I blogged about what happened in June, and the financial overview.
I think question to ask is what does Meta have to gain by joining the fediverse? They don’t need to. Their strength has been their large user base who are too dependent on their services to quit, and this small population is of no interest. So then why? What could be the reason a multi billion dollar organization would join the fediverse with a history of data mining and buying out other companies to increase their influence? Is forming a partnership with them to access their user base really a great idea? Why did people run from Reddit to jump into the arms of Meta? Is Zuckerberg really that much more trusting than Spez just because he doesn’t go on public tantrums and is using this open source tech? Do people want to be that connected with what Meta has to offer despite having been so adamant about deleting material from reddit and leaving behind their communities there? Is gaining influence in the space before the platform even becomes remotely mainstream friendly a strategic move on their part to stop it before it even happens?
It’s been hard enough trying to reform communities after leaving reddit and then finding to yet again try to reform communities on another instance and hoping people move there may be a hurdle that leads people back to Reddit where at least it is a more separate experience from meta. It does make me glad though that slowly communities are starting to become more spread out like Android forming their own instance just in case another migration from a big place happens. But, those are some of the concerns people have had where despite the ire towards Reddit recently they are still way better than Meta. I want see this place grow as something separate from corporate entities, but if many instances start partnering with then too then aside from use of small independent instances it starts feeling pointless to replace full time for the corporate experience.