I’m just curious what you folks think. The whole idea of the Fediverse seems to go against everything Meta has stops for with their existing platforms (Facebook and Instagram).
What are they after? Are they going to try and infiltrate it so they can get people’s data and content? Are they trying to monetize it? It just doesn’t add up. I feel like most people on the Fediverse already would agree that we don’t want Meta’s platforms to access our content.
Please excuse my ignorance if it doesn’t work like I think it does. I’m relatively new to the Fediverse myself.
Honestly? Zuckerberg has always had an obsession with the next step as it relates to how people use the internet. He has a track record of trying to catch lightning in a bottle again and getting struck by lightning instead, to the detriment of his own company.
Just look at the Metaverse, he got obsessed with a relatively new technologies (vr and blockchain) and wasted billions of dollars chasing the same high he once got when Facebook took over.
Maybe he sees money in the fediverse, but i think Zuckerberg is just getting excited about a new technology like the rest of us. Unlike the rest of us however, he will likely end up spending billions of dollars continuing to chase that high that he got from Facebook.
The are using the a/p code because why not? Also because it’s been around a while and that might be useful when competitors start suing.
Threads instantly will become the de facto fediverse client. If they federate for even a month, and then defed, nearly everyone from any other instance will want to move to threads to maintain that access.
I think that Meta is trying to beat Twitter on microblogging. Using ActivityPub, like Lemmy and Mastodon, is just a fast and convenient way to start up quickly. The Fediverse will suffer with Thread invasion, as “colateral damage”.
What are they after: Money
Are they going to try and infiltrate it: Obviously
Are they trying to monetize it: Obviously
It doesn’t add up: To them it does
I feel like most people…: I’ve got some bad news for you
I think it’s all about moderation and content management.
Before Musk, the greatest challenge facing Twitter was content moderation. There’s all this legal but annoying content you do not want to host, but if you block people from your platform you’re suddenly limiting free speech and there’s an outrage and suddenly you’re in even deeper shit.
The fediverse solves this very elegantly - throwing you off my platform is not the same as cutting you off from the public sphere the platform is part of. So Meta can be stricter in their content management than Twitter was, and possibly avoid the free speech critiques that Twitter faced.
It’s already kind of visible in how the Threads developers are emphasising how they’re trying to make Threads a “friendlier” space than Twitter.
They don’t have to own the fediverse, they can just charge for access to it. People who are happy with a superficial view, will pay with their data to have a window.
I know it, you know it, the original Twitter team knows it, and Meta knows it too.
Over time I think this will become increasingly clear to everyone, and as a new social network pops up every couple of months and social media becomes more fragmented, it will only become more important that people are able to communicate with each other across networks. Even the average normie out there who hasn’t joined the Fediverse yet because they think it’s “too complicated” or “don’t want to join something with servers”, is starting to look at services like BlueSky, Threads and Tumblr (which have all made some level of commitment to federation) and slowly beginning to understand the value of being able to follow people on completely different networks. And the more social networks that exist, the more valuable federation becomes.
I guess what I’m getting at is that Meta and BlueSky know that social media fragmentation and federation are not only on the horizon, but here today. Meta, Twitter and TikTok would be perfectly happy to have things continue as is, with them being the center of the centralized social media universe. But the biggest collective fear of every big tech company is sleeping on paradigm shifts caused by new, disruptive technology (like ActivityPub), and thus being dethroned by some new players.
I’d argue that the fact that Meta, one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies in the world, is now planning on adopting ActivityPub is a sign that the Fediverse is winning.
It’s kind of like the old days when we had AOL amd MSN, and initially the people didn’t realize that they were in containers and then they got a browser and the whole internet was sitting out there.
I fully believe it has to do with moderation and wanting to offload the costs of moderation. Moderation is expensive and requires whole teams, but if they just direct that federated instances need to comply with Meta’s moderation standards, suddenly they’re not directly responsible (or legally liable) for that stuff. It also has to do with ads - once Meta becomes dominant, they can say “we will serve federated ads and you have to deal with it or defederate from us.”
Maybe a technical infrastructure shortcut, a credibility boost with certain tech-literate folks, and a sop to (mostly EU) regulators about embracing (hmmm… and THEN what?) existing open standards. It could be all of them, but I am betting on mostly #3, like “See? Mastodon and ActivityPub exist so this is no different than when Google launched Gmail!”
