Meta is actively censoring their criticism https://social.coop/@eb/113805990453206360 // https://boehs.org/node/meta-censorship . They can't even do free speech right.

Really I've always been opposed to federating with Threads/Meta.

Solidarity with our trans and immigrant members, and everyone else who will be harmed by Meta's policies.

Boot to the head!

The purpose of federating with a server or service is sharing communications with a trusted source. Explicitly stating that you are going to stop moderating to protect vulnerable people is a breach of trust. So we don't truck with these people.

Curious if we've had reported hate speech or otherwise rule-violating speech from threads.net? Or if this is in response to change in policy. If we have had any reports I would change my vote (and I am still open to changing my vote without reports, but in general I default to wanting members to be allowed to make their own choices)

Let's go!

Federation with threads had no value to me even before they approved of attacking vulnerable people

Really no need to continue federating with corporate social media, especially one by the likes of Meta.

Even after seeing Zuckerberg speak and reading some of the details around Meta's changes in policy from this month, I was personally leaning to vote not to suspend for the following reasons:

• Our current policy, limit, has been working well at least as measured by the complete lack of moderation load linked to Threads.net and the fact that users have been following and reading each other peacefully.

• Social.coop and Threads.net have been federating more than 500 follow links, which would be severed by our changing our policy to suspend.

• My personal ethical and political convictions lead me to believe that it might be better for the Fediverse and wider society if we did not have to break federation with instances run by corporations such as Meta, partly because of the ethical impact of isolating hundreds of millions of humans from exposure to occasionally better-run instances ;)

After discussing with the community and reading diverse opinions, though, I have decided to Agree with this motion. This mainly because of the nth order effects of agreeing with a degradation in social contracts without penalization; and the direct emotional impact on community members, even prior to any moderation events being necessary, derived from the reduction in psychological safety in the Fediverse enacted by Meta for apparently purely profit-seeking intents.

I originally voted to federate with threads, but after recent news, I can't think about Meta without disgust.

The users on Threads are not necessarily a threat, many of them are very cool. My feed is full of LGBT people. They are potentially able to join us, and would be more likely to see our server if messages can still flow.

My position remains that the minor convenience of keeping up with friends on threads through this interface, or even the more major problem of losing members of the community who want to be able to interact with threads, still pales in comparison to the major harms caused by continuing to federate with an organization that has, even before this current policy change, had a history of being accepting of hate speech, and even being complicit in genocide. We shouldn't give special consideration to any part of the network just because it's "too big to fail", and we especially shouldn't give special consideration to capitalist enterprises that stand in opposition to our cooperative values. If threads were just another Mastodon instance we would have blocked them long ago.

I personally think Limit remains the appropriate posture. Although Meta's policies have recently worsened, they have always been bad, and we made the decision to Limit with that in mind.

Agree – Meta's policies are overwhelming harmful to marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ+ community. They have no place in the fediverse.

While I generally keep as far away from Meta stuff as possible, my ideal version of the fediverse is analogous to an RSS reader which I would like to fill with stuff from as wide variety of sources. My reader does not block Substack newsletters despite the company being both annoying and evil.

But I appreciate that I am often a minority view with nuanced thoughts which annoy other people and aren't very practical or productive, so I'm happy to abstain. I won't be too sad if social.coop restricts what comes into it (I think I current follow one account) - I'll just figure out a way to follow those people that doesn't involve actually getting a fucking Threads account.

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?

The deciding factor for me is that keeping Threads limited would require subverting our own rules. If we believe in our rules as written, then this is the right move. Threads cannot be "too big to defederate".

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.

I feel it's a point of principle, that we collectively should have nothing to do with Meta and show that where we can.

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.

Meta's new content moderation policy is antiqueer also meta is antidemocracy and its capitalist and data-harvesting which is cringe

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.

This is a complex decision and it's hard for me to take a clear stand here.

One of the things I checked when joining social.coop was its stance in regards to Threads. I liked the (to me) sensible solution of limiting vs the radical separation of suspending, because:

• I think the world needs more bridges and less walls. I know, too abstract and not very useful argument per se. Also, the paradox of the tolerance with the intolerant, etc. But bear with me.

• I think the "bridge" can be positive. It gives people the possibility of accessing what's good in Threads without many of the bad (ads, algorithm, etc.). To me, this would be a good argument in favour of joining Mastodon. You don't miss out: you just join in better conditions.

• It gives us more freedom as users: to follow accounts there, to not follow them, or even to block that domain entirely. It puts "active" or pre-emptive moderation in the hands of each person, where I think it should be.

• There hasn't been any need to moderate so far, so this solution seems to be working quite well, and I don't think the policy change in Threads will change that.

• And if I'm wrong and it comes to that, we still have the possibility, as per our Federation Abuse Policy, of applying the Three Strikes Rule and suspend Threads. But on the basis of actual need of moderation, and not as a pre-emptive, emotional or value-based block.

This issue was a blocker for me, to the point I chose this instance based on that. And I have now even considered switching again to another instance.

