cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/12225991
TL;DR: The common view on Meta’s Threads is that it will be either all good or all bad, leading to oversimplified and at the end contra productive propositions like the Fedipact. But in reality, it’s behaviour will most likely change dynamically over time, and therefore, to prevent us getting in a position, in which Threads can actually perform EEE on us, we need to adapt a dynamic strategy as well.
Why the hell would anyone (particularly fediverse users) give Facebook the benefit of the doubt? I genuinely can’t understand it.
So Twitter is dying, we all know that.
Former Twitter users have a few options on where to go next. Ideally Mastodon/Fediverse. Blue Sky possibly. Likely Threads.
Users who go to Threads or Blue Sky will just make it Twitter 2, specifically Twitter from before Elon which I’ll be honest wasn’t a particularly great Twitter to begin with. (That isn’t to say the Fediverse is immune from the same fate, it just has some better protections against it.)
So option 1, Fediverse says “Fuck Threads”, Twitter 2 is born and it’s shitty for them. Fediverse gets a few new users, but mostly the Fediverse wonders why “everyone” is on Threads.
Option 2, Fediverse keeps an open dialogue with Threads. Threads users are more aware of the Fediverse. More Threads users actually migrate to the Fediverse. The Fediverse gets a wider range of users. If (when?) the Fediverse has to completely cut off Threads, the Fediverse will at least have more users, some of which will remain.
Another open question, does the Fediverse want former Twitter/Threads users?
Yes. More users, more thoughts, more opinions, more diversity, a better Fediverse. That isn’t to say I want shitheads. We can and should still ban shitheads.
People that go to Bluesky or Threads are happy in their corporate gardens. The fediverse is not really an option for most of those people, anymore than Facebook is not really an option for me. If Facebook thought that threads could possibly lose more users than it gained, they wouldn’t federate.
Facebooks interests are diametrically opposed to the fediverse’s. They aren’t “just another server”, they are a multi billion dollar surveillance capitalist juggernaut. Thinking that you can somehow benefit from any kind of relationship with them is wrongheaded, IMO.
Why do people feel like we need rapid growth in numbers? The fediverse is still under development, and past events have often strained the infrastructure. Will threads users even be ‘impressed’ by our homespun alternative if it struggles under the weight of replicating millions of paid posts?
To tell you the truth, I am disappointed and saddened by what I see as the end of this whole fediverse experiment. To think that in the end we will happily give away what we worked so hard to build.
I don’t need rapid growth, but I do want growth. Any* users we can siphon off of Threads is a win.
*Any assuming good faith users. I’m against active shitheads. The Fediverse should not reshape itself to fit Threads, Threads should reshape to fit into the Fediverse.
My take is that if the Fediverse can be destroyed simply by a particular instance being too popular, then maybe that’s a problem with the Fediverse - not that instance.
So if we had 100 Mastodon instances, and each instance had 100 users, we have a healthy Fediverse of 10,000 users.
Now 1 of those 100 instances decides to do something. Maybe they make a moderation decision and become super pro Nazi. Maybe they add a new feature where you can video chat with other users.
Now Nazis are frowned upon. So if 1 instance of 100 users is full of Nazis, the other 99 defederate from the 1. The Fediverse now has 99 instances of 100 users and we have a healthy Fediverse of 9,900 users.
But maybe video chatting is a neat feature. Initially only 100 users can video chat with each other. Other instances add video chatting, but not in a compatible way. Some users can video chat with each other, some can’t, & some don’t like the feature at all. As a community the different instances and developers work together to figure out what should happen to varying degrees of success.
But let’s change things. 1 instance has 7,000 users, a second instance has 2,000 users, and a few dozen instances have a few users, we still get a healthy Fediverse of 10,000 users.
But maybe the 7,000 user instance becomes pro Nazi. The smaller instance can defederate, but now you have the 7,000 user Pro Nazi Fediverse, and the 3,000 user Anti Nazi Fediverse. It isn’t broken. The smaller Fediverse still exists, but it’s smaller. Maybe the 2,000 user instance would rather rejoin the larger Fediverse. Maybe Nazis aren’t that bad. Now we have a big Fediverse of 7,000 Nazis and 2,000 Nazi tolerators. The 1,000 user Fediverse still exists, but is MUCH smaller. Not great, for either Fediverse.
