this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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I've used this analogy before, but threads is like a huge, 5k passenger cruise ship docking in a small town in Alaska. You don't have to know ahead of time that the 2 public bathrooms, one at the general store and the other at McDonalds, aren't going to be enough. You can also forecast the complaining about how everything isn't really tourist ready. It will suck for everyone. The small museum will be overrun and damaged, the people will be treated like dirt. It's an easy forecast.
Here's the important bit, just because they've never been in the cruise line business, doesn't mean you have to give them a chance to ruin your town.
edit: made sentence make sense.
The problem with analogies is that they are not literally the thing that you're analogizing, so there's going to always be parts of the analogy that don't "work."
In this case, what resource is Threads (the cruise ship) actually using from the small town (the rest of the Fediverse?) that causes the inhabitants of that small town any actual trouble? The fact that people on Threads can read posts from people on the Fediverse doesn't actually affect people on the rest of the Fediverse in any way. If you're concerned about the converse - the Fediverse being overrun with content from Threads - that's not actually something that they're implementing.
This comment feels like it's been on the Fediverse too long. To continue the analogy, your small town suddenly starts hosting a lot of voices on soap boxes. The more visited the town becomes, the more town criers it gets. Those criers bring their audiences, so not only do you have long queues for the two public bathrooms but you get fights in the town square; struggles over ideologies and all the underhanded trolling that entails. Corpos move in, governments move in, all eager to bend the ear of anyone unfortunate enough to get in grabbing range.
I liked Digg. I loved Reddit. At some point you just need to make a stand. Money and profitability aren't part of the equation, fuck'em. I'll keep my small town tyvm.
That's not true, their CEO said that you'll be able to converse and comment without leaving the app in the near future. Also, most instance owners are small, they could be overwhelmed pretty easily.
I'm 100% sure that this small town isn't ready for a cruise ship. That's not to say, that in a year or two, we couldn't be prepared for it. Right now, the relatively small influx from Reddit brutalized the existing community. This is the wild, wild, west for Meta because they're not getting enough new users for their shareholders in their existing platforms, I'm sure they're salivating.
A Threads users' content is only going to be visible outside of Threads if the user explicitly opts in to that. The vast majority of people aren't going to do that, or even be aware they can do that. In this analogy, most of the people aren't going to be aware their cruise ship has docked at a town and aren't going to be interested in getting off of it.
Where are you getting this information and if it's true? Even if it's true, Meta isn't known for sticking with what works for the user, but what works for their shareholders. They will figure out a way to exploit and/or extinguish the fediverse.
In the cruise ship analogy, they will stay on the boat the first few 3 or 4 times so everyone backs down and then they'll open the bridge for all 5k. None of this rocket science.
Why do you want them here so bad?
Here's where I got that information.
Because I believe in open protocols and freedom of discourse. I think that widespread adoption of open protocols like ActivityPub are a good thing.
Why is it a good thing?
Edit: I should clarify this question. You're saying you like open discourse, etc., but if threads EEE's the crap out of the fediverse, then this side is gone and you're killing off open discourse. Also, corporations like meta, are closed discourse.
Meta can not EEE the fediverse. The worst they can do is create their own distinct fediverse. But anyone who doesn't want to participate will still be using the open fediverse. They can't take your instance or force it to update to their standards.
It keeps things open to competition. It prevents situations like we saw with Reddit, where single organizations are able to gatekeep content and force everyone to use their portals to access it.
meta is a closed discourse and privately owned, so is reddit. This is user and volunteer run, why would you expose the user and volunteer ran place to closed and greedy companies to do that here?
The whole point of this thread is that Meta is opening up by implementing AcitivtyPub support, people are responding with hostility towards that, and as part of their justification for that hostility they're accusing Meta of being closed.
This is insane.
Do you work for meta or any of their subsidiaries? If not, you're going to have a bad time.
Truly a dizzying series of logical leaps.
No, I am not an employee of Meta or any of its subsidiaries. Even though I'm not 100% opposed to everything they ever do. Do you think there's no possibility of nuance on a subject like this, anyone who doesn't completely hate Meta and oppose all of their actions must be secretly working for them?
The hard time I'm warning you of, has just begun. Have fun with your nuance when meta craps all over you one way or another. Have a nice holiday, fr.
User opts in? Or instance opts in?
Users. They're talking about whether Threads' user content will be "broadcast" out to external instances.
Yes, which as far as I understand functions via an instance federating with another instance, bringing users along with it regardless of input.
I know theres a future version on the way that will let users block out set instances, but since when do users need to pick and choose what instances their instance shows them?
What do you mean? I follow a lot of hashtags on Mastodon. Won't I be seeing a lot of Threads content if I'm on a server federated with them without explicitly opting into that?
Threads' implementation is planned, at least initially, to flow inward rather than outward. The posts they make won't be seen outside of Threads at all initially, and later they intend to add that as something users will have to opt into in their settings (people rarely change their default settings so this will likely not happen much).
Even if it eventually does happen, many Fediverse server projects are already implementing features to allow users to block instances for themselves without need for defederation. If you find the comments from Threads to be annoying, block them.
Is it really that big? I thought a bunch of folks tried it for a week then stopped--especially when they realized you can’t delete your account without also deleting your linked Instagram account (assuming you have one).
They can't have it both ways, is it 100 million and amazing or is it small and needing content?