this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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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.