I’ve been seeing a lot of people say that it’s wrong to block Threads as an instance because it’s unfair to Threads users, and that the ‘right’ thing to do is individually block malicious actors....
I’ve been seeing a lot of people say that it’s wrong to block Threads as an instance because it’s unfair to Threads users, and that the ‘right’ thing to do is individually block malicious actors. And at the same time, I’ve also seen a lot of people citing some number: if even .1% of Threads users are TERFs or other forms of transphobic/homophobic/outright fascists/what-have-you, then that’s still 16k accounts that need to be individually blocked. (These are other people’s numbers, not mine.)
The instance I’m on in small and industry-focused, so it’s unlikely my instance will block Threads. But considering so many LGBTQ people went to Mastodon in the first place to avoid the growing hate on Twitter, I really don’t see the problem with their instances preemptively blocking an instance with an already abysmal record of moderation (see: none). There’s a hashtag (#FediPact) for a site that tracks this.
Finally, I’ve been seeing a lot of citation of Mastodon.social’s own rules as part of petitioning Mastodon.social to block the Threads instance. Considering Threads’ inability (unwillingness? incapacity?) to moderate to meet those rules, I understand the drive to block the instance. However, I also don’t see Mastodon.social actually blocking Threads.
I've been thinking about this comment all day. I understand where you're coming from, and in line with what you've said about the message of "the fediverse," I believe you're right on the money as...
I've been thinking about this comment all day. I understand where you're coming from, and in line with what you've said about the message of "the fediverse," I believe you're right on the money as to why Mastodon.social will not be blocking Threads.
But don't you think community can be about protecting those within from bad actors on the outside, even just in potentiality? Isn't that the point of a safe space, to create a place where its members—used to living defensively—are less likely to be attacked?
If I misunderstood the cant of your comment, than apologies in advance.
Yes, of course it can be. But that's why it should be the individual communities defederating from Threads and not Mastodon itself. Plus the whole point of the Fediverse is to prevent a single...
Yes, of course it can be. But that's why it should be the individual communities defederating from Threads and not Mastodon itself. Plus the whole point of the Fediverse is to prevent a single entity from taking over the entire thing.
I have not seen anyone asking Mastodon as a service to defederate Threads. I have seen people asking Mastodon.social to defederate from Threads, meaning only the instance Mastodon.social will be...
I have not seen anyone asking Mastodon as a service to defederate Threads. I have seen people asking Mastodon.social to defederate from Threads, meaning only the instance Mastodon.social will be blocked to Threads users and vice versa.
This thread we are talking in now started because Fedi Garden is trying to leverage its power to compel servers to degenerate with Threads. Also, back when I was active on hachyderm, the majority...
This thread we are talking in now started because Fedi Garden is trying to leverage its power to compel servers to degenerate with Threads. Also, back when I was active on hachyderm, the majority of people asking for hachyderm to defederate Threads were not actually using hachyderm.
Yes, exactly. There's a difference between Mastodon.social, as an instance, blocking its users from interacting with Threads, and Mastodon the organization defederating Threads, isn't there?
Yes, exactly. There's a difference between Mastodon.social, as an instance, blocking its users from interacting with Threads, and Mastodon the organization defederating Threads, isn't there?
That's correct, there is a difference. It's fine for one's own community to decide to federate or not with another community. That's reasonable. However, it's a completely different thing to start...
That's correct, there is a difference. It's fine for one's own community to decide to federate or not with another community. That's reasonable. However, it's a completely different thing to start asking or even demanding that other communities act in lockstep, or else those communities may be defederated, too.
Now, Fedi Garden is not going so far as to threaten to defederate that those who are federating with Threads. One, Fedi Garden isn't an instance. And two, they explicitly said they think instance admins should not behave that one towards other instances. But it is opening that door towards that behavior, isn't it? Like the door is cracked just a tad. At some point, if it's not already happening, some instance admin will defederate another instance simply because that instance is federated with Threads (or some other instance that isn't liked). That doesn't help the ecosystem; it actively harms it.
I believe that currently the federation is one-way? That is, accounts on a Mastodon instance can subscribe to a Threads account, but not vice-versa. This makes it similar to moderating outgoing...
I believe that currently the federation is one-way? That is, accounts on a Mastodon instance can subscribe to a Threads account, but not vice-versa. This makes it similar to moderating outgoing links. If nobody local links to a website, there’s nothing to moderate. Similarly for Threads accounts that nobody local follows.
