this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse (privacy.thenexus.today)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9799372

What's Meta up to?

  1. Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse

  2. 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

  3. 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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

If I don't believe the fediverse can survive the embrace of big tech, I don't believe in the fediverse? What? Makes absolutely no sense.

Meta doesn't want to separate content from service. They want to lock users into their own services using their enormous wealth and marketing. It's the opposite of the open web you are talking about. They will be compatible with the fediverse to influence it and try to control it, by adding features you can only get if you are on their platform. Their goal is to make most people prefer the Meta version of the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

by adding features you can only get if you are on their platform. Their goal is to make most people prefer the Meta version of the fediverse

Why is this a bad thing? This is the system working as intended: a company forced to make a service people want, rather than just taking users for granted. You resist enshittification because you're not being held hostage through access to content, so the company is forced to make the service good. And this will attract other companies to produce competing services.

And besides, most people already prefer the Meta version... they already have the user advantage. There's already way more users locked in their services than there is on the rest of the Fediverse.