Fediverse

I'm not sure I totally agree with that assessment. If we compare the sheer amount of resources and talent behind Meta vs. behind the Fediverse, it's clear that there's no way the Fediverse can ever compete in terms on innovation and features. Not to say that there aren't talented devs on the Fediverse - they're all pretty talented if you ask me - but Meta can just hire hundreds of similarly talented devs without even feeling the cost.

Really, the only way to prevent getting washed away by Meta (in development, in users, in culture, in basically just about everything) is to not associate with Meta at all. Co-existence doesn't mean we have to cooperate, after all. If the Fediverse shows that it has the userbase and staying power to withstand a full EEE "assualt" and remain standing, then I would be more inclined to take the "wait and see" approach. But I think as it stands now, Meta is very clearly trying to overwhelm the Fediverse before it has a chance to get going on its own merits

A for-profit and a non-profit silos existing along each other might suffice. The resources and goals of the for-profit one shouldn't dictate what the non-profit community of developers, admins and users, a lot of which are volunteers do. We can't match either and we probably shouldn't.

Letting them dictate the pace for technological development is actually the shortest path to be extinguished.

They have already 30 millions of users, which is approximately 2.5x the whole fediverse. Shortly they will easily reach 100/200 millions, probably, which means the whole fediverse will be <5%.

Now, in this condition, with Meta turning >100 billions of profit in a year, Mastodon (and Lemmy, and Pixelfed) etc., should compete by aiming for feature parity with an organization that can throw hundreds of full-time developers at the code? Sorry, no.

The whole idea in my opinion is framed poorly. For me the fediverse is a technical implementation of an idea. The technology comes after the idea, and the idea is simple: decentralization, non-monetization, no ads, and no-profit. It is a corner of the cyberspace which is and should remain out of reach for the big companies. We cannot, and should not, compete in their game.

This means that our tech should be poor out of principle? No, obviously. But we need to be realistic that fedi software will fail to keep the pace in terms of features with Threads. Aiming to do that seems already saying that Threads will take decisions, the rest will need to catch up, and it's just a matter of time before one of their feature is a change in ActivityPub, or requires an extension of it, or breaks compliance with it.

I think that the way forward is simply acknowledging that while there are technical similarities, Threads and the fedi software are wildly different things, and they should be considered as such. Some will federate, some will not, but we should keep that distinction.

That's a whole lotta text. Fuck Meta and everything they stand for. Period.

What need is there to Federate with Meta? They're a corporation where growth matters. Lemmy and Mastodon are private, networked instances where funding can and often does come from donations. Provided instance operators can subsist off those donations, the need to grow for the sake of growth/profit is a non-issue.

For those unfamiliar with Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

I don’t think it’s inevitable Threads will have a better user experience than non-corporate apps. Meta has different goals and will optimize the user experience to drive profits. Look at how they continuously make Facebook and Instagram worse to drive engagement.

Also, see Reddit. Apollo was one dude’s project that blows the official app out of the water. And all the other apps scrambling to support Lemmy benefit from apps like Apollo and Reddit is Fun lessons in UX. It’s early days but we’re already seeing Lemmy apps with a lot of potential.

Linux is another example. Technical issues for new users aside, there’s a lot of beautiful, easy to use desktops that blow windows 10/11 out of the water. And other less new user friendly options for power users are available as well.

The community driven approach has been demonstrated to work because it’s only goal is to give the community a good experience.

I think a promising way to defeat a giant for-profit corporation like Meta is by investing capital in many smaller non-profit corporations which can each focus more tightly on the fediverse while Meta spins off to focus on the next hype train a year from now.

Little non-profit companies can carve off small portions of the market for federated social media content and, if enough exist to carve it in small enough pieces, then giant corporations like Meta will focus on other markets that are less fragmented.

Sure, Meta might try to buy out the little guys and consolidate, but as long as the little guys keep investing in free and open source IP(not trademarked/copyrighted systems) there won't be much room for Meta to technically differentiate themselves in a meaningful way to most consumers.

Defederation with them will be a shot in the leg, and handicap the Fediverse movement itself. There will be users/instances in the current Fediverse that would want to federate with them, and banning such instances would create silos and echo chambers.

I don't quite follow this line of thinking. Instance A can still be federated with Instance B even if Instance B is federated with Threads.

The greater danger, IMO, is the open source Fediverse losing users to Thread because of the slicker interface and greater engagement.

if meta figures out a way to backfill posts from other servers so you don't have to go to that instances website that's it they win