Allowing subscriptions in the other direction seems like it might be more problematic. Maybe you don’t want strangers from Threads following your account or replying to your posts? I can definitely understand being wary about having a larger audience. “More users, more problems” is my motto these days.
But I don’t think that’s happened yet? It makes these calls to defederate seem rather premature. They seem to be about what people fear might happen, rather than things that happened?
More generally, though, server-blocking seems to be used to pressure other servers to moderate better. That might work for small instances. I don’t think it works for very large ones. They have plenty of users already.
By analogy, let’s say you have a small email provider and you decide you don’t like Google, so you block GMail. Who does that hurt more, you or them? Maybe that’s not the best tactic?
I think there is a largescale anxiety about what could happen, which isn't so much based on fearmongering as the reason why so many people ended up on the fediverse in the first place, instead of...
I think there is a largescale anxiety about what could happen, which isn't so much based on fearmongering as the reason why so many people ended up on the fediverse in the first place, instead of the others: twitter, facebook, etc. Hate campaigns (including stochastic harassment) proliferated there in a way I myself saw first hand; while I have seen ripples of it on the fediverse (even on my little professional server!) it seems the moderation reaction is much more immediate. Smaller servers, quicker reaction times. It seems to be working out that way.
I will argue that the email provider analogy isn't applicable, because "email" isn't an open community where every email you send puts your message on a semi-public list of all sent emails searchable by content and hashtag where bad actors and just general scumbags can peruse for the sole purpose of initiating harassment. And while I understand your point, I do think the visibility factor of the fediverse—and the fact that it's a social network and not a private form of communication—does change things.
(Also, for what it's worth, gmail does block email providers who have a history of spam. If we liken hate crimes to spam, then…)
I'd never heard of Fedi Garden before. So I don't know if this site is a major "entry point" for people seeking to try out the Fediverse via Mastodon. And given that it's only a curated list of...
The presence of Threads within the Fediverse remains a polarizing and controversial subject, with a deepening divide between those that want to embrace it, and those who want to keep it out. Recently, these calls seem to be renewed, with community members even demanding that Mastodon’s flagship instance block the server.
Fedi Garden describes itself as “a small, human-curated list of nice, well-run servers on Mastodon and the Wider Fediverse.” As a service, it follows in a long tradition of directories designed to help connect people to individuals or communities based on interest, location, profession, or politics.
Recently, the project announced the addition of a policy that every listed server will be required to block Threads.net. To be clear: the service operator is not going to defederate with instances who federate with Threads, nor are they advocating for admins to treat each other this way.
I'd never heard of Fedi Garden before. So I don't know if this site is a major "entry point" for people seeking to try out the Fediverse via Mastodon. And given that it's only a curated list of instances, those instances certainly don't have a "right" to continue to be listed on it, even if the curation standards changed after initial listing.
But the bigger issue is obviously how different instances are treating each other with regards to Threads having entered the Fediverse.
Should instances defederate from other instances just because an instance has federated with Threads? Should the decision be at the user level instead? Does federating with Threads hurt or help the Fediverse?
Curious to see thoughts on all of this. Personally, I'm OK with federating. The small Mastodon instance I'm on did talk about it a little and those that joined the discussion seemed open to federating; at least I didn't see anyone say anything against it publicly. And if Threads federation does make things difficult for us, we'll defederate, but at least we'll give Threads a chance.
This is why I stopped using Lemmy and /kbin when I got access to Tildes. You're liable to lose access to entire communities just because their founders happen to have arbitrarily chosen one name...
This is why I stopped using Lemmy and /kbin when I got access to Tildes. You're liable to lose access to entire communities just because their founders happen to have arbitrarily chosen one name from a list when they signed up and you arbitrarily chose another and now you can't access that community anymore because one set of arbitrary people dislike the other.
You could always self-host. But I get that that's not a solution for everyone. I don't even do it and I probably easily could. I'd rather not have to worry about the administrative and technical...
You could always self-host. But I get that that's not a solution for everyone. I don't even do it and I probably easily could. I'd rather not have to worry about the administrative and technical stuff. But in return for relying on others, I have to deal with their policies and sometimes whims. Is that a good tradeoff? I guess it depends on the players involved.
