Because a lot of people here are also on the microblogging side of the Fediverse and a lot of people find Lemmy/kbin’s presentation of conversations a lot more appealing.
Also a lot of people don’t realize that we won’t see Threads content at all because they don’t quite understand how federation works.
I know, I’m not saying it’s not. Additionally, it is not even sure if they will ever be able to, because Lemmy uses the article format for posts while microblogging platforms use note.
Yes, comments are notes. But look at the main post from Mastodon: you only see the title and a link to the original post. That is just a placeholder. I am doubtful whether Threads will even have such a placeholder at all given their “careful” approach to federation.
A couple counterpoints. First, there’s no such thing as a public secret. They can get our data whether we like it or not. And there’s not much difference between sharing your post through boosting vs just sharing a screenshot of your post.
It might be more productive to make a list of demands, rather than black and white defederation. Defederate until they have proper moderation, offer to federate as soon as they take proper action.
I think it’s wild to see your first point made so frequently especially in light of the push for advancements in digital rights over the past few years. Having access to your data is by no means equivalent to having rights over it’s usage (yes even with regards to showing ads NEXT TO the content) and any conversation that doesn’t take that into account is dishonest at best.
Your second point I strongly agree with. The absolute best case scenario here would’ve been for the existing fediverse to refuse federation unless Meta agreed to some fairly basic terms. It was probably the only time when noncorporate social was going to have any leverage at all. Not necessarily too late but it seems unlikely
This text made me realise something: “defed or not defed” discussions are ultimately rushed.
Because at the end of the day, most Mastodon instances might defed Threads. Not due to Facebook’s help in genocides or because they’re a big corp, but simply because admins will say “screw it, 90% of rule violations come from Threads users, I’m not dealing with this shit.”
really nice writeup, but this made me curious, have any meta lawsuits resulted in jail time? pretty sure an individual wouldnt be able to get away with what meta has been doing
I don’t think the people who are genuinely psyched about Threads on fedi are monsters or fascists, and I don’t think those kinds of characterizations—which show up a lot in my replies—are helping. And I understand that our theories of change just don’t overlap as much as I’d initially hoped.
And here’s me, who frankly couldn’t give two shits either way, and finds the excessive discussion quite absurd.
I mean, if the federated space stays small, no commercial company holds much value into integrating with it. Naturally. This is also why it’s so transparent that for Meta this is a way to pre-empty legislation and restrictions in the EU by being "open"™️ with Threads.
But on the other hand if it does take off, Meta is really going to be the least of the protocol’s problems. The sheer amount of commercial providers will be, including the very large like Meta, Microsoft and Google, up to thousands and millions of small providers that all build on purely commercial interests. Nevermind Apple’s obviously incompatible version they’ll make the only one you can install apps for on iOS.
Meta specifically? It’s an early warning shot, either about a future of obscurity, or of commercialization.
Commercial attracts commercial and noncommercial attracts noncommercial. Fedizens trying to figure out how they can attract their favorite influencers to the Fediverse, or otherwise interact with them from the Fediverse, are really missing the point. Those who monetize their web presence will only be active on systems in which monetization is a built-in feature. TikTok is probably the most explicitly built-for-monetization platform at this time. YouTube and Twitch also seem in that camp. Threads, from what I've heard, is basically Instagram, which is also very influencer-dominated. This is no accident. The so-called pivot to video made the discourse about vloggers instead of bloggers, and video is an inherently much more expensive means of communication than writing, and so there is more need to direct traffic to Patreon, Ko-Fi, etc. to keep the lights on. Those places where the money changes hands (or paid ads get run) are of course places of proprietary technology and DRM. The Fediverse (and open source stuff in general) couldn't be a more effective influencer repellent if it tried. I for one see this as a feature. So what if there could be more people here (or reachable from here)? At this point we seem to have enough critical mass to be interesting. It's enough people for me. And there's still plenty of opportunity for gradual organic growth in our user base.
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