S̶̶̶o̶̶̶.̶.̶.̶.̶i̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶s̶̶̶o̶̶̶u̶̶̶n̶̶̶d̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶l̶̶̶i̶̶̶k̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶M̶̶̶a̶̶̶s̶̶̶t̶̶̶o̶̶̶d̶̶̶o̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶c̶̶̶h̶̶̶a̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶e̶̶̶d̶̶̶ ̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶e̶̶̶i̶̶̶r̶̶̶ ̶m̶̶̶i̶̶̶n̶̶̶d̶̶̶ ̶o̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶n̶̶̶o̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶w̶̶̶a̶̶̶n̶̶̶t̶̶̶i̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶ ̶t̶̶̶o̶̶̶ ̶h̶̶̶a̶̶̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶c̶̶̶o̶̶̶m̶̶̶m̶̶̶u̶̶̶n̶̶̶i̶̶̶c̶̶̶a̶̶̶t̶̶̶i̶̶̶o̶̶̶n̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶w̶̶̶i̶̶̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶ ̶M̶̶̶e̶̶̶t̶̶̶a̶̶̶ ̶a̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶a̶̶̶l̶̶̶l̶̶̶.̶.̶.̶.̶s̶̶̶h̶̶̶i̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶ ̶
I made a mistake, it was Fosstodon. They told Meta to fuck off. https://hub.fosstodon.org/assets/images/meeting-with-meta-email.webp
Mastodon is 100% a competitor to #Meta, and if I were #Mastodon, I would watch my back since everything Meta does is only for the benefit (or the endgame is) for themselves and their market share. Best case scenario would for Meta to extinguish Mastodon and have everyone go to #threads.
I do not understand why Mastedon is downplaying the very likely scenario of Meta EEE'ing the shit out of ActivityPub once they get people to migrate to Threads
Whelp, time to pack up I guess. Mastodon is the biggest player in the fediverse right now, so if Meta EEE's us then the fediverse as a concept is doomed.
We have the foreknowledge of seeing EEE happen with XMPP/Google Chat, now. We can fight back against EEE against ActivityPub as it actually happens, with instances defederating with Meta and so on, when they start actually taking those negative actions. It's gonna be fine.
Can we actually fight back, though? most of the people using the Fedi are on Mastodon, primarily coming from places like Twitter and Reddit because of the recent drama. The biggest complaint new people have is about how complicated Masto and other fediverse services are to get into for people who aren't tech savvy, between choosing different instances and figuring out how to use them. Meanwhile, Meta provides a familiar, convenient experience from a brand they already know, even with its horrible reputation. Then when 90% of "fediverse" users are on Threads instead of the rest of the fedi, they'll announce that they are dropping support for ActivityPub and there will only be a few thousand people left elsewhere to mourn it.
I think it’s worth noting that many more of us are aware of EEE than in the past, and while meta is very well known, it’s also kind of infamous. While some services have brand loyalty, meta kind of has a mix of brand apathy or brand repulsiveness to a lot of people. I think the most loyalty you might find would be in people who purchase into the quest ecosystem, or are avid users of Instagram.
I think enough of us are aware of the circumstances that when Meta eventually does start taking steps towards the “extension” phase, they’re going to get called out immediately, and communities are going to better able to resist than in the past.
I would agree if they didn't already shovel in 10 million people from instagram in the past few hours, and you cant leave without deleting your facebook and instagram accounts and everything you have invested in them. They gained in the past few hours more people than the entire Fediverse has gained over the course of several years.
I think most people are here because we don't really like groups like Meta. We existed before, and I believe we can persist without. Meta is going to have Facebook/instagram/whatsapp integration in threads that will require us to visit their site and/or link accounts to view. I think we might as well just defederate at that point.
But they took them from Instagram. As somebody on another forum said, because it sort of came with Instagram, they didn't sign up to Meta out of the blue. People not on Instagram will likely not sign up for it, at least not in those numbers.