With Mastodon, you can at least transfer your account to other instances. It's built into the platform and from what I've seen, doesn't look too difficult. But I've never tried it; haven't had a need. But Lemmy doesn't have that. So if I wanted to move, I'd have to create a brand new account on the new instance and just delete or abandon my account on the old one. Not that I've wanted to move, but I've also run into the issues with defederation and losing access to communities. I agree with the defederation decisions made on my home instance, but I still want access to those communities, so I've just had to make additional accounts on those instances. It's not the end of the world, but it is slightly annoying.
This whole issue seems, to me, why most people will never be terribly interested in federated services. For most people (those who do not self-host), a federated service is still playing in...
This whole issue seems, to me, why most people will never be terribly interested in federated services. For most people (those who do not self-host), a federated service is still playing in someone else's sandbox, so what's the point? It occurs to me that this might be one reason Discord has found so much adoption, you can create your own "server", but an account on one will work on another, provided you are invited or whatever the rules are for a given server. It's like a walled garden that is internally federated and you don't need to be a sysadmin to run an instance.
A bit off topic, but I have been considering returning to some form of microblogging. Are there any recommended servers from Tildes folks? A lot of the tech ones seem fine, like tech.lgbt (which...
A bit off topic, but I have been considering returning to some form of microblogging. Are there any recommended servers from Tildes folks? A lot of the tech ones seem fine, like tech.lgbt (which even covers two areas of interest), but I crave subject diversity. Fedi Garden gives me the same sensation as being trapped on a character create screen. Am I overthinking it on account of federation? Last I tried it many many years ago the federation was quite janky so there was still quite a bit of ‘home server advantage’
A) I'd say the "home server advantage" is pretty small at this point B) that being said, I can personally recommend kind.social as a fairly generalist instance that has a good feel to it.
A) I'd say the "home server advantage" is pretty small at this point
B) that being said, I can personally recommend kind.social as a fairly generalist instance that has a good feel to it.
I definitely wouldn't say that. If you don't already have a pre-existing community then your home server dictates a LOT. The local (and on non-Mastodon instances, bubble/recommended) timeline is...
A) I'd say the "home server advantage" is pretty small at this point
I definitely wouldn't say that. If you don't already have a pre-existing community then your home server dictates a LOT. The local (and on non-Mastodon instances, bubble/recommended) timeline is almost an entire community into itself. I'm selfhosting yet I can still trace a vast majority of the mutuals I actively talk to into one of the 4 instances I have old/alt accounts on even if they may not be on those instances anymore.
If all you do on fedi is to follow hashtags and follow George Takei then sure it may not feel like it, but the fedi (or at least the parts I feel are worth sticking for) is not one giant community like what most advocates claim, but a mesh of smaller communities.
Picking a home server that's right for you is quite important if you don't want to be disappointed with fedi as a whole, not because you can't access other communities, but because of the stuff that'll be "promoted" in your feed(s). The difference between wetdry.world/lethallava.land (different software, operated by the same staff and part of the same community) and mastodon.social, and, idk, dotnet.social local timelines are hopefully obvious.
I checked my follows just to get some more data. I have about 90 follows - about 30 of them are on my home server, and another 10 are from a server I used to be on. I think the home-server number...
I checked my follows just to get some more data. I have about 90 follows - about 30 of them are on my home server, and another 10 are from a server I used to be on. I think the home-server number would go down significantly if I only counted active users - a lot of that was a group from a discord where most of us signed up on the same server.
On my third try, I just went with mastodon.social. It’s pretty stable. I’ve learned not to care that much who is on the same server. The “explore” and “live” feeds seem pretty random and not that...
On my third try, I just went with mastodon.social. It’s pretty stable. I’ve learned not to care that much who is on the same server. The “explore” and “live” feeds seem pretty random and not that useful.
On a smaller instance, Live on "This Server" is helpful. I'm on a small instance, with like ~60 active users, with probably only half who toot regularly. I'm seeing what my community members are...
On a smaller instance, Live on "This Server" is helpful. I'm on a small instance, with like ~60 active users, with probably only half who toot regularly. I'm seeing what my community members are talking about and can easily jump into conversations.
But on a larger instance, like mastodon.social with it's nearly 2mil accounts, yeah, it's hard to get a sense of community. It sure it just looks like another live feed of random people tooting.
Bluesky is a good choice frankly. You can hook up your own instance and federate with everyone easily if that's something you want. Unlike Mastodon, accounts are portable on Bluesky, so the main...
Bluesky is a good choice frankly. You can hook up your own instance and federate with everyone easily if that's something you want. Unlike Mastodon, accounts are portable on Bluesky, so the main server is totally fine.
