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Embrace, Extend, Enforce (ƎƎƎ): A practical Strategy against potentially abusive Instances like Meta’s Threads
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this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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I'm not. I'm saying Meta will most likely behave abusive, but not all the time and because Threads will be a major instance in the Fediverse soon, we will not be able to afford blocking it permanently.
And that's why, even if it may not feel good, we will need to find some handle of interacting with Threads that goes beyond simply defederating.
What do you mean by not afford to?
https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub
In this article, The Verge is describing what they think may happen to the Fediverse in the next years: big time commercialization.
Now the current Fediverse can either try to adapt to this new stage and try to grow with it; or block it out entirely and stay small. These two factions are by some called "big" and "small fedi".
I'm a supporter of "big fedi", because I think people will just move to other instances that federate with the big ones if we don't. From my perspective, a big bull is charging right at us. We can either jump on it, ride it and try to taim it; or get trampled dead by it.
I disagree that those are the options. The fediverse is made up largely of people that are actively seeking alternatives to the very models of big commercial social networks. We have built and are growing this alternative in spite of the 'competition' from the commercial players. We don't need (or want) them. Facebook adopting the activity pub protocol does not mean we have to federate with them, and we should be beyond suspicious that they want to federate with us. No good can come of it.
The important thing for me is that the fediverse remains an alternative network, rather than simply an alternative 'client' for Facebook.
Ok, but if you do this, when comes the time when you try to grow the Fediverse again? Currently, the Fediverse has about 2M users, which are mostly on Mastodon. With the entry of Threads, this percentage will decrease over time. It will weaken or position further. Probably, there will be some companies that will try to compete with threads and if we are lucky, they are nice to us. But on paper, our percentage and our influence will decrease further. When is the point when you turn the switch to growth and claim room in the market?
So no, I don't see how it could work. I think we are currently in the best position that we will have in the next years and we should use it to our advantage.
Its pretty clear what they want: they see an emerging market and they want to claim and dominate it like they always do and they want to use us for their growth and they will use that growth for potentially bad things. That's all to be expected. But as long as they federate nicely with us, we should federate with them too. People will start asking themselves why some users have different domains and when important public figures start posting from the fediverse, word will get around. People thrive for freedom. I would go as far as saying that we have a responsibility here: our presence on Threads shows people the alternative to walled gardens.
And once important public figures have migrated in the Fediverse, temporary defederation will hurt Meta much more. Meta hugely underestimating what happens if the Left has pointed out the Fediverse as their new frontier.
How can all of that happen by just defederating? For me its a form of casting away responsibility.
The fediverse is not "an emerging market". It is in fact, competing for market share with the likes of Facebook. They don't give a shit about the technology, they just need the users. They feel threatened that people are jumping ship, and the best thing they can think to do is make sure they own the alternatives. Facebook will use its size and power to essentially turn mastodon into a Facebook client. In some ways I admire your optimistic outlook, but I cannot share it.
A facebook client that can chose to defederate from facebook? The overall vibe on Threads is already not exactly great. Threads growth is limited (altough it could franchise at some point).
It would be good if the market outside Threads would continue to grow at such a rate that it is too expensive for Threads to pull EEE. As it is currently. As long as this is the case, the fediverse has a chance of surving.
Ah but then it's too late. You think you are going to eat facebook's lunch, but it's gonna be the other way around.
Why is what too late?
Say threads has like 100 million users. Your instance federates with 1 million users. Then you federate with threads so now you federate with 101 million. You get some new users by saying "hey check it out, interact with Facebook without having an account there". Later you decide to defederate from threads and go back to your 1 or 1.1 million users. Who is going to stay on your instance? Anyone attracted by federation with Facebook is going to leave, along with any existing users that got used to/enjoyed federating with Facebook.
Fair point - but: along with threads, hopefully there will be many other instances with, say, 20 million users combined. So the instance will still have 20 million users federating. And if the reason for the defederation was justified, maybe other instances will jump along too and then Threads loses 21 million users as well.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I will personally not be on any fediverse instance that federates with threads.
