Comment by electric_nan@lemmy.ml on Embrace, Extend, Enforce (ƎƎƎ): A practical Strategy against potentially abusive Instances like Meta’s Threads

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/12225991

TL;DR: The common view on Meta’s Threads is that it will be either all good or all bad, leading to oversimplified and at the end contra productive propositions like the Fedipact. But in reality, it’s behaviour will most likely change dynamically over time, and therefore, to prevent us getting in a position, in which Threads can actually perform EEE on us, we need to adapt a dynamic strategy as well.

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.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Yup.

I will personally not be on any fediverse instance that federates with threads.

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.

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