Or what about the video chat? What if the 7,000 user instance adds video chat? What if they don’t want to share how it works? If you want video chat you have to move instances. Now our 7,000 user instance has 8,000 users. Now our 8,000 user instance adds ads. You can’t leave if you want video chat.
The Fediverse can’t be destroyed, but it can be shrunk. If it shrinks too much too fast, it might cease to be useful. If it grows too much too fast, it might cease to be useful.
You sound so innocent it’s almost cute. Option 2 will never happen because people are already aware the Fediverse exists and that still doesn’t make it for them, what the want is the closed walled gardens, when (not if) the time comes to cut off Threads they’ll just return to their posting there. With Threads closed off from the Fediverse, there is no incentive for them to keep their activity here.
I would argue that most people don’t know about the Fediverse.
The Fediverse has maybe a few million users, depending how you count it.
Threads has 100s of million users. Even if only ½% of those move to the Fediverse, that’s still a huge win.
I’m not. I’m saying Meta will most likely behave abusive, but not all the time and because Threads will be a major instance in the Fediverse soon, we will not be able to afford blocking it permanently.
And that’s why, even if it may not feel good, we will need to find some handle of interacting with Threads that goes beyond simply defederating.
https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub
In this article, The Verge is describing what they think may happen to the Fediverse in the next years: big time commercialization.
Now the current Fediverse can either try to adapt to this new stage and try to grow with it; or block it out entirely and stay small. These two factions are by some called “big” and “small fedi”.
I’m a supporter of “big fedi”, because I think people will just move to other instances that federate with the big ones if we don’t. From my perspective, a big bull is charging right at us. We can either jump on it, ride it and try to taim it; or get trampled dead by it.
“but with its currently starting commercialization”
Wait. The fediverse is going commercial?
I mean, that was a leap ahead, but there are currently a few companies directing towards the fediverse: Meta, Wordpress, Medium, Mozilla, Flipchart. Also look at the most recent The Verge arcticles about the fediverse, they are also pushing the point that the social web will be a growing market in 2024 (https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub).
You could say that this is all hype, but I think its clear the “hobby phase” of the Fediverse is beginning to end and a new phase starts. At the latest when Threads federates with Mastodon.
They will take everything and shit on it.
What’s the point in being here if the corporations are coming here?
We’ll probably have to move to a new internet. Dibs on calling it the “Freediverse”.
Do you people want others on fedi or not? Jesus Christ.
Devs: make thing
Others: use thing
You: stop it!
No but there are basically two ways things can go:
- The Fediverse stays tiny. It will probably be non-commercial, such a tiny userbase isn’t attractive to for-profit companies.
- It blows up, getting big. This makes Meta really the smallest problem, as the bigger thing to worry about will be the sheer amount of corporations setting up activity-pub based applications and commercializing as much of the system as possible.
People wanted the Fediverse to get more popular. So more popular it gets, more big companies and an like will join the Fediverse. So mission accomplished, everyone. 🥳
Defederation still a thing? What happened I thought it was going save the Fediverse from this stuff.
My argument was that monetary compensation of some form would drive participation, and that participation could take the form of simple things like ads all the way to developers coding lemmy instances to accept ads and other preferred features desired by corporations like user tracking, algorithms to place preferred posts, communities and/or users at the top of views, etc… Make the software free and give instance operators a cut of any revenue, and bam, EEE wins. Way too easy, the burden of running the instances falls on the operator and with some nice EULA wording, probably the liability as well.
Of course, that hypothetical scenario hinges on corporations finding the lemmyverse worthwhile to exploit, which hopefully won’t happen.
The proper strategy is not to play the corpo game. Mass commercialization and corporate entities pushing to monopolize is the root cause of the problems that we have with the www. The only way to “win” is to exclude these known bad actors and prevent them from reshaping this place into another cesspit filled with ads and more coordinated efforts to subvert free societies.
Those E’s are backwards!
Its a play on embrace, extend and extinguish (EEE) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