Yup.
I will and if it is only to argue with insta-kids about the Fediverse. ha ha :)
I think its not clear yet who will be eating whose lunch. It will be probably be a continuous back and forth.
Normally companies like Facebook just buy their competition, and either kill it or control it. They can't buy activity pub so this is their strategy instead. Their goal is still the same: kill or control. Why on earth would you want to partner with someone who has that attitude towards you?
Its a monopoly, its behaving like a monopoly. But because of network effects, we cannot just ignore it, we have to go in direct combat.
At least if you want the Fediverse (with a diverse instance-landscape) to become big, confrontation with Meta is inevitable.
If you don't want it to become big, that's fine, but then we have a different opinion there.
Network effects are already in play even before Facebook adopts federation. I, like many others here have sacrificed the convenience of a Facebook network for a better alternative. The fediverse is growing in spite of it's disadvantage in terms of network effect. Let Facebook die of enshittification and it's users will find the alternatives. Rather than "direct combat" with the giant, I prefer to say "the only winning move, is not to play".
Interesting point. With activitypub, Threads could try to avoid enshittification.
The Problem: Threads, Mastodon and the other Fediverse apps will soon not be the only players in the Fediverse. At least letting die Facebook of enshittification will not work at this point. And additionally, if Threads decides to franchise its own instances, you have tiny thread-instances all over Social Media not even operated by Meta and that seems pretty resistant to enshittification.
Enshittification is what happens when companies have to really start making money. They often lose money in the race to build up a strong userbase. Once they have that, they start ruining the experience by showing too many ads and/or charging for access. Facebook isn't going to invest in federation if it doesn't have a very solid plan, devised by a huge team of well-paid professionals, to protect and grow its profit margin. Anything they touch will enshittify eventually.
Mmmh, you could be right there.
Ok, but you have still the other competitors. And even if you count them out, there will always be instances that federate with Threads. That's how the Fediverse works. Yes you can do coordinated actions, but only to a point. For letting Threads enshitificate, you would need an air-tight wall from Threads to all other instances and that's not possible.
Yup, that is how it works, and how Facebook will exploit that openness. I only hope that more people will come around to my point of view and refuse to engage with hostile networks like Facebook.
Ok, so we have come to a conclusion here. That's fine. What I'm not sure about is whether these two standpoints will complement each other in some way or work against each other in the future.
I at least will take some interesting points away from this.
We can either chose to drive and contribute to the change, or hide away from it and eventually get rolled over.
It's already proven that it is a mistake to jump on the bull (or, for matter of analogy, the smart truck) and try to tame it. it's already engineered and moved by big money so that its controls will never be available to us. Smarter than trying to tame it (a useless fight) or leave ourselves be trampled by it (a useless sacrifice), we can simply jump aside.
Why is it proven? Also: isn't the whole Fediverse situation kind of unique?
There's nothing unique to the current Fediverse situation. In the days of old people had their own web pages and web servers too, and we had protocols to announce changes to people too (hello? RSS? X-Headers?), we linked to each other as well (directories, webrings) and we had chat (IRC). Yet we still landed on CorpoNet.
In fact I'd surmise the current situation is worse. Whereas with the old ad tried protocols you could actually host a web server with content on a potato, or on an old beeper, nu-protocols tend to be quite resource hungry. I oft hear that people have to pay two bills for Mastodon: one for the web service and another one for the amont of storage and traffic that it generates; from what I hear Matrix is similarly heavy compared to, say, IRC or XMPP. Dunno if it's still true or not but I also recall that stuff like Lemmy depends on DNS, meaning you have to be able to buy your own domain and depend on that kind of central authority (wasn't the point of Fediverse stuff to be decentralized?). Rather recently a good amount of Lemmy servers were oopsied because one of the .tld authorities pulled the rug from under an entire top-level domain name.
I meant unique in the size and numbers of users. I think at a certain point, you will lose some beginner-friendliness if you want it to scale.
Well, then you could just as well call the web itself not enough dezentralized. The Fediverse just builds on that.
Ok, that's not so great