this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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I think it’s a downside that I’ve heard they’re not federating immediately, but rather doing that in a few months.
Instagram Threads WILL entice a bunch of people to leave Twitter (and eventually get to the fediverse), but if Insta Threads aren’t federated on day 1, we can’t offer up alternatives to users that doesn’t harvest data.
Instead, they’ll only get that choice in a few months, though still better than never I guess 🤷♂️
The concern is that suddenly Meta will make up the biggest part of the Fediverse and exert too much power as a company, which they don't have a good record for, over the non-corporate Fediverse. Historically this would allow them to "embrace, extend, extinguish" the Fediverse that many love and have spent years building.
The entire fediverse is built upon the idea of an open protocol that anyone is welcome in yet it seems like everyone is shocked that a corporation is finally jumping in.
This was inevitable and more will be coming. The beauty of the fediverse is that you can still find an instance that gets all the mainstream content of the Meta stuff while not subjecting you to the algorithm and data gathering that Meta apps have. In addition, if you DON'T want to participate and see that stuff, the fediverse provides ways to de-federate your neck of the woods and live in bliss without seeing and interacting with any Meta content.
The concern is that the fediverse as it exists now may not be big enough to survive corporations entering it. If they start creating their own modified versions of that open protocol (which they will) it will eventually mean they start breaking compatibilty with the rest of the fediverse. That means that the rest of the fediverse will then need to move over to their protocol which they have control over or just accept that the free and open fediverse can no longer connect to the corporate fediverse. Right now the free and open fediverse is small and may not have the staying power to survive that disconnect once people get used to being connected to the corporate side of fediverse. Once that disconnect happens the average joe is going to go with the side that has more content which is going to be the corporate fediverse if they are alowed to join before the free and open fediverse has truely gotten off the ground.
Meta has also never been anything other than actively malicious when it comes to online communities. Giving them any power at all in the still infant fediverse brings more risk than any possible reward. It's like letting a hyena into a daycare and saying it's fine because the hyena isn't hungry right now. Eventually it will be and why would you even let it in in the first place. Eventually meta will want more control. Letting them in now and allowing them to cement their place in the fediverse will just make it that much easier to extend and extinguish when that time comes.
Why would other instances have to move away to the corpo protocol? I mean, if they screw them over by creating a walled garden in the fediverse let them do whatever they want. They have absolutely NO power about my self hosted instance and the instances I federate with no matter how big, important or powerful they are. If they break the protocol by injecting harmful content you can still stay on an older version or fork it. Its open source for a reason.
Also if the average joe moves over to the corpo platform: it's their decision. The only thing I can do is provide an open and transparent alternative and inform people with my conviction. We have to give up the idea of hoarding users and forcing security and privacy on them no matter how well we mean it.
Look at XMMP, this is why it basically died. The corpos embraced, extended, and extinguished by closing federation once they reached a certain population
It was always open to people, never to corporations. There's a big difference between the two.
It was inevitable that there would be corporate interest especially as we pose an alternative and potential threat to their market share but never that people on the Fediverse, many of whom came here to escape the spam, hate, and corporate control of places like Facebook would embrace this. Nobody is shocked by this.
The admins of the Mastodon instance I've been on, Kolektiva, already announced they won't be federating with "Threads" as it was Zuckerberg's censorship that lead them to create their instance as an alternative. Many others are doing the same as they did when Trump created his instance that ended up in a closed loop. Those type of controls built into most parts of the Fediverse are certainly a strength. It's not simply about living in "bliss" but about protecting what's been built largely by volunteers over years. Data gathering would definitely be a threat if Meta was allowed in.
The history of corporate involvement in open-sourced space has been antagonistic and threatening. People have reason not to trust Meta and many have joined here long ago to get away from it so these these are valid concerns being articulated by much of the Fediverse and it'll be interesting to see what comes next to say the least.