I think this is reasonable.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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It would be interesting to know what Meta told them.
I imagine they've used a FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) strategy to paint themselves in a good light and being without them in dark clouds.
Honestly this is all secondary. I believe the main reason we aren't gonna defederate Threads and other big players when they join AP is that we just can't afford to.
Affordability isn't the issue when defederating. We have nothing to gain from them federating. I believe (given they are a multinational) that the automatic migration of accounts will only ever work in the direction TO threads, never the other way around. So, why are we federating with them again?
We absolutely do have something to gain and to lose, and that is users. Like it or not, the big players have the power to bring in massive number of people with marketing and brand recognition. And before you say to hell with Meta shills, if we fracture the fediverse in 2 parts, one federated with big players and the other without, I'd wager most users would prefer the first option when joining the fediverse. Just for reference, Threads got 5ml sign-ups in the first 4 hours, while Mastadon total userbase is around 10ml
We don't get the users on the Fediverse. Brand recognition is benefiting Meta only. They won't advertise with ActivityPub, but will use it as a fig-leaf for the antitrust agencies, where they are under probation.
Your view of the situation is too narrow. It's not about the individual, never has been. It's about the survival of the network. Why would you invite somebody with known anti-competitive tendencies into your network? That just invites bad outcomes.
If I couldn't manage to convince you specifically, this is too important to be taken lightly. You brushed off EEE without addressing the valid points. Please take some time to understand where the main point of the criticism lies and what is at stake.
I AM thinking about the survival of the network. It's not the question of IF but WHEN they are gonna start pulling their usual BS. My point is, by federating with Threads we will expose more people to the fediverse, who might join us when the inevitable happens. Otherwise it's just a missed opportunity. Personally, I hate Meta and wish to have nothing to do with them but the truth is we have more to gain by federating than they do. I might be too optimistic but I believe Threads is doomed to fail. It's basically a social network with worst of both worlds. Threads doesn't offer the privacy and freedom the rest of the fediverse does while it lacks the user loyalty and established communities so it will be very difficult for them to attract advertisers. We've also seen how easy corpos axe their less succesful products so there's a good chance we might even come out on top.
edit: I was wrong about the community aspect, apparently Thread is interconnected with instagram.. EEE does seem more of a concern now.
You underestimate Meta's resources or influence. They have the potential to influence user bases, use competitive pressure (features!) to draw people to their own instance or manipulate the platform (extend ActivityPub) to their advantage.
How many developers does the Fediverse "have"? A few part timers or Patreon financed developers which to tackle servers, apps, etc. Compare that with Meta's (roughly and conservatively estimated) 10000 developers. There is no comparison. The Fediverse can't compete.
Also, assuming the failing of Threads and using it as an excuse is reckless or at least irresponsible. The dangers we are facing right now are too big to be easily brushed of with a "will fail, meh".
I think it is a mistake to underestimate Meta's resolve here. They present a concrete danger to the wider Fediverse and we need to take it seriously.
You are %100 correct, but I don't understand how defederating Meta will change any of the things you pointed out?
It's not only the defederation. It's the message that it sends. Defederating "Threads" says: "We don't see any value in this service. People who think like us shouldn't join it."
Don't underestimate the power of influence we techies (or first movers) have. Regular people look to us for guidance on which service to choose from the wide variety out there.
If we say, "This doesn't hold any value." less people will choose it. The effect may be small, but it is there, and it is accumulative.
I guess that makes us both guilty of underestimating Meta's resources and influence.
Even in an unlikely event that people would notice our existence, should we choose to preemptively defederate Meta, it is much more likely for Meta to push the narrative that 'they' were the ones who deferated us. No one's gonna hear about our values and what we stand for, even if they did, why would they believe us over the platform which allegedly has the power to influence elections?
edit: They don't even need to make stuff up, they can just say they were unable to guarantee a safe and well moderated space as a company if they were to stay federated.
While you're right, they have massive influence, but we have the moral high ground.
The people we are close to, our friends, relatives, etc. will believe in us. That's all we need, because this is the most sustainable growth there is.
We don't need to spew marketing propaganda. We just need to stand our ground and not endorse companies which will operate opposite of our values.
