Abandoned this profile due to lemmy.world’s federation with Threads. I have moved onto feddit.de as they are the only instance I could find defederated from Threads, hexbear, and lemmygrad.
I’m happy with my new home.
No, that’s a half-measure at best… It only blocks Threads posts from showing up in your feed. It does not block Threads users comments from showing up on federated instances, even if the individual user personally blocks them.
I am legitimately fearful for LGBTQ+ users, as their community members have already been harrased on Threads by the far-right.
Edit: Since so many people are misinformed: No, blocking Threads on an individual basis is not a solution. This only blocks posts from Threads showing up in your feed. It does not block Threads users’ comments from spreading hate and extremism throughout federated instances, and lemmy users will still be subject to potential harassment from Threads users. (See the harassment of the LGBTQ+ community on Threads for examples…)
Here’s a comment of mine that states my argument against federating with Threads.
Also, I was not trying to debate the issue here. I was looking for recommendations for alternative instances… I’d appreciate anyone actually responding to my comment.
Original comment: Anybody have recommendations on a decent instance that won’t be federating with Threads? Maybe one that allows community creation but isn’t full of tankies?
I’m jumping ship from .world if they go through with federating with Threads. Such a shame to see the effort put into building this great instance come undone.
This place decided to disregard what the majority of their users want and turn the neighborhood to shit way faster than reddit. I thought we’d at least have a couple years before instance admins started selling out to such a shitty company that’s going to make the fediverse a less safe place for their users.
Meta will also do anything they can to EEE and I’m not convinced the fediverse is as invulnerable to such exploitation as some users seem to be.
There’s no hypocrisy; you’re just stating a false equivalence. Not to mention totally ignoring the entire argument about radicalization on threads/inability to moderate it on lemmy.
And you keep stating that my points establishing character in regard to Meta/Threads are irrelevant, but you aren’t making a good argument as to why. You fixate on that as a strawman argument while ignoring my point that lack of moderation on threads will negatively affect fediverse communities with toxic/extremist content.
You’re arguing like a petulant middle schooler with ad hominem and strawman tactics. Get back to me if you can speak like a grown-up. Otherwise I’m not going to engage with you. (Before you “no u” me with another false equivalence, my remarks were not on the same personal attack level.)
Okay but, we all know that already. This discussion is about federating with Lemmy/Fedi.
Tell that to the astroturfers simping for FB/Threads…
And do you understand how you reinforce an argument with supporting evidence? I wanted to establish factual information supporting a clear history of the company’s bad practices. That was/is relevant to consideration of federating with a platform.
In fact, lemmy.world has already defederated with instances due to failure to moderate far-right extremism. So why would they federate with Threads when far-right extremism is already a systemic issue and they have admitted lemmy lacks the necessary moderation tools to manage Threads federation?
It seems obvious to me that is a bad idea and it would cultivate a more toxic user experience with more recruitment for radicalism/extremism.
The examples I listed were to demonstrate the fact that meta/FB is a bad actor, not that all are applicable to lemmy.
Also, the lemmy.world team admitted that lemmy lacks the moderation tools required for federation with threads.
This doesn’t pair well with the extremist content popular and promoted on threads. And I’m tired of hearing about the false solution people keep pretending exists in the form of personally blocking instances.
That may solve me not seeing the content, but what about my fellow users? What about people browsing without a profile/not signed in?
I care about more than myself. I care about the health of fellow human beings on this site, and I don’t want Threads to increase the amount of radicalization and extremism on this site. I don’t want more people to fall victim to radicalization. I have lost family to qanon/maga cults and I think we need to protect the integrity of the fediverse.
When players like threads/meta try to join in, I believe it is the responsibility of admins of the large instances to protect their users and refuse to federate with them. Period.
I’m pasting an old comment of mine from the official lemmy.world post discussing potential future federation with threads/meta:
I would like to start by expressing my sincere gratitude and appreciation for the hard work you’ve done with lemmy.world. But I am strongly opposed to federating with Threads. Please read this comment in full, as I believe it outlines the sentiment and reservations held by many within our community.
I think it might be helpful to use an analogy that I think will help express the feelings of many of those within our community regarding the problem with the “wait and see” approach.
What’s to say Threads won’t follow in their very well-established footprints under Meta as a company?
If I go to a friend’s house and their child spits in my face every time, I don’t want to go to my friend’s house. I tell them this. The friend again says, “Well this time just might be different, let’s just wait and see!” Meanwhile, this kid spits in my face without fail, every chance they get. There is a very consistent and pervasive pattern of this.
