problem in the Middle East.
Just to clarify- I didn’t claim that they aren’t hateful instances, deliberately so to avoid starting an argument. I mean, I will say that they aren’t if you want, but the point I was making was that .world admins did not provide any example in the thread where they announced this. You could be the worst criminal on Earth, and the judge sentencing you must still be expected to provide proof before taking further action. Likewise, no matter how “obvious” it seems that Hexbear etc are “hateful” instances, responsible admins are still expected to provide concrete reasons for defederation.
This isn’t just semantics. This is important because when you get into the specifics, when you force people to provide examples of Lemmygraders or Hexbears supposedly cheering on the murder of Israelis or denying genocides like Holodomor, no one is able to quote anything that can be remotely interpreted as that without engaging in really bad faith, other than maybe using sources such as circlejerk communities making fun of them (such as Meanwhileongrad).
Anyway, it’s honestly not that easy to find, because Hexbear and Lemmygrad themselves are circlejerks most of the time, so I’m not bothered by regular users not having proof or anything when stating that they dislike these instances. But when it’s the whole admin of a large instance, I expect more seriousness.
You had me go back and check and the .world admins did provide evidence of users planning to break .world rules in each defederation announcement post. You’re free to disagree with their conclusions but you’re wrong when you say they provided no evidence. Besides that, you sound like you’re sitting on the fence on whether or not they are hateful, I have receipts of the admins cheering on the Tiananmen Square massacre because it was a western plot or painting the CCP’s treatment of Uighur’s as a simple necessary anti-terrorism action rather than ethnic cleansing. Please don’t willfully look the other way because they don’t outright yell “gas the Jews”.
I also question why a “circlejerk” community pointing out the ridiculous shit said by leadership and regular posters on the instances isn’t valid. It’s a community dedicated to pointing out the glorification of authoritarianism found on these instances with direct screenshots and links to said bad behavior. The source should be irrelevant provided the information they’re sharing isn’t presented misleadingly. Some of the stuff on meanwhileongrad is definitely misleading or a screenshot of a post that ended up removed but there is a clear pattern from the top down.
Pretty sure you’re confusing Threads for Twitter. Threads doesn’t contain any more of that than lemmy or mastodon already does, and it’s probably less, so such handwringing is overstated. They’ve already implemented a “Restrict” setting in addition to blocks and mutes, and frankly their handling of blocking and how people can interact with your account after being restricted or blocked is already more effective than what’s here or on mastodon.
Thank you. People on the Fedi fail to realise how similar they are to the places they call out. This disinformation and misinformation is insane. People don’t care to be accurate nor honest. I don’t get how anyone can attempt to claim any moral superiority