this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Might seem naive, but I actually have a hard time imagining this. There's just not a lot to make one instance more desirable than another, which seems like a bad thing, but I don't think it is. I decided against signing up on lemmy.ml because it was laggy, so I went with a smaller instance- all the same content, but without the lag. If a lot of content gets created on one instance, there's no pressure to pile in, because you can view, comment and interact from a different, smaller instance.
There are ways for large players to hijack things if we let them. There's always the embrace, extend, extinguish method where a company starts adding proprietary features to the protocol and then cutting support to the competitors once they hit a critical mass.
Let's say they add some proprietary features. That's basically the difference between kbin and lemmy - they both support enough of the basic feature set required that anything they add on top of it is just "nice to have", not something which would prevent a lemmy user from switching to kbin if every lemmy instance gets shut down.
Just the fact that lemmy/kbin exists and that we are on it suggests that the scenario is unlikely. Still, the idea would be that Meta would make their own ActivityPub based service. They make it super easy for facebook/Instagram users to join. Then eventually they roll out some feature that needs MetaPub, their new open source (if you agree to their strict license) version of the api. Now if you want to interact with people using those features, you need to go to a Meta approved instance. Eventually they disable the old ActivityPub system and cut ties with standard Lemmy/kbin instances. Probably in the name of security or user experience.