Clarity on stance with regards to Threads

I am morally opposed to what Meta has been saying publicly, and I expect nothing but bad things from them, but I haven't yet seen evidence of us needing to suspend Threads, while there is evidence of members trying to follow people on Threads. From discussion on social.coop Matrix:

the facts from a moderation and admin PoV seem to be that 1. moderation load so far is effectively zero and 2. likely more than 100 people here would see some of the people they follow disappear if we suspend.

I'm not following any accounts (whether person, public figure or brand) on threads, so I am not personally impacted by a suspend.

To me the most compelling reason to suspend is as @Flancian stated.

as one of the few cooperative instances of the Fediverse, I believe this actually sends a stronger message than if some mod happens to take the decision unilaterally based on personal opinions

I prefer the current policy of limiting. I use our federation with threads to follow specific people who aren't the problematic folks that we're worried about, and I hope to follow friends leaving X.

Edit: I reviewed the defederation policy. My preference stands, but I can't deny that the policy is in place and we haven't carved out an exception for massive networks with many different types of users. Changing my vote.

My vote is to defederate from Threads. I don't see a value in being federated with a large commercial platform whose principles are so different from ours. The differences are clearly illustrated by the recent changes in Meta's hateful content policies.

We waited and saw; now let's suspend and be done with it.

Having publicly opposed this in the previous round, I'll publicly support it this time around -- Meta is crossing into "actively supporting hate speech" territory at this point.

I personally am endangered by their lack of moderation and aggression towards trans people

Threads is not a friend to the Fediverse and no exceptions to our policies about federation should be compromised.

I think that Meta's moderation policies are awful. That being said, as a principal I believe in open social networking. I don't think that federation is the same as an endorsement. I think users should be able to make their own decisions on whether they wish to engage with the threads platform or not.

I have seen many codes of conduct and guidelines for moderation, but I have never before seen one that specifically listed forms of abuse as approved. This, combined with Zuckerberg's speech in which he talks of changing social standards and aligns Meta with Donald Trump, sends a message: conscious malice, against women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants. We must resist this and defend vulnerable people by every ethical means we can find.

I think it is worth recognizing that many workers at Meta are aghast at this new policy, as are many users of Meta. Our quarrel is not with them, and we should look for ways to support them. For now, we should start by defending the integrity of the Fediverse.

Given the later counter-proposal, I'm confused about this particular vote request.

If we aren't principled about not tolerating intolerance, then who are we as a collective?

I thought I would follow threads stuff more, and haven't done so. Given that and the fact that I strongly disagree with their moderation policy and how antithetical it is to our rules, it seems worth going ahead and blocking. I originally was for suspend.

Hate speech significantly harms communities. It is particularly toxic to growing a vibrant discourse and diverse participation. People who enjoy harming others with hate speech have many platforms where they can attack others while sharing in their exploits with a large number of like-minded haters. In many places (including in the USA where I live), haters occupy many of the dominant power positions in society. They need no amplification, they get far too much already. We would be doing our community, and the communities with which we overlap, a grave disservice by investing in the success of hate networks via federation.

People who wish to participate in Threads can make an account on Threads, right? I think it is important for Social.Coop to resist the lurch to the right in corporate social media, and for Mastodon instances to offer a clear alternative.

platform endorses hateful conduct

I agree with the author of the invert proposal that the vote should be whether we grant an exception or not rather than whether we should block threads or not, thus voting on the other one and abstaining from this one

Meta has publicly embraced a bigoted policy under a pretense of "free speech." In the end, does social.coop support that decision with an open-door policy towards Meta, or does it close the door? I vote we suspend/block.

As a queer person, I don’t think this new policy from Meta represents a materially different approach to content moderation as actually practiced by Meta. Meta has been anti-queer, anti-sex-worker, and anti-anti-capitalist in its content moderation for years. As such, I’d rather be able to monitor activity of Threads being reposted to Mastodon. I also follow none and see very few Threads accounts so far. But, I don’t care enough to vote against or block the proposal.

I really hope I just voted to defederate from Facebook....

I still find LIMIT the right approach, for reasons given the last time around: there are useful accounts there, and LIMIT protects people from random drive-by hate speech.

That said, I would be swayed if those who take on moderation duties believe it will substantially change their moderation burden.

