this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Maybe I’m not getting something here, but neither Mastodon nor Lemmy are private, you can find everything open for everyone already, so how would federation change something there? Federation doesn’t mean everyone would use their app, so they wouldn’t gain any app usage analytics.
Also I don’t get how your metaphor make sense. The amount of fediverse users is a rounding error next to threads, instagram, WhatsApp and facebook. So there’s not a "lot a tiny things that can add up", only a small amount of tiny things which don’t really add up to anything.
We’re pretty much agreeing here. I don’t think them federating out makes much of a difference. They get the data from the reverse for free. They only have to scoop, and it’s worth almost noting individually.
But that’s their current game. Has been for a long time. Serving one ad is a tiny thing. But they add up.
However, them wanting to federate indicates they see the fediverse as something worth noting and paying attention to, possibly even joining. That’s not nothing.
They either think:
That response can come in many forms.
If they provoke a backlash of defederation (done), that causes devision and argument. They win by shattering the potential threat before it can grow.
If they are allowed to join and become a large voice and eventually be like gmail to email, big enough to have control and provide the filtering people are already (quietly, carefully) asking for. All they need to do is to offer “spam filters” and a “personal feed” and we have Facebook 2.0 and they don’t even have to foot most of the server bills.
I’m not sure how to win this, but there’s a lot of ways to lose it.
Sry, I‘m still not following. I don’t understand your argument, are you saying they want to federate to gain additional users to grab data from? Because I don’t think that’s going to be a significant amount of people.
Most people don’t care about what makes the fediverse desirable to its current users, all it does is add friction to them and therefore I don’t see it growing much either.
I think the reason why meta wants to federate is this:
I don’t think they’re doing it to "get more data" or to "take over the fediverse". There’s nothing worth taking over and they can probably get the data anyways, it’s all openly available. So it’s basically all upside and no downside for them.
If they thought the fediverse was insignificant they wouldn’t even bother. Them spending publicly visible time and energy on it means there’s something for them to gain.
But yeah, I’m not entirely sure what yet. Like you said, reading data is freely available, so it’s not just that.