However, I also appreciate many of the arguments that have been shared in favour of suspending, some of them being:

• Meta is very bad and getting worse. Which, well, I totally agree with. And I can also relate to the urge of burning the bridge and cutting all ties with them for good. And I say for good because I'm sure they won't become better.

• The Mastodon Server Covenant encourages active moderation, cutting ties with badly moderated instances. While I don't exactly agree that Threads is just like any other Mastodon instance as others have suggested, if we want to follow that approach it makes sense to treat it as one.

• It's quite clear to me that my interactions with someone in Threads (e.g. a boost) wouldn't be welcome in Mastodon anyway, and would be "contaminating" the place for others, or leaking data from here to Threads. I don't want to be that person.

• I didn't even get to follow anyone meaningful in Threads yet, so I can't say I'm losing but a possibility.

• And most importantly to me, people here don't seem to see social.coop as a safe space anymore if Threads is only limited.

So while I wanted to vote "Disagree", I'm voting "Agree" if only for that very last point.

I prefer people to feel safe, and I can take the relatively small burden of seeing my possibilities limited here in favour of the common good, or look for other options elsewhere. And as a bonus, I get to enjoy the great gut feeling of saying "FRACK YOU, META".

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.

the current policy is in place for a reason, and I expect threads to become toxic like Twitter under its current direction

I disagree with this proposal, which means I think we should take action and suspend Threads as stated in the vote above.

FWIW I think running two polls is fine; I personally think the previous one's block-means-status-quo framing is maybe clearer on average but I am interested in seeing how the community responds to both framings.

One thing that this proposal could incorporate is the impact on the community if we accept it (which would be to sever follow links).

Threads should not get a special treatment because of the size. If we are blocking instances that allow hate speech, and Threads meet that description, we block them without a vote (unless there's an unforeseen nuance, I have no idea what that can be).

I won't leave the coop over this, but it seems like the process is an attempt at circumventing the previous vote (which is still ongoing, at this time).

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 appreciate the point being made here and deeply oppose the logic that their size justifies accommodation. If anything, their size should make us more concerned by their policies, rather than more willing to overlook them.

The purpose of federating with a server or service is sharing communications with a trusted source. Explicitly stating that you are going to stop moderating to protect vulnerable people is a breach of trust. So we don't truck with these people.

Not necessarily a Block for this, but it would make me question why we are tolerating intolerant and dangerous content policies in the name of "being a good neighbor" or whatever that might look like. It is not a good idea to federate to Threads given Meta's new content policy, full stop. If you want to engage in that level of "tolerance", go create an account on Threads.

Their policy changes leave no ethical wiggle room. They aren't trying to do good and doing it poorly, they are doing badly, happy about it, and explicitly making that bad behavior their policy going forward. Continuing to federate with them says we're "willing to see if they REALLY MEAN IT when they say they're going to allow hate speech". This is ridiculous. They've proven themselves. Enough is enough.

Given that I voted "Agree" on the other proposal, I would obviously vote "Disagree" on this one, however, I have instead chose to choose "Block". Having two competing proposals, that both do the same thing as far as I can tell but with agree/abstain switched is extremely confusing. While I generally agree that we should have discussed this in a place that all social.coop members can actually read about it before creating the proposal, I don't think we're well served by having two ongoing votes.

Voted for defederation in the other thread with explanation, so disagreeing here.

Same reason as explained in the previous proposal.

Nothing prevents people who enjoy or value Threads from having an account on Threads. (Until yesterday I had an account on FB. I still have one on Instagram, though I will get off as soon as I convince my coworkers to switch to Pixelfed.) I think defederation is an important response by Social.Coop to a rightward shift in social media.

Absolutely not.

Elaboration: this would constitute adopting an ongoing perpetual elevated moderation task load.

I see this as equivalent to a vote to remain in a structure when a neighboring structure is perpetually on fire, and the proposed solution would be to have people posted for the foreseeable future, hosing down the sides of our own building to prevent the spread of fire.

This is, in essence, what a "continue to limit and moderate" plan of inaction would entail.

If I understand the paired proposal, this is clear for me to vote on both, and I appreciate these together as a clearer statement of what the opposing outcomes should be (suspend OR exception). Potential for confusion or split decision with two separate proposals, but if there's not clarity between these two in outcome they can be combined. I vote for suspend, against exception.

"poor moderation" would be one thing; active endorsement of hateful conduct is another

(Reason as per my comment on the other proposal.)

Threads shouldn't be treated differently than any other instance.

I see the theory in the argument here, but in the end, this proposal just clouds the issue. Also, I'm for suspend.

I was also pretty confused by the fact that we have two dueling proposals on the same topic but I think I'm with Calix on this one. It's pretty weird that we've given Meta a free pass on its bad behavior. The way this proposal is written feels kind of confusing given the situation we're in, but I think that might be more representative of the fact that it's kind of backwards we're still debating this. Only difference between Meta today and last month is now they're saying the quiet part loud

I stand firmly with our policy and do not believe we should be making exceptions for Meta.

I don't support Meta or any connection to their products including even limited federation. Their actions speak loudly and any connection provides their actions support in my vivew.

Why would we grant them an exception?

