Last boost, WAY too many people seem to be freaking out about Meta's move, in a way that seems counter to why I like the Fedisphere.
Even if it was a Microsoft style, Embrace, Expand, Exterminate tactic, that would involve US moving to their servers, which... sorry ain’t happening.
Yes, we should look at what Meta is doing skeptically, but we should let them do it because damn it, if they implement correctly, it would also mean moving OUT of their environment is easier.
Open Data is a two way street, in AND out of a system.
If there is a threat to all the users of #Mastodon that would be posed by #Meta merely being in the #Fediverse, then what is protecting those users from the numerous unknown instances that are already here from doing whatever it is Meta is going to do?
The campaign to preemptively block #Threads seems to me to imply there is some fundamental architectural flaw in the #ActivityPub protocol that admins are currently relying on security by obscurity to mitigate. If so, then the actual problem is Mastodon itself, and federation should be abandoned entirely until this flaw can be corrected, rather than using band-aids like blocking one big instance and then relying on the goodwill of individual admins to keep the system safe.
what is protecting those users from the numerous unknown instances that are already here from doing whatever it is Meta is going to do?
Batshit. Insane. Gobs. Of. Wealth.
Facebook is scale at scales the mind simply boggles at.
3 billion monthly average users (MAU).
5 billion items posted per day. That's about 60,000 per second.
A market capitalisation (after a couple of bad years, I'll add), of three quarters of a trillion dollars.
Compared to its home state of California, that's a wealth of $19,000 per person in the state which Facebook can leverage to do its bidding. Facebook bought WhatsApp, then making a loss on $10m in sales, for $19 billion, largely cash. Keep in mind that the typical US household would struggle to meet an unexpected $400 expense. Facebook's price was more than $400 per resident of California, which is to say, Facebook's buying power is comparable to that of the wealthiest state in the United States.
Yes, there are threats that small instances may pose to the Fediverse. Yes, there are privacy and surveillance issues I've long been aware of and have warned against, as have others (see @alex particularly, who ... has greater pedigree than I do in this space). But those instances don't have access to Facebook's resources, combined with Facebook's nearly-twenty-year record of abusing its dumb fucks, excuse me, users, and violating condition after condition after condition regulators have imposed upon it.
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