this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024

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Instagram and Threads moderation is out of control (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

This was not unexpected as Facebook has history of poor moderation and deliberate spread of misinformation.

If you're an instance owner or admin you might want to consider again defederating from Threads and joining the Fedipact

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

This was why I was against automatically defenerating right away. Now they can't just put it down to empty meta thinking, there's an actual reason that can be pointed to.

They are evidentially bad

[+] [email protected] -12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Wouldn’t it make more sense to move to a server that federates with Threads so that you’re not at a whim of Meta but still able to talk to people there? The point of social networks is communication with friends and those might not be so eager to jump. They might even hear from you how other servers and apps are better and move eventually :)

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

That makes no sense.

Any sensible person would want to avoid/run from trouble, not move towards it.
By continuing to interact with Thread users you're enabling those users to feel justified in not wanting to leave.

This system is similar to what creates regimes like the CCP or North Korea to enforce their citizens to obey their rule otherwise their connections to their family and friends are at risk.

to break this system people must run (brain drain), by staying you enable those at the top to threaten others close to you to listen to them. It's a cyclic toxic structure.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

By continuing to interact with Thread users you’re enabling those users to feel justified in not wanting to leave.

People do not have to leave Threads. They should, but they don't have to. No harm in interacting with them. In fact, such interaction will make them aware of the alternatives.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago

I have this radical idea that Threads users are people too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Isn't the problem that it's only a one way street? And their users vastly outnumber ours?

So you end up in a situation where you give them content and engagement but receive nothing back, since their users can't see our content. Even worst, our own users are more likely to post on their infrastructure because of the higher count, so the servers federated with them just end up being ghost servers to hold users.

You end up being at their whim because what you had before died.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

It’s a problem from content moderation standpoint but also an opportunity. Threads is not trying to steal users from Mastodon, they are already orders of magnitude bigger and current crowd would never switch anyway. The other way around is not so certain. If Threads sucks but you can still participate in it without having an account there then Mastodon becomes a very attractive proposition for people who would never consider ActivityPub based platforms before. Defederating mans you’re robbing yourself of opportunity to court those people.

Also, it’s important to note the timing of when Threads became open to the public and where. For months it was unavailable in the EU because of uncertainties related to Digital Services Act, which among other things enforces interoperability on big platforms. Details for existing ones are still being worked on but Threads was the first big one that launched since it came into effect. It’s been speculated that Threads got a green light from the EU commissioners because they promised interoperability early on. It’s quite likely that Meta had no choice but to open itself up and we’re just enjoying fruits of EU not bowing down to American corpos.

[+] [email protected] -14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

yep. this is exactly why i wont defederate threads. i want to give those users an option, but still be able to talk to their friends.

theres a bunch of ... people.. who think that meta will somehow take over the activtypub protocol and fuck everyone over, but that just cant happen with the consortium as it is.

the only thing people have to fear from meta on the fediverse is a better interface attracting more users than other servers... and if you cant solve that you deserve to fail

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This has already happened with federated services (XMPP)

It's not a conspiracy, there is proven history of EEE techniques being successfully used to capture an audience and then destroy the adoption of the protocol.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

your premise seems invalid on its face. i would argue that google did not, actually, kill xmpp. that protocol is still in use today, its just not popular.

again, the biggest problem the fediverse has is just threads having a better product on the same, open protocol. eee? ha, whatever

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Browser incompatibilities:

The plaintiffs in an antitrust case claimed Microsoft had added support for ActiveX controls in the Internet Explorer Web browser to break compatibility with Netscape Navigator, which used components based on Java and Netscape's own plugin system.

On CSS, data:, etc.: A decade after the original Netscape-related antitrust suit, the Web browser company Opera Software filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the European Union, saying it "calls on Microsoft to adhere to its own public pronouncements to support these standards, instead of stifling them with its notorious 'Embrace, Extend and Extinguish' strategy".[15]

Office documents: In a memo to the Office product group in 1998, Bill Gates stated: "One thing we have got to change in our strategy – allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other people's browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destory [sic] Windows."[16]

Breaking Java's portability: The antitrust case's plaintiffs also accused Microsoft of using an "embrace and extend" strategy with regard to the Java platform, which was designed explicitly with the goal of developing programs that could run on any operating system, be it Windows, Mac, or Linux. They claimed that, by omitting the Java Native Interface (JNI) from its implementation and providing J/Direct for a similar purpose, Microsoft deliberately tied Windows Java programs to its platform, making them unusable on Linux and Mac systems. According to an internal communication, Microsoft sought to downplay Java's cross-platform capability and make it "just the latest, best way to write Windows applications".[17] Microsoft paid Sun Microsystems US$20 million in January 2001 (equivalent to $34.41 million in 2023[18]) to settle the resulting legal implications of their breach of contract.[19]

More Java issues: Sun sued Microsoft over Java again in 2002 and Microsoft agreed to settle out of court for US$2 billion[20][21] (equivalent to US$3.23 billion in 2023[18]).

Instant messaging: In 2001, CNET described an instance concerning Microsoft's instant messaging program.[22] "Embrace" AOL's IM protocol, the de facto standard of the 1990s and early 2000s. "Extend" the standard with proprietary Microsoft addons which added new features, but broke compatibility with AOL's software. Gain dominance, since Microsoft had 95% OS share and their MSN Messenger was provided for free. Finally, "extinguish" and lock out AOL's IM software, since AOL was unable to use the modified MS-patented protocol.

Email protocols: Microsoft supported POP3, IMAP, and SMTP email protocols in their Microsoft Outlook email client. At the same time, they developed their own email protocol, MAPI, which has since been documented but is largely unused by third parties. Microsoft has announced that they would end support for the less secure basic authentication, which lacks support for multi-factor authentication, access to Exchange Online APIs for Office 365 customers, which disables most use of IMAP or POP3 and requires significant upgrades to support the more secure OAuth2 based authentication in applications in order to continue to use those protocols;[23] some customers have responded by simply shutting off older protocols.[24]

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My hypothesis:

Meta is one of those companies wallowing in the idiotic belief that generative AI will "soon" reach intelligence and sentience and the ability to walk your dog, so odds are that it's deploying them heavily for moderation duties. Except that the crap does not understand a single iot of the pictures and text that it analyses, so it's bound to get huge amounts of false positives and false negatives.

Well, here's an example of false positive. i.e. machine mod assuming that the poster is underageb&.

Protip: if you use "assumer machine" to handle people, you're trash, your service is trash, and you both deserve to be treated as trash. Not this conclusion is surprising regarding Meta.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Well the other thing of course is that Facebook are very much on the side of the far right (who keep promising to get rid of all the pesky laws preventing them from making as much money as possible). So they all disincentivized to get rid of misinformation spread by their favorite group of people.

It isn't just stupidity.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago

Something run by Facebook is having issues? What a surprise...

I'm still amazed some people want Threads to show up in the Fediverse 🤢

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I used bad words against a nefarious political person on instagram and the comment got promptly removed. I then disputed the issue and they happily restored the comment lol.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I have so far managed to avoid threads, but Insta is filled with 'Comment forcedengagement to get the pattern/recipie/cureforthecommon cold' or stolen videos with facts about some shitty car.

I block them, but that appears to count as interest, so I end up with more of that shit shoved at me.

I'm only there because the crafters I want to see are there, and none of them want to join anything federated. :(

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

From what I have seen, most Threads users are safe-spacers who wanted a platform with heavy moderation. So I guess these are just the growing pains they'll have to get used to in the pursuit of their circlejerk paradise, particularly since this is Meta we're talking about who have never been reliable or effective when it comes to moderating content.