Mastodon is just one platform used to access the Fediverse. I agree, Mastodon might not be the hottest Fediverse microblogging app in a decade, but the Fediverse will certainly still be around. And that’s what you should really care about.

Don’t go to Mastodon specifically, just go to the Fediverse.

I’ve never been there so don’t know really. But it does seem full of ads and not very social either.

Musk has marketed it as the world’s “town square"

He says it so clearly here which makes me wonder how people don’t realize it:

How fucked up would it be if your actual town square was owned by a private company?

A private company that is in control of who is allowed to talk and what they are allowed to say. A private company that even decides what you hear and see while walking the square. Meanwhile also shovelling ads in front of you while you try to find the people you actually want to engage with.

“Social” media owned by private corporations is not social. Such media is anti-social, corporate control of public spaces that ought to belong to the people, just like they mostly do in real life.

Thanks, that added some good context to your position. I think it’s a legitimate worry but I think we have a chance, unlike the shopping mall scenario.

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.

What makes you say that? Why is defederation not good enough?

… Or you know, just go to an instance that defederates from Threads if you don’t want you content there?

Yes

A quick search leads me to https://fedi.tips/ which has a lot of information. It mostly focuses on Mastodon but it generally applies to Lemmy and any other Fediverse app as well.

You probably won’t find any source specifically saying that “content is not forwarded from remote servers to other remote servers” because that’s just not how it works. The documentation will probably focus on what it actually does rather than all of the infinite things that it doesn’t do.

but my understanding is that since LW will federate with them, any content they host, will end up on meta

Your understanding is wrong. Instances don’t forward stuff from other instances to other instances. Instances only send their own content directly to the instances they federate with.

No, that’s not how federation works. My instance sends my content directly to everything my instance federates with. No instance takes content from other instances and sends it further - that is not a thing. I sent my content to lemmy.world and it is free to be there. Lemmy.world will not forward that to Threads.

Don’t be sad, we all misunderstand stuff sometimes :)

True, that’s fair. But I’d still join a small server to give it a chance and to keep them afloat. Small servers would maybe stay around more if more people joined :)

Here, you dropped this: /s

the federation can still scrape data through other federated instances that mine is connected with

That’s not true. If your instance is defederated from Threads, your content will never be sent to Threads. Other instances will not forward content for you to Threads.

Stop praying and just move to an instance that defederates with Threads. It’s really not hard.

decently-sized

Why does this matter? You can see everything on lemmy.world even if you come from a small instance. Size is not necessarily a benefit here.

diatribes

I learned a new word today

whatever LW does will affect all of Lemmy

Uuuh no it won’t? The fact that they federate with Threads doesn’t mean that my instance does. How does it affect me?

FWIW I think this is intentional and a feature, not a bug. By spreading content to communities, you can delegate moderation responsibility much easier.

Content not posted to any community would need something akin to a site-wide moderator or an admin to moderate, and such a moderator wouldn’t be as effective. They’d cover a wider array of very different content. Community moderators work better because they can define rules that are only confined to their comm and they know better how to moderate their own community and they also care more about their own community so are more motivated to keep it well-moderated in the fashion they want.