this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Ehm... Shouldn't Fediverse be... Open?
Meta is a company that is gonna join us in being open and when they get enough users to have their platform running organically they cut us off.
So Threads, which is has 140+ million users and has consistently grown since launch without federation is worried about "getting enough users" from the fediverse, which has less than 10 million?
Fedi users are also about a bajillion times less likely to migrate to a Meta product than the other way around. There was the opportunity to catch some people and help grow the fediverse, but between this and the mastodon HOA (pushes glasses umm excuse me you forgot to put a CW warning on your post about flowers a flower killed my dog when I was five and this is very problematic trauma you're causing and your alt-text should be at least 3 paragraphs and include a bibliography) it's likely the fediverse just did what it needed to ensure it stays a niche for like 3 audiences and that more people are stuck with the corpos if they want content that's not about being a communist or using linux.
Anyway, this is a step for Meta to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Everyone keeps saying how Meta is going to destroy the fedi (don't worry, we'll take care of it for them) but no one is saying how. For example, they cut us off? So what? We're cut off right now.
No one knows the exact way Facebook will try to destroy the fediverse, but I guarantee you they will try.
It challenges the foundation of their entire companies' profit model. If they lose total control of the social network they will be out of business as quick as you can say Myspace.
Disagree entirely.
For one, Meta has diversified enough that it's going to be nearly impossible for them to pull a MySpace. They have Insta, Facebook (blue app) and WhatsApp with a billion+ users each. Even Threads on its own is probably sustainable enough to carry them for a decade, and though far, far down the list, they've branched into other business like with the Quest. Except maybe pixelfed, there isn't really even a direct competitor (other than just the vague "social media") to Meta's properties.
Second, I don't think this is any indicator that Meta views the fedi as a threat. Had they, they probably would have just simply tried to buy their way in somewhere, as they did with Instagram and WhatsApp (this is definitely their MO, Facebook is the only true Meta product.) Further, I am not even sure how so many are making the case that the fediverse is somehow inevitable. Projects don't succeed on pure ideology, and in particular with social media not only do you have to do the technicals right including building a product that users actually want to use, you also have to get the right combination of deliberate community building and sheer luck to get it to stick. Already, the entire point of the fediverse is at odds with how the majority of people want to use social media. With fediverse stuff, you're expected to curate and deliberately shape your experience. I've found more use for blocks and mutes on Lemmy, which is ostensibly the smallest social media site I've ever used, and by a large margin. The default these days for most people are Instagram and TikTok - just open the app and watch whatever is served up.
So we're basically starting at a point that the fediverse is offering a niche product with technical hurdles (which, are very small, but it doesn't take much) for users to even get on, they're going to have to spend a decent amount of time to getting to a usable product, find out they joined the wrong instance and rebuild that, and the communities seem to be made up of the gotcha police half of the time. And then there are just the pure numbers. Even with multiple external exogenous events (like reddit had with Digg, for example) from direct analogues to Lemmy and Mastodon, Lemmy is barely growing and Mastodon probably gained about as many users last month as Threads did while I was writing this.
This whole debate on the fediverse is very "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day in your life, but for me? It was Tuesday." The fediverse, for its part, couldn't be a better stooge for Meta at the moment. They can say to regulators "look at us, we're open" and then watch as the fedi preemptively blocks millions of users from an introduction to the fedi.
Meta may be many times bigger, but that does not mean they are not interested in killing all competition. That is just the megalomaniac mind set.
Not sure a buy-in option exists with the Fediverse.
Meta may not even care if they get partially de-federated. They can still claim they are part of the Fediverse with a simpler start-up. People who were considering trying the Fediverse may think they already have with their Threads account.
lmao you guys are cringe as hell. You really think Facebook is worried about a group that's a fraction of Reddit's userbase, which is already a fraction of Facebook's userbase?
If Threads, which has the biggest userbase of any instance, is allowed to connect with Lemmy, their communities will naturally become the most trafficked (embrace).
Over time, the Lemmy userbase will largely move everything to the communities with the most activity. Facebook could also add its own proprietary features that Lemmy users wouldn't be able to see or use without the Lemmy devs somehow found ways to enable compatibility (extend).
Then, after a while, Facebook could simply say, "Eh, ActivityPub isn't worth it," and turn it off, leaving us without most of the communities we've become accustomed to and without most of the users we've come to know through those communities (extinguish).
