Found this post super informative as it relates to Mastodon, and thought Lemmy might also benefit from this perspective. I’m not sure I share his optimism, but his points seem sound to dampen some of the alarm bells over Meta joining the Fediverse.

  • RxBrad@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, I’m kind of bummed that so many people are stomping their feet and saying they don’t want the big guy to find their little cabin in the woods.

    If mas.to – where I signed up for Mastodon – defederates Threads, I’m just going to lose access to the vast population that will simply use that easiest means of joining the Fediverse.

    Defederating is just going to chase droves of people off independent servers and into the arms of Zuck.

    • RQG@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It does either way. As you said defederating threads makes an instance not viable for you. Many people might think that way. This defacto lessens decentralization and increases vulnerability to an eventual takeover.

      And defederating threads has the issues you mentioned. Both comes with problems and in the end it might split the fediverse.

      Or am I missing something?

      • RxBrad@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        But the other side of the coin is that if they don’t defederate, my instance remains completely viable. I will continue to happily chug along on mas.to in my Trunks app.

        If we federate now (i.e. don’t actively defederate), even the normies will learn early-on that they can sign up on a non-Threads instance & use a non-Threads app, and not have The Algorithm crammed down their throat like it is now on Threads. And they can still see Taylor Swift or Paris HIlton or whoever’s posts, if they choose. Additionally, if they see non-Threads content up-front, normies have something to be upset about if Meta splits from the Fediverse in a likely inevitable dick move. And if our first move isn’t to chase every normie off a non-Threads platform, there will be stuff they actually value not-on-threads-dot-net.

        If we defederate from the beginning, normies don’t know what they’re missing, and they don’t care about non-Threads instances. Anything not Threads fades into obscurity as more & more people trickle away to where the content is. And we just make the doomsday Meta takeover actually more possible.

        • RQG@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I think both scenarios are absolutely possible and possibly huge have up and down sides. I just hope this cool place we got here will survive and stay cool. I find it impossible to predict what will happen at this point. Some instances will block meta and some won’t. Which is the nature of decentralization and the thing instance owners should do. Decide for their instance and the people on it what they think is right. People can then leave or join instances that align with their ideas. Shit is going to get real soon around here.

    • g8phcon2@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      if they do, you can just folow them for here right? Or does lemmy.world have less features than kbin.social?