this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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Okay. I’ve seen stuff like this on both mastodon, and here, but i haven’t heard about them doing anything that would actually harm the fediverse. I guess i don’t know what the problem is. I know they’ve got a negative reputation, and for good reason, but isn’t that the awesome part of threads being federated? We can follow and connect to people there without being part of their system, and therefor not susceptible to their bs? If I’m missing something please fill me in.
Give https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html a read. Might sway you, might not.
This is an excellent point. Thanks!
in that case considering meta is saying that it would take nearly a year to federate the platform we probably should defederate them.
What point in that linked blog swayed you? The circumstances are quite different. XMPP was dogshit when Google started working with it. ActivityPub is light years ahead.
I really don’t know enough to say one way or the other, but the fact that this is an established Microsoft practice swayed me. I can actually believe google didn’t intend to do what it did to xmpp as a log of google employees from the 2000’s speak highly of the company, but these executives are traded like nfl players, and i know enough about meta’s history to believe they may do this. Besides I’m still new to development, but i don’t see many other reasons why it would take meta nearly a year to fully launch federation.
Actually this just occurred to me, but isn’t it interesting which accounts were linked first?
Triple-E predates Microsoft. IBM was doing it before Bill Gates was a twinkle in the mailman's eye.
Just think:
Meta has literal billions of users.
The entire fediverse has about 1.5 million.
Less than a fraction of a percent.
Why in THE FUCK would meta notice, or care, at fucking all? The entire fediverse of traffic ported over to meta wouldn't budge their advertising bottom line.
But, it's a comparatively small group of smart people, having conversations, and profiles they don't have tabs and near total control over.
There's news about cop city and gaza I have seen here that I've seen NOWHERE else.
Don't let them control the narrative here
Well, then, let’s make our point I’ll just email the holders of the instances I’m on and let them know I support defederating threads
The fediverse is an emerging threat. It's not ready yet, but it's on the right trajectory. Every time there's angst on some other platform, the fediverse get's a bump. Fediverse is not a real competitor yet, perhaps it never will be, but for meta it's sensible to establish a presence here in the short term, because it may be much more difficult later.
Why do people ask rhetorical questions without following through?!
This is a question that should be asked. If, indeed, the fediverse is so unimportant WHY THE FLYING FUCK IS META INTERESTED IN FEDERATING WITH IT!?!? THAT is the question people should be asking, given that Meta does nothing that isn't designed to add more money to Zuck the Fuck's portfolio.
And yet … most people (for clarity, I don't mean you here!) don't ask that question. They don't take that question you ask and wonder beyond that first kneejerk level. Use that question instead as a "LOL Meta doesn't care about the fediverse" piece of evidence.
And this is why we can't have nice things.
There is one big reason why they would care - antitrust and EU regulation protection. They have no intention to destroy the platform Rather they want to please the regulators as they are leveraging the open standards. The EEE strategy is a conspiracy theory. Government regulations are the most probable reason for this change.
Dude, even if it isn't straight out EEE they'll just drown us, and eventually kill us because if whatever reason. It doesn't even have anything to do with Lemmy, they have to manuver carefully if they want to let us live.
Do you have a Lemmy server that can take the load off of a billion user network? I have one and it for sure can't.
Your server has users that all follow every single user on the entire fediverse? I will admit, that'd be a real concern in that case, but it also sounds a bit weird. What kind of users do you invite to your instance? O.o
If 99% of the network is meta (probably more) then every user will follow stuff on meta instances, instances like Reddit, will have an enormous load of content. You don't need "everyone following everything" to get that, just imagine a "Reddit all" instance it will bring any small network to its knees.
It's all in the numbers, and the usage IMO. I don't want 10000 soul less posts a day, I want to see what people are up to, working on etc. those concepts are quite incompatible, at least on Lemmy because we are just small servers, not a uniformed giga billion network.
If your users are subscribing to 10,000 accounts who spam so badly that it causes resource issues, that’s not a Threads issue, that’s an issue of who you allow to use your instance.
That's not how it works.
That is exactly how it works. If your users are abusing your instance, it's on you as the instance owner to decide whether their usage is inline with your expectations as a host, or if they're better served elsewhere.
But that's good. Meta doesn't care about Lemmy or Mastodon because they're tiny. Threads is a threat to Twitter. They want to integrate with Mastodon just because Twitter doesn't. That's it.
They're not going for "total control" of your conversation about Gaza. You are not important to them. You are not the main character in some David and Goliath story. There are only Goliaths.
Do you know why Facebook paid a billion dollars for Instagram? Instagram wasn't worth that much. It wasn't generating a billion dollars in revenue. It probably still doesn't.
Facebook bought Instagram because Instagram was a growing app that was popular with a demographic Facebook wanted to control. They spent a billion dollars to eliminate a growing threat.
Mastodon and, to a lesser extent, Lemmy, represent a growing threat. Not a very big one right now, but it could become a bigger one. It could become another billion dollar problem for the goliaths on the Internet, in a few years. They need to have total control, if a social media app starts to fragment it just collapses instead as users decide to go wherever the other users are.
Facebook's 1000:1 user ratio would make Lemmy irrelevant and stave off that billion dollar problem for Facebook down the road. An incredibly cheap way to kill a tiny but growing competitor.
That’s the case whether or not you federate with Threads. But if you do, that’s not going to matter because you can freely communicate with people on Threads.