Why should I believe this kid won’t spit in my face all of a sudden, when they’ve taken every single chance they could repeatedly, knowing that it was wrong and not caring what repercussions would befall them? Do you really think this kid is going to refrain from spitting in my face this time?
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. -
Albert Einstein-someone.
Meta/FB have continually demonstrated their core business practices are unethical and that they will continue carrying them out without regard for laws or their users’ well-being. There’s no reason to wait and see. It’s not logical to believe this time will be different.
Threads would bring such a large influx of hateful, racist, violent, bigoted political extremists to the fediverse. They will also do whatever they can to exploit users on this site for their own gain. Their modus operandi has been to exploit their users.
Instead of just conjecture and analogies, I will now provide factual information regarding Meta’s practices as a company.
This really should be obvious by now… but Meta mines and sells their user’s information. Just look at the permissions you have to grant them for Threads… That alone should tell you there’s no reason to “wait and see.” Just look right now. They haven’t changed…
FB users have to agree to all sorts of unethical things in the TOS, including giving Meta permission to run unethical experiments on their users without informed consent. Their first published research was where they manipulated users’ feeds with positive or negative information, in order to see if it affected their mood. It did, and they successfully induced depression in many of their users!
Meta has played a very key role in spreading misinformation, perpetuating dangerous conspiracy theories, and radicalizing the alt right. This is present across nations, but it certainly contributed heavily to the climate of political extremism that led to a mass of insurrectionists to attempt to overthrow my duly elected government…
I will now turn to an article that surmises well the core practices of Meta as a company:
Elevates disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories from the extremist fringes into the mainstream, fostering, among other effects, the resurgent anti-vaccination movement, broad-based questioning of basic public health measures in response to COVID-19, and the proliferation of the Big Lie of 2020—that the presidential election was stolen through voter fraud [16];
Empowers bullies of every size, from cyber-bullying in schools, to dictators who use the platform to spread disinformation, censor their critics, perpetuate violence, and instigate genocide;
Defrauds both advertisers and newsrooms, systematically and globally, with falsified video engagement and user activity statistics;
Reflects an apparent political agenda espoused by a small core of corporate leaders, who actively impede or overrule the adoption of good governance;
Brandishes its monopolistic power to preserve a social media landscape absent meaningful regulatory oversight, privacy protections, safety measures, or corporate citizenship; and
Disrupts intellectual and civil discourse, at scale and by design.
I ask you now if you truly believe this is the sort of player you want on the Fediverse? Do you really want to federate lemmy.world with such a blatantly immoral and detrimental corporation?
I have really enjoyed my time here on Lemmy.world and have so greatly appreciated the hard work of you and your team. I have been donating to you to help with the costs of running this instance.
However, federating with Threads contradicts my philosophy and ethical principles, and I will be sadly canceling my donations and finding a new home should we federate with Threads in the future. I firmly believe that most users on lemmy.world share this sentiment. I hope this comment helped express the resistance and fears of our community.
Once again, I appreciate all the work you guys have done. But I respectfully and severely dissent on this issue.
This is awesome. Makes me want a Futurama I-Spy book or Where’s Waldo.
I’m not happy with this development, but I’m slightly amused by the irony being that lemmy.ml is pro-china and has been moderated as such.
Average German Shepherds have cognitive abilities similar to a human child around the age of 3. Exceptional German Shepherd intelligence definitely exceeds that imo.
I grew up in a large family with many children and my educational background is in psychology, and I am convinced that some of my dogs have been as smart as the average 4 or 5 year old, at least…
Part of that, just like in raising children, is about imprinting and instilling inquisitiveness. Creating complicated play activities like hide and seek, hiding toys/wrapping them in a blanket, scent training, etc. I train my GSDs to observe animals rather than go after them, and they will sit on the porch outside and just watch animals like I would.
You can shape dogs to be smarter and incredibly affectionate/empathetic; it’s not entirely genetics in my opinion. For the greatest impact it’s best to start young, but I’ve been able to facilitate more inquisitiveness in rescues/fosters before too.
I trained my previous German Shepherd to understand a conditional question. It took a few years to teach, but I would ask “What do you want? Do you want [option]?” Could be go out, food, water, treat, play, love, walk, ride.
After enough conditioning, I could ask him “What do you want?” and he would literally tell me. I’d ask him and sometimes it was clear he was just bored, and would literally start to slow wag his tail and try out options. Like he’d go up to his treats and I’d say “No, you don’t need any more of those…” and he’d get this little tail wag and then go try a toy or something. Was really handy if he ran out of water or something. I’d ask “What do you want?” and he’d lead me to his empty water bowl.
