Background

Meta’s Threads platform has joined the fediverse a few months ago. In the absence of an explicit federation policy, FediScience has been treating Threads like any other instance and not taken pre-emptive measures (like e.g. domain block) against it.

However, the FediScience board is aware of the contentious nature of Threads presence and had set up a working group to discuss the issue and propose a way forward.

This proposal has now been accepted for implementation by the board and is described below.

Proposal

In future, FediScience’s Mastodon instance will allow federation with Threads.net (from Instagram/Meta) on an opt-in basis, only. This means that FediScience will not block Threads on a server level, but rather implement an automatic user-level block of Threads for each existing and new user of FediScience. Users who want to follow accounts from Threads will then be able to remove this block individually in their Mastodon profiles. Accounts who already interact with Threads will not be affected.

In addition, admins will monitor both the amount of traffic and moderation needs due to Threads, in order to evaluate whether a complete server-wide limitation or suspension of Threads will become necessary at a later date. Such a change of policy (if necessary) would, of course, be discussed with FediScience membership well in advance (unless there is an immediate need to act).

Reasoning

There are good arguments for and against federation with Threads. Some of the arguments from the discussion are listed here:

pros:

• We don’t really pre-emptively block any other servers.
• It would be positive to talk to a larger audience (i.e. get our content on Threads); some people may have left FediScience for this reason.
• Some users want to interact with users who may (only) be on Threads.
• Outreach may be important for some organizations accounts on FediScience.

cons:

• Meta is huge and there is a danger of it dominating the Fediverse.
• It is fair to assume that Meta is not acting in good faith, or in any case, may change their policies at any second.
• Spam or harassment may become a problem (there is very little moderation on Threads).
• Not limiting Threads in any way may make (some) users of FediScience very exposed to harmful / targeted action.
• Meta can harvest more data through federation (including interactions like favorites) and it allows them to claim they have a “legitimate interest” to collect it.

Therefore, the Threads working group has suggested to the board that we don’t (immediately) ban Threads on a server wide level, but rather protect our users by implementing a user-level block for each FediScience user. This, however, enables users who want to interact with Threads to lift the block on their own.

The board has accepted the proposed solution and will implement it after giving notice to the FediScience account holders.

Implementation

The solution will be implemented on Saturday the 26th of June 2024. All accounts of fediscience.org who, as of that date, do NOT yet follow a threads.net account will be set to “block” Threads in their user profiles. Accounts who already interact with Threads will not be affected. In addition, newly signed-up accounts will automatically be set to block Threads as well. Blocks can be lifted (and reinstated) by users on their own at any time.

For questions or problems after the implementation, please contact https://fediscience.org/@admin