They don't want to federate because Twitter does not.
But neither to "extinguish" Mastodon or so. They need it as a defense like Google uses Mozilla, showcasing that not only do they enjoy competition, they in fact actively support it, by making their content available over there, too.
Because like you say, the entirely metaverse is so tiny compared to meta, thy could not give a flying fuck whatever the reason if it's about anything competitive. But they can utilize the tiny underdog as a shield from criticism. And that's valuable to them.
Threads doesnt have that much users I think. Fb, insta and whatsapp do have a lot of users but I dont expect a lot of users comming from there
Meta will be okay making money off lemmy indirectly for a while. Then, if they grow, they'll want more than a toehold.
When it's Facebook, trust that greed and power are the goals.
People are concerned because there were examples of such things going horribly wrong, most notably with Google and XMPP.
Way back in the day, Google announced that its Talk messenger will support XMPP, which made decentralization fans very happy - finally, they can communicate with everyone from the comfort of their decentralized instance!..oh.
Google started implementing features in Talk that are incompatible with XMPP, and then dropped XMPP support altogether, ending up deprecating Talk in favor of Google-only Hangouts. This forced many XMPP users to get into Google's ecosystem, since the people they contacted through XMPP were mostly just using Google Talk, and they couldn't be contacted through XMPP any more. As a result, XMPP became worse off than it started and got practically forgotten by all but 1,5 nerds who keep it alive.
now most of their contacts were in defederated Google to which they now didn't have access.
this ☝️. Those of us who remember what happened then, understand the potential dangers of federating with a juggernaut like META.
We should tread lightly!
Is it even true? I doubt XMPP was ever popular outside of google's talk.
Xmpp's popularity isn't the point.
The point is google intentionally killed it
How do you define if a communication protocol is dead? I use XMPP everyday, it works just well.
Also, I doubt that Google wanted to destroy XMPP. They simply needed a chat then noticed it's crap for mobile devices. They wanted to offer their users seemless migration to the new proprietary protocol.
I was sad that Google stopped to use an official standard, but there are many better free options left.
XMPP works great on mobile devices today. Google could have easily developed and published such extensions themselves.
Not even a little bit. XMPP was rubbish.
Why? It works great for me and my contacts. I use it for all my personal messaging.
When Google started using XMPP in Talk, 20 years ago, it was crap. I haven’t used it in probably 15 years but it wasn’t great then either.
Then it must have gotten a lot better in the meantime then. I discovered it ~2020 while searching for alternatives to WhatsApp and realizing that other walled gardens cannot be the answer since they have the same problem as WhatsApp. I think we should revive the idea of an universal internet standard for instant messaging.
No it's not in the least bit, but because people keep reposting that angry blog post by someone who was personally involved and wanted someone to blame so they blamed Google (as if XMPP needed any outside help to fail to catch on, they could do it on their own perfectly fine), people believe that narrative and then get sold on Meta wanting to the same with the Fediverse. As if they could give a flying fart (just like with Google and XMPP).
If they don't care about Fediverse they wouldn't join it in the first place. It isn't just meaningless but actually harmful - people can gain access to the content on their service without being subject to their extensive surveillance and ads. Add to this all the regular problems with federation.
As for Google and XMPP, back in the days it was happening Google were playing good guys - they had infamous "don't be evil" motto, supported various open standards and open-source projects (they still do so to some extend of course). I think for them it wasn't really an intent to 'kill' XMPP, it just XMPP was too dependant on google so they suffered a lot when the company decided to stop federation.
No it didn't
Wrong again.
This. I don't care what Google or Meta do, I will never use their services.
@Creatortray
You've just written it : their negative reputation for easaly understandable reasons. We can already foresee Threads will very soon be used to spread the most toxic campaigns on the net and that will undoubtably harm the Fediverse. One of the most valuable trait of the Fediverse is its decentralization and consequently, the potential accountability of any server administrator. Why should we take those risks when it's so easy to avoid it? #BlockThreadsOut
@mypasswordis1234
@Nelfan @Creatortray @mypasswordis1234 if my server federates with #Threads and it creates a problem, I’ll stop supporting it and move to one that doesn’t.
@boiglenoight @Nelfan @Creatortray @mypasswordis1234
Great toot, Nelfaneor, but to use the word 'risk' with respect to the probability of #falseBook creating harm in the #fediverse network, is a mistake — it is a "certainty".
Boiglenoight if you value the free and open web we have news for you, your instance is having its HTTPS intercepted by Cloud(G)lare (change 'G' to 'F'). Move to a different one, if you want us to continue dialog with you.
It is inevitable that Meta will try to kill the fediverse while chasing profits, there is no other possibility in their endgame.
If that is pushing ads into other instances or killing those instances entirely we don’t know yet but it will happen.
It has to because the shareholders must always have more.
I just don’t think it’s possible for something to kill the fediverse. And if it is possible, then it is a flaw in the design of the fediverse and needs to be fixed.
Are you planning to pay for the extra bandwith to deal with all the additional traffic?
Meta will.
And then when they own the servers amd all the traffic, lemmy will be quietly murdered.
Quietly, because they'll control the traffic, and therefore the narrative
That's just...not how any of this works.
It'll be successful and the current devs will lose the ability to unilaterally control the project.
So competition, that's what they are afraid of.