That’s a really hot take. It could be that Eugene - exactly as he says, thinks wide adoption of ActivityPub is a hood thing and that federation is robust enough to handle any potential threat from Threads - which isn’t even federating yet.
Why jump straight to ‘the guy is clearly corrupt and has taken money from Meta’?
I understand all the fear around meta. However on federated platforms, is all competition not a good thing?
Also I have to imagine the overlap between the type of people currently on federated platforms, and those willing to use any platform made by meta is rather slim.
Also what do you think about the comparisons with XMPP?
when a large monopolistic company is trying to join the fediverse, its not because they want to play fair. They literally can not try and play fair, if their profits are not continually growing, then they are legally not representing the best interest of the shareholders. if you actually believe that meta joining the fediverse has an altruistic motive, or they they will not act in a way that benefits their shareholders(to kill any competition that takes any of their profit in any way), then you are probably not looking at the full story and need to consider if you are capable of thinking.
Why erect this straw man? No one is claiming Meta is being altruistic, that’s not the question. They aren’t federating at all yet. We have no ifea what the eventual form of federation will take.
I’m not saying they’re doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that Meta has no other microblogging platform. They’re not trying to choke out competition, because there isn’t any competition.
I personally believe that they are trying to tap into the Fediverse and use it as a springboard to grow their own platforms. However it’s worth keeping in mind that as any federated platform grows, other federated platforms grow with it.
Kbin’s growth is good for lemmy. The Fediverse grows with this kind of competition.
While Im not personally a fan of meta. It’s probably in the fedieverse’s best interest to at least be willing to come to the table and consider the possibilities, instead of just immediately fighting this. Remember, we haven’t seen the implementation yet. This is all just speculations.
It’s because you can’t “kill” a the AP protocol. XMPP didn’t go away when Messenger and GChat removed support for it, it just went back to how it was before hand, a fraction of tech enthusiasts using it for private communication. It would probably be the same with AP. A separate collection of sites using it to federate information.
… even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
Granted this leaves out how Google used it’s influence to control and stagnate the XMPP protocol, but that’s another can of worms.
I see no way they aren't a competitor. Meta is a company. Companies exists to make money. Meta makes money by driving engagement and then monitizing via ads or user data sale for others to target ads.
Like are we all supposed to pretend a company, Meta of all companies, is an altruistic entity? Because that's not how it works... At all.
It's poisoning the well though, even if I don't see the ads. Also they will prioritize inflammatory content to drive engagement, which would affect other instances as well (you know, like they do for all their other apps/platforms).
And corporations are not good or bad, but the for profit ones... are for profit. And I'm sorry but there is no justification for a profit motive in social media.
This is true with Kbin and Lemmy, and Mastodon instances but Meta doesn't have that mindset. They are going to have ads and are going to see users not on their instance as eyes that rightfully belong to them that are not set on those ads.
Again, from the user POV, yes, that is fine. From Meta POV, it's incentive to try and lock as many eyes in as possible using tactics that we probably won't think of because we aren't able to think from the POV of being pure scum.
if you believe meta is going to act in the best interest of the fediverse, and not try to fuck it over, then please kindly remove your head from your ass.
I believe they may try, but I think the approach Mastodon is taking isn't necessarily a warm embrace. They seem to be handling this with skepticism and I have read that they have plans to Defederate if Meta tries to exploit Activity Pub in any way.
Meta will act in Meta’s best interest. We don’t know yet whether that will be be beneficial or damaging to the Fediverse. It could be beneficial in terms of user numbers and general adoption. If they are arses then sure - defederate
that would be censorship, something the fediverse aims to avoid. We all shit on meta/twitter/other large corps for censoring content, but when instance owner's do it, its fine? De-federating for ideological reasons like this goes against the principles of federation.