As it stands now, I'm able to follow public figures and friends on Threads, which is of value to me, but Threads users cannot interact with our members, so they don't have access to direct hate at any of them. Our members also will not incidentally see messages of hate from Threads unless they explicitly follow someone posting them. This seems like a tolerable state of affairs to me.

(If Threads introduced full federation, I think this discussion should be had again.)

I am not up to speed on the social.coop Threads history. I detest Meta for the reasons outlined above, but still have Meta accounts for staying in touch with friends/family (though not Threads). I have interacted little with Threads via social.coop so I don't see their content. This seems like a matter of calling a spade a spade, and if Threads was just another ActivityPub server with the same moderation policy, we'd give them the boot, so... doesn't seem right to make an exception for them?

At one point I would have agreed. But at this point Meta is pretty clearly becoming the metaphorical Nazi bar. And to be honest, I don't believe I've yet interacted with a single person on Threads yet. So I personally no longer think it's worth signaling that Threads is worth exempting.

The only justification for making an exception is related specifically to the unique attribute of Meta/Threads: its large size and resulting network effect. That is, they are the only players capable of being a candidate for exception. So this proposal is already a sign of preferential treatment for corporate social media.

So, it really isn't worthwhile being complicit in the negative externalities they generate in order to quench the desire to interact with a few valuable accounts.

The Federation Abuse Policy seems well suited to handle this situation. No exception needed

We shouldn't let billionaires bully us into bending our rules.

I had originally abstained 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 I decided to simply vote my conscience.

I don't have time to get my head back around this whole discussion, with apologies. Generally the question seems too complex for this very specific framing. Out there in the world, there is actual hate speech, and there is manipulation of the concept to shut down what I would consider necessary free speech against the powers that be. Also the impact of corporate use of private data for ads and AI. Also a confusing (to me) set of technical and non-technical options we can use.

Block them.

We're in uncharted waters. While I agree that Threads, as an organization, is behaving deplorably it's too early to tell how that will translate into whatever interactions we'll have with its members. Since I'd like the Fediverse to serve as a force for change in the world -- not just a refuge from it -- I prefer not to shut down channels of communication preemptively.

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

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

Also, it is a matter of humans and political stance.

"An instance has a large number of users" isn't a valid reason to grant an exception, IMO, especially a known bad actor with a long history of abuse like Meta. As I said in the poll to defederate I thought we should have defederated from Threads from the start.

changed my vote from block to disagree (to better reflect my intent)

As I understand this proposal, it should be left to the Community Working Group to make a final decision on whether "Threads" is the "origin of a pattern of hate speech". It looks as though voters in the previous proposal mostly think it is.

No exceptions!

I'll be sad to disconnect from the people I follow on Threads, but I just don't think sheer size should exempt Threads from our federation policy.

I see Calix's point, and while having two proposals on the same question could be confusing, it looks like the votes trend in the same direction, so we're not that confused. It's worth the reminder that democratic process is not simply a solved problem.

No, I do not think exceptions should be made to our policies to accommodate abuse instances.

I don't understand what this proposal is meant to do. But I do agree in Suspending Threads.

I appreciate this reframing, and I support it, especially on a time-limited basis for future reconsideration. Threads has always been problematic, but for some users the ability to connect with people there makes fully leaning into the fediverse more possible. Limit remains the appropriate posture.

I really appreciate the way you framed this poll. I also appreciate that you linked to https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Federation_abuse_policy My reading of that policy is that we do not need an exemption to keep Threads at Limit status - the policy says "Action may be taken" and "If it is an obvious candidate for silencing or suspending under the below criteria, Community Moderation Team may do so" (I agree Meta meets the criteria) I trust that our Mods will suspend as needed for mod burden

It does not seem like there is a current issue with Threads from how this proposal is written. Instead it reads as a political disagreement with a Threads policy that will likely result in an issue. I would rather wait until CWG has an operational issue rather then suspend pre-emptively.

Meta's stance on hate speech and moderation is unacceptable.

Meta's new content moderation policy is antiqueer also meta is antidemocracy and its capitalist and data-harvesting which is cringe

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

I'm new here, and don't feel confident in my reasoning. I support the outcome (don't apply the policy to Meta, because realism). However, I don't think ad-hoc directives to ignore policy are a great way to do that. Am I being naive to suggest that the policy should contain the exemption, so that it's clear what the policy is? How does someone understand from the policy that it doesn't apply to Meta without reading the history of deliberation about the policy?

Voting on this proposal requires previous clarity about whether keeping Threads "limited" would be an exception to our Federation Abuse Polity. After reading our policy, that isn't completely clear to me, so I abstained in this one.

I am no longer comfortable with threads development. If there is a moment to defederate, it is now.

I don't want to privilege number of users over ethical baselines. A smaller universe with better actors.

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?

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.

Size alone isn't justification for exceptions.

I was initially happy to see how Meta behaved in relation to federation of Threads, and give them an opportunity to demonstrate they were acting in good faith. The recent announcement from Meta suggests to me that they are actually quite content for hate speech to thrive on their platform, which has pushed me towards 'Suspend'.

I don't think we should have a special exemption for Threads. If there is a problem with the output of our Federation abuse policy (not sure there is) then we should revise that instead.