Please: Everyone read this piece about how "Embrace, extend and destroy" can destroy a federated network. It happened before and they certainly will try to do it with the fediverse.

Big corpos don't want to take it over, they want it gone.

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

For those who don't know, the strategy is called Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. The phase comes from Microsoft who used this to (try to) crush competing document editors, Java implementations, browsers, and operating systems. Other big tech companies employ similar strategies.

Facebook coming to the Fediverse is the Embrace phase of this process and that makes Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, Misskey, and Akkoma the competitors.

I think the issue being missed here is that Meta will ultimately aim to suck all users into themselves, and then once they feel they've done enough of that, they will go completely closed, even potentially forking the protocol itself. If any legal attempt to stop this is made they will bog it down with hordes of lawyers for decades.

Their goal is not to help fediverse, it is recognising fediverse to be a threat and aiming to absorb it. Literally no different to how reddit slowly absorbed all internet forums into itself, killing the distributed internet.

Fediverse is attempting to bring back that distributed internet and they're trying to find ways to kill it. All corporations seek monopoly, it's how capitalism works.

If I wanted to see content from my racist Trumper uncle, I would just create a Facebook account. Keep Threads far away from the rest of the Fediverse. We don't need to compete with them. Who cares if they're way bigger with way more content if 99% of that content is garbage?

tbh, as a small instance, i might be defederating meta. im not a fan of the person that has everything through theft and scam.

Regardless of what anyone thinks about politics, nothing good will come by letting them in. I hope all current instances defederate, I know mine will.

Currently Reddit has significantly more users than Lemmy. Has that stopped people from signing up to Lemmy? Twitter has has significantly more users than Mastodon since forever. Has that stopped people from signing up for Mastodon? Has it killed Mastodon?

The common error I see in all the "Threads will kill the Fediverse" mania is that it assumes the same people who sign up for Threads would have otherwise signed up for Mastodon/Lemmy/Kdin/etc. 99.9% of them probably never would have. They want something that's easy and just works; and they're willing to let a company profit off their data to have it.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

How many things will we let them ruin before we finally learn that corporations cannot be trusted?

@peppy

We have to stick to our guns and keep supporting the small instances.

Admins needs to strike first and defederate from Meta before they do.

#fediverse #mastodon #lemmy

One thing I don't understand is why would meta even federate with anyone outside of their own instances anyway?

Makes no sense to ever open up to allow any other instances in. Not like they are crying for users.

The fediverse just makes sense in their own bubble. Turn Facebook, Instagram, and their other apps into the fediverse and federate them all together.

I don't expect them to ever open up to the actual fediverse. Same with BlueSky. I feel like all of these companies will USE the fediverse but in a closed bubble.

Everyone is talking about defederating because of XMPP and EEE. But the very fact that we know about EEE means that it's much less likely to succeed.

Zuck is seeing the metaverse crash and burn and he knows he needs to create the next hot new thing before even the boomers left on facebook get bored with it. Twitter crashing and burning is a perfect business opportunity, but he can't just copy Twitter - it has to be "Twitter, but better". Hence the fediverse.

From Meta's standpoint, they don't need the Fediverse. Meta operates at a vastly different scale. Mastodon took 7 years to reach ~10M users - Threads did that in a day or two. My guess is that Zuck is riding on the Fediverse buzzword. I'm sure whatever integration he builds in future will be limited.

TL;DR below:

One of the things that I feel isn't being thought about much, is that it isn't just Meta's ideology and policies that will harm smaller instances and the fediverse itself; but the volume of data that their userbase will generate.

For smaller instances like mine running on six vcores, 4GB of memory, 512GB storage and a 120Mbps network...I feel like all it would take is a handful of users federating with them and the data flow alone would destroy our resources at the network if not disk level.

No, I don't plan on allowing my instance to see or interact with theirs; but the point applies to all small instances and part time hobby servers. We don't have the means to take on the data they could throw out into the federated network.

I'm totally willing to discuss my thoughts since it seems I'm in the minority on this threads mania-

Once Threads launches it'll obviously have a lot more users than the whole fediverse combined, maybe even 90% of all users. Now let's say some instances with barely 1-2% users and small content feed defederate from it. Do people think a new user who does not care about things like open source or privacy will join the niche instance? No, people will go where the content is. Big social media giants will jump on fediverse bandwagon and instances who dont fetch their data will become extremely niche communtites (some might like that but it's not good for overall fediverse health).

Instead let's say we keep federated with threads, and make posts like how YSK: other instances don't track your data, other instances are free from corpo greed, other instances are run by normal people etc etc and make users aware and let them naturally migrate. Ideally, meta will bring the eyeballs which we can help to make fediverse as a whole grow.

imo it's naive to think that us 100k users defederating will put even a dent on threads. Insta tik-tok people will join the new trendy social media and generate content. The only solution is to make people constantly aware that better alternatives to view the same content exist.

Everyone is really scrambling now as if they really thought up to now that the Fediverse was immune to corpo bullshit

I will continue to use Mastodon and Lemmy.

Doing my part!

The content I want to have will never be on a meta server. And even if, I will not federate with them and not use them.

For the exact same reasons I also don't use Facebook.

I don't think this will matter at all. The first instance that brands itself as "we only federate with instances that exclude all relationships with Meta," is the instance I will be in and all the people who I want to hang around will be there also. Federating with Meta will be like holding a flashing neon sign that says "stay away from me."

I don't want anything to do with Reddit anymore and I haven't had anything to do with Twitter or Facebook for more than 10 years - and all for similar reasons. Huge groups of people brought together by money are fucking poison.

I see your panic and raise you a "what's the solution?"

yeah, i really, well and truly do not wish to be linked with meta on fediverse. it's obvious the damage it will do either way. may as well stay as we are and avoid the termoil which meta will bring us should they decide to federate.

I don't think this looks very good, but if we want a fighting chance, we can definitely do two things:

1. We need to make using other instances of Lemmy and kbin extremely easy. Seamless. Two taps on your phone simple. Sign up with Google. All that jazz. Then the most basic user will have an easier time choosing a non-Threads instance.

2. We need to, ironically I guess, advertise our LACK of advertisements. No matter how they do it, I'd bet anything Treads will integrate ads somehow, so this is a way we can quickly stand out.

On another note, users will want to go where the content lives. Of course, that makes this much more difficult. We all know Threads will be big, almost immediately. So, should we defederate with Threads like many of us are planning? This will keep us "safe" but we'll lose all the new content. Or should we instead remain federated to keep seeing the content? Of course this doesn't stop Threads from defederating from us themselves, so I truly don't know the answer.

No matter what, I think we need to stand out to average social media users in a big way. I think my two points above are just a start, though. We need to offer more.

I don't have high hopes, but I'm planning to fight like hell for our little paradise in any way I can.

check this out

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

Defederate from any instance that federated with meta.