I see being listed in some directory as a form of advertising for new users. Do you even want your Mastodon instance to grow that way? Often, more users means more problems. Trying it out yourself...
I see being listed in some directory as a form of advertising for new users. Do you even want your Mastodon instance to grow that way? Often, more users means more problems.
Trying it out yourself makes sense to me. The trouble is, I wouldn’t even know which Threads users to subscribe to. How would anyone find interesting people to follow?
I use threads instead of Bluesky or Mastodon, and I find that it's much easier to find new accounts to follow. It's much much more like old twitter than the others. It may be because I already...
I use threads instead of Bluesky or Mastodon, and I find that it's much easier to find new accounts to follow. It's much much more like old twitter than the others. It may be because I already have a lively instagram account, but I've enjoyed using threads since I got on it after the initial surge. I waited a few months before joining so that it wasn't just a weird free for all.
Self hosting is the key here but the biggest problem in the fediverse is people reaching to defederation as the first solution. It's the nuclear option, it should be held only if the instance as a...
Self hosting is the key here but the biggest problem in the fediverse is people reaching to defederation as the first solution. It's the nuclear option, it should be held only if the instance as a whole is some sort of massive problem. People need to take agency for their own safety and use tools like blocking and muting to moderate their own experience.
The entire fabric of this comes apart and becomes entirely useless if this path of federation discrimination is done.
President Biden is now posting into the fediverse (The Verge) I don't think I will be following this account, but I'm sure someone will report on it if he posts anything interesting :) Or boost it...
The official US president Threads account, currently helmed by President Joe Biden, has begun using Meta’s ActivityPub integration, making Biden the first sitting US president to post on the decentralized networking protocol. If you want to follow the President’s posts, but don’t want to leave Mastodon, you can follow @potus@threads.net.
I don't think I will be following this account, but I'm sure someone will report on it if he posts anything interesting :) Or boost it maybe?
Apparently, it's one-way. He (or more likely, his PR person) couldn't read any Fediverse replies using Threads, even if he wanted to. So, not really any different from blogging.
Even if Threads implemented that feature, I think it would make sense to keep it one-way for public officials.
I’ve been seeing a lot of people say that it’s wrong to block Threads as an instance because it’s unfair to Threads users, and that the ‘right’ thing to do is individually block malicious actors. And at the same time, I’ve also seen a lot of people citing some number: if even .1% of Threads users are TERFs or other forms of transphobic/homophobic/outright fascists/what-have-you, then that’s still 16k accounts that need to be individually blocked. (These are other people’s numbers, not mine.)
The instance I’m on in small and industry-focused, so it’s unlikely my instance will block Threads. But considering so many LGBTQ people went to Mastodon in the first place to avoid the growing hate on Twitter, I really don’t see the problem with their instances preemptively blocking an instance with an already abysmal record of moderation (see: none). There’s a hashtag (#FediPact) for a site that tracks this.
Finally, I’ve been seeing a lot of citation of Mastodon.social’s own rules as part of petitioning Mastodon.social to block the Threads instance. Considering Threads’ inability (unwillingness? incapacity?) to moderate to meet those rules, I understand the drive to block the instance. However, I also don’t see Mastodon.social actually blocking Threads.
Gargron (mastodon's main dev) is also very much in favor of Threads federation
I would hope so. "The fediverse is the way of the future!" is inconsistent with "let's block the first mainstream service in the fediverse!"
I've been thinking about this comment all day. I understand where you're coming from, and in line with what you've said about the message of "the fediverse," I believe you're right on the money as to why Mastodon.social will not be blocking Threads.
But don't you think community can be about protecting those within from bad actors on the outside, even just in potentiality? Isn't that the point of a safe space, to create a place where its members—used to living defensively—are less likely to be attacked?
If I misunderstood the cant of your comment, than apologies in advance.
Yes, of course it can be. But that's why it should be the individual communities defederating from Threads and not Mastodon itself. Plus the whole point of the Fediverse is to prevent a single entity from taking over the entire thing.
I have not seen anyone asking Mastodon as a service to defederate Threads. I have seen people asking Mastodon.social to defederate from Threads, meaning only the instance Mastodon.social will be blocked to Threads users and vice versa.
But again, this is only what I've seen on my end.
This thread we are talking in now started because Fedi Garden is trying to leverage its power to compel servers to degenerate with Threads. Also, back when I was active on hachyderm, the majority of people asking for hachyderm to defederate Threads were not actually using hachyderm.