Incidentally thru different keyword use for toys, he learned to differentiate the names his favorite toys. Like his basketballs were always one of his favorites, and he comprehended that his ball had a specific name, but still fell into the category of “toy.” So if you said “Go get a toy” he might bring his basketball, but if you said “Go get your ball” he would only grab his basketball.
He sadly died a couple years ago. He imprinted a bit on one of my current dogs (also a GSD), and I’ve been trying to expand on toy names with this guy. The names he’s got down well so far are blue ball, basketball, jack, long jack, cactus, pineapple, donut, and the ring. Maybe a couple other toys I can’t think of that he’s learned. (we spoil our dogs with too many toys…) But I can tell him “Go get the cactus!” and he’ll tear off and search until he finds the specific toy.
It’s very enriching for him and really shows off the intelligence of dogs that people take for granted (intelligence definitely varies on breed tho…).
No. While faster than light travel might secure the human race’s survival and intergalactic presence, is the human race more important than our planet? I don’t think so…
While I value human life, we’re just hairless apes that are both too smart for our own good and still incredibly simple-minded and tribal. Our importance is self-importance. What is the benefit of human-kind for the universe? So far we’re making existence worse for other species. We’re already destroying our planet.
Emotionally and selfishly I want us to continue going, but I think our existence has been far more detrimental than neutral, and certainly far from a positive impact on nature. We’re parasites to this planet, and I think a life-supporting planet is more important than the selfish and detrimental endeavors carried out by one species.
The Earth is more important than our selfish asses.
It can be really hard to recognize and reprogram automatic negative thoughts… I don’t know you and don’t want to jump to conclusions about you from a single comment, but I thought it could be helpful to share this info.
The “What? Me Worry” evidence-based module available here for free has great education on how to engage in cognitive restructuring, which is all about evaluating the evidence for and against a belief, and altering it to make it more accurate (not more positive, but it just so happens that the more accurate beliefs tend to be more positive than the automatic negative thoughts).
This is an awesome website full of free evidence-based resources that I used in clinical interventions with my former Clients. Love to share it online. I’ve found a lot of the material very helpful myself.
Sounds like you’ve dodged a toxic work environment so far, hope it stays that way for you!
I had a very toxic, manipulative, and lying boss. Would literally gaslight people. She criticized my valid overtime to my supervisor and when my supervisor told me, I said “Can you come with me to her office right now? I’m going to confront her.” My supervisor was nervous but followed me to our boss’ office. This was just the last straw for me in a long series of events.
Our department’s office was being remodeled and we were temporarily in a space where there were a ton of other teams from homeless and school-based departments that heard me confront her.
I probably came close to aggressive, but I mostly stayed in an assertive tone/cadence. But it was clear that I was pissed… Every time she made one of her unreasonable criticisms I called her out on it. When she said we were going to agree to disagree, I told her: “No we’re not; because you are wrong.”
She knew that her criticisms were unreasonable and just to abuse her limited power that sadly still went to her head. She would gaslight our team about policy/workload changes that didn’t actually come from above, and increased our workload unreasonably to make her look good. She literally told a team member of mine who was suicidal (we were all struggling immensely being over-worked in the collapsing healthcare system here in the US) “It sounds like you’re standing on a ledge and you need to decide to stay or leap.” This is leadership in one of the largest mental health organization in the US… She also told this same team member: “You’re not depressed; you’re just lazy.”…
She only got worse over the years until I quit in February this year after long-covid started kicking my ass and I couldn’t handle the workload/lifestyle anymore. Despite the fact that she only got worse over time, she never treated me that way to my face again.
She’d lie and talk shit about me behind my back, but she never talked down to me or anything like that to my face again. I think I scared her. She’d never had anyone confront her and call her out on her bullshit, not to mention with an office full of like 20+ people to hear her humiliation.
On the walk back to my supervisor’s office to finish our monthly ‘supervision’ meeting, my supervisor said “I can’t believe you talked to her like that. I wish I could stand up to them like that… but I’m too afraid to lose my job.”
That right there is where I argue that my actions were probably against my own best interests, but it did work out well for me. She would no longer micromanage and harass me like everyone else she oversaw. It’s usually worked out for the better, but I’ve got a bad habit of sticking to my guns when I know I’m right and not being afraid of confrontation.
I can’t think of a time in my life that directly confronting and taking on a bully hasn’t had a positive outcome for me. Whether it be verbally or physically, it has always made the circumstances better for me. Don’t know if it’s fear or respect. Most bullies are very insecure tho.