Threads' approach to federation makes this a different case than other fediverse servers. As it stands now, our members can follow those on Threads who bring value to their feeds, but threads users have no ability to interact back. This is a meaningful difference that I think justifies continuing to keep Threads at LIMIT since there's no opportunity for Threads users to abuse our members, or even for our members to incidentally experience messages of hate without explicitly choosing to follow someone posting them.

Meta are codifying acceptance of hate and bigotry.

nothing needs to be said here. we're against the fascist technostate or we're not.

Though I previously supported federation with Threads, I no longer see any up side to federation with Meta.

For me at least, the goal of Threads federation was to make the fediverse more accessible to those who might not have otherwise considered it. While there is still much work to be done in terms of helping the less fedi-tech savvy escape the bad place(s), I believe our responsibility is first to our community.

I would like to see evidence from the Community Working Group about whether threads.net is an actual source of problem behaviour that is reaching the social.coop server. If there's an actual problem that passes the "3 strikes rule" then I can see that Meta's new policy makes suspension very probable. On the other hand if "limit" is doing its job, and social.coop users only follow non-abusive posters on Threads, then hateful content should not be polluting our server and the status quo could continue

I am morally opposed to what Meta has been saying publicly, and I expect nothing but bad things from them, but I haven't yet seen evidence of us needing to suspend Threads, while there is evidence of members trying to follow people on Threads. From discussion on social.coop Matrix:

the facts from a moderation and admin PoV seem to be that 1. moderation load so far is effectively zero and 2. likely more than 100 people here would see some of the people they follow disappear if we suspend.

I originally decided to abstain from this vote because I wanted to see our Community Working Group be given an opportunity to help guide the coop in making this decision. But in the end it seemed like now was the time to vote my conscience.

Yes.

Block them.

They've changed the terms, so we block until they change back.

According to our bylaws, we should not federate with any instance that spreads hate, discrimination and misinformation.

Letting it continue because it has a huge number of users will only make it worst (bully before, bullier now).

I thought we should have blocked Threads from the start.

I think it's a bit confusing seeing two proposals about this... but I'm going to vote in the later proposal, so I'm abstaining here.

I am torn, and I value the discussions I've had with people on this topic, and look forward to future ones! On the one hand, I see: many people on our server are getting value from being able to follow Threads users. Weighing in the other direction is any value Meta/Threads may be getting from us. It is not clear to me that they are benefitting. I think their policy is horrible, and I have personally blocked them. But I think people are more likely to move from Threads to the Fediverse if the Fediverse is a thing available to them. We should definitely suspend if Threads becomes a moderator burden.

The purpose of our coop is the motive for applying our policy to Threads.net.

I do not support the argument that because an instance is popular it should be excused from this community's hate speech policy.

It is uncertain if the burden caused to members who follow people on Threads justifies the blocking. I disagree with Meta's policies and would love to see people leaving. But if we isolate the users there (just because they don't know better), it feels like we (as a community) are not helping with the larger picture. If this doesn't matter and all we want is to protect our users from possible bad content that escapes our moderation, it seems that we should have blocked it long ago, right?

Meta is an irresponsible organization and cannot be trusted. Defederate.

Confusingly, there are two proposals in this thread. I'm abstaining because I think the framing of both of these proposals matter. In this proposal, the focus is on an outcome, and in the other proposal it's about whether or not an existing policy is being followed (which, it is claimed, would support a particular outcome already).

This abstention is primarily seeking clarity and further discussion.

Social.coop should be maintained as a safe place where people.of all kinds can interact without the stress of witnessing hate speech or the fear of experiencing hate speech.

if this proposal passes, we request the Community Working Group to maintain the existing "Limit" status, instead of applying the "Suspend" action called for by the Federation abuse policy.

IMO this wording is much more confusing than the original, but regardless my vote still stands: I wish for threads to be blocked, hence I think I’m supposed to disagree?

Edited to a block given the author voted to block, and the ambiguity. My block vote on this proposal does NOT apply to the original.

An instance's scale should not be a factor in the application of our safety standards.

Edit: After looking at the Federation abuse policy, it's pretty clear that the criteria for suspension includes:

"The site is the origin of a pattern of hate speech, and lacks policies or fails to enforce policies to deal with hate speech, or actively encourages it."

While I still believe that the scale of Meta services shows the limits of the policy, the policy is clear, and I can't think how to frame an exception that makes sense. Changed my vote.