Yes, exactly. There's a difference between Mastodon.social, as an instance, blocking its users from interacting with Threads, and Mastodon the organization defederating Threads, isn't there?
That's correct, there is a difference. It's fine for one's own community to decide to federate or not with another community. That's reasonable. However, it's a completely different thing to start asking or even demanding that other communities act in lockstep, or else those communities may be defederated, too.
Now, Fedi Garden is not going so far as to threaten to defederate that those who are federating with Threads. One, Fedi Garden isn't an instance. And two, they explicitly said they think instance admins should not behave that one towards other instances. But it is opening that door towards that behavior, isn't it? Like the door is cracked just a tad. At some point, if it's not already happening, some instance admin will defederate another instance simply because that instance is federated with Threads (or some other instance that isn't liked). That doesn't help the ecosystem; it actively harms it.
I believe that currently the federation is one-way? That is, accounts on a Mastodon instance can subscribe to a Threads account, but not vice-versa. This makes it similar to moderating outgoing links. If nobody local links to a website, there’s nothing to moderate. Similarly for Threads accounts that nobody local follows.
Allowing subscriptions in the other direction seems like it might be more problematic. Maybe you don’t want strangers from Threads following your account or replying to your posts? I can definitely understand being wary about having a larger audience. “More users, more problems” is my motto these days.
But I don’t think that’s happened yet? It makes these calls to defederate seem rather premature. They seem to be about what people fear might happen, rather than things that happened?
More generally, though, server-blocking seems to be used to pressure other servers to moderate better. That might work for small instances. I don’t think it works for very large ones. They have plenty of users already.
By analogy, let’s say you have a small email provider and you decide you don’t like Google, so you block GMail. Who does that hurt more, you or them? Maybe that’s not the best tactic?
I think there is a largescale anxiety about what could happen, which isn't so much based on fearmongering as the reason why so many people ended up on the fediverse in the first place, instead of the others: twitter, facebook, etc. Hate campaigns (including stochastic harassment) proliferated there in a way I myself saw first hand; while I have seen ripples of it on the fediverse (even on my little professional server!) it seems the moderation reaction is much more immediate. Smaller servers, quicker reaction times. It seems to be working out that way.
I will argue that the email provider analogy isn't applicable, because "email" isn't an open community where every email you send puts your message on a semi-public list of all sent emails searchable by content and hashtag where bad actors and just general scumbags can peruse for the sole purpose of initiating harassment. And while I understand your point, I do think the visibility factor of the fediverse—and the fact that it's a social network and not a private form of communication—does change things.
(Also, for what it's worth, gmail does block email providers who have a history of spam. If we liken hate crimes to spam, then…)
I'd never heard of Fedi Garden before. So I don't know if this site is a major "entry point" for people seeking to try out the Fediverse via Mastodon. And given that it's only a curated list of instances, those instances certainly don't have a "right" to continue to be listed on it, even if the curation standards changed after initial listing.
But the bigger issue is obviously how different instances are treating each other with regards to Threads having entered the Fediverse.
Should instances defederate from other instances just because an instance has federated with Threads? Should the decision be at the user level instead? Does federating with Threads hurt or help the Fediverse?
Curious to see thoughts on all of this. Personally, I'm OK with federating. The small Mastodon instance I'm on did talk about it a little and those that joined the discussion seemed open to federating; at least I didn't see anyone say anything against it publicly. And if Threads federation does make things difficult for us, we'll defederate, but at least we'll give Threads a chance.
This is why I stopped using Lemmy and /kbin when I got access to Tildes. You're liable to lose access to entire communities just because their founders happen to have arbitrarily chosen one name from a list when they signed up and you arbitrarily chose another and now you can't access that community anymore because one set of arbitrary people dislike the other.
You could always self-host. But I get that that's not a solution for everyone. I don't even do it and I probably easily could. I'd rather not have to worry about the administrative and technical stuff. But in return for relying on others, I have to deal with their policies and sometimes whims. Is that a good tradeoff? I guess it depends on the players involved.
With Mastodon, you can at least transfer your account to other instances. It's built into the platform and from what I've seen, doesn't look too difficult. But I've never tried it; haven't had a need. But Lemmy doesn't have that. So if I wanted to move, I'd have to create a brand new account on the new instance and just delete or abandon my account on the old one. Not that I've wanted to move, but I've also run into the issues with defederation and losing access to communities. I agree with the defederation decisions made on my home instance, but I still want access to those communities, so I've just had to make additional accounts on those instances. It's not the end of the world, but it is slightly annoying.
