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How do we feel about federating with Threads?
(kbin.social)
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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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I'm baffled by the trend in recent years of everyone insisting that they need to be in control of every byte of data that they deliberately publish onto the open medium of the Internet.
I mean, I'm not really baffled. I understand that people see that their data might be worth pennies and they want those pennies to be their pennies, darnit. I mean I'm dismayed by it.
If Meta's going to be supporting ActivityPub, then yay, IMO. If you don't want Meta's servers to see your data then stop posting it on an open protocol whose purpose is to show it to Meta's servers.
Look, I understand your opinion and I respect it, but I simply do not trust Meta. They are a business, and they are always going to do what is best for their business. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with that - all businesses are in the business of staying in business - but I think their track record makes them an untrustworthy actor in regards to the fediverse; they're a big tech company joining a small (and I would argue obscure) ensemble of social networks.
Of course, I could be totally wrong and this could be a total boon for Activity Pub, kbin, mastodon, and the wider fediverse. I just think that the opposite is more likely.
And if Meta tries to pull some sort of destructive shenanigans, sure, then defederate from them. Not because they're Meta, but because they're pulling destructive shenanigans. There's already plenty of instances that get defederated for that sort of thing.
That's not what I'm annoyed about here, though. I'm annoyed by all the people who have come to the Fediverse claiming that it's because it's open and free and all that, and then when some company that they have a particular personal dislike for comes along and wants to participate in the protocol exactly as intended they go "but not like that!"
If some random instance like lemmy.ca (name picked randomly) was to find itself in financial difficulty keeping the lights on and was to strike some kind of deal with an advertiser to put banner ads on their site, would there be a similar enormous hue and cry about it? Maybe users on lemmy.ca who have to actually deal with the advertising might raise a ruckus, but over here on kbin.social it wouldn't affect me in the slightest.
Meta has already pulled plenty of destructive shenanigans. What makes you think this time will be different?
That they have not yet done so.
It's not hard to defederate. It's a simple, easy lever to pull. All I'm saying is that it's silly to pull it preemtptively. Meta might do something destructive, but if it doesn't then defederating preemptively is a huge waste of an opportunity.
is better to pull before water starts boiling
This is the sticking point for me:
I don't think they want to participate in the protocol as intended at all. I think they want to gradually warp Activity Pub for their own ends.
This isn't about liking or disliking, it's about inferring future behaviour based on past patterns. That company has an abominable history. It actively impeded an international genocide trial (after it spent years facilitating the genocide).
When that's the kind of level they can stoop to I think it's madness to engage with them and expect good faith. The secret meetings haven't helped.
If they do then that would be a reason to defederate.
All I'm arguing is that it's silly to defederate before they do that, because they might not.
A wild polar bear might not bite me if I pat it either.
Personally it doesn't seem preemptive to me because I think the part where Meta held secret meetings with certain Fediverse admins and made them sign NDAs was a clear indication of the way they are going to do things, i.e nontransparent and not as equals.
Perfect conditions for embrace extend extinguish, which is boiling a frog so could do a lot of damage before most people are able to spot it.
I accept that YMMV though, I just don't think it's particularly closed-minded of those of us who are too wary of their motives to want to federate with them.
In principle, I agree.
My fear is that the fediverse has no big hitter that can compete with Meta’s resources. The closest thing would be Mastodon.social, and they are still tiny compared to the two-billion instagram users Meta is gonna advertise Threads to and the 390 million ~~Twitter~~ X users that they are trying to poach.
I think Meta will play nice in the beginning, but eventually (perhaps even quickly) will gain a much larger userbase than everyone else. From there, it is only a matter of time before their users create more communities and content than everyone else.
Eventually, anyone who is federated with Threads is going to get accustomed to seeing and enjoying Threads content (why wouldn’t they? It’s from people.) That is where I fear Meta will start to flex their muscles because at the end of the day their business model is based on selling user data to advertisers; having users being able to interact from other platforms doesn’t really fit into that as well as having everyone be on your platform.
Obviously, I don’t have a crystal ball and all of this is theoretical, but I can see something like this happening where people start to abandon smaller platforms for Threads because their preferred platform got defederated.
Why in hell would a massive social media company give two flying shits about a decentralized, comparatively tiny not-quite-one-platform?
To eat it. To completely destroy it and thus gain greater power and control over even more.
Like, the fediverse isn't a threat at all to fb/meta, but people, chatting on internet, without total top down direct oversight on what comes up in your feed?
Well how would they make their money? Or push their propaganda?
of havings problem unrelated to data