People are worried that they’ll embrace, extend and extinguish it. That is, join the fediverse, make Threads a better client than any of the existing ones until everyone uses their client, then use that extra reach to harm the fediverse.
I’m personally not that worried, because of who we are. We’re a bunch of geeks with anarchist leanings, and so probably wouldn’t switch to Threads anyway.
Please remember the example of Microsoft and open source office document formats. And in the early days of Internet Explorer with HTML. The risk here is that Threads will embrace the fediverse for a bit. Then they will incorporate features that are only available in Threads that will bleed users away from the open source options. All the while vacuuming up user data for profit while having distain for user privacy. Why would we want to allow them to cast aside the privacy for only one of our users? Are we not going to act like stewards for open source and protection of user privacy?
This us exactly the threat. They’ll start setting standards that other instances will be pressured to follow. Those standards will be ways to control the fediverse and make it a propietary data-gathering and sales/advertising platform just like everything else.
Maybe? But a lot of people have exited reddit over the last month. Maybe not the average user but not the most hardcore geek anarchist either-they weren’t on Reddit to begin with. Then there are the obvious reasons that a lot of people have left Twitter an those are the same type of people leaving reddit. So mastodon is probably more at risk than Lemmy but I don’t think for a second that meta would not throw together a Lemmy competitor if they smell any money whatsoever in it.
Either way you run risks simply by interacting with threads, even if you interact accidentally. Their entire business model is to suck every last piece of data out of you that they can so they can sell in every way they can possibly think of to monetize it.
Since lemmyworld has no intention of blocking them I’m finding another instance to move to. Better safe than sorry with a company that has a horrific record on every single issue. And that way if they federate then back out, I won’t be losing anything because I’ll have never seen that content to begin with.
Someone in another thread somewhere said it was stated on mastodon.world that they would only block in if something happens. I don’t remember what topic that was in so unfortunately I don’t have a link for you. At any rate, silence also speaks volumes.
I think the main fear would be that a few really cool communities naturally spark up, even if they’re niche, and could long term create that fracture when you have to choose between keeping with that community (and any corporate backed extensions) or not.
The will federate, try their best to suck as many users from fediverse as possible into threads, then defederate and become a walled garden again.
As for how they will suck users away:
Make their algorithms prefer posts from threads, so anyone wanting to reach a wider audience needs to move to threads
Add twitter like checkmarks that are only available for users of threads (they will say it is for security since they need to verify the idwntity of checkmarked people)
Add features that are not exposed on activity pub, so that you have to be on threads to use them (twitter did the same by for example not making polls available over API)
Intentionally make their activity pub slow and unreliable to make it look like other instances are broken and threads is fast and reliable.
Unfortunately, realistically speaking there are no users here to suck. In a few days of existence threads already grew ten times bigger than all the fediverse combined.
They will start setting standards that other instances will be pressured to follow. Those standards will be mechanisms to control the fediverse and make it a data-gathering ad & sales platform.
This is what people want to avoid. Meta is a bad actor, they intend on making their presence ubiquitous so people end up relying on it for their internet experience.
Y’know how you need a Facebook account to sign up for all sorts of things now? That’s what people want to avoid happening in the fediverse.
It’s simple really. If something as large as Facebook federates, you will never be able to know whether the users you are engaging with are actual people somewhere, and not just large language models.
It’s happening on reddit right now. The only value to this sort of website is engaging with actual people.
If I wanted to talk to a chatbot, I can already do that. Meta has proven again and again that it will manipulate it’s users with insidious content and moderation, and will knowingly harm users, such as by selling user data to foreign governments or deliberately fomenting depression and anxiety in its users, even kids.
Can someone ELI5 this situation to me? Not sure what Meta can do to instances/the Fediverse.
People are worried that they’ll embrace, extend and extinguish it. That is, join the fediverse, make Threads a better client than any of the existing ones until everyone uses their client, then use that extra reach to harm the fediverse.
I’m personally not that worried, because of who we are. We’re a bunch of geeks with anarchist leanings, and so probably wouldn’t switch to Threads anyway.
Please remember the example of Microsoft and open source office document formats. And in the early days of Internet Explorer with HTML. The risk here is that Threads will embrace the fediverse for a bit. Then they will incorporate features that are only available in Threads that will bleed users away from the open source options. All the while vacuuming up user data for profit while having distain for user privacy. Why would we want to allow them to cast aside the privacy for only one of our users? Are we not going to act like stewards for open source and protection of user privacy?
This us exactly the threat. They’ll start setting standards that other instances will be pressured to follow. Those standards will be ways to control the fediverse and make it a propietary data-gathering and sales/advertising platform just like everything else.
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Maybe? But a lot of people have exited reddit over the last month. Maybe not the average user but not the most hardcore geek anarchist either-they weren’t on Reddit to begin with. Then there are the obvious reasons that a lot of people have left Twitter an those are the same type of people leaving reddit. So mastodon is probably more at risk than Lemmy but I don’t think for a second that meta would not throw together a Lemmy competitor if they smell any money whatsoever in it.
Either way you run risks simply by interacting with threads, even if you interact accidentally. Their entire business model is to suck every last piece of data out of you that they can so they can sell in every way they can possibly think of to monetize it.
Since lemmyworld has no intention of blocking them I’m finding another instance to move to. Better safe than sorry with a company that has a horrific record on every single issue. And that way if they federate then back out, I won’t be losing anything because I’ll have never seen that content to begin with.
Where have you read that lemmyworld has no intention of blocking Threads? I will leave as well if true.
Someone in another thread somewhere said it was stated on mastodon.world that they would only block in if something happens. I don’t remember what topic that was in so unfortunately I don’t have a link for you. At any rate, silence also speaks volumes.
I moved to lemmy.ml
What about when/if the fediverse becomes mainstream? Sure, YOU wouldn’t use threads but plenty of people will.
Nobody is suggesting that we destroy Threads. We just don’t want to let it control the fediverse.
You know me, haha
I think the main fear would be that a few really cool communities naturally spark up, even if they’re niche, and could long term create that fracture when you have to choose between keeping with that community (and any corporate backed extensions) or not.
The will federate, try their best to suck as many users from fediverse as possible into threads, then defederate and become a walled garden again.
As for how they will suck users away:
Unfortunately, realistically speaking there are no users here to suck. In a few days of existence threads already grew ten times bigger than all the fediverse combined.
Meta have stated no such plans. I understand the distrust, I’m hesitant myself. But let’s not spread inaccurate statements
There should be no benefit of the doubt with Facebook. They’ve proven time and time again how shitty they are.
If you let your shitty “friend” exploit you for the 100th time the friend is the problem, but you are also responsible because you keep letting them.
Yes, the reasonable stance. Because that worked every time, all the time with commercial entities.
They will start setting standards that other instances will be pressured to follow. Those standards will be mechanisms to control the fediverse and make it a data-gathering ad & sales platform.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
This is what people want to avoid. Meta is a bad actor, they intend on making their presence ubiquitous so people end up relying on it for their internet experience.
Y’know how you need a Facebook account to sign up for all sorts of things now? That’s what people want to avoid happening in the fediverse.
It’s simple really. If something as large as Facebook federates, you will never be able to know whether the users you are engaging with are actual people somewhere, and not just large language models.
It’s happening on reddit right now. The only value to this sort of website is engaging with actual people.
If I wanted to talk to a chatbot, I can already do that. Meta has proven again and again that it will manipulate it’s users with insidious content and moderation, and will knowingly harm users, such as by selling user data to foreign governments or deliberately fomenting depression and anxiety in its users, even kids.
I mean, they can turn it into total shit like they did with Instagram and Facebook.