this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 135 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Honestly surprised there are no ads yet. I thought that was the whole point of the website...

[–] illi@lemm.ee 145 points 4 months ago (3 children)

They need to make it nice first, to reel people in. Once they are in and invested, that's when ads start.

[–] RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 64 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] xavier666@lemm.ee 16 points 4 months ago

It's a classic (enshittification tactic)

[–] MagicShel@programming.dev 35 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well that sounds enshitty.

[–] qprimed@lemmy.ml 24 points 4 months ago (1 children)

wait till you see the -ification.

[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 4 months ago

that's when they start filtering out the genuine content and show you mostly promoted stuff

[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 28 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yep. that's the classic shitty business model

  • Make a site that's attractive to use for a lot of people

  • Once you have enough people, lock in the users with network effect, walled garden, etc

  • Use the users to draw in businesses

  • Lock in the businesses and squeeze them for profit.

  • Squeeze users and businesses for money, abandon any maintenance and improvement on the site except for monetization.

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 22 points 4 months ago

It's the 3 D's.

  1. Develop the product
  2. Draw people in
  3. Dump a nice steamy log on the whole thing
[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 19 points 4 months ago

They have to build social inertia first. This is something Facebook figured out a long time ago and is well-documented. They were begging for money from investors to keep the site running and Zuck refused to run ads because the site was still growing like crazy.

It might be years yet before they start running ads but rest assured they will eventually.

[–] zecg@lemmy.world 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You don't raise temperature while the frog is in the pond.

[–] ricdeh@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I don't understand this metaphor. Is it about frog breeding for later eating? Why else would you want to heat your pond, irrespective of the frog. And why is there a greater incentive to heat the pond when there's no frog, and vice versa? So many questions!

[–] Vanth@reddthat.com 12 points 4 months ago

I interpreted it as you don't heat the pot while the frog is still in the pond. You only apply heat slowly once the front is already in the pot.

Don't load up the ads until the users are already on Threads. Wait until they are active on Threads, then crank up the ads when it's more difficult for the users to leave.

[–] my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 1 points 4 months ago

There was an experiment once where it was determined that a frog with it's brain removed wouldn't jump out of slowly heated water but would reflexively jump if placed into already hot water, leading to a myth that a frog won't leave boiling water if heated gradually enough.

Idioms around frog boiling generally means to make changes slowly and gradually enough that there is minimal reaction from affected parties.

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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 81 points 4 months ago (3 children)

And this is why it’s not a good idea to federate with Threads.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 42 points 4 months ago (1 children)

On the contrary, that's how you get an ad-free access to Threads content.

[–] Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Interesting that you think that I may be interested in Threads content.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

Interesting that you think that I may be interested in Threads content.

I'm not interested in what content you are interested in. You (Edit: Not even you, gravitas_deficiency. Why even interject as if you were the person I replied to?) made a comment regarding blocking Threads content for everyone. Let everyone decide for themselves which accounts to follow, don't promote not to federate at all just because you personally don't want to follow accounts there. Just don't click the follow button, duh.

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 15 points 4 months ago (8 children)

Go to some junk instance that's willing to federate if you want.

Federating with Threads makes an instance unacceptable as far as most of us are concerned. Their mere existence is malignant.

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[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 points 4 months ago

9/10 of the most followed accounts on Fedi are on Threads, so you may not, but clearly many many people do.

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[–] chrisbit@leminal.space 20 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

There are myriad reasons not to federate with Threads.

[–] troed@fedia.io 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)
[–] neshura@bookwormstory.social 50 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (9 children)

bold of you to assume that ads won't just be disguised as regular posts (and therefore federate)

Edit: after reading the article I heavily suspect ads will federate. As is they are just specially marked posts so I see no reason to think they won't federate.

[–] MagicShel@programming.dev 12 points 4 months ago (5 children)

My instance is defederated from threads. At the time I mildly disagreed with that decision. Federated ads would vindicate that decision. I don't need threads content that badly.

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[–] zecg@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago (3 children)

That's why they have stealth enshittification techniques to disguise them.

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[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean they do. And I'm sure they will. But as long as you're not using Threads they can't be pushed into your feed.

I assume in the future there will probably be an option to "block Threads accounts except the ones that I specifically follow".

[–] troed@fedia.io 1 points 4 months ago (3 children)

This is how the protocol works.

  1. You only get content from those you follow (in your home feed).

  2. Your server's local feed will contain all posts made by users on your server.

  3. Your server's global feed will contain all posts from users someone on your server follows.

Note how #3 isn't actually a global feed. Spin up your own server at home and it will be the same as your home feed when you're the only users.

Even if you federate with Threads, there's simply no way for them to "inject ads" into any of these feeds.

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[–] riodoro1@lemmy.world 60 points 4 months ago

Tomorrow.

That’s when.

Stop using meta services.

[–] AGuyAcrossTheInternet@fedia.io 43 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Don't worry, Threads Pro will have you covered for an ad reduction for 3.99/mo.! And Threads Pro Plus for 5.99/mo. will get rid of them all by 2030!

[–] ThunderComplex@lemmy.today 2 points 4 months ago

Your prices are optimistically low. They’ll probably be double that and lock features behind the more expensive plan.

[–] 314xel@lemmy.world 34 points 4 months ago

‘no immediate timeline’ toward monetization

Soo, starting tomorrow

[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 33 points 4 months ago

We know what enshittification looks like now. Just because you restart it doesn’t mean it’s not obvious where it ends up.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 26 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I don't get why anyone even uses it. There are other better options that aren't run by Facebook.

[–] FrostyTheDoo@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

It's an awareness thing. Everyone uses it because everyone else uses it, because it's the main one people know about, because Meta has unlimited money to market it and scale it, which are exorbitantly expensive.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 6 points 4 months ago

Most people are some combination of lazy, uninformed, stressed, and stupid. Can't think long term, just trying to get to tomorrow.

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 5 points 4 months ago

Not complicated.

  1. The value of any social network is its' users more than anything. They'll use it in spite of it being super shitty if the people they want to follow are on it.

  2. Threads basically created "one-click account creation" with Instagram so the onboarding was seamless.

  3. They capitalized on the Muskification of Twitter.

[–] YeetPics@mander.xyz 20 points 4 months ago

Lmao, called it

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Tried Threads briefly. It’s full of the same people who comment on or create Facebook reels. Insta-political trolling, deliberately wrong info just to get people to comment and correct it, “I’m stupidly out of the loop on this ridiculously popular topic, can someone tell me why [thing] is?” Just to get every know-it-all to reply. Like every low-effort post on Reddit ever.

Couple that with the inability to sort, and the inability for notifications to take you to the post you were having a discussion on, and I gave up after about 3-4 days.

The platform sucks and so do the participants.

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[–] Sharan@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

I have tried Threads, and I really can't recall when was the last time I wasn't impressed at all by something.

This doesn't help.the situation at all.

Hell, Musk's Twitter is a better option to explore than Threads.

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