Meta/Instagram launched a new product called Threads today (working title project92). It adds a new interface for creating text posts and replying to them, using your Instagram account. Of note, Meta has stated that Threads plans to support ActivityPub in the future, and allow federation with ActivityPub services. If you actually look at your Threads profile page in the app your username has a threads.net tag next to it - presumably to support future federation.
Per the link, a number of fediverse communities are pledging to block any Meta-directed instances that should exist in the future. Thus instance content would not be federated to Meta instances, and Meta users would not be able to interact with instance content.
I'm curious what the opinions on this here are. I personally feel like Meta has shown time and time again that they are not very good citizens of the Internet; beyond concerns of an Eternal September triggered by federated Instagram, I worry that bringing their massive userbase to the fediverse would allow them to influence it to negative effect.
I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place, and I'm eager to hear more opinions. What do you think?
Companies invading the fediverse was always going to happen, it's not necessarily a bad thing. You get more users, a rock solid instance, possibly more support in coding, and maybe more. There's no reason to have bots essentially copying content from a place that offers federation
There's also definite downsides, federating could be expensive for smaller instances to handle all that content, potential pressure for more tracking/less porn/more ad friendly code built into the system, making communities better through proprietary extensions to slowly cannibalize the rest of the instances.
Blanket decisions to block corporate instances is probably a bad move, though keeping a short leash is wise.
But think of the type of content meta/IG is going to be creating. It's going to be a ton of garbage self centered wanna be influencer posts. A never ending content generation machine. If the entire feed of IG was federated, the All view would be squashed with IG garbage.
You should never gatekeep though, it looks bad in my opinion
Of course you're gonna have "low quality influencers", but if you're attracting THOSE people, you've already attracted a massive audience of other people. Those low quality influencers wouldn't be coming over in the first place if there wasn't a massive audience to appeal to in the first place. And if there is a big audience on these platforms, then you're gonna have the higher quality creators come over.
I make YouTube videos, but I'm hesitant to fully dump Twitter because I'm losing out on a critical connection pathway with my (admittedly small) audience. If I could know that a majority of my audience was on mastodon AND that I could collaborate with other creators in my niche, I'd fully switch over and delete Twitter from my phone in a heartbeat.
But I can't do that because everyone uses Twitter.
Threads is letting people get their foot in the door for the Fediverse. And I think it's really sucky that, if I want to reach the biggest audience, I might just have to make an account on Threads, because practically all the instances out there are defederating from it.
Lemmy/Mastodon et al basically exist on a principle of ethics that outweighs the desire of "wanting to reach the biggest audience". People have deliberately chosen this platform over twitter and reddit, deliberately gone from high traffic social media to a platform with a much more limited userbase, because of those principles. Of course the hope is that one day this platform will grow as big or bigger than the old platforms, but organically and on its own principles.
It seems counterproductive to suddenly ignore those principles for the sake of traffic, just because a major corporate player suddenly wants a bite of this platform as well.
If you want visibility and a big audience on account of your career then by all means set up accounts on every platform you can think of, that is all part of that game, but don't try to force this platform to become one of them just because of that desire for visibility.
Exactly. No offense but I don't care about your business.
If I walk into a bar,I just want a drink. I'm not looking to get advertised to. If I go to a park, why would I want to see fifteen billboards advertising to me?
Is there really nowhere to go where we aren't always the product? Lemmy and the fediverse at large are basically saying that since we are the content creators and the users and chip in to keep it all going that we aren't being mined for data and swamped by bullshit. I'm good with that.
I can see where you're coming from, especially with the part about how people came to Lemmy and Mastodon to get away from the type of people who want to reach the biggest audience. But I guess that leads us down the path of, "What SHOULD Lemmy be?"
I recently ditched both Reddit and Twitter for their fediverse equivalents. But they haven't been true replacements because they don't have the users to replicate the sheer amount of content. The mildlyinteresting subreddit has 22 million subscribers. The equivalent on lemmy.world has 100 subscribers. The last post was 3 days ago. I'm not even a fan of that subreddit, but the fact that such a weird type of content can keep so many users engaged speaks to how many people are out there searching for mildly interesting things to share.
Lemmy just doesn't have that.
I guess it all comes down to this. I don't care that much about expanding my content creator presence into Mastodon/Twitter, that's just not the type of creator I am. But (I think) Lemmy could use more creators. Not even "content creators" in the traditional sense of youtubers or twitch streamers, but random people making posts on their favorite communities. If someone's favorite subreddit is mildlyinteresting, and they come over here and see that the biggest mildlyinteresting community only has 100 subscribers, what do you think they're gonna do?
Which leads back into the question, "What SHOULD Lemmy be?"
Do you think it should be a reddit equivalent with as many users as that has? With as many super-niche communities as you can think of?
Or should it be a somewhat niche thing with an admittedly passionate community?
Maybe I'm just kinda imposing my own beliefs here (as someone looking for a reddit replacement), but I'd prefer the former. And you don't need super high quality users to post on communities like mildly interesting or whatever, you just need interested people. You need numbers.
All is currently like 40% porn, 40% shit posting, and 20% other, you aren't losing anything by adding Instagram.
Exactly, the way it should be.