Is there an opt-in "block me" page or do we have to send it a bunch of f-off messages?

Streams has a good policy. I "grandfathered it"

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You can see what Meta has in mind. The Threads-connected Fediverse will all be Threads-like instances. Meta gets to determine all the policies for all the instances. You don't comply, you aren't part of "their" Fediverse.

I can understand the privacy policy requirement and the requirement to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Compliance is required by law in the U.S. and most jurisdictions have something similar.

Requiring a public feed is odd. And what does that mean exactly? If you have a single-user instance and your public posts are shown publicly on your channel, does that count as a public feed?

If they mean "we want to be able to go to your website and see what kind of content is there so we know whether you are producing illegal or undesired content" then I understand the desire. It makes it easier for them to moderate connections to their server.

On the other hand, if they want it in a specific format so they can ingest it somehow, that poses questions on what they need it for and why it has to be in that specific format.

I am sure there will be more clarification later. And I would not be surprised if this is something put together by their legal department.

How it is implemented may have to change as a more diverse set of sites enter the fediverse. For example, what are they going to do when everyone on WordPress turns on ActivityPub? Do their blog posts count as a feed? What about private discussion groups and forums? What about direct messages?

Right now we have more questions than answers.

The Threads rules make perfect sense, for a large multinational corporation.

They get a modest increase in the number of people interacting with Threads. They don't have to pay anything to keep other Fediverse servers operating. They don't need to reach 100% of the current Fediverse, they can just pick the low-hanging fruit (instances that follow Threads rules and don't create much extra work for them). They can ignore small instances and uncommonly-used software. Instances that hate Meta have already decided to block Threads, which is perfect for them because it reduces the number of anti-Meta posts and comments that Threads users will see.

I don't think this is a disaster or a crisis. It's just another step in the evolution of online social networking, and those of us who prefer freedom will find ways to keep doing what we want.

@Bill Statler My instance has a publicly accessible feed, but threads.net is blocked anyways :)

If nothing else, if Threads becomes too overzealous about blocking sites over small technicalities, that may work against them and encourage people to switch to open source fediverse apps.

Think about it this way. If Threads blocks your mom because her posts are private, are you going to stay on Threads? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on how much you want to talk to your mom, I suppose.

Meanwhile, Mastodon sites have established the precedent of blocking instances over anything that they don't like. So for a lot of people, it'll just be more of the same.

@Bill Statler I am blocking instances in Hubzilla, too.

@_jayrope - I do that too. I think I've got about 20 instances blocked. But in Hubzilla and (streams) we have better tools for keeping Bad People off of our feeds. So we have less excuse for blocklists with a thousand instances listed, which might block thousands of innocent people.

Looks like there is now a real-world case of an instance being Threadiblocked because they didn't have a public feed.

Liaizon Wakest wrote the following post Sat, 06 Apr 2024 16:06:36 -0700
Threads had https://fedibird.com on its block list and @のえる reached out to them and they removed it from from the block list:
https://www.threads.net/@noellabo34/post/C4_Tgl_S6FS

Just interesting to see how this sort of thing plays out.

They also responded with a link to Threads instance blocking policy which is up here: https://help.instagram.com/914046486923176/

@Bill Statler Personally i think Mastodon has great tools. Their filter, blocking and muting options are excellent, and also allow them to sort a lot of information in a practical, meaningful way.

Does "Threads" have a public feed?

"Log in to see more replies." Makes me think not.