Having a degree in #internationalrelations didn't land me a proper job in the field so far, but I can now argue on the internet more efficiently about the latest pressing #global#geopolitical with some strangers. I see it as an absolute win! 💯💯
Welp, it just happened. #Zuck became the most followed person in the #Fediverse with a follower count of more than 4 times that of @Mastodon itself
Of course, those are only rough numbers. Most of the people following him are on Threads, and many do not even know anything about decentralized social platforms (or care). People outside of Threads that are following him are few (including myself, now*).
But this is more of a symbolic thing. Once other profiles enable the Fediverse integration, we'll be seeing more and more Threads profiles topping the charts. Or maybe not, who knows. I already start to see many profiles on Threads that stopped posting since quite a while, and I'm wondering if they're still active. Many people on other centralized platforms just call Threads dead already, lol.
OTOH, even the overall atmosphere on Threads just seems to be... subpar to say the least. I really don't feel I could learn anything from the people out there, apart from a few dozen interesting profiles that are simply just hard to find - they were hard to find on Insta, they are hard to find there as well. If, for whatever reason, Threads were to simply turn the federation off abruptly, I wouldn't feel anything of value would be lost apart from these profiles, at least for me. I wonder how long it will take until it will be just another enshittified, ad-ridden, useless platform, just like the other two in #Meta's portfolio are, all filled with trolls, bots, scammers and propaganda accounts of the Kremlin-backed modern far-right that spread the lies and nonsense.
If you have a presence on Mastodon, yet you'd also love to try out Threads, you're not missing anything. Really. This place is just way better, and it centers not around advertisers, but around you.
*you traitor, how dare you follow the Satan over this place? well, I actually thought it out for a bit. And I don't know if I'll keep the follow on the long term either. But this is just part of my way to #quitfacebook, as funny as it may seem. It is just one of the many active accounts/pages that I still follow on that cesspit, so I thought, why not.
I also have a habit of checking my profile from various servers, and I'm having a hard time seeing even my popular posts. So I can say #Friendica keeps me quite protected from the aforementioned. Plus that Meta doesn't have any ads to serve me around this place.
A small addendum to what I previously wrote: You can already see this in practice.
I was just scrolling through the list, which is now populated by other Threads accounts as well, and I found this account, that I won't tag here (for people on Mastodon, see pic 1). It already tops place 134 as the most followed account in the Fediverse, as of writing.
This person publicly claims that is an Amazon Associate and that is posting affiliate links from which is earning money from qualifying purchases - and as expected, the profile is full of these links (see picture 2 if on Mastodon).
Now, one might say, "but what's wrong with this? People might be interested in getting deals on stuff they want" - and this is true, I do not think what this person posts is simply useless or toxic to everyone. But the fact that it's so high up in the top of the most followed Fediverse profiles gets me worried. Many people do see stuff like this as spam, and would rather not see that in their feed.
And if that person is also paying to get higher up in the feeds of Threads users, specially those that are not following the guy, that is spam, and it's not the appropriate behavior.
This is just illustrative of the state of Threads, another #Meta product, next to #Facebook and #Instagram, and why any self-hostable, open source Fediverse platform is still a better choice to the Fediverse overall, than it. It is also concerning if more such profiles are topping the most followed Fediverse profiles and destroying its quality overall.
In a powerful display of solidarity and defiance, over 10,000 individuals gathered outside a church in Moscow today for the funeral of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Chanting slogans such as “Alexei” and “We are not afraid,” mourners paid their respects to Navalny, who died in prison on February 16.
I was just scrolling yesterday through my stared posts in looking for something and I found this - which just seems way too relevant today in light of the #TuckerCarlson interview with #Putin.