That's too optimistic, even for me. Peoples' perception will decide the fate of the technology. You might be able to influence a couple of friends and family but the general public is much much larger.
Just take a look at what happened to cryptocurrency. It was an amazing and novel idea, decentrilizing money, cutting the banks, and the goverment from day to day transactions. It had it flaws but nothing that couldn't be fixed with a few iterations. Nowadays ordinary people won't touch it because it's either for 'illegal activities', 'scams', or 'gambling'.
While I might only be able to influence a few people, the act of defederating Meta will have the power to influence a lot of people to influence a lot of other people.
Why would anyone want to recommend an App which can't even interact with the most promising communication network in recent years?
Federating with Meta will send the opposite message: "Yes, we endorse them. You can choose either us or them. Have fun."
I do not endorse them and I don't want anybody I know of to think I do.
I agree with him completely, why are people so he'll bent on fear mongering this? The worst possible outcome is that the fedi will... be exactly the same as it is now lol.
Meta doesn't care about the Fedi population, they're not even 1% of their userbase, and they know that the fedi crowd is one of the most anti people of their network.
There is no embrace-extend-extinguish. If Meta starts to change up the ActivityPub protocol and then make it proprietary, then networks like Lemmy and Mastodon will just stay on the original one. They can't force the fedi to follow, and they know this.
They can't inject ads or data scrape more then they already can. Your public info is already public, which can be assumed that it can and is being scraped. This exact comment is one of them. They can scrape your info the exact same as they can now.
This will introduce more people to the concept of the fedi and they'll be more willing to migrate to other platforms like Mastodon/Lemmy when they understand the concept better. This is only a good thing for the population, and we won't lose any to the new network as stated before.
So at that point, what is a single downside of this? You can even just instance block them if you still dont like it, so it won't even affect you then.
The size difference between Meta and Mastodon isn't even funny. Mastodon is basically a rounding error.
But even if Meta wouldn't even represent a significant proportion of the fediverse's user base, their presence could influence the development and evolution of ActivityPub and the network. Meta's financial resources and influence could drive changes that a smaller, independent network like the Fediverse might disagree with but have little power to resist.
How would the fedi not have the power to resist? People will just create forks removing unwanted changes. Given the grassroots nature of the fedi, I can bet there's a ton of people willing and qualified to do so. Meta can't do anything to the fedi, we're already independent and fully functional without their involvement so we have zero reliance on them. I don't see how we'd ever have to rely on them.
We don't have to rely on them. They initially support open standards, extend those standards with proprietary features, then use those features to outcompete smaller rivals. You can't deny that this would be in their interest. You can't deny that Meta is known for anti-competitive behavior. Why trust them blindly, just because they do something which looks like they have (or act on) the same values than you?
Out compete with whom? Mastodon is not their rival. Our population is non existent to theirs and is completely irrelevant. They already have a locked down protocol that we can't interact with. I cannot stress this enough: they give zero fucks about the fedi population, and they have nothing to gain from attempting to absorb and extremely small community compared to theirs. Also literally the most resilient community out there.
So I ask again, who are they competing with? They have nothing to gain from us.
They don't need to absorb it. They just have to prevent it from growing as fast. The Fediverse grew orders if magnitude over the last month. If this continues, everything will be the Fediverse. Meta obviously doesn't want that and Threads is a panicked attempt to "nip it in the bud".
If that was the case, then they'd go for Bluesky which will inevitably grow significantly bigger.
Could be. Perhaps the developers of Bluesky realized the dangers of letting them in and showed them the door early. Perhaps it's still to small to take seriously. Who knows.
What we do know though is that the Fediverse grew over leaps and bounds recently and is thus very much on their radar. That's a bad place to be.
Also I don't know if Bluesky protocol is public anywhere? It's possible it could bridge with ActivityPub as well.
That was not my point. I never focused on the "what it is right now" because that can easily change or be changed, but rather on "what could potentially happen".
These actions we need to prevent, or mitigate. Joining them or letting them join us does not do any of that. We're letting them dictate the playbook right now.
Of course it's a shit product name that uses a generic commonly used term. :/
Yeah, right.
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