Meta will kill small instances! Please read.
Meta will kill small instances! Please read.
I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.
Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.
As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:
- Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won't care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
- When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won't care. They will use Threads because its faster.
This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.
Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That's not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.
My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.
I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.
We couldn't get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.
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We have to stick to our guns and keep supporting the small instances.
Admins needs to strike first and defederate from Meta before they do.
What good does that do the small instances? And how does that harm Meta?
All that happens is:
- The small instances won't get the extra activity that Meta users might bring
- Meta will not get the small amount of existing content on those small instances
That's more a loss for us.
Ya pretty much double-edge sword
On one hand, Instagram users can bring a ton of content, which "should" be good for the overall website
On the other, it's Meta lol
If I wanted all of the Instagram content I would be on Instagram. I don't want all of that content cluttering up another space and overwhelming another space.
The difference is here you can manage your own feed and pick and choose. Many folks don't want metas apps on their device but wouldn't mind some of the content. Folks that don't want it don't have to sub but those that do can benefit second hand.
I don't want Instagram content here! If I wanted Instagram-TikTok-type content I'd be there not here. I hope that crap stays away.
And yes, it's Meta lol
Nobody wants Meta's manipulated content. Let's not forget why we call them Meta.
I don't really see how it'd be a loss. The fediverse has existed for a long time alongside big centralized social media, and Threads ostensibly having ActivityPub support doesn't really change that.
The loss of potential growth opportunity... And all the potential negative effects happen anyway, no matter if you federate or not.
How about you do that once Meta does anything other than run their own instance and help to popularize the concept of the fediverse?
That's the "Embrace" step
We should be warry of anything big tech embraces. For example, Facebook reportedly uses servers running Linux. For that reason, we should all stop using Linux. Since Facebook has both an ios and an android app, we basically have to stop using our phones. We should shoot ourselves in the foot if there's a chance we might get to bleed on them /s
Nice sarcasm, very helpful for discussion. Anyhow, this has applied to Linux as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
To risk being serious here for a second- when Google+ launched, I remember being super bumbed out about how empty it felt and the fact that my friends couldn't be on it yet because it was invite only. All the way back then, I had the idea that it would be really cool if there was a way for different social media websites to talk to each other directly instead of just users sharing links, so I could kind of take my friend group with me to Google+ even though they were still on Facebook. At the time I didn't recognize either of them as really evil, I just though Google+ had a better interface. So all the way back then, 10+ years ago, I personally felt the lock in that established social networks had was way too strong for even well funded newcomers to overcome, and if there was some kind of standard for them to communicate with eachother, it would allow for a lot more innovation.
Today, not only is my vague idea a reality in the form of ActivityPub, the largest social media company in the world is actually embracing that open standard and funneling it's users towards it. In the future, other huge corporate backed social media companies might feel pressured to build around it as well. We might be heading towards the commodification of social media, where you give put your social handle like an email address, and anyone who wants to follow you can do so from Kbin, Mastodon, Peertube, Threads, Tumblr, etc...
Today, I really do think of Meta and Mark Zuckerberg as genuinely evil. But I don't look with suspicion on everything they do just because of that. For example, they typically do pay some amount of taxes. While I am suspicious that they aren't paying enough, I don't think theirs something inherently tainted about the money they pay with. That's how I think about threads. It's not currently federated. If I was suspicious of anything, it would be that being federated was a bold claim that brought a lot of attention to them, and that they might stall and even back out of ever doing it. That's the play if you're evil. If they actually federate, I view it as the fediverse has created such a great value proposition that supporting it enhances the value of Threads. Just because they are evil, it doesn't mean everything they do is wrong and the opposite is right. Them being evil means they don't do right reliably.
I think we need to accept the fact that we live in a world with Big Companies and think about how they can be better than they were before. Right now, I think Meta is actually making a socially good decision to support ActivityPub. And it might also be good for them. But just because it's good for them, it doesn't mean it's bad for us. If we can find a way to structure incentives so big company's interests end up aligning with ours, we'll be in a much better place. Better than just saying anything Meta does is automatically wrong and nothing will be good until they are totally gone.