What I mean by that is that it doesn’t shove the AI summaries into your face, and they are only generated if you actually click on a different tab.

I just use Kagi, which seems to be pretty good at filtering bullshit by default, and have mabually downranked reddit and twitter, ot any other site I found and don’t like. But it’s been a long time since I used other search, so I can’t compare it much since I’m used to it. Never really had any problems with not finding what I need.

I’m using Kagi, but as of right now I’m not sure if I can recommend it. The last year with it was amazing, but for the past few days I’ve been getting blocked searches from my VPN out of nowhere. That would be a dealbreaker for me, but I hope it was just a mistake and they will fix it. It’s the first time it has happened in the year or so I’ve been using it.

Apparently, they are also adding a bunch of AI features, but I only noticed it when I was looking up the feature page, and I haven’t noticed any of it in my feed before that - so I guess they don’t push it on users and it’s optional somewhere out of the way, so don’t let that discourage you. (Though, it would’ve discouraged me, if I saw that before I started using it. But as of now it doesn’t affect you unless you look for it, I guess)

Other than that, the search is awesome. But since I’m using it exclusively for like a year, I can’t really compare it with other engines, it’s possible that I’m just used to it.

I’ve never had issues with looking anything up. By downranking Reddit and using a search engine with a good indexer that downranks bullshit and generated websites, which mine is really good at, I haven’t noticed much change from how it was before.

But I agree with the second part. That’s something that never occured to me, and it makes sense. I was usually trying to answer questions I knew, and never had the urge to reply “just google it”, so it doesn’t change much for me, but it’s a really good point I never realized.

Yes, because you don’t want to provide them your content for free, so they can continue building engagement on your behalf.

I agree that decentralization isn’t anti-corporate. I would even say that it has nothing to do with your motives for doing it. But I’m hoping that the consensus that is reached about what Fediverse should be will include focus on being anti-corporate, and stay in the realm of community-owned and non-profit. Actually, I don’t mind being for-profit, or even ads that are respectful, as long as it’s not manipulating with users in any way based on their data, for example though the content they are shown. DuckDuckGo would be the best example - you get static search results, nothing is “personalized”, and the ads you get are related to your current search only. No ML models exploiting you as much as they can. That’s what I imagine under “privacy-centric”

And unfortunately, this disqualifies almost every larger company.

But fediverse isn’t only a tool, but also a network and thus, a community. And a vision is pretty important for communities. So the question about what should be the main values and ideals behind the fediverse are important. If we would be only here because the fediverse is a tool - a social network - then there is a lot of better alternatives, with more content and better user experience. I mean, unless you want to talk about some super-controversial topics that would get you banned, there’s not really that much of a difference in how limited are you in the way you interact with Reddit, Facebook or Twitter, apart from the UI being a little bit more difficult.

And letting any other big player into the fediverse will only lead to them eventually bringing the difficulties in, as has been already mentioned in other posts - by extending ActivityPub, and using their teams to create difficult to implement but really handy features that any FOSS will have difficulties with implementing, causing them to be inferior and bringing people over to them.

And that’s another issue - if we federate, you won’t even be able to block those trackers, because the Meta instance will just be able to ask the server for those data, if I understood it correctly.

I didn’t research it too in depth, but from the quick understanding I have about it, it works something like this:

Fediverse is just a name for servers that implement the protocol ActivityPub. The protocol defines a way how different servers should share data and interact with eachother.

For example, you have Mastodon, which has decided to implent a Twitter-like social network. Or Lemmy, that implemented Reddit-like social network, or the Pixelwhatever, that implements a picture sharing service.

When someone hosts an instance of the social network, you use it just like you would a normal social network. But in addition to that, ActivityPub protocol defines a way how can the servers talk to eachother - how they share data. So a user of i.e lemmy.ml can ask their home instance “can you let me subscribe to posts from programming.dev community?”, and the instance will use the protocol to start fetching posts from there, to show to the user, while also sending back comments the user makes on said treads.

