TL; Don’t Read German

TLDR - Threads hype or shill

There should be a rule that advertisers should openly identify themselves on any and all social media sites with penalties that are existential threats when they don’t.

Abridged pseudo-translation plus comments. Biased because I strongly disagree with the author.

“The new era for social media: how Threads changes the rules of the game”

Background on how Instagram grew

By using the Twitter API to allow people to follow through IG the people who they did from Twitter. Then Faecesbook bought IG, and promoted it in the FB “app” [SIC - the author talks about social media, but shows blatant ignorance on the difference between a platform and the software used to access it.]

Threads competing m. Twitter but being strongly linked to IG, heavy interoperability, Threads becoming ActivityPub-compatible soon, explosive growth, millions of users in hours.

IG growing first through the twitter API and now using the same mechanic in the other direction.

Why ActivityPub? Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? NoN

Fuckenberg mentions that Twitter has still lots of network effect going on. Then the author mentions discussions on Mastodon about Meta destroying Mastodon + Fediverse… or rather, he makes a strawman out of them. And then he beats the strawman that himself created through something that boils down to “those discussions are bizarre lol lmao XD I assoome dat those full blood nurrds are ignorants on maths.”

Then two parentheses later, the author claims that Meta doesn’t give a fuck about ActivityPub or the fediverse… yeah, except that it’s still adopting it and the author is so busy masturbating over “intenshuns” (wollen) that doesn’t realise that, regardless of what Meta “wants”, it’s still able to cause damage.

Reason #1 - asymmetric network effect

The author tells us anecdotes on his times in Twitter, then claims that “asymmetric networks yield extra strong network effects”. And by “asymmetric” he means that A following B doesn’t require B to follow A. Under the following arguments: the larger my network (i.e. number of followers), the harder it is for me to transpose that network elsewhere, since those asymmetric connections are platform-exclusive, and the people are socially distant from each other.

More to come later as it’s 9:00 here and I need my breakfast.

EDIT:

The author claims that Twitter was relevant, but not big, due to the asymmetrical principle. Then screwing over its API in the early 10s making it dysfunctional, with a big gap between its potential and actual situation.

Then the author claims that Meta is aiming for the ActivityPub for 1) Twitter having big network effect, and 2) being currently rather weak, and Meta leaving nothing to chance. That’s a bit of a non sequitur IMO.

Then the author claims that, once Threads supports AP, its users will be able to follow European and German institutions and agencies.

Reason #2 - Creators

Musk drives influencers and creators off Twitter. So the move would be to appease creators who are more and more afraid of relying on the whims of a centralised social media company. Basically honey for the trap.

Except that, even if those creators end deplatformed or whatever from Threads, odds are that they won’t be able to migrate their followers into the rest of the Mastodon side of the Fediverse. Threads would be so massive that it would be able to dictate “kick them out or we defederate you”, so they’d end in relatively obscure spots. For us in Lemmy it’s obvious that defederation is a mechanic of the federation, and how it’s important to be there, but also that Threads can easily abuse it, if given room.

The Standard

Elon Musk making AP grow due to his idiocy.

Now, you can pitcure a Reddit one can riot in one or two years.

Come on this text was written across the revolt. Marcel Weiss is completely clueless on what’s happening about the topic that he’s talking about.

It doesn’t fucking matter Meta’s “intenshuns” regarding the Fediverse, that’s only a big red herring. What matters is the effect, and how much power it would give Meta over the Fediverse. That’s what the “ignorant nerds” are worried about, the whole protocol would gravitate around Meta alone.