This is known as "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish".
Embrace a competing product and enable compatibility with the product. This may seem like some sort of goodwill gesture, but it's not. Companies are in it to make a profit, and any users not using their product is profit lost.
Extend the capabilities of your own product beyond that of your competitor's product, creating compatibility issues. Some existing users may jump ship to the "better" product because of this, and new users will be pressed to use the "better" product because of the compatibility issues.
Extinguish the competition by disabling compatibility with your competitor's product after they've lost users and stopped growing since you offer a better product with more features.
By using this method, you may successfully kill any potential competitor before they become a problem, nipping its growth in the bud.
You can find more information and examples on the the Wikipedia article about this method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Aren't they doing this already without federating?
No, "embrace, extend, extinguish" specifically involves some sort of interoperability between a larger organization (Facebook) and a smaller one (Lemmy).
Considering they already have like 10x the users than the fediverse already..
Indeed that laugh since 90% of those users are likely bots and the 10% remaining are people that will only overrun this platform with mediocre recycled memes disengaging existing lemmy users.
Unless the benefit would be extremely big, Facebook users are just going to dilute existing lemmy content instead of add to it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Considering they already have like 100x the users than the fediverse already..
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Okay? How would that effect us
If you want Facebook controlling the fediverse with their overwhelming bulk of users.
How would they control it? If they do anything bad we can just defederate, right?
The problem with that is, if they join, they will have the most active communities. Everyone will naturally want to use those instead of the less active ones in other communities.
So, in that case, defederation may end up harming the userbase. After that, they'd basically have to rebuild the communities that got abandoned for the larger ones on Threads. Some users may even jump ship to Threads to continue using the communities they've become accustomed to.
So the question is: defederate and potentially harm your instance, possibly even irreparably, or stay federated and continue allowing Facebook to do what it wants?
We build this entire reddit alternative without interconnectivity with reddit, why couldn't we do that again if threads decides to do that. People will be familiar with how lemmy works and there will be no ads here, so I don't completely see a problem. Plus the format of lemmy is completely different from threads right?
We could, but we'd basically have to start over again. It wouldn't be quite from scratch, but it'd be pretty close.
It depends on how Facebook implements ActivityPub. For comparison, Mastodon and Lemmy both use ActivityPub. Mastodon users can actually search for and comment on Lemmy posts (each Lemmy post and comment appears as a new Mastodon post), but, due to Mastodon having a specific option in ActivityPub turned off (I don't remember which one), the reverse is not true.
Being open doesn't mean you let leeches enter your home
But they restore balance to my humors!
Gosh this giant group of White Nationalists wants to come to my house for my birthday, well wow golly gee every opinion is a rich and valuable thing better let them in
Is threads that bad?
Meta is
I agree it's a stupid company, but I don't see why we should work against them if they finally decide to so something kinda good.
Read about EEE
Yea but how are they going to extinguish an non-centralized social network?
They enter the Fediverse, use ActivityPub, begin adding some "extensions" to it and suddenly everyone has to play cat and mouse with the new extensions because Meta has 90% of the users. Then, some time later, Meta says they don't see the need to be federated anymore and pull the plug, disconnecting everyone in the Fediverse from 90% (or more) of the users and from the communities that live on the Meta side.
Just look at what happened with Jabber and Google Talk.
By making it irrelevant
Lmfao doing good?! Facebook spread right wing nationalism/fascism internationally and on purpose. FOH with your bad faith commentary.*
Not necessarily threads, but to remain wide open isn't necessarily the best policy. Or so I assume this to be the point they were making.
No. This argument is stupid
Can individual users block instances?
We don't need to tolerate nasty megacorporations.
relevant xkcd my friend ;) The fediverse is still open.
Is threads racist? Or just run by a big company?
Run by Facebook.
Not if they disagree with me!
I didn't know that not wanting to federate with a sociopathic megacorporation that has a terrible precedent with unethical behavior is just a matter of having different opinions.
"WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE BIG MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES RIGHT TO STEAL OUR DATA AND INFILTRATE OUR SPACES TO DESTROY COMPETITION!?"
Bruv, I'm thinking of the users who want to see what they want to see instead of what others want them to see.
Bruv, you're just parroting a talking point that exists to out you as someone who is clueless. It's been said, many times, that all the data in the fediverse is already openly accessible.