The thing about the Fediverse is that you have the choice to pick an instance. We shit on "big tech" when they do something, because there isn't anything else to do. I personally want to be on an instance that will defed the fuck out of threads (and anyone else who will bring over people who will delight themselves on harassing me and my friends) should they federate, and if you don't want that you're welcome to go to an instance that won't, and we can still talk to each other.
ps: As far as I'm aware, Fediverse never "aimed to avoid censorship" nor had any "principles on federation". In fact, there are large parts of Mastodon (well, mostly Pleroma/Akkoma/Soapbox) filled to the brim with the worst kinda people you can imagine, yet they're all defederated into their own little sandbox. Nobody can decide who can use and build upon ActivityPub but we sure as shit can decide to not federate with a company so shit at moderation that everyone opposing federation with them seems to be a minority in one way or another.
Hmm... sounds a bit too idealistic to be true, especially given how Facebook has acted in the past. I appreciate his hope for the future, but I think he severely underestimates the lengths to which FB will go to monetize and control users on their platforms.
Here's the scenario I don't like. Threads scrapes my OC on a federated server, then reposts it to their users with advertisements. Now, not only has FB taken my OC without getting my permission or even informing me, they're now garnering profit from it. If this were a print publication, this would plainly be copyright theft. And if I want to remove my content that's now hosted on Threads without my permission, there's no possible way for me to do so - I can delete the post and hope their federated server does the same, but given how hard they make it to delete a FB account, I'm not terribly optimistic.
It's no wonder #threads isn't launching in Europe - there's no way in hell this kind of thing is even remotely GDPR compliant.
That's an interesting point. Can anyone take your original content and repost it to make money? As I understand it, anything you create is theoretically copyrighted at the moment you created. You're not required to file a copyright, at least not in the United States.
US copyright starts at the moment of creation, but the issue here is really enforcement. To get a copyright enforced, you have to bring a civil suit, which is considerably expensive in terms of both time and money. If you're going after a company as big as FB, your expense dramatically increases while your likelihood of getting a favorable judgment drops. And even then, you're probably only looking at getting the content taken down, not a monetary award, because in this scenario it would be near impossible to tell how much ad revenue your specific content generated for FB, or how much was lost to FB if you were getting ad traffic revenue from your content on another platform that's now going to FB.
While these potential problems exist with or without FB in the picture, as any instance owner could theoretically do the same thing, the difference in scale combined with how FB treats its users (cattle) is what's making my alarm bells go off. There's so much potential for abuse, with very little benefit to the existing users of the Fediverse.
Sure they can. Stack overflow is one example. Any business operating on user driven content will be culpable. When you agree to the EULA and it tells you "what you post here belongs to us and we grant you a license to publish it yourself", you're signing over ownership of your content in exchange for a license to replicate it. That's how social media all works, all the EULAs work that way. FOSS is no different.
Dude a federated SO would be a dream. Imagine actually be able to post something without it being flagged as a duplicate of a 10 year old outdated question.
Look I don’t want to be combative here, and my sincere apologies if this response comes off that way but here goes
IMHO this is already the way activitypub works. Platforms that choose to federate, are able to pool their posts and the like. And yes instances can make money off of content posted on other instances. That’s not a bug it’s a feature.
On the other hand, meta sucks and I’m not sure if I’d really want to federate with them either. So like, idk lol, just spitballing
100%. The open and public nature of the fediverse is something everyone should be considering every single time they post on a federated platform. I don't want to federate with meta because ew , but it would be absurd to think that a public platform like this isn't gonna get scraped to hell anyways.
I think E/E/E is still a risk. If some “high follower” type people start joining Threads, and people on Mastodon start following them and making that content a big part of their feed, those people are not going to be happy if Threads accounts suddenly disappear because Meta make arbitrary, incompatible changes.
Hopefully it won’t actually extinguish Mastodon/the Fediverse, but it can still do damage.
Yeah, I don't find his answer on E/E/E comforting. However if nothing changes hopefully the niche that's already on Mastodon and kbin/Lemmy could survive regardless of Threads as I'm fairly happy with the state it is right now.
Google effectively killed XMPP this way. During the time the federation was working the protocol essentially stood still, because they were afraid of breaking GTalk. Once GTalk gained enough momentum Google just pulled the plug.
