With Meta’s Threads recently starting concrete federation experiments, we have been asked about datasci.social’s stance concerning preemptive suspension (also called “defederation” or “fediblock”).
Here my (Michael’s) short answer:
Has datasci.social suspended or limited the threads.net domain?
No.
Will datasci.social suspend or limit the threads.net domain?
Possibly, if/whenever necessary. We are closely monitoring the situation.
Long answer: Given Meta’s abysmal history with surveillance capitalism and human rights it is reasonable to consider Threads a bad faith actor, meaning that its activities should be assumed to underlie as exploitative as possible motives. In the context of Mastodon this could mean some kind of “Embrace, extend, and extinguish” strategy, indiscriminate data collection, or worse. Therefore we are empathethic with any server admin who preemptively suspends or limits the threads.net domain. From our side however, we do not follow this strategy at the moment, because:
We will stay vigilant and keep monitoring the situation. For now we treat threads.net just as any other instance, and we are ready to react fast if necessary. At the same time, should we ever decide that we want to limit or suspend threads.net, we will aim to give as much advance notice as possible - especially if doing so could disrupt our members. Peace!