Mastodon's Founder & CEO Gives His Thoughts on Meta's Threads
Mastodon's Founder & CEO Gives His Thoughts on Meta's Threads
There’s been a lot of speculation around what Threads will be and what it means for Mastodon. We’ve put together some of the most common questions and our responses based on what was launched today.
Found this post super informative as it relates to Mastodon, and thought Lemmy might also benefit from this perspective. I'm not sure I share his optimism, but his points seem sound to dampen some of the alarm bells over Meta joining the Fediverse.
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Honestly, I'm kind of bummed that so many people are stomping their feet and saying they don't want the big guy to find their little cabin in the woods.
If mas.to -- where I signed up for Mastodon -- defederates Threads, I'm just going to lose access to the vast population that will simply use that easiest means of joining the Fediverse.
Defederating is just going to chase droves of people off independent servers and into the arms of Zuck.
You've completely missed the point. It's not that Facebook (and by extension, their users) will connect to Mastodon, it's that they will take over Mastodon, seizing all control for themselves, and coopting the existing userbase.
Right now it's a separate product. Just like people know that Twitter is not Mastodon, Threads isn't either. If you want to reach Twitter users, you get a Twitter account. If you want to reach Mastodon users, you get a Mastodon account. Facebook is planning to market themselves as the best way to enter the Mastodon ecosystem. Before long, they will be the absolute dominant server. Then they will have control, because defederation is a weapon they can wield and not vice-versa.
This is not theoretical, either. Google did the EXACT same thing back with Google Talk and the XMPP protocol. And we know how Facebook operates, so we know that this will eventually happen. The only way to stop it is before it starts - Facebook users need to be unhappy (at Facebook) that they can't reach Mastodon users, so that defederation remains their own problem.
(Separately, I agree with you that Lemmy needs to become more accessible to the common user. But simply handing it all over to someone as awful as Zuck is not the way)
It’s going to be an arms race to make sure free software provides a better service than Threads does, and that people know about it. We can’t be satisfied with unpolished diy software for nerds any more.
This might be a very pessimistic take, but I strongly feel like any average Joe will rather pick the Meta/big corp alternative to the FOSS one. The fact that Meta's got a reputation for Facebook and Instagram while Mastodon's got a reputation for being confusing is... very not promising. Basically I feel like this is a lost race already. Hope it's just me.
Lol Meta has a reputation for stealing data, denying genocide, platforming bigots, and interfering in elections. The idea that the name Facebook wasn't so toxic that one of the largest tech companies did a massive rebranding in the wake of major scandal (see threatening democracy) is a fantasy.
And that's precisely why the worry, because there is no chance in hell that fediverse can provide a better, stable and more feature-filled service than an established multibillion corporation like meta.
I think the only problem here is that Eugene has shown absolutely no interest in developing that way. I think that's what feels so silly about this whole post, he's forgetting that the ways in which Mastodon are opinionated are not popular even among Mastodon essentialists.
The only way they co-opt the existing userbase is if everyone defederates from them and people who need/want a bigger network have no option but to move to Threads. This is what happened to XMPP and we risk doing it to ourselves this time around.
I'm not saying no instance should defederate. There are good reasons to avoid them. But if there are no independent instances federated with them, Meta dominates the space by default and without anywhere else for its users to go (unless they want a smaller network and know about the existence of defederated instances).
It does either way. As you said defederating threads makes an instance not viable for you. Many people might think that way. This defacto lessens decentralization and increases vulnerability to an eventual takeover.
And defederating threads has the issues you mentioned. Both comes with problems and in the end it might split the fediverse.
Or am I missing something?
But the other side of the coin is that if they don't defederate, my instance remains completely viable. I will continue to happily chug along on mas.to in my Trunks app.
If we federate now (i.e. don't actively defederate), even the normies will learn early-on that they can sign up on a non-Threads instance & use a non-Threads app, and not have The Algorithm crammed down their throat like it is now on Threads. And they can still see Taylor Swift or Paris HIlton or whoever's posts, if they choose. Additionally, if they see non-Threads content up-front, normies have something to be upset about if Meta splits from the Fediverse in a likely inevitable dick move. And if our first move isn't to chase every normie off a non-Threads platform, there will be stuff they actually value not-on-threads-dot-net.
If we defederate from the beginning, normies don't know what they're missing, and they don't care about non-Threads instances. Anything not Threads fades into obscurity as more & more people trickle away to where the content is. And we just make the doomsday Meta takeover actually more possible.
I think both scenarios are absolutely possible and possibly huge have up and down sides. I just hope this cool place we got here will survive and stay cool. I find it impossible to predict what will happen at this point. Some instances will block meta and some won't. Which is the nature of decentralization and the thing instance owners should do. Decide for their instance and the people on it what they think is right. People can then leave or join instances that align with their ideas. Shit is going to get real soon around here.
That's not how people work. If they start from Threads, very few will switch to a 3rd party client. And defederation will happen anyway once Meta gets control, it's the whole point of EEE.
You do have a point though- Threads could be a threat to Mastodon even completely isolated. A lot of current Mastodon growth isn't because of its draw as a product/platform; it's simply people people leaving Twitter for something else. Threads will also be a something else, creating meaningful competition
Most of what I followed on Twitter was RSS feed type stuff from websites. And a few gaming/tech journalists -- people who are generally not awful.
When Elon bought Twitter, the journalists were falling all over themselves to go somewhere else: CoHost, Mastodon, whatever. Almost all of them have bailed on those platforms and reluctantly gone back to Twitter, because their livelihood is dependent on them having visibility to the masses.
Last weekend with the tweet view limit announcement, there was a wave "here's my Bluesky account" tweets from those same journalists who came back to Twitter. But that runs them into the same wall they had with Mastodon. Almost nobody actually uses Bluesky. In this case, because Jack just won't let the normies in; rather than due to lack of interest or inability to figure out the platform.
Permanently Deleted
Ignoring everything else, they absolutely intend to collect and sell your data regardless of whether you use or interact with anybody from their service:
"Information From Third Party Services and Users: We collect information about the Third Party Services and Third Party Users who interact with Threads. If you interact with Threads through a Third Party Service (such as by following Threads users, interacting with Threads content, or by allowing Threads users to follow you or interact with your content), we collect information about your third-party account and profile (such as your username, profile picture, IP address, and the name of the Third Party Service on which you are registered), your content (such as when you allow Threads users to follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in your posts), and your interactions (such as when you follow, like, reshare, or have mentions in Threads posts).
We use the information we collect for Threads for the purposes described in the Meta Privacy Policy, including to provide, personalize, and improve Threads and other Meta Products (including seamless personalization of your experience across Threads and Instagram), to provide measurement, analytics and other business services (including ads), to promote safety, integrity and security, to communicate with you, and to research and innovate for social good."
https://help.instagram.com/515230437301944?helpref=faq_content
Yes. But they'll scrape our Mastodon info whether they're federated or not.
Probably already are.
if they do, you can just folow them for here right? Or does lemmy.world have less features than kbin.social?
Maybe I'm completely misinterpreting it... but my impression is that if my Mastodon instance defederates Threads, then I cannot interact, in any way, with anyone on Threads from my account on the defederating instance.
I'm on mas.to. The admin already publicly stated that Meta invited them to talks. They declined. And they even blocked Meta's access to anything mas.to before Threads was even a thing. Defederation is probably a foregone conclusion there.