Clarity on stance with regards to Threads

I think I may have failed at loomio? this maybe looks like a reply to Nathan? sorry if I am adding to the confusion.

To expand on my previous comment: Our Federation Abuse Policy seems to be framed in a passive or reactive moderation: moderate only if needed. It even has a Three Strikes Rule, and I understand that the criteria for suspending that are being quoted in this proposal only apply AFTER those three strikes. It's like a fairly prudent vote of confidence: it takes just three bad apples among thousands to toss the basket.

What we are proposing here is blocking pre-emptively, with literally no "strikes" or ocurrences of "problem behaviour" towards our instance.

So, as I'm new here and I may be misunderstanding our policy, my question would be: Are we usually actively checking other instances' moderation criteria and suspending them preemptively?

• If we are not, suspending Threads would be the exception and not the other way around. We would be suspending it just because it's big, bad and well known.

• If we indeed are, then I can accept the framing of this proposal, but then our Federation Abuse Policy should make it more clear that we are using active moderation in that sense, and that the Three Strikes Rule doesn't apply as a pre-requisite.

There's no "tricky" or "thin line" involved here at all. Meta is a proven human rights violator and complicit in genocide. There is zero reason to federate with this disgusting entity.

Is there a reason there now appears to be two competing proposals regarding Threads: one to defederate, and one to grant an exception?

@Tim If I understand correctly, the author wanted a reverse block... meaning they would leave the coop if Threads was NOT suspended.

@django @gasperak I've replied elsewhere in this thread, but for clarity: I think framing this decision as "should we defederate from Threads" incorrectly means that members can vote for a radical change (granting an unprecedented exception to our Federation abuse policy) by using the "block" vote, and incorrectly places the burden of democratic cheerleading onto folks wishing to maintain our existing policy.

I raised these concerns in the "social.coop open chatroom" matrix chat before either proposal was made, and attempted to participate in a co-drafting effort to synthesise approaches, but the proposer of the other proposal – feeling under pressure due to safety concerns raised – moved ahead with that framing.

And, I believe it's less bad for democracy to have these two competing, inverted, proposals than to have an incorrect framing, or to wait to see what happens with the other proposal before reframing it.

@Calix I appreciate the response, but I’m sorry to say that this doesn’t clarify things for me. In fact, I’m now even more confused. I understand the concern you have about framing, and I agree that the framing of the proposal(s) ought to be clear. It isn’t, currently. At least not to me.

I'm happy to hear from people who see value in federation with Threads. I see none, and their large user base doesn't seem like a reason, like it's more about buying access than anything related to moderation policy. I'm a bit puzzled about the apparently redundant proposal so I'm trying to vote consistently with the previous one.

@Paul Southworth pwssocial.coop I follow people on threads, the value to me is being able to interact with them without having to create a Threads account (which I have no interest in doing). The actual moderator burden of federating with Threads on a limited basis is apparently zero - I would be interested in hearing an articulation of the value of defederating that does not rely solely on 'behaving in line with our principles' (I like principles! I am just curious if there's any concrete benefit to defederating)

I would like more discussion before voting, at least on a couple of things.

First, if the bad stuff from Threads never gets to us under limited federation (is that true?), then I think it's ambiguous whether our Federated Abuse Policy mandates suspension, since the criteria for suspension all begin with "The site is the origin of" bad stuff. A case could be made that, from our perspective, it is not the origin of bad stuff, for us, since we never see the bad stuff. A case could be made for the other interpretation too, though, so it merits discussion.

Second, if the point is to make a political statement, or to have some political effect, or to deny Threads some benefit that they get from federation, then I am certainly open to that, but I would just like more discussion about what we want to accomplish and what is the best way to do that.

At the moment, I think I'll abstain because I need to discuss* (or read more), to choose the disadvantages (between limiting or suspending)(I can see the advantages of both positions). It's a delicate balance between acting quickly and taking the time to weigh up our thoughts.

Could this decision be limited in time and reversible (in case Meta miraculously changes)?

