Clarity on stance with regards to Threads

I think the preference towards limiting in the defederation level poll was pretty clear -- we could run a larger version of that vote to make it more official?

https://www.loomio.com/p/etLGnr0z/poll-threads-net-defederation-level

@Erik Moeller

There was a formal proposal to moderate Threads at the Limit level, which passed with the following vote tally:

• 74% of votes were in support of the proposal

• 18% of votes opposed the proposal

• 7% abstained

98 of our 375 Loomio members participated in the poll.

The proposal was in the ginormous thread on the Anti-Meta-Fedi-Pact.

You can view the proposal and results here:

https://www.loomio.com/d/AZcJK6y2/discussion-support-the-anti-meta-fedi-pact/344

@Dynamic @Erik Moeller thanks both of you. If a clear decision was made, things do not have to be redone. It was just that the outcome of all the activity last summer wasn't clear to me, and maybe also it isn't to other members. Maybe a notification on the approach/policy suffices.

I say "maybe" a couple of times, because the process was quite messy and reformulated polls launched inbetween ultra long discussions. Also the urgency was about "what we may do in the future" with many non-voters, whereas now its actual decision time.

(For me personally I got to think hard on whether Limit is sufficient, or I should migrate)

@Arnold Schrijver So my read would be that the decision-making process so far has been sufficient to put the "limit" rule in practice (if it isn't already), which doesn't preclude a follow-up proposal to get wider participation, in case folks feel a need for that. Does that sound reasonable?

@Erik Moeller sounds reasonable :)

@Arnold Schrijver @Erik Moeller

Agreed. Even if the process had been less mess, it's always possible to revisit past decisions.

@Dynamic I think a reminder as an instance announcement on Mastodon would be good, once the spigot is turned on? Although, arguably the spigot has been turned on already and the time for an announcement is now. I'm worried what ita going to do to our databases, but hopefully the Mastodon team is out ahead of that?

@Ed Summers

If you think an announcement is called for, I would lean toward sooner rather than later. No opinion about whether this is needed

I also thought we’d pretty clearly landed on limit. I will say asking again may invoke some fatigue on the subject (I feel it already!) given the variety of threads we had on it here and because it’s all over masto.

It’s always possible to revisit decisions, of course, but at some point asking over and over feels a bit like trying to get a different answer from an ever-smaller list of responders as others get tired and drop out.

@Jonobie Ford

Hard agree on the fatigue. One thing I've resolved is that if we need to hash this out again, I'm not going to facilitate any discussions about it.

I double checked and we did not have a rule in place. I took the liberty of applying the limit since we hadn't done that yet (though of course if anyone feels like I've overstepped, please let me know, it's easily reversible). We currently have 3 accounts on threads.net stored on the server with a total of 25 followers across them (most of which are for the instagram founder guy). These accounts will not be affected by the limit, and searching for accounts won't be affected, but posts from threads will no longer show up in the federated timeline (limit really doesn't do much).

@Sam Whited

Thanks. I can't imagine this was overstepping, given that it's what the current policy says should happen.

@Sam Whited @Dynamic Note that @Erik Moeller's toot is also doing the rounds on the fedi now, and boosted already 281 times: https://social.coop/@eloquence/111588877096843391

@Sam Whited

What do you mean when you say "these accounts won't be affected by the limit"? Here's what I see if I try to follow Mosseri on social.coop now:

I'm assuming this means that any posts of his that get boosted also won't show up in my timeline until I follow him. If that's not the actual behavior, that would be great to know!

@Erik Moeller oh yah, I forgot about the warning. You can still show the profile and follow it though. I'm not sure how boosts are handled and I blocked the domain on my account so I can't test it. I could unblock it for a bit and then re-block it if someone wants to check.

@Sam Whited Yeah, that's the big difference to suspending. I'm around for the next hour or so, ping me on fedi if you want to do a quick boost test :-)

@Sam Whited I just saw a post from a Threads user I didn't follow, boosted into my home timeline by another user I followed. So a server-side "Limit" definitely does not stop that.

There's a bug for this, though it's not clear yet if the Mastodon folks themselves see it as a bug: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/26301

@Erik Moeller

Thanks for sharing this. Not happy to hear it.

This seems like an interesting development: https://mastodon.social/@dansup/111617703110836835

I'd really like to see us turn on authorized fetch if we haven't already (especially in light of threads); I wonder if anyone on the tech team could weigh in on whether the extra authentication load for us would cause any problems? I suspect it would be fine, but they'd have a better view into how close to capacity the system is running than I would.

EDIT: See also this thread about authorized_fetch where discussion should probably happen: https://www.loomio.com/d/Ry5oCGg4/enable-authorized_fetch

Hi folks, I really appreciate that this conversation is happening, especially because I don't have capacity right now to dive into the details myself. Thank you!

May I ask that once things have been finalized, someone create a guide, even if it's just a few bullet points, for what the policy is, and how we can find and follow people on Threads if we want to?

Good idea @J. Nathan Matias it seems like a good page to have on wiki.social.coop that summarizes and points to the relevant polls and discussion?

I'm noticing that social.coop is listed on the sites supporting the threads block: https://fedidb.org/current-events/anti-meta-fedi-pact

Since we voted to limit and not block I guess we should ask for it to be removed?

@Ed Summers

I agree that we shouldn't be on that list. I wonder how we got there.

Is there a list of criteria that would cause us to suspend rather than limit? I would imagine that it may become necessary to suspend, but having clear guidelines around that would be nice.

@Jay

I haven't been involved in community working group (CWG) moderation activities personally, but my understanding is that our current culture is to err on the side of trusting moderator judgment rather than trying to formulate one-size-fits-all rules.

The proposal that was approved stated that the CWG would moderate Threads at the limit level and would otherwise treat with the same moderation approach as they would with other instances. So I would be very surprised if there is an enumerated list of criteria.

Folks, the question is back, the answer is simpler, right?

@Arnold Schrijver We're planning to hold a new vote tomorrow! https://doc.anagora.org/against-meta

We're working on a vote now! There was lots of discussion over in the Fediverse proper and on Matrix.

We are drafting the vote with the community in the link Evan shared, https://doc.anagora.org/against-meta.

By default I will create a 'decision' in this thread unless people prefer starting a new thread just about the January 2025 events.

@Shauna Gordon-McKeon Since the Limit was applied we likely prevented abuse.
There are ~6k accounts our server knows about (discovered via posts boosted to our federated timeline). Unfortunately Mastodon doesn't have a great way to browse/filter these ~300k posts, even as a mod.

@Django +1 to that.

@Shauna Gordon-McKeon as Django says; no reports, which is why I thought no action was imminently needed. But people reported a fear that Social.coop was ceasing to feel like a safe space because of our lack of further action so I thought it better to ask the community.

I'll also add: in addition to wanting to err on the side of empowering members, I also want to err on the side of keeping lines of communication open. I understand the important symbolic meaning of de-federating as a sign of disagreement with Threads policy but I would rather make a symbolic gesture that keeps lines of communication to people on Threads open. We have a budget; we could donate to the communities impacted by Threads policy decisions.

@Flancian I'm surprised by this stance (in a good way). I figured you'd disagree, since the points you raised when the limit was proposed haven't changed as far as I can tell. Yay for talking I suppose :p