āThreads is deepening its ties to the fediverse, also known as the open social web, which powers services like X alternative Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and other apps. On Wednesday, Meta announced that users on Threads will be able to see fediverse replies on other posts besides their own. In addition, posts that originated through the Threads API, like those created via third-party apps and scheduling services, will now be syndicated to the fediverse. The latter had previously been announced via an in-app message informing users that API posts would be shared to the fediverse starting on August 28.ā
A is defederated from Threads, but federates with B. And B federates with Threads. Now Meta can cash out on your data via B.
Now Meta can cash out on your data via
B.
Everything weāre posting is public, anyone can cash in on it regardless of who you defederate.
Everyone can break into my house regardless of having a key or not. I still donāt have my key delivered to them.
I donāt think thatās how it works and it would likely not be legal. By explicitly blocking Threads, you make a big statement about not wanting your instanceās posts to show up there. Also from a technical standpoint, I donāt think a āmiddle-manā instance will push posts from another instance to a third one. Youād have to explicitly scrape data thatās not available via the API. Please correct me if Iām wrong.
The fediverse is too new and niche to say that with certainty.
The legality is likely untested and certainly not enforced by pubspec yet.
I donāt know enough to speak to the technicalities with certainty, but my surface level understanding is that that is exactly how it works, and it is one of the known flaws of the fediverse as it currently exists.
You might be making a statement, but server B is just a node and, frankly, doesnāt care. If you federate with them, you federate with everyone they federate with as well.
Itās uncomfortably like an STD in that regard.
@copygirl @Dirk yes, I also get the feeling this would not work in a compliant setup but it seems like a good idea to test this in e.g. a federation test suite.
Maybe @evanprodromou would know how this should work, or would know of someone who might be testing this kind of scenario.
@flancian @Dirk Threads has about 200 million monthly users, 33 million daily users. The fediverse has just under 1 million monthly users. Do you really think that 0.5% has any relevance to Meta?
Also: What data do you think Meta will be able to use - and for what? They canāt use this data to serve you ads, simply because they donāt know you. They canāt track you around the web because you donāt have a Meta account.
Threads has about 200 million monthly users, 33 million daily users. The fediverse has just under 1 million monthly users. Do you really think that 0.5% has any relevance to Meta?
Do you really think they would care about those users when they extend and extinguish the Fediverse?
@Dirk How should they achieve it? The Fediverse contains of a lot of different systems that offer so much more than Threads could ever do.
