Hey guys. I admittedly am mostly a layman to the Fediverse as a concept. So I am coming into this post with the knowledge that I don’t understand the technical intricacies of it.
I fully expect that Meta will act in as bad of faith as possible, that is something that I think we all agree on. But from what I understand about the Fediverse, I’m just having a hard time understanding how we would not be shooting ourselves in the foot unless we at least try to federate with Threads.
I am aware of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.
Here are my understandings of the goals as a non-corporate fediverse:
- We love decentralization
- We love privacy
- We love self-reliance
- We would love to see the non-corporate federation grow
With those understandings, here are my questions:
Doesn’t the fediverse have an inherent protection and/or immunity from corporate take-over?
As I mention above, I am aware of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. But, how is that a risk for the Fediverse?
QOL features, and gimmicky capabilities can be replicated.
The only thing we may not directly be capable of are 1st party Meta acct/apps integrations.
Aren’t we protected?
Threads requires effectively all personal data from its users. But only their users. We are not forfeiting any personal data by federating with Threads; we are isolated to, and protected by, our individual instances.
Is there anything currently stopping Meta from scraping the Fediverse for our content?
If even anonymized privacy is a concern, why do we think that defederating will protect us? We’re all posting our content on private servers which are wide-open to the public.
Won’t we grow & educate?
If we keep corporate instances in the federation, isn’t is safe to assume that the non-corporate instance will grow massively? Connecting with Threads and others will allow us to proselytize the benefits of moving off of threads, and improving their digital wellbeing. If we are not connected, they will largely remain oblivious to us.
EDIT: I think this is a benefit because the people who want off of Threads and into the Fediverse are the people who strive for Freedom. This atricle claims the fediverse is not looking for growth, but we do want it to grow with people who agree with its goals, right?
Aren’t we worried we’re forcing an ultimatum while the Fediverse is still in its infancy?
If we disconnect now, we are telling everyone “choose the shiny new Threads, or the clunky up-and-coming Fediverse”. This affects prospective users, and existing users.
What’s the harm in pulling the ripcord if we try it, and it’s truly not a good fit?
If we pull the ripcord now, we allow Threads to grow in their walled garden.
If we pull the ripcord later, we make an informed decision.
If we never pull the ripcord, we allow Threads to pull the ripcord if they ever so choose. That encloses them into their walled garden, which is exactly where they’d be if WE pull the ripcord now.
“What about an influx of low-quality content?”
This is a whataboutism I’ve heard. What’s stopping individuals from blocking their disliked communities?
“What if Meta doesn’t moderate well?”
This is another whataboutism I’ve heard. I personally think that Meta has a vested interest to moderate Threads enough to stay out of the news. As a publicly traded company, it’s in their best interest to not scare off their advertisers and shareholders.
If some low-quality moderation does persist though, we still have the ability to block users & communities.
Thanks for taking the time to answer any of these. I will likely have follow-ups, and if/when I do please understand I am asking them in a good-faith effort to try and clarify/understand.
I’m not going to explain it to you.
I mean, it’s been fifteen fucking years. We know what Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey are about. They’ve shown us their whole entire asses. We’ve seen them radicalize our family members and put Nazis onto the streets. We’ve seen them stand by while genocide was organized on their platforms. Cambridge Analytica. Trump.
But the second they dangle a toy in front of us with the vague scent of FOMO and ground floor clout, that whole history gets thrown away and we’re back to repeating everything like it’s 2007 all over again.
Come on.
To clarify, my post is trying to highlight that Threads will exist with or without us. If they want to join the Fediverse, and we refuse and wall their garden for them, that does nothing to stop their growth and profit immensely. However, we lose the opportunity to connect with their users and content, and we lose any chance we have to convince them off of Threads. If they remain federated, we can offer the identical content they’re used to while promoting privacy and self reliance.
Risk/reward. What are the chances that a user of Threads would know or care about how Fediverse works? What are the chances that Meta obscures any knowledge on the Fediverse, so that it’s difficult to learn how the Fediverse works?
Meta is not some sort of saint that’s offering us a bone. They will try their absolute hardest to ensure it’s difficult to switch one away from Threads, and it will most likely be successful.
And on the risk side, how many users would you lose from an EEE maneuver? Even if the Fediverse remains standing, how much of its reputation has been damaged, and how will that affect its future growth?
To be clear: Fediverse is resilient toward corporate takeover. But EEE is not a corporate takeover maneuver. It’s a maneuver designed to attack the reputation of a platform, to stop it from growing. Nobody wants to use a platform with a bad reputation, and EEE is the platform equivalent of a bully becoming your friend just so they can gossip behind your back. You don’t need to be bought out or taken over to suffer reputation loss. The Fediverse is completely vulnerable to EEE. Even in the post by the Mastodon developer about Threads, he points out that he’s not worried about Meta stealing your data. But he said nothing about Mastodon’s ability to survive an EEE. Which I think is pretty telling.
And if we view it from the lens of my analogy (bully trying to befriend you to gain gossip material), I think the answer for what to do is plenty clear: don’t accept the friendship. That is what we are deciding to do. Accepting the friendship anyways because “maybe we can teach the bully to become a good friend” is both naive and missing the entire point. You’re missing the forest for single particular tree that most likely isn’t even there.