This whole issue seems, to me, why most people will never be terribly interested in federated services. For most people (those who do not self-host), a federated service is still playing in someone else's sandbox, so what's the point? It occurs to me that this might be one reason Discord has found so much adoption, you can create your own "server", but an account on one will work on another, provided you are invited or whatever the rules are for a given server. It's like a walled garden that is internally federated and you don't need to be a sysadmin to run an instance.
A bit off topic, but I have been considering returning to some form of microblogging. Are there any recommended servers from Tildes folks? A lot of the tech ones seem fine, like tech.lgbt (which even covers two areas of interest), but I crave subject diversity. Fedi Garden gives me the same sensation as being trapped on a character create screen. Am I overthinking it on account of federation? Last I tried it many many years ago the federation was quite janky so there was still quite a bit of ‘home server advantage’
A) I'd say the "home server advantage" is pretty small at this point
B) that being said, I can personally recommend kind.social as a fairly generalist instance that has a good feel to it.
I definitely wouldn't say that. If you don't already have a pre-existing community then your home server dictates a LOT. The local (and on non-Mastodon instances, bubble/recommended) timeline is almost an entire community into itself. I'm selfhosting yet I can still trace a vast majority of the mutuals I actively talk to into one of the 4 instances I have old/alt accounts on even if they may not be on those instances anymore.
If all you do on fedi is to follow hashtags and follow George Takei then sure it may not feel like it, but the fedi (or at least the parts I feel are worth sticking for) is not one giant community like what most advocates claim, but a mesh of smaller communities.
Picking a home server that's right for you is quite important if you don't want to be disappointed with fedi as a whole, not because you can't access other communities, but because of the stuff that'll be "promoted" in your feed(s). The difference between wetdry.world/lethallava.land (different software, operated by the same staff and part of the same community) and mastodon.social, and, idk, dotnet.social local timelines are hopefully obvious.
I checked my follows just to get some more data. I have about 90 follows - about 30 of them are on my home server, and another 10 are from a server I used to be on. I think the home-server number would go down significantly if I only counted active users - a lot of that was a group from a discord where most of us signed up on the same server.
On my third try, I just went with mastodon.social. It’s pretty stable. I’ve learned not to care that much who is on the same server. The “explore” and “live” feeds seem pretty random and not that useful.
On a smaller instance, Live on "This Server" is helpful. I'm on a small instance, with like ~60 active users, with probably only half who toot regularly. I'm seeing what my community members are talking about and can easily jump into conversations.
But on a larger instance, like mastodon.social with it's nearly 2mil accounts, yeah, it's hard to get a sense of community. It sure it just looks like another live feed of random people tooting.
Bluesky is a good choice frankly. You can hook up your own instance and federate with everyone easily if that's something you want. Unlike Mastodon, accounts are portable on Bluesky, so the main server is totally fine.
Except, at least for my interests, it seems to be a desolate and barren wasteland.
I see being listed in some directory as a form of advertising for new users. Do you even want your Mastodon instance to grow that way? Often, more users means more problems.
Trying it out yourself makes sense to me. The trouble is, I wouldn’t even know which Threads users to subscribe to. How would anyone find interesting people to follow?
I use threads instead of Bluesky or Mastodon, and I find that it's much easier to find new accounts to follow. It's much much more like old twitter than the others. It may be because I already have a lively instagram account, but I've enjoyed using threads since I got on it after the initial surge. I waited a few months before joining so that it wasn't just a weird free for all.
Self hosting is the key here but the biggest problem in the fediverse is people reaching to defederation as the first solution. It's the nuclear option, it should be held only if the instance as a whole is some sort of massive problem. People need to take agency for their own safety and use tools like blocking and muting to moderate their own experience.
The entire fabric of this comes apart and becomes entirely useless if this path of federation discrimination is done.
President Biden is now posting into the fediverse (The Verge)
I don't think I will be following this account, but I'm sure someone will report on it if he posts anything interesting :) Or boost it maybe?
Apparently, it's one-way. He (or more likely, his PR person) couldn't read any Fediverse replies using Threads, even if he wanted to. So, not really any different from blogging.
Even if Threads implemented that feature, I think it would make sense to keep it one-way for public officials.
This post provides quite an interesting take: A Fediverse, if you can keep it