The thing is that this can happen even without active malice.
If the product owners or engineers decide "hey, we want to add this cool feature, but it's not supported by activity pub" the path of least resistance -- bypassing the long process of changing the activity pub spec and getting everyone else on board -- can be super tempting, and come from a place of wanting to make your product better.
Those ostensibly good intentions can lead to E/E/E without actively meaning to.
Ah I see, so they never federated with XMPP. This would be comparable if they would take Mastodon server and build Threads from it, but never connected it to the Fediverse.
GTalk used Jabber to help bootstrap their I'm then stole part of Jabber's user base.
I think the people that value being on a decentralized service will stay on a decentralized server. The people that would abandon one platform to follow their favorite "high follower" poster are normies that never cared about what service they were using to begin with. Meta may absolutely take a large share of users to their platform in the future if they shut off federation and our favorite celebrities and shitposters are no longer visible. But I don't really see how that is any different than Twitter currently having all the celebrities and high volume shitposters. We already can't see them. The EEE argument just strikes me as sour grapes that "their" users are going somewhere else. And I'm on the fediverse (both Mastodon and kbin) so I see the value here. But I'm not going to get angry that normies don't want to put the effort into learning this ecosystem when they have their own lives and struggles and a limited number of social causes to care about.
Now what does bother me is Meta having an outsized influence on the development of the protocol of ActivityPub. We've seen something similar to this with Google using Chrome to push some additions to how browsers handle HTML standards/elements, like supporting DRM.
All I can say is that, I started using Jabber before GTalk federation, but ultimately Google made me leave Jabber.
What actually happened is that some friends who originally were on Jabber switched to GTalk, because later Google added it to Gmail, making it more convenient.
So essentially when they defederated, my network was pretty empty.
Then the only real solution is to disallow big companies from making convenient products. At some point the onus has to be put on the average user. Throwing your hands up and saying "the normies are too stupid to consider their own self interest" may be true but it is also an unsolvable problem if they choose to never put any thought into their own lives and problems.
My point is that we shouldnt enable those big companies even more than they currently are. We shouldnt let them into our own garden. This is a lemmy.world thread, i didnt even know that, i am using kbin. Tomorrow, this might have been a threads thread and i might have not even noticed it. But if for x, y, w reasons, kbin defederates from threads one day, i will notice that most of my feed will have 0 content all of a sudden.
Taking stuff away is a very powerful motivator. We will end fighting human nature. While if we never federate with threads and naturally grow the rest of the fediverse, this wont happen. It's easier to grow a garden amongst other gardens than to grow it next to a skyscraper.
If this is how it will play out, then we're already doomed. Meta will throw money at the platform until everyone you want to follow is there, which will leech fediverse users until there are only the hardcore users left.
The solution to that, which I would fully support, would be for kbin, lemmyworld, etc to deferate from threads from the beginning. You can’t lose something you never had and personally, I don’t want to interact with a meta owned product so the prospect of what you just described bothers me. If lemmyworld doesn’t defederate from them I would 100% move to another instance that does.
Edit: So there is actually a pact for instances to sign pledging to block meta and I don’t see lemmy.world on it. That said, it’s a long list and it’s manually updated so I may have just missed it. fedipact.online
Because GTalk integrated with Gmail and with ability to still having access to other friends was much more convenient and they didn't care about who owns their favorite instant messaging network. And majority of their friends were also on Google.
The truth is that only purists will stay, and most people (even tech people) don't give damn about being locked out.
Google also broke things in a subtle way. You could see the person is online, if they messaged you you would get their message, if you messaged them, your message would show as delivered, but never get to them.
So first thing you thought that maybe they are just busy. When you started suspecting something is not right then it made you think that maybe there's an issue with Jabber etc
I don't think the defederation was ever announced, it was more like a bug that was never fixed.
