@lufthans You have a good point here. Even if the "taking-over-the-existing-fediverse" reason is not compelling, as I point out, that doesn't mean embrace and extend won't be part of the game plan -- and it almost certainly will be, I agree. I'm going to add this to the post.
@J12t Scenario #2 is more or less in line with my current contingent theory; scenario #3 is entirely plausible, and it actually plugs the biggest hole in my own theory (that getting big instances into a franchise-type agreement would just end up with users vacating those instances). It makes sense if the real goal is chaff-deployment to get around regulations.
@J12t And DSA compliance does make sense. I'd forgotten about that:
"The European Union is coming down hard on Meta, demanding all sorts of interoperability as part of its Digital Services Act. By implementing a bona-fide W3C interoperability standard as part of a new app, Meta can signal both cooperation with the EU authorities, while delaying opening its core business as long as possible."
@shoq@tchambers it’s plausible, and to me more plausible than the alternatives that I have heard discussed and that I can come up with. But it fundamentally is speculation without any data to back it up.
@J12t A good post as always -- DSA compliance makes a lot of sense. Along similar lines, from a privacy perspective, Meta could potentially avoid legal liability by acting as a service provider to the instances they're federating with. Most US laws only apply to entities above a certain threshold, so it's possible that many medium-size instances could be essentially unregulated (not sure how this works under GDPR). 1/2
@J12t Big tech companies have been lobbying heavily to shape service provider language -- here's a good example from the #ADPPA consumer privacy legislation, where they successfully inserted some major loopholes. I doubt they were thinking specifically of ActivityPub federation when they were doing that but it certainly applies! At least potentially, we'd need to know more about their plans to know for sure 2/2
But looking at xmpp's example, I don't think network size matter as much as potential.
It is a lot harder to do an EEE after the thing you are trying to extinguish has reached mass market, by then it is too late.
I don't think one reason is enough to do anything, as far as facebook or other companies are concerned.
One cannot build a business case with a single reason, so there has to be more than one factor.
@J12t even if Facebook's plan is not to try and control Activity Pub-based applications, blocking is the right thing to do because Mark Zuckerberg is a fascist.
@J12t Yes, agreed it shows appeasement to the EU requests, and prepares for the horrific mash up of state specific GDPR type laws already in progress within the U.S. it’s definitely a toe in the water. I’m not sure they have figured out quite yet how to make it profitable, but have to start somewhere.
"“Meta is hoping for at least tens of millions of users within the first few months of availability”. The Fediverse currently has between 1 and 2 million active monthly users. So Meta is expecting at least 10x of those numbers by the end of the year.
(If you think of it, of course they want those kinds of numbers. Both Facebook and Instagram have far more than a billion users each."
I'd offer a fourth possible reason: To kill Twitter.
@J12t One factor I think applies to Twitter -- I think it is a fight for top influencers, and every post they do on "Threads" is one less Tweet, and the top 10 percent of Twiter users produce 50 percent of Elon's revenue. As top accounts shift from Twitter to Threads, it sucks a disproportionate level of revuen away from Twitter.
@Cassandra@tchambers Because one is a struggling startup attempting to compete with a several-billion monthly users empire, and the other is that empire?
But what is that availability going to look like? I have yet to hear of a coherent speculation or leak about what they actually intend. Tim, if you had to guess, is Meta going to host instances for anyone who wants to pay for one; run a few mega instances with centralized search; just allow Meta products to federate their posts to any fedi followers? I mean, does anyone really know what’s coming?
I only know what we read in the papers. Sounds like a P92 service, using ActivtyPub likely at threads.com launching mid-July. Federation starting 3 months later.
@shoq@tchambers nobody knows of course, and who does isn’t telling yet. But we can guess.
It’s the instagram team that is building this. So I would expect that they simply use the instagram backend, and the client may simply be a fork of the instagram client. Cheapest way to build and scale for them. The ActivityPub part is only scheduled for “later” and probably not expected to carry much volume. If my thesis from the post is right, they might event “hide” it.
Exactly why I was asking. It seemed silly, but I heard it from two different sources. On the other hand, it might be one app with entirely different use-cases. For example, federating Insta posts, and a next-gen facebook groups system meant to expose new features outside the old model, or perhaps just to cock-block the evolution of fedi groups.
@ethergear imho if meta wanted to connect two of their apps more tightly, there is no conceivable reason (to me) why they would want to do that via a standard not maintained by them.
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