BananaTrifleViolin

Yeah I found the article a bizarre read. It talks about ActovityPub and Mastodon but fails to mention the fediverse at all. Instead it talks about the “pluriverse”, some random new term pulled from some paper, and paints a vision of people spread across various commercial social media platforms.

Either it’s a blind spot In their research or an agenda so deliberate omission, but regardless it seems strange to talk about the disintegration of social media and even Mastodon but not what Mastodon is a part of.

But I agree the general themes are there - it’s basically talking about the impact of enshittification but without using the term.

Just on the “There are so much socialists/communists around, including Lemmy’s founders. Even the ‘subreddits’ called communities.”

You really need to learn to tolerate and listen to the views of people you disagree with. Just cutting those voices out entirely and not wanting to hear them really is putting yourself into an echo chamber. You are an individual - don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need to belong to a “group” and agree with all the thoughts in that group and disagree with all the thoughts outside that group. It’s important that you are open to being challenged and hearing other peoples world views, even if yours is ultimately unchanged. Otherwise you’ll just be a sheep thinking how others are directing you to think.

Also, the idea that the word “community” is socialist/communist is the most rediculous thing I’ve read in a while.

It depends what you use it for.

If you’re watching your own content within your home then Jellyfin is better. It’s free, open source and private. Your Jellyfin instance is yours and secure, and entirely under your control.

Plex’s differences are mostly behind it’s plex pass pay wall, and you sacrifice privacy using their platform. The key difference is really offline and remote viewing of content which is easier and slicker with plex (but doable with jellyfin), and the plex App maybe available a few more devices. There are also some credits and ad skipping features. That’s about it - I struggle to see the benefit in plex. The only other thing I can think of is some people prefer the interface?

I used to use Plex and got annoyed when I couldn’t view my content, which I host locally, because their login servers were down. Made me realise why did I need them so I researched a bit and switched to Jellyfin.

To be fair, they can “prempt” Threads.net by blocking the domains. That’s basically how they block other instances.

I personally think the default should be to block Threads.net and federate if and when a server wants to, rather than waiting for Meta to pull a switch. However I disagree with OP’s approach of blackmail and threats, and his idea he “owns” the communities he moderates.

This is true - the bigger impact would be on Kbin instances that are both Threadiverse and Microblogverse facing.

However, if you go on Mastodon you can see Lemmy threads as posts which you can click through to the hosting instance and also boost (but not downvote). So for Lemmy if Threads.net federates, the biggest impact would be exposure of content to Threads users who then come in to Lemmy instances but not logged in or who could boost content and distort things.

For Kbin instances and also Mastodon it could mean being swamped with content from Threads.net.

Personally I do think overall the Kbin/Lemmy/Mastodon servers should probably not federate with Threads.net. The content appears to be poor and it could flood the fediverse with crap, when really it’s still small and needs to grow organically. Threads.net is at 70m users already and rising rapidly, while Mastodon is at 8m (1.6m active) and the Threadiverse is more like 130k across Kbin and Lemmy. Mastodon/Kbin/Lemmy need time to establish what it means to be an independent federated social media network. They can always federate with Threads.net in the future - rather than it being Meta’s choice, it should be the communities choice if and when they want to federate with a behemoth network.

I think you’re probably best shutting “your” subs and moving anyway - if you want to dictate how a server runs, you’re probably better off hosting your own instance. I’m not sure we need people in the fediverse who thinks a moderator owns a community - it’s just the other extreme from Reddit’s attitude that they own a community.

I happen to agree with defederating, but I don’t like threats and the idea of blackmail to a community.

I like and trust Proton Mail, and they support setting up custom domains while hosting your email data (for subscriber users).

You can then access it via their web mail box, via their Android and iOS apps, or via a desktop email client if you install their “bridge” application. The bridge application basically maintains the secure encryption ethos of their email system by ensuring all email traffic between your desktop and their servers remains encrypted, but can still be accessed via your preferred email clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook. The bridge is available for Windows, iOS and Linux.

I personally recommend Protonmail as it’s primary focus is security and encryption, yet it does this in a very well developed and slick interface, so you get the best of both worlds. I’m a subscriber and moved from Gmail about 2 years ago as I wanted better privacy and security (they even have great tools for importing your old emails from major web providers). I don’t have a custom domain but from my experiences of everything else they provide, I’d be confident it works as intended.

EDIT: In terms of cost, its €4 a month for the first tier which includes support for 1 custom domain, 10 email addresses, and 15GB of storage, or €10 for 500GB, 3 domains, 15 emails. They also include VPN, calendar, drive storage and a password manager in both.

I’d say the biggest reason is culture and identity. The threadiverse is small at present - about 120k - and the microblogverse is bigger - 8m - but still smaller than the Threads.net 70m already and potential 1bn if meta leverages instagram. Why would a smaller and growing new independent social media platform want to be swamped by a commercial tidal wave? There isn’t really a benefit to the independent parts of the Fediverse.

It’s better for the independent parts of the fediverse to grow organically, remain independent and grow it’s own identity rather than disappear into useless oblivion.

Also if I understand it correctly, the Threads.net is a microblogging site so while they may both use ActivityPub, Lemmy does not support microblog content. For Lemmy, it would mainly be the Lemmy content appearing within Threads.net. Federating with Threads.net is more of an issue for Kbin (which does both Threadiverse and Microblogverse content) and Mastodon (which does Microblogverse content) - the content would be visible in both directions. So for Lemmy it might be a big influx of users so may be manageable, but for Kbin & Mastodon it may also be a flood of content which might not be mangeable. But correct me if I’m wrong on that.