The people that would abandon one platform to follow their favorite "high follower" poster are normies that never cared about what service they were using to begin with
Thats now how things work. Let's say that now you are following people from fediverse. Those people are motivated to post things, because someone needs to, because they want to grow the community, etc. Meta joins, then meta people post a trillion things(because they are a trillion people, some of which might even be paid by meta). Those initial fediverse people no longer post things because "they have already been posted".
Then you defederate meta. Congratulations, now you have 0 content and 0 content submitters. You will start to start from the beginning, from an even worse point than we are atm. You are now dead.
Very few people are as ideologically driven as they think they are. Ultimately it is about quality of life. And maybe you can tolerate some junk because of your ideology but everyone has their limit. Content is king, not only for the "normies" but for everyone. What is the point of a fediverse that has nothing to interact with and noone to interact with you?
Then the fediverse was only a temporary stopgap until Meta (or any other corporation) made a better product than Twitter. It was doomed from the start.
Big companies can do whatever they want. But we are enabling them to do it easier if we federate with them. When i joined reddit 15? years ago, it wasnt that dissimilar to the fediverse. Of course it is even harder now to replicate the thunder in a bottle that reddit was and to scale but still.
The culture may have been similar to fediverse culture, but the underlying structure was nowhere near similar. It was just as much a private site run by (benevolent) dictators.
IMHO this is 100% the plan. If they play their cards right they stand to take out two birds with one stone (heh). They’ve already paid celebrities to be on there.
Still, this can only happen if Threads gets massive enough relative to the rest of the fediverse that the incompatibility doesn’t hurt them equally.
…that is to say, it’s all pretty likely, unless other strong competitors show up with ActivityPub support.
It's not gonna extinguish the fediverse in the same way nobody leaving reddit joined Mastodon as a replacement. They're technically compatible, but these are entirely different styles of sites we're talking about. Lemmy and Kbin are gonna keep on trucking regardless of what happens to the Twitter-likes.
But they're definitely going to try and kill Mastodon/similar through social engineering. Everybody's favorite content creators, organizations, and brands will be on Threads, not Mastodon, and when they lock it down we'll lose access to them and end up needing a Threads account. I don't understand why anyone trusts this company won't try to secure market dominance and then monopolize it. The guy says "we'll just be right back where we are now," but this could easily decrease the Mastodon population by pulling away anyone who doesn't care about federation or open source and just wanted a decent Twitter alternative.
Exactly, Jabber got worse after Google defederated, not the same as it was, because people that did not care about decentralized network jumped GTalk. I suspect majority of current mastodon users don't care about it either and won't want to stay on the empty network.
Except that I don’t need a Twitter account so I won’t need a threads account either. But I do not, in any way, want to interact with a meta owned product and don’t like the idea of them being involved in the fediverse.
It’s all fun and games until Facebook starts adding features, then eventually starts defining what the fediverse should do to maintain federation with Facebook.
I disagree. Mastodon does not "set the rules" for federation of Kbin, Lemmy, Funkwhale, BookWyrm, Pixelfed, Peertube, or any other platform in the Fediverse. The platforms are interoperable when it makes sense, but they are designed to fill different needs and it makes no sense for them to follow some centralized "rules of federation".
out of the goodness of their collective hearts? They already sell books (through ads) and host video, why do you think they’d stop after only crushing federalized social media? Because they can’t be bothered?
No? Up until very recently, Mastodon essentially was the Fediverse, and it was laughably tiny compared to Meta. It cracked 2.5 million active monthly users in January, which sounds like a lot until you realize Instagram has 2 billion active monthly users. More importantly, the active user count for the whole Fediverse was in decline since that January number, down to 1.4 million monthly users at the start of June. The Reddit drama drove an increase in users, but no way Meta is agile enough to shove this out the door in response to something that recent. Its not like Mastodon has a glowing public perception outside of the Fediverse, either.
Truthfully, I don’t think Meta gives a damn about the current Fediverse; it’s too small to matter. Whatever their goal, I don’t think we were a consideration.
Will Meta embrace-extend-extinguish the ActivityPub protocol?