Thank you @Flancian and @Calix for taking the time to write the proposals, so that we can take a stand on them.

@MarieVC (social.coop/MarieVC) 

Could this decision be limited in time and reversible

reversibility is the default, just open another poll when if ever the time comes

@Evan Boehs that is true, but (copying from Mastodon thread about this):

IIUC we should be able to reverse this in the sense of going back to e.g. limit at any time if we vote for that (and I hope we will some day). But:

> Suspending a server will remove all existing follow relationships between local accounts and accounts on the suspended server. They will not be restored in case the remote server is un-suspended later.

What we can do to work around this last sad detail is to "back up" all follow relationships before suspending -- as in, literally get a list of all the people who were following someone in Threads, and the other way around. Then we could give this to affected people and, if we ever unsuspend, we could presumably re-add these.

I voted for the exception on the Abuse policy for the following reasons. In these times of polarisation, we need to keep the bridges open and enable people to communicate with each other. The Fediverse and in particular Social.coop has carefully crafted its moderation and governance policies. In the previous vote about federating with Threads (in 2023), the community adopted the Limit option, which allows our community to engage with individual Threads users of their choice. Each one of us can choose to block and/or to engage or not with those people. It hasn't implied any moderation burden as we can learn from the admin team. In this case I think it is the appropriate way to go forward to keep our bridges open, or at least allow individual members to communicate and be followed if they want. All this I say while being absolutely critical of these autocratic billionaires and their profit maximising platforms, and for the last 25 years I have been working towards a community driven cooperative-commons ecosystem, working for social justice. But at the same time I realise the importance of keeping our communication options open, build bridges where possible instead of isolating ourselves.

I have no idea where to comment on this massive pile of proposals, votes, comments, etc, so I'll just post here and hope someone sees it.

As someone who voted against the proposal that just passed (moving Threads from limit to suspend) I have some preferences about how this could be carried out that I hope would be taken into account. In particular, I would like at least a week's notice, ideally more, before the actual suspend happens so I have time to contact the people I'm connected with to warn them and exchange other contact info. I would also ideally like a list from the server admins of who specifically I'm going to lose contact with, again so I can make the choice to contact them.

@Shauna Gordon-McKeon thank you for commenting! Your comment influenced the implementation plan that the CWG and the TWG decided on, which is now ongoing: there is an announcement up in the instance now giving people a heads up that this will happen. After suspension, you will be able to download a list of the people who you lost contact with because of the suspension (sorry about that).

@wouter@freeknowledge.eu thank you for commenting as well! I agree that keeping bridges up makes sense by default, if nothing else because building bridges is so much harder than bringing them down. Because of this, and the fact that we weren't getting reports about Threads.net accounts, originally I was individually going to vote for keeping the limit. What swayed me in the end, FWIW, were the reports from community members saying they were feeling Social.coop was degrading as a safe space due to our lack of further action after the degradation of terms announced by Threads.net. I hope we will be able to eventually rebuild what we're tearing down in a way that is both conducive to constructive dialogue with different parts of the Fediverse and protective of the most exposed subcommunities within Social.coop.

@Flancian "After suspension, you will be able to download a list of the people who you lost contact with because of the suspension (sorry about that)."

Can we get access to this list before the suspension? It's much more useful while we're still connected with people! The plan right now seems like "Here's a list of people you can no longer talk to, have fun trying to talk to them to figure out an alternative way to talk to them"

EDIT: I think mastodon only generates the lists after suspend, is it possible to do a multi-step process where we suspend, generate the lists, then briefly unsuspend so people can reach out to their contacts who they're losing access to? Obviously the ideal would be for mastodon to improve/change this functionality but getting changes pushed to mastodon is a whole other mess

Can we maybe be given more time than a week to vote on these proposals? I'm on here once a week at best...

I am happy to see that we've codified a policy from community concerns so that we can apply our policies more objectively. This is tremendous progress from where we were when Threads first came out.

But I am also really sad about the decision to suspend, both because of the state of the world today, and also because isolationism doesn't change minds.