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this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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Fediverse
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You forgot profit.
If Meta/threads sees a way to cram ads into their instance(s), they will. If they offer money to others to put ads on their instances, they will. If they make rules or other demands of those making money - like no defederating from Meta/Threads, or requiring federating with other corporate instances, they will. On top of that, you’re going to get people drawn into the fediverse, like influencers, political spammers, more bots, and anyone else that follows that type of social media. Coders will start writing corporate-friendly instance code that will allow individuals (like influencers) to spin up profitable instances quickly that tie right into the corporateverse.
EEE will happen. We can argue about defederating from these corporate instances, but it’s going to be a running retreat.
Maybe hyperbolic. Maybe not. If, of course, if meta/threads finds the fediverse profitable.
I really enjoyed reading this although it is quite dystopian. Very well put. Thank you.
You know that someone with the ability to write like this could always write to the guy who founded mastodon for example (who apparently is on the hype train himself, who knows, maybe he has been paid already. But I got no evidence).
I‘m actually suspecting a lot of the „wait & see“ peeps to be paid actors or „true believers“ that already have a threads account and are working for the takeover.
I'm pretty cynical. I'm a huge sci-fi fan, and enjoy everything from Star Trek, to The Expanse, to William Gibson's novels. P K Dick, too.
You want to know which futuristic reality they projected is the one in the lead? I can tell you it's not the gleaming white space stations with hundreds of thousands of humans peacefully engaged in furthering knowledge and exploration.
Nope.
It's the despotic corporatocracy with the token ineffective government winning. The corporations rule all. Ever read Jennifer Government? Yeah, we're headed for Gibson's Sprawl and disparity in a hurry...well, if Climate Change doesn't get us all first.
I feel like I would like to read those but 1984 already made me wanna puke so I might have to pass.
Still, I very much get what you mean.
So then explain to me, how exactly does this impact you? What about you block the meta instance yourself? You will not see any threads content and will continue to use lemmy/ActivityPub in literally the exact same way.
If corporations get their hooks into the fediverse it will be like putting out fires. Plenty of people out there willing to sacrifice what the fediverse is for a few bucks. I don't want Threads/Meta to even get a toehold, that shit's poison.
Do you know how federation works? Because if you did you'd know that 'corportions get their hooks into the fediverse' does not mean anything. Defederation and forking of the source code is a click away, the reason lemmy exists is to move away from corporations. Contradicting that would just spawn a new lemmy federation.
Did you read what I wrote? Are you just being stubborn about human nature? Don't insult me by implying I don't understand this stuff at least at the surface level. All I'm painting is a potential future, and that future is depended on corporations finding the fediverse worth the effort. If they don't, NBD. If they do, I can assure you they will grind away at what the fediverse is until it's shaped like what they want, federation be damned. Like I said, maybe you can carve out a corpo-free area, but that depends on the instance operators wanting to put out the effort and money while corps are potentially waving cash in their direction. Humans are shortsighted and greedy.
Corporations will try ofcourse that's what they do, but denying meta federation from the getgo goes against the philosophy of federation. The points you're making NEED to be made, we NEED to observe how meta handles it and how all services are affected. We can decide from there whether your doom scenario holds any merrit whatsoever.