There are comparisons to be made between Meta adopting ActivityPub for its new social media platform and Meta adopting XMPP for its Messenger service a decade ago. There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now.
Yes, 5 years from now when Threads abandons ActivityPub, you will be 5 years behind Threads. That is not a good outcome.
XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
Mastodon is not exactly a household name.
I really hope for the best. And it's not like anyone can stop Meta from making Threads and enabling ActivityPub. But this reasoning is not very convincing.
large instances like Mastedon and Lemmy.world can defederate....Mastedon already sold out so this could already be a lost cause. If they had any fucking decency they would have refused to work with them in any capacity
I don’t feel like this is a 1-1 comparison with the XMPP issue.
With XMPP users joined servers and then Google started working with the protocol allowing those users contact books to increase by hundreds overnight. Then when Google dropped, many people built work connections through those chats and still wanted to talk so they migrated to Google as it was the simpler platform.
But fediverse isn’t about talking to individuals for the most part. Mastadon gets the closest, but even then it’s about following updates and quickly getting ideas out to large groups, not the 1-1 communication of a chat. Fediverse is mostly about talking in communities. When threads defederates after getting a bunch of users, those users will lose entire communities instead of just a couple individuals that can switch platforms. And asking a community of hundreds to move to your preferred social isn’t how it works. People go towards communities, not companies. When threads defederates (which will happen) they will lose members, many communities will drop in membership, but I think the fediverse will be in the same spot after that it would be in if threads never existed. Not the same as today. But if we ignore threads and try to project the growth out 5 years. That’s where I think we’ll be if threads defederates in 5 years.
Mastodon can be a household name when Threads users question why people have an @user username and are introduced to a platform with no ads. They're gonna complain eventually, and they will find comments mocking them for using Threads.
If they did the contract would be under an NDA. No way for us to find that shit out - you just have to watch the enshittification happen as the early birds get paid.
Meta is a publicly traded company - that doesn’t mean they have business arrangements the outside world doesn’t know about. They’re held to public reporting obligations and have a Board of Directors hand-picked by Zuck (since he still has the majority control of voting shares).
A transaction like that is done in secret all the time, each and every day.
While this would get the effect of more users, it goes against what decentralized services are intended to do. One of the biggest things that decentralization brings is that Lemmy does not become another Reddit situation happening now in 7-8 years, if users are spread out over many instances, if Lemmy decides to pull a Reddit or a Digg, you can just go another instance instead of having to abandon it entirely.
Sadly it's not a problem that can be easily solved by pointing users to a single instance, because then, ironically, you fragment the fragmented community into an "us vs them" situation against the lemmy.ml instance if anything were to happen, with lemmy.ml always winning because that's where the users would be.
I think having a short list of general purpose instances, maybe 5-10 or so, where it chooses one of them at random and lists the others under an "other servers" button is the best compromise to this, as it spreads the load out across trusted instances, while also not leaving a single instance to become so big that they essentially control the entire network.
I completely agree. But lemmy.ml should sit in the default. Hell, I would even add a tool tip next to the drop down box for other servers that says, "Don't know what this is? Click here to learn more about decentralization, or just leave it as the default and click continue"
I can see both of these ideas potentially working out, I just hope if Lemmy decides to do something like this that they ask the community first for ideas instead of just doing it, so they can work out a solution that works for everyone
I say they do this now, and in 5-7 years if Lemmy is lucky enough to be a strong reddit competitor, then they could do any number of things to solve the centralization problem. They could easily stop accepting signups to lemmy.ml and put a new default in its place to help spread the load.
Right now, lots of reddit users are bouncing here to check it out, and bouncing back due to the complexity of signup. That is wasted potential to onboard. Fear of centralization is not Lemmy's primary issue at the moment. Lack of network effect is.
I agree that they should ask the community. But that's kinda what I'm hoping to do for them with a post like this. If this post gains traction I hope they take notice.
