Technology
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If we all just defederate with them upon arrival, it seems it stunts their ability to do that. Some users will go to their platform, sure - but if we don't allow them to piggyback off of our content and engagement, effectively segregating their community away from ours, influence will be minimal, in theory.
Obviously some users will go to their platform, but really, that's fine. We don't need to interact with the entire internet.
Sounds good, but only in theory.
I think you almost comically underestimate Metas power to bring eyeballs and therefor content to a platform. In due time the vast majority of Activity Pub „stuff“ will happen under Metas regime. The initial services such as Mastodon or Lemmy will merely be a blip on the radar. Sure, they will continue to exist, but the mass adoption and the network effects that come with it will be under Metas claim on the fediverse. And then it’s „embrace, extend, extinguish“ again (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish).
If a majority of instances defederate from them at the start, meta won’t have the ability to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish in a meaningful way because meta wasn’t embraced back in the first place.
According to Fediverse Observer the fediverse currently has 1.8 million monthly active users (src). Instagram in the meantime has 1.44 billion monthly active users (src).
Lets be generous and use the 12 million total user accounts for the fediverse, not the IMHO more relevant active users. Lets then be very conservative and say that only 1% of all Instagram users will try the new Activity Pub based service Threads. By this estimate the Meta-share of the fediverse will bigger then the whole accumulated userbase so far with 14.4 million users. I think that the 1% is quite conservative, given the marketing might that Meta has.
This means that from the start there will be a "second" fediverse - even if completely defederated from the existing one - with people sharing links, writing comments & thoughts and posting pictures. So there is a potential question to be asked - who is defederating from whom here content-wise?
Secondly I think EEE can also aim at "just" the featureset and technicalities. Safe to assume that Meta has more paid engineers and designers on staff then lets say Lemmy (or Mastodon). Those teams will implement features that the users want, that make their life more convenient. Features that take the currently existing "nerdy overhead" out of the fediverse. All the OS services in the fediverse are then under pressure to either adopt or die.
So yeah, capitalism does what capitalism does, making things marketable. Written wearing my Che shirt.
What I'm saying is to let them have their own fediverse and keep them out of ours. Meta has already taken over Instagram and Whatsapp, and considered buying TikTok. Why should they have this too?
The fediverse exists as a shared commons currently; large, for-profit entities don't like shared alternatives they can't profit off as that is lost market share. From Meta's standpoint, they have to kill it or take it over and monetize it (and then kill it) as they can't maximize their profit from it otherwise. Coexistence with a competing paradigm (namely, a decenteralized, primarily non-profit social media competitor) is temporary and non of Meta's actions will go decreasing their profits except as a temporary loss leader to kill their competition (like Walmart going into a community and lowering their prices to kill their organic competition or Amazon killing bookstores). Again, Meta has already proven that they will take over competing social media and it would be foolish to think that they would not try again. If the fediverse were really not a threat to them, why would they create a product that ties into it and then ask the current fediverse operators to sign an NDA to discuss it. If the 12 million users (with 1.8 million active users, which, as a side note is a great demonstration of the pareto principal) didn't pose either a potential market or a up and coming threat to Meta, why would they bother? It's not like the fediverse could ever go viral and become a competitor like TikTok became to pre-existing social media.
To think that Meta would not use their app to bias their massive user base to their own subs that they would then monetize, manipulate, and then cut off from the fediverse when they reach a critical mass is (respectfully) naive (as demonstrated by Google and XMPP or to a lesser extent with Apple iMessage and SMS/RCS). To think that Meta wouldn't add proprietary features that are not interoperable with the existing fediverse is also naive (see, Reddit closing their source, adding a bunch of features like chat functionality but not allowing 3rd party applications to use them).
If the subs with the most engagement are Meta operated, they will either degrade the experience of non-Meta users to the point where those users will switch to the Meta service, or just defederate as it will no longer be in their financial interest to federate with something that they have already subsumed. They will treat the existing fediverse like Reddit treated Apollo and the 3rd party application ecosystem. Do you really want that?
I 100% agree with every point you made. And no, I do not want that, at all.
I still think it will play out like this though. Just because the network effect, speed of iNnoVaTIve feature development and marketing combined will favor Meta - a combination of "Why can't mlem app do X?", "All your friends are here" and banner ads on Insta. The "OG Fediverse" will still exist, maybe even grow - but federation as a new architecture for all Social Media will be off the table.