Do you think Meta's Threads app will be beneficial or detrimental to the Fediverse?
Personally I believe that it'll make people associate the Fediverse with Threads, which is not a good thing. Edit: It'll replace their definition of the Fediverse, with Threads, and people may widely forget about Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin etc.
Considering that the big majority of Threads' users are cringe influencers, brands that are ads themselves, and celebrities who don't want to interact with anybody but their bootlickers (who are also celebrities), I would say it's detrimental to the fediverse.
You're judging the platform based on the earliest of early adopters. Yes, people with nothing to lose and everything to gain by being on the ground floor of the platform have joined, but general adoption will take a little while. It will grow and normalize. They do have an uphill battle convincing people to leave Twitter, and frankly, ActivityPub isn't a big selling point. Being able to talk to nerds who left Twitter and Reddit isn't going to drive the average Instagram user or current average Twitter user to a platform - or else they'd be here. Yes, that's the side many of us know, but we are not average users.
Judging a platform by its users or vis versa is really shitty unless it's something truly extreme like Nazi's. "Do we really want normies who mostly follow celebrities and l brands?" Yes, we do. I'd love to follow Matt Mercer and Wizards of the Coast on here. I'd love to follow my favorite youtubers and politicians and game studios. That probably sounds pretty palatable to many users here, but if my mom follows movie stars, TV networks, and crafting influences because those are her interests, how is that any less legitimate? And is it wrong for me to want the accounts she's interested in to join the fediverse so we can have a common platform to share things with eachother?
I look forward to it. Granted, I wonder at this point if ActivityPub is still on the roadmap given the user count and communication already happening. Their goal is to hurt Twitter, and that's starting to happen already. Why should they seek out conflict when they're winning?
I'm following Midwest.social on mastodon, which is an instance of Lemmy, not mastodon. I give it a 6/10. It's far from ideal, but you'll basically come a cross comment chains in your feed. It's much harder to take in the WHOLE discussion and kind of gage the general sentiment of people on the platform, but it is functional and easy enough to leave your own comment, as well as keep track of specific users replying back and forth. I could definitely see people using a more Twitter-like app as a reddit replacement now that I've test driven it myself.
It’s good for Thread users because they will have an open API where they can download all their content and/or move to other instances freely. Cory Doctorow talks a lot about how Interoperability is the most important part for truly open social networks.
And that is not a mistake or a missing feature in a beta version. People can easily join but they can’t leave. Threads can only grow. And the will remain this way until someone wins in court against Meta
When I draw from experience with Meta it will mean harm for the Fediverse. Their moderation will be bad. They won’t ban Nazis. Nazis will attact marginalized people in the rest of the Fediverse. So instances will block Threats some won’t = The fediverse is split. Zuck wins.
Why exactly do you believe that a partial mass-defederation of Threads would "split" the fediverse? That's not how interactions between instances works.
It’s not a technical split, but an ethicsl split. Until recently the fediverse took pride in the fact that they watched out for eachother. If tgere was an instance that didn’t moderate nazis, they defederated or at least muted it. Now, that the instance in question is run by a corporation with a history of bad moderation, desinforamation and hate-speech they get the benefit of doubt, because people think it’s cool that an awful guy like Mark Zuckerberg sees a chance of making big money on their hobby. I think Meta joins the Fediverse to attack Twitter. It’s a means to end competition. Thus they will not let the rest of the fediverse become competition. “Competition is for losers” – Peter Thiel
It's less than an ethical split, actually. If A does not federate Threads, but B does, Threads still does not meaningfully impact the experience of users on A. No defederation between A and B is needed for A to maintain their desired experience.
As such, there isn't a split. There's an ethical difference, but the impact is negligible, and thus it doesn't require disassociation, which would be what an "ethical split" would be.
Until recently the fediverse took pride in the fact that they watched out for eachother. If tgere was an instance that didn’t moderate nazis, they defederated or at least muted it.
Or if they were Beehaw, and the other instance got too big. lemmy.ml soft-blocked HTTP requests from the KbinBot. And so on and so forth. Add in all the drama that went down in Mastodon between instances. You're painting a very rosy picture of a tidy, well-behaved Fediverse when in reality it's been pretty messy.
Not that this is relevant, as mentioned above.
Now, that the instance in question is run by a corporation with a history of bad moderation, desinforamation and hate-speech they get the benefit of doubt, because (...)
Again, this isn't relevant in the context of causing a split. Let's assume Threads is full of Nazis. 100% of users are Nazis. No! 200% of Threads users are Nazis!
None of those Nazis will be able to get content onto A in the earlier example, at least not from within Threads. If A wants to block Threads, they can just do that. Blocklists don't have to be common between other instances, it literally doesn't matter.
Thus [Meta] will not let the rest of the fediverse become competition.
Meta does not have a way to impact Fediverse projects without the consent of the project they attempt to impact. They cannot "stop" Mastodon or Lemmy or Kbin in any way. It's FOSS.
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