Mets is not different than any other person entering the fediverse. They are ultimately a company and will do what they need to be profitable. Ultimately they advertise social connection, and that's their business model.
Why is everyone acting like meta is different than anyone else, they're not special.
Because decentralized social networks don't need to be profitable. That's the whole point of this. Spread out, smaller instances, there is absolutely no need to for an instance to become so massive that it requires profitability to continue.
Can someone explain to me why people are so violently opposed to this?
If Threads blows up, and ActivityPub is integrated, you’ll have access to all of it through any federated instance. No need to let Meta sap all your data to view it or communicate with it’s users. Meta can’t kill ActivityPub or force us onto Threads, just abandon it and leave us back where we are today. If you don’t like the Meta users, just make or join an instance that isn’t federated.
Anyone can scrape the metaverse data and use it for whatever, Meta included. Them implementing ActivityPub doesn’t change anything about that.
Look I don’t like Meta as much as the next guy, but this all just seems like illogical gatekeeping
Edit: I understand now, see: XMPP and Google. Good article someone replied to me with, down below.
Do you remember what happened with gtalk and facebook messenger? They both were based on xmpp. After moving away from xmpp (what both did), I didnt have use for xmpp anymore. Honestly, Meta has given me no reason whatsoever in their whole record of existence to earn my trust.
More than 5 million people signed up within hours, let’s assume they will have 30 million users by the end of the month. I’m sure there are Mastodon users will consider switching to Threads.
And not to mention the Threads app is a privacy nightmare. I’m sure they can figure out any fediverse user, If fediverse server remains federated with meta server.
There's plenty of conversation already existing. Even my single user instance is barely keeping up.
Its not like this is how federation works, federation happens in 3 ways: a person follows a user, thus getting their posts, an instance follows a relay, which gets sent posts and spreads them back out like a vaccum, and 3rd boosting posts.
I don't see threads changing all that much if people don't follow those accounts, and or meta doesn't follow relays and send their posts out through relays.
Plus if all a lot of people who you follow are on threads then it might be a more attractive option to just switch platforms so you can see their content again after meta defederates
But Mastodon has less users than Threads already, if someone wanted to jump ship for more conversation wouldn’t they do it already? Heck, wouldn’t they have stayed on twitter?
I guess the fear (and probable strategy for Meta) is to first establish themselves as just a reliable instance with a closed app (Threads). From there, it's a slow crawl to bring in the users, from outside but also from other instances. They have multiple tools for this: the infinite budget to develop Threads with exclusive features, just a better app, maybe influencer friendly ad models. The list is infinite.
So where's the rub? Meta is just introducing activity pub to more users.
The problem is two step: They'll eventually will lock in the platform from rest of the fediverse. It'll might be years from now but it'll happen (unless it's killed first if course). This hurts rest of the fediverse by making it smaller: They will hook in users that would've otherwise chosen another instance and now are in Meta's side fence which has turned into a wall.
Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. Big corporations want mainly one thing: gobble up as much value exclusively to themselves. They will take whatever means necessary to get there. The strategies to privatize public resources (XMPP, ActivityPub, etc.) are known. They look great for the public on the outside, but over the years will erode the value for everybody BUT them. In order to not let it get as far, many (including me) are of the conviction to not even give them a finger, let alone the whole hand.
It's only been a few hours and they already have more users than the entire Fediverse did during its peak by yesterday after all of this recent drama. We are already fucked, I salute every one of you as the fediverse sinks.
The audience is not the problem. Meta’s mere presence on the network will be. We are now at a critical point in the struggle to survive as a network, and it’s not looking good.
If we continue like today, the network effect (Google it) would eventually lead to ActivityPub being the de facto too-big-to-fail standard in all of the web. We aren’t there yet, though. Meta knows this too and doesn’t want it to happen, because extracting value from a diverse network is way harder than from a centralized user base. The fact that they even want to federate in the first place (shouldn’t be in their interest!) rings alarm bells.
