Fediverse

More users means more content, especially for a Twitter-like service which is based on following individual people. And apparently they already have more sign-ups than Mastadon.

This is a non sequiter argument. It does not necessarily follow that good content comes from a large userbase. In fact, both of those things are rarely true at the same time. points vaguely at social media

I was coming at it from the perspective of an ex-Reddit user. The main appeal of that site to me was (is?) the size of the userbase and the fact it meant you had access to literally any type of person at your fingertips. Every niche interest was represented, there were people of all ages and walks of life and you could find help or others in the same boat no matter what tech issue you faced or rare ailment you contracted. This type of "content" if you can call it that is only available once the population reaches a certain critical mass. Smaller communities are of course more conducive to civil discussion, high-effort posting and actual conversations, but looking at the popularity of that social media you're gesturing towards I'm not sure that's what the majority of people are even after.

It's not that I want to attract Facebook users to Lemmy, it's more that Threads as an alternative could well siphon other users who might have otherwise come over here, ending up preventing this site from reaching critical mass. Then again, maybe this particular fear is overexaggerated right now since - as you say - Threads is competing with Twitter and not Reddit/Lemmy.

I find the kind of stuff posted on Insta to be vapid enough or sufficiently commercial that I feel no need to interact with it. I probably still wouldn’t interact with it even if it happens to show up here.

I think the problem is twofold here really. First is the All feed, which by function of how the engagement algorithm works would instantly get flooded with content from Threads if they end up federated, drowning out the content from here. It would not be a matter of deciding not to engage with the post from Threads and keeping scrolling. You wouldn't browse Lemmy anymore, it would just be Threads and Meta all the way down.

Second is the comment sections to any discussion even on communities here would likely get flooded with Facebook comments. By sheer volume of users they have already too many of them would find their way here. And it is again not exactly the type of - let's call it "discourse" - I'm chomping at the bit to partake in.

More likely, the play now is to capitalize on the discontent and missteps over at Twitter, and capture the folks over there who are leaving¹.

I think you're absolutely right and I think if Zuckerberg even knows what "Lemmy" is then it's because somebody mentioned it in passing when briefing him about ActivityPub. It's clear trying to usurp Twitter has been planned for a long time and you can understand why. If Lemmy was involved in the thought process at all, it would only be as inspiration for how Threads could in the future be connected to yet another new platform which in that case would outcompete Reddit, which is a site I'm sure Zuckerberg would very much like to usurp as well.

I do, however, think corporate engagement here IS valuable. In the same way that social media teams at your favorite retail brands engage on the Big Socials, I would also welcome their engagement here as well because its another avenue to interact with the brand as a potential, current or disgruntled customer.

But social media teams at your favorite brands don't connect on social media in order to contact disgruntled customers or discuss consumer concerns, they do it because it's great, cheap advertising. RyanAir doesn't use twitter to ask customers if the uncomfortable seats injured their backs, they make funny tweets because they believe it will sell more cheap plane tickets.

Hell, even if the social media admin appears to be discussing actual issues with consumers I doubt those issues would go anywhere afterwards. The big brands aren't interested in consumer concerns but they probably wouldn't mind looking like they are since that would make people more sympathetic towards them and more likely to chose their product.

Make popcorn and watch the theater. I just read Twitter is suing Meta already, so you know this is gonna be fun!

Can we arrange for a cage to be built in the courtroom and schedule it so Zuck and Elon give their testimonies in between the rounds of beating the shit out of each other?

Half a billion Twitter users? At its peak Twitter had 300 million monthly users. Or are you talking total number of Twitter accounts, even the ones that have been lying dormant since 2016?

Twitter has always been an also-ran as a social media site. Despite being a "major" and "international" site, its peak user count was smaller than a lot of strictly-regional social media sites. Sina Weibo, for example, was until recently regarded as a failure because it had "only" 600 million active users, and that's a single-nation site for all practical purposes, against Twitter's "international" membership. (With a major cash and marketing push from new owners Ali, Weibo has grown quite a bit since those failure days, mind. It still has only about 600 million active users, but it's become quite an influential social hub at the expense of Tencent's QZone.)