Pretentiousness wasn't the intent. I chose reactionary because it was the most neutral way to describe the phenomenon. If you have problems with the word choice. What word would you use to describe it? Keep in mind. I'm as about as skeptical of this so-called AI as anyone else. Even though I have self-hosted them at home. I don't generally run them. Because they are largely useless to me. Still though, we see people having for lack of better words. Very strong, lower knowledge reactions to the discussion. If you feel that's pretentious, then honestly what terms would you suggest for those well beyond healthy skepticism?

@gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de I addressed this same topic a year ago, reaching almost the same conclusions. I say "almost" because I disagree with the idea that Threads hasn't harmed the Fediverse. Threads siphoned off user attention by flooding news outlets with press releases. This was particularly evident in Europe, where there was an unrelenting, steady stream of press coverage across online publications claiming that Threads had implemented ActivityPub and federated with the Fediverse—claims that were simply untrue! While it was true outside Europe, those articles were being written in Italian, Polish, German, and Greek! As I state in my article: > Threads adopted a highly unscrupulous approach: not only did it effectively segregate its users, but it also maliciously peddled the idea of ​​federation everywhere. Here in Europe—where they had already decided against actual federation—they distributed false press releases (dutifully picked up by the worst online outlets) claiming they were opening up to the Fediverse. They tried to treat the audience receptive to the Fediverse concept like a herd to be milked, using the very idea of ​​the Fediverse as a buzzword to steal visibility from our own projects. Threads is, for all intents and purposes, a hostile presence that must be contained; we should avoid extremism, certainly, but we must also maintain a firm stance. This diversion of attention away from the Fediverse has caused severe damage to the entire European Fediverse movement! https://www.informapirata.it/2025/11/09/threads-e-la-federazione-con-il-fediverso-libero/

I had high hopes for the H-train in that headline.

It's been a couple weeks and I wanted to add another perspective about this. I noticed a user downvoting posts, https://lemvotes.org/user/FarStare@lemmy.dbzer0.com if it helps to have specifics. In the more than one full year of existing, they have never once contributed via making a post, never once commenting even, just doling out up- and down-votes in roughly equal proportion, and even those nearly exclusively via posts but almost never comments. I am not concerned about receiving votes from PugJesus - either up or down, as PugJesus has earned the right to speak on behalf of the community. But who is this other person who is influencing how others see my content? Are they male or female? Do they have a degree of some kind? Do they primarily visit meme communities, as the vote pattern might suggest, or other communities as well? So how do I feel about people who use the Threadiverse more than others? My answer is more complex and nuanced than simply yay or nay. I might prefer the opposite of the implemented feature even - the more someone posts (including comments?), the more upvotes they are allowed to make? Have they not earned such? Also, if votes were exposed, each individual could decide for themselves how they wanted to make use of voting - perhaps someone would ban PugJesus, or conversely write special code (a 3rd party app / API recipient?) to highlight posts that PugJesus upvoted (isn't that how "boosting" works? at least re-tweeting does). It's really difficult to guess what someone wants, as each person wants different things. Which is why ultimately in an effort to make things more fair & equitable, the solution can end up making it less so. I like the follow-up suggestion to leave this new option OFF by default, so that an instance admin would have to specifically opt-in, perhaps as part of an overall suite of features limiting things like posts and comments as well. Although really, I think other approaches might work better - e.g. why would someone want to limit themselves to "some" of PugJesus' content, wouldn't they rather simply have it all or else ban him from the instance and therefore have none? I am not seeing the benefit realistically of having "some", especially when the delimiter is not based on community or overall content but simply what time of day (based on an arbitrary threshold for when they starts and ends to restart the next period) the votes are cast?

@toddsundsted@epiktistes.com absolutely. In fact, the app that made the AP news rounds a couple months ago was Holos, an AP client on your phone that connected to a server elsewhere. That's the ideal use case for C2S, but alas they didn't go that route. I'm hoping to look into using it to enable cross-instance activities. Think "liking and replying" using your Mastodon account while browsing a WordPress site.

@kathsone that instance was created pretending to be the "Mastodon Italiana" instance, as if it were the official Italian server. It was a clever move because it attracted a huge number of users, but now they might as well stop using these tricks!Unfortunately, it seems to me that administrators are tempted to confine their users in a cage where they try to keep following the same people from the same instance and the same promotional accounts.@filippodb @amministratore @anze3db @fedidevs