I’m still pretty much “wait and see” on this. A lot of folks are predicting gloom and doom, but also have a lot of good points. Meta shouldn’t be trusted in general, but they also haven’t done anything yet - they haven’t even implemented ActivityPub yet.
I think it’s more they’re trying to make a Twitter-killer then kill Mastodon from the inside. They want people on their site so they can show them ads, and they want to get those people from Twitter. ActivityPub integration is another feature they can use to get attention.
I think it’s more they’re trying to make a Twitter-killer then kill Mastodon from the inside.
This is the answer. They aren’t stupid, they know that if they just spin up a Twitter clone, nobody will use it. They need a reason to exist. Honestly I don’t think they give a single shit about Mastodon or killing it. But what ActivityPub does, is get them an instant content base. And if they are building their own AI, it’s a whole lot of live conversation for them to train it on.
It also gives them an edge over Bluesky, since no where else is using the Bluesky protocol yet, whereas ActivityPub has all these sites also using it and populated.
Threads wants to be there place where everyone is happening and everyone feels like they need to be, like Twitter was and Bluesky is starting to be. Mastodon was never that. Mastodon, to them, is a tool to use against Twitter and Bluesky for that pop culture spot, not a rival.
ActivityPub integration is another feature they can use to get attention.
See, that's what I don't understand. ActivityPub means nothing to the vast majority of potential Threads users. There's no way that Meta is going to use ActivityPub to gain users; all they have to do is what they HAVE done, leverage Instagram. The only thing that makes sense to me is that they may be hoping that federation will allow them to get around the EU's limitations.
But even that doesn't really make sense. Zuck doesn't really care that much about regulations. He breaks them all the time. Which leaves me with the question, why ActivityPub? What aren't we seeing?
EDIT: I've just found kbin.social and find it has superior signup options. It's just: make an account (email/password), or sign up with Google or Apple. No server talk. Upside is the layout is nice and it acts as a Lemmy instance (threads) as well as a mastodon instance (microblogging). Only downside currently is that their android/iOS app is in development and isn't ready yet, so desktop only.
It could be the fediverse thing we are waiting for, but to use it in the current state as a first entry point has some downsides.
it is early beta with a lot of features not implemented yet.
the website still works good, even on mobile.
in addition to the concept of groups, posts and comments you now have instances, threads, microblogs and magazines. That's overwhelming and drives people off. The masses don't care how it is technically implemented as long as it's easy to handle.
Edit: as a benefit to be an active part of all those integrated fediverse parts you have to set up several accounts for each part, not only for kbin don't have to set up an extra account in lemmy or mastodon. You can post from within kbin.
Don't get me wrong, as already mentioned I would love to see a fediverse browser collecting everything together. But for now that's future talk.
in addition to the concept of groups, posts and comments you now have instances, threads, microblogs and magazines. That's overwhelming and drives people off. The masses don't care how it is technically implemented as long as it's easy to handle.
The only new concepts on /kbin, compared to reddit are: instances and microblogs.
Multiple instances (servers) are the essence of fediverse. Microblogs exist only on /kbin, because Mastodon (as it is much bigger than Lemmy right now).
Groups are subreddits are communities (Lemmy) are magazines (/kbin).
Threads is your regular reddit-style posts and comments. Lemmy is nothing but threads. Same for reddit, innit?
I understand the concept and also the meaning and consequences behind the different types.
Most of the new users will come from a centralized system with mostly posts, threads and comments.
We should keep it simple and self explanatory as possible, or we accept the niche position. I won't have a problem with that but the chance is here to bring fediverse out of the corner.
A good onboarding would help a lot and lower the hurdles.
I already have Mastodon accounts, but kbin is looking like a very attractive middle ground for being able to interact with a lot of different fedi types. I am just not a fan of how it thinks upvote means boost.
I think it’s a great idea. Let there be an Ellis Island, accepting the tired, the hungry, the poor. As long as there are signs everywhere letting them know “you probably shouldn’t live the rest of your new life here, try somewhere else!”
blog.joinmastodon.org
Hot