119
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
119 points (86.1% liked)
Fediverse
28409 readers
1122 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
Mmmh, you could be right there.
Ok, but you have still the other competitors. And even if you count them out, there will always be instances that federate with Threads. That's how the Fediverse works. Yes you can do coordinated actions, but only to a point. For letting Threads enshitificate, you would need an air-tight wall from Threads to all other instances and that's not possible.
Yup, that is how it works, and how Facebook will exploit that openness. I only hope that more people will come around to my point of view and refuse to engage with hostile networks like Facebook.
Ok, so we have come to a conclusion here. That's fine. What I'm not sure about is whether these two standpoints will complement each other in some way or work against each other in the future.
I at least will take some interesting points away from this.