It would also be possible to connect Mastodon with Lemmy - assuming that some kind of UI is created that would handle the difference in type of content. But the ActivityPub protocol gives them a common language about how to interact. So if a Mastodon creates a special post type for Lemmy posts, users can start requesting “Hey, can you get me posts from this Lemmy instance?”, and it will be able to get them though ActivityPub and then somehow show it to them.

A fediverse is just a network of servers that are allowed to talk to eachother. If Meta would join the Fediverse and we did not defederate with it, it would mean that Meta’s servers can ask any instance to give them their content and let their users interact with it - but Meta will decide how is it shown. So Meta can riddle it with ads, run analytics about how are users interacting with the posts, scrape it for user data or simply use the content we have as a way how to kickstart their platform that noone would want to use in the first place.

So, defederation just means “I don’t want to talk to you, and I will not give you any data.”

Nothing is stopping Meta (or me, or you) from launching an instance that has ads, investors, and sells all its data to people, whether that data comes from that instance or is discovered through federation.

You are right, they are only suggestions. But suggestions I would really like to se enforced, and that is exactly what defederation is for. If we want to uphold the values mentioned in the quote, and not let our content be monetized through federation, then defederating with those who don’t uphold the values is the solution. It’s as simple as that.

Meta already has access to our public posts just by scraping the instance, they don’t need to federate to do that.

While they don’t have to federate to do that, federation makes it a lot easier, because the content is served right to them. It also legitimizes them monetizing and stealing our content, because after all - that’s how the protocol works. While scraping for content is much more effort and grey-zone, since then they also have to somehow show it to the users - by impersonating us? By using fake accounts or bots? Probably, but that’s still more effort. And that’s what I take issue with. Meta would decide how is our content shown, they would be monetizing it and they would be using it to manipulate with their users (because as far as I know, the instance you are on is in full control of the UI, and the order in which content is shown and how), or watch and analyze how users interact with it. And I want no part in that, in spirit of the above mentioned suggestions.

I’ve actually just asked that in another post, because I am kind of interested in what people see as Fediverse main idea.

But, thanks for this summary of how Threads looks like, since I’m avoiding it like a plague. You seriously can’t even select what content you see? Fuck, that’s way worse than I though - that’s so obviously a ML model manipulating with people without holding anything back. I hope they’ve at least done something with the misalingment where it seems to just radicalize people to keep them on the platform, because if not, the world is fucked.

I hate Meta so much…

I’ve though about it some more and I have realized something - while I definitely don’t want Meta to have any access to my content, so I will simply not be interacting with any instance that won’t defederate, if it would allow me to message people on Messenger with my account on a random federated server, I’ll be all in - but only use the instance for messaging. Which reminds me that I don’t really know how interconnected are Threads with the rest of Meta ecosystem - will you be able to message someone on Facebook from Threads? As far as I know, I don’t even think you can message someone on Instagram from Messenger, unless they have a FB account - at least I never managed to do that.

So I’m 90% sure that will never happen.

It’s only my personal point of view, but have you ever seen how does a Meta user usually communicates? Can you imagine a moderating an instance where you suddenly get an influx of 3 billion users? None of them will ever create an account outside of the Meta ecosystem, and will only bring problems to most of the other instances, while making any kind of moderation a living hell.

While lemmy.world is not my main instance, so I have no say in whether you defederate or not, I would like to bring this arugment into the discussion, because it’s applicable for all instances, and make de-federation an absolute must for every instance.

Allowing Meta in goes directly against the idea of Fediverse, and we should fight it as much as possible.

This is a literal quote from the main header on https://www.fediverse.to/

The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

Join the growing community and experience the web as it was meant to be.

I’ve seen a lot of comments mentioning that defederating with Meta goes against the principles and main ideas of the Fediverse, that it should be inclusive and allow people to connect. But, judging by this main selling point of the Fediverse, it sounds to me like Meta shouldn’t be in the Fediverse do begin with.

Definitely defederate. I did not come here to let Meta monetize my content on their platform. Also - Facebook and Instagram crowd is among the worst userbase on the internet, with the blandest cotent, right behind Tik-Toc. I don’t think it has much value, and it would make everything hell to moderate - it’s just a lot of users.

So, defederate, I say.