Definitely not recommending that sort of confrontation in a work setting tho. I think I probably would have been fired in most circumstances, but I think she knew I’d do my damnedest to uncover her bullshit on my way out.
Here is a free evidence-based resource for self-esteem.
I used to use this website a lot with my clients when I was a caseworker. I’ve found some of the resources helpful myself. Here is their resource page. Distress Intolerance is a neat one.
The longer it continues, the more likely that scenario is IMO. Bitter alt-right extremists would probably start losing interest after a short while, whereas social media competitors would stand to gain from long-term interference.
Felt close to dying last year from covid + pneumonia (possibly comorbid RSV as well). Still not 100% over my long-covid symptoms.
I was shot at in the woods as a kid by an old man with a shotgun and a big greyhound. My niece and nephew were with me, and I literally drug them behind me as we ran back to our family’s camp site. Have no idea why he fired at us, but he most certainly did… I was so afraid he was going to release his dog… No way we would’ve gotten away from it. Our family didn’t believe us about this event until the 3 of us reminisced about it as young adults at Thanksgiving years later.
I also was chased by a farmer known for shooting trespassers with rock salt, when we snuck on his farm for shrooming. Some other highlights from that shrooming trip were almost stepping on a pygmie rattlesnake, and my brother getting stuck in quicksand and loosing his boot while we fled from the pursuing farmer thru the woods.
A buddy of mine and I were chased by a strange car for miles late at night. Should’ve called the police, but we were dumb teenagers. No idea what they wanted, but they pursued us for miles. We drove into a large neighborhood that was being developed, sped around the grid of empty streets with our lights off being chased by that car going crazy speeds on those residential streets, and we managed to slip out of the developing neighborhood and hid in a driveway on a side street until we saw the car go flying past looking for us. Still have no clue who that was or what their motivation/end goal was…
Had a close call with my wife and human traffickers… At least I’m 99% sure. I have had multiple training seminars from my former employer (mental health organization) due to the extremely elevated rate of human trafficking in this region and along Route 66 which pases thru. As a caseworker for the adult population, I worked with individuals who had been trafficked…
My wife is very petite and adorable, and was clearly being stalked and targeted by a man in Walmart while we were shopping one night. We were split up shopping, and apparently this man had been following my wife down every aisle, staring at her, and was coordinating with someone on the phone. This was unknown to me when I was heading to meet back up with my wife.
I finally spotted her down an aisle, but saw this guy peaking around the end of the aisle at my wife, who was the only person in that aisle… He was speaking quietly and I couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, but it was clear he was staring at my wife and relaying information to someone on the phone.
I’m muscular and I don’t fuck around. I’m from Jersey and will admit I can be a bit of a hothead. I wanted to do more, but I walked right in front of this guy while he was staring at my wife down the aisle, postured up feet in front of him while giving him a deathstare until that bastard broke my stare, looking like he’d seen a ghost. I walked down the aisle towards my wife, turning back and maintaining eye-contact with the creep the whole time, especially as I put my arm around her.
I could tell I shook the guy, because he went out of his way to circle by my wife and I a few times with totally different body language, speaking in an entirely different cadence, volume, and tone. It was clear he was speaking loudly and in a manner aimed at us overhearing his now seemingly innocuous conversation. But it was clearly a rouse. He was stammering over his words all nervously and clearly wasn’t really asking the person on the phone about shopping items.
After I got back to my wife, she told me how this creep was following her down aisles for the last 15 minutes or more, staring at her while on the phone. Some people reading this may believe I jumped to conclusions, but this tripped human trafficking warning signs and sent alarm bells ringing in my gut. Better safe than sorry. Dude was a creek regardless.
I can’t think of any other close calls right now, but I know there’s other stories somewhere in my memory bank…
Bonus points if you have a flashlight with a beveled edge for self-defense. Good old blind and bash!
I disagree that they aren’t selling out.
I consider it to be as such when this move isn’t supported by most of their userbase, they misframe that blocking Threads is a viable solution for the rampant issues with hate/extremism, and the decision puts their users at risk (both in the form of extremism/harassment and exploitation by Meta).
It’s an inch towards becoming mainstream, but the costs outweigh the benefits IMO. I believe it’s hypocritical to defederate from exploding heads and then turn around and federate with Threads.
I think misleading users into believing they can block Threads (only the posts), making a decision against the majority of their community’s wishes, and instead subjecting them to potential harassment, misinformation and exploitation is selling out.