What’s Meta up to?
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Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse
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Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you’re following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn’t available to the rest of the fediverse – as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol
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Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta’s own ends
Since the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads, the most obvious ways of exploiting it – such as stealing market share by getting people currently in the fediverse to move to Threads – aren’t going to work. But exploitation is one of Meta’s core competences, and once you start to look at it with that lens, it’s easy to see some of the ways even their initial announcement and tiny first steps are exploiting the fediverse: making Threads feel like a more compelling platform, and reshaping regulation. Longer term, it’s a great opportunity for Meta to explore – and maybe invest in – shifting their business model to decentralized surveillance capitalism.
None of those things sounds inherently bad to me.
They might not be inherently bad, but they’ll be likely bad depending on how it’s done, and Facebook isn’t to be trusted.
Just for the sake of example:
- What if Threads develops features that work well with the ActivityPub protocol, but since they’re closed-source they cannot be implemented by Mastodon instances?
- What if Threads implements asymmetric federation - where Threads users can interact with outsiders’ content, but outsiders cannot interact with Threads’ content?
- What if Threads has some bullshit term of agreement like “by using our platform you agree to have your data collected, and if you’re seeing this you’re already using our platform”?
- etc.
Note that Facebook has a long story of user-hostile decisions; as in, this crap wouldn’t be below its moral standards. So, while most of the time this would be FUD, in this case it’s just F, no uncertainty or doubt.
What specific features do you have in mind that could be implemented in a closed-source manner that couldn’t be reverse-engineered and implemented by open-source instance software too? It’s not easy to come up with such a thing, and it’s unclear what benefit it would serve Meta that they can’t accomplish by just not joining the Fediverse in the first place.
If Threads implements asymmetric federation, I’ll shrug and ignore them because I’ll never see their content and it won’t ever affect me.
Doesn’t Threads already have a bullshit terms of service? That’s my default assumption for any website, really. But even if they don’t, ActivityPub is an open protocol and so of course my data is being collected by who-knows-how-many organizations already. Meta doesn’t need to do anything new at all to get access to it.
Sorry for the wall of text.
What specific features do you have in mind that could be implemented in a closed-source manner that couldn’t be reverse-engineered and implemented by open-source instance software too?
The features don’t need to be impossible to reverse engineer; they could be costly enough to do so, rely on other FB/Meta platforms, or demand server capabilities past what you’d expect from typical Mastodon instances. For example:
- implementing some data format that is decoded by the front-end
- allowing you to access content from FB/IG/WhatsApp from Threads
- “we now allow big arse videos”.
and it’s unclear what benefit it would serve Meta that they can’t accomplish by just not joining the Fediverse in the first place.
Killing a bird and a baby mammoth with a single stone, before they grow and invade your turf.
On one side you have Twitter/X; it bleeds money and Musk is an idiot, but he has enough money to throw at the problems until they go away, and he has a “vishun” about an “errything app” that would clearly compete with FB/IG/WhatsApp. On another you have the Fediverse; it’s small and negligible but it has potential for unrestricted growth, and already includes things like Matrix (that competes with WhatsApp) and Friendica (that competes with FB).
From Meta’s point of view, Twitter/X is by far the biggest threat. It could be addressed without federation, but by doing so would feed Mastodon, and a stronger Mastodon means a stronger Fediverse and this power would put Matrix, Friendica etc. in a better position. With federation however they can EEE one while killing another, and still advertise the whole thing as “I don’t understand, why you say that we have a monopoly over online communication? We’re even part of a federation? Meta plays nice with competitors. I’m so confused~”.
Here’s five examples that they’be already done:
- Signing up with an Instagram account
- Automatically following everybody you follow on Instagram
- The ability to follow a thread on Threads
- Seeing content from anybody on Threads in your app
- Communicating with people on Threads who haven’t opted in to federation
(Edited for formatting)
Fair! Good and bad depends on your perspective and how successful Meta is. It’s only the last bit about “using selfishly for Meta’s own ends” that I see as inherently bad. In general though I’ve writen elsewhere that I think it’s a great opportunity for the fediverse – I talked about about why in In Chaos There Is Opportunity and probably will say more in a later post in this series.
I’d say that the vast majority of economic actors - both companies like Meta and individual people - are generally acting in a selfish manner. It’s one of the great successes of modern market economies that most of the time that selfishness can be harnessed to serve the public good in various ways, so I’d want to see more detail about what exactly they’re doing before calling it bad.
I’ve certainly never said I trust Meta, just that I don’t think they’re the maniacal evil overlords many of these discussions are portraying them as.
OK, so, if you don’t trust Meta, and think they’re generally acting in a selfish manner, why do you think that they’ll freely let people move from Threads to the fedierse and make it easy to take all their followers?
Or phrased somewhat differently: it’s clearly good from their perspective to say that people can move their followers. Do you think it’s also always better for them to also let people easily move all their followers (which Meta is able to monetize while on Threads) to some other instance (where it’s harder for Meta to monetize them)? If there are situations where it’s not better from Meta’s perspective, why do you think they’ll make it easy – or even allow it?
