if Meta joins the Fediverse, Meta will be the only one winning. In fact, reactions show that they are already winning: the Fediverse is split between blocking Meta or not. If that happens, this would mean a fragmented, frustrating two-tier fediverse with little appeal for newcomers.
For me the fact that is can be fragmented and still fully functional is the best feature. Anyone that wants unified social media can have whatever meta gives them, anyone that wants to avoid meta can join instances that defederate them, and anyone that doesn’t care can just not care. Not sure how this author concludes that the fediverse doing exactly what it was designed to will ‘kill’ it.
Exactly. We can defederate them without suffering major damage. We get to be us, they can be them.
Before I read: I am guessing this is about how meta will absolutely kill the fediverse and that nobody will be using it after they federate on activitypub. Will edit after I read
edit: yup lol, just bad. It assumes XMPP was killed by Google when in fact it is not and still alive. The main big clients still get updates and the main Android client should even get a Material 3 redesign this year! The big Linux client Dino has got a Libadwaita update! But XMPP is dead you tell me. Oh well… Plus in this context, Meta can’t really kill the fediverse since 1. it will just end up exactly in the state we are in today and 2. I like the point Mastodon made, the fediverse already has a almost semi-mainstream brand: Mastodon. That alone could very well save it.
In the post it talks about the Fediverse winning. Yeah sure, blocking 99% of the users of the fediverse is winning. An anti-social social media. Talk about an attractive for the mainstream people, that will surely NOT push them to centralized platforms like Threads… Plus I am 99% convinced that Threads being federated is just because of the EU laws forcing interoperability between services, so they can say they support open protocols for communication.
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As opposed to what. Silent complacency and making Zuck happy?
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This is the same thing as people being against big companies contributing to open source software, like the Linux kernel. Like… Most contributions that make it usable today are thanks to huge corporations such as Intel or Google, and guess what? Linux is more popular and usable than ever!
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No, it won’t die as in, disappear. It’ll get cancer and “die” just like reddit is slowly experiencing. A loss of uniqueness, value and useability, since those require a sufficient number of non-conforming people.
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Correct. But, if they isolate too much, they run out of content of course. He who controls the content controls the internet, basically. If we wish to have any kind of independent existence outside of his eventual control, we would need a sufficient number of disconnected Instances, with enough users on them, right?
I’m gonna repost this again then: https://www.timothychambers.net/2023/06/23/project-and-the.html
Why do these people never address acquisition and bribery? Is Zuck not going to throw money at his problem?
So here’s the thing: there are quite a few free and open source technologies Google adopted that have remained free and open source… I’m not convinced Google was trying to kill XMPP, and even if it were, the fact that corporations can often successfully kill non proprietary standards isn’t a great argument against wanting corporations to adopt those standards.
If content from Threads is available to the Fediverse and vice versa, then there is certainly a risk that 95% of users end up on Threads (e.g., because the sign up experience is better, because it’s conceptually simpler for the non tech savvy, and so on) … And that, by defederating, Threads could force the remaining 5% to move to Threads to continue seeing content.
The issue with that threat is that it has nothing to do with Threads federating. Guess what? The moment Threads launched, it had 5x as many users as Lemmy does. If simply being big and having a lot of content is what allows a platform to scale to the point that it can use the network effect to kill competition, large social media companies have that advantage whether they federate or not.
Worried that Threads will launch features that aren’t accessible unless you’re on their instance? Well, if they aren’t federated… That’ll happen anyway.
What Threads joining the Fediverse does, is provide ~1M users on the fediverse access to content from ~5M more users, and means that everyone leaving a platform like Reddit in favor of a platform like Lemmy sees more content. That is 5x more helpful to getting Lemmy to scale than it is for Threads.
One major point in the article is people on the fediverse shouldn’t even play this “scaling game”. You do well pointing out how trying to focus on scaling the fediverse is sort of a lose/lose situation. This is precisely why the fediverse shouldn’t play this game because these social media corporations are masterminds at playing this game.
The major advantage the fediverse has over these social media companies is the fediverse doesn’t need to play this game. Social media companies are slaves to their shareholders, meaning every decision they make ultimately needs to increase profits. For the fediverse, there are no shareholders that needs to be satisfied with higher profits. This is why the fediverse should just focus on shared values. Bring people into the fold of the fediverse because they are tired of the enshittification which ultimately affects all social media platforms owned by large corporations.
Here’s the thing though: I want the Fediverse to have enough scale so it’s got most of the content I want, and I can spend most of my time here.
Otherwise I’m still relying on Reddit, etc – so I want scale.
The fediverse doesn’t need to scale to make money, but it needs to scale to a point where there are thriving communities. One thing I loved about reddit was stumbling upon a new sun full of people talking about the most obscure shit. Lemmy still has some ways to go to get there!
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I don’t know about garbage. While the oft-cited XMPP example is far from perfect, it’d be foolish to assume Zuck’s intent isn’t to acquire and monetize the majority of the Fediverse.
If I were him, I’d do it by co-opting the development, offering features like video hosting that the wider community would be unable to match. Certain Instances can be bought outright, others can be at least influenced with money.
This would serve to halt our growth, blocking the way forward for anyone to compete who could not match their resources.
