this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.

Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.

As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:

  1. Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won't care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
  2. When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won't care. They will use Threads because its faster.

This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.

Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That's not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.

My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.

I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.

We couldn't get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.

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[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (10 children)

I feel like this will just hurt us more then help.

[–] [email protected] 104 points 1 year ago

I don't see why this would hurt us. But even if it did, I would rather take the blow than associate with Big Tech again.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Growth at any cost is the mindset that not only ruins anything good for profit, it is also the exact issue we are facing now in real life with the right gaining traction in many liberal and multicultural democracies.

Because everyone is being let in, without a second thought on if they even should be there, we now have massive social issues with not at all integrated subcultures in Europe that embrace values diametrically opposed to our tolerant and pluralist societies, in turn empowering the right to ruin any progress made in an effort to throw out the brown people again.

The right question to ask is not "can we accept this new member to our society?", the right question is "should we accept this new member into our society based on their beliefs and values, based on if they can contribute anything to the existing society?"

And to return to the matter at hand, this is what the fediverse is supposed to be. A bunch of communities and little realms, each with their own rules and interests but united in their belief that self determination and democratic structures make for a better and more fair internet. And then we have the meta intruder we are about to welcome with open arms, without any rules or expectations of him to adopt our values and culture, so they bring their own, corporate, centralized culture and use their money to brute force that culture into every place of importance.

It is not racist or intolerant of societies to expect newcomers to assimilate, and ignoring that fact brought us a re emerging right.

And it is not fearmongering or small minded to be extremely sceptical of Facebook trying to establish themselves in the fediverse, they are literally the OG data and privacy violating corporation, they invented echo chambers and connecting extremists. There is zero value to the fediverse in welcoming meta. The only one who wins if that happens is meta.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly. Facebook is a known bad actor. There is absolutely no reason to believe their intentions are anything but evil. Pretending Threads is just another instance is both naive and dangerous. It is a cancer. If allowed to federate, it will metastacize.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

Facebook is not evil, advertising is.

The people at Facebook aren't sitting there plotting to make the world worse, they're just sitting there figuring out how to make the numbers go up and since they're an advertising driven business, that means engagement metrics, which leads to the vast majority of their resultant evil. The advertising / engagement driven business model is what is actually evil and what could actually be addressed by legislators.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Meta willingly under-moderated across large swaths of east Asia and Africa, leading to unchecked rumors and tangible acts of genocide. Zuckerberg has compared himself to Augustus Caesar.

I think it’s acceptable to cut off a wildfire before it spreads.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gotta love the fact Meta contributed to how my country got a murderer and the son of a dictator as presidents. Real great and trustworthy company there /s

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

How is that any different from what we have now?

Threads has launched, but has federation disabled. So right now Threads is a standalone system, and it and the Fediverse cannot intercommunicate.

If Threads later adds in federation but all the of the Fediverse blocks them, we're in exactly the situation that exists right this minute. And that doesn't seem to be hurting the Fediverse at all.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do you really want the Instagram crowd to interact with us...?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been on Instagram for 3 years trying to build up an art profile, sharing my artwork. I think it's not Us vs Them, all sorts of people are spread out everywhere online.

I'm happy to be here on the fediverse with my fediverse accounts, not threads. I'm extremely despondent about threads existing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

No reason to be despondent until they actually make the leap to the fediverse and we discuss what the plan is to federate. Threads will not automatically federated with everyone. We will have a long time to look at what threads is and what kind of content they will bring

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I personally don't want that. I want to be able to log in to mastodon or lemmy without needing a facebook account and be able to interact with my less tech savvy friends and family, as well as get news from journalists/bands/sports teams/etc.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How exactly will it hurt us to not be usurped by an evil megacorp?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

How will not federating with them prevent that?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If we federate with Meta, we will be immediately drowned out by the huge user numbers of the Meta properties. They already have more users on day one than the entire fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean, if they actually subscribe to threads and discussions across instances, and isn't that kind of the point of a social network? For users to use it? Also odd that half the arguments against it are that it will kill the fediverse and half of the arguments are that it will provide too many users to the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I don't think so; it won't hurt 'us' anymore than we were hurt yesterday, when Threads hadn't launched yet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Why would that hurt us? Sorry, I'm pretty new to all this...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I feel different