I think new laws in Europe have something to do with it. EU is trying to force the big platforms to interoperate. Facebook/Meta is of course one of the most targeted. So I think their thought is by signing on to the existing fediverse, they can say hey we are playing nice no need to regulate us further
That’s seems pretty likely. It really rubs me the wrong way that they specifically name drop Mastodon in the sign up page for Threads. It definitely seems like a way to avoid being held accountable for having a monopoly.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community space dedicated to being helpful and answering each others’ questions on various topics.
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All posts titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That’s it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it’s in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content. Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
Matrix Chat Room
To find & join our chat room, log into fluffychat.im(or any other matrix client) and put #nostupidquestions:matrix.org on the search bar.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
Lower infrastructure and maintenance costs. It fits the current scene of all tech companies suddenly getting paranoid and chasing immediate profits.
Honestly? Zuckerberg has always had an obsession with the next step as it relates to how people use the internet. He has a track record of trying to catch lightning in a bottle again and getting struck by lightning instead, to the detriment of his own company.
Just look at the Metaverse, he got obsessed with a relatively new technologies (vr and blockchain) and wasted billions of dollars chasing the same high he once got when Facebook took over.
Maybe he sees money in the fediverse, but i think Zuckerberg is just getting excited about a new technology like the rest of us. Unlike the rest of us however, he will likely end up spending billions of dollars continuing to chase that high that he got from Facebook.
Microsoft pioneered (or maybe popularized, not sure) embrace, extend, extinguish. I’m sure this is a version of that.
You’re thinking about it to hard.
The are using the a/p code because why not? Also because it’s been around a while and that might be useful when competitors start suing.
Threads instantly will become the de facto fediverse client. If they federate for even a month, and then defed, nearly everyone from any other instance will want to move to threads to maintain that access.
I think that Meta is trying to beat Twitter on microblogging. Using ActivityPub, like Lemmy and Mastodon, is just a fast and convenient way to start up quickly. The Fediverse will suffer with Thread invasion, as “colateral damage”.
Until most have blocked all of the communities on their instance, at least, no?
What are they after: Money Are they going to try and infiltrate it: Obviously Are they trying to monetize it: Obviously It doesn’t add up: To them it does I feel like most people…: I’ve got some bad news for you
I think it’s all about moderation and content management.
Before Musk, the greatest challenge facing Twitter was content moderation. There’s all this legal but annoying content you do not want to host, but if you block people from your platform you’re suddenly limiting free speech and there’s an outrage and suddenly you’re in even deeper shit.
The fediverse solves this very elegantly - throwing you off my platform is not the same as cutting you off from the public sphere the platform is part of. So Meta can be stricter in their content management than Twitter was, and possibly avoid the free speech critiques that Twitter faced.
It’s already kind of visible in how the Threads developers are emphasising how they’re trying to make Threads a “friendlier” space than Twitter.
They don’t have to own the fediverse, they can just charge for access to it. People who are happy with a superficial view, will pay with their data to have a window.
Federation is the future of social media.
I know it, you know it, the original Twitter team knows it, and Meta knows it too.
Over time I think this will become increasingly clear to everyone, and as a new social network pops up every couple of months and social media becomes more fragmented, it will only become more important that people are able to communicate with each other across networks. Even the average normie out there who hasn’t joined the Fediverse yet because they think it’s “too complicated” or “don’t want to join something with servers”, is starting to look at services like BlueSky, Threads and Tumblr (which have all made some level of commitment to federation) and slowly beginning to understand the value of being able to follow people on completely different networks. And the more social networks that exist, the more valuable federation becomes.
I guess what I’m getting at is that Meta and BlueSky know that social media fragmentation and federation are not only on the horizon, but here today. Meta, Twitter and TikTok would be perfectly happy to have things continue as is, with them being the center of the centralized social media universe. But the biggest collective fear of every big tech company is sleeping on paradigm shifts caused by new, disruptive technology (like ActivityPub), and thus being dethroned by some new players.
I’d argue that the fact that Meta, one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies in the world, is now planning on adopting ActivityPub is a sign that the Fediverse is winning.
It’s kind of like the old days when we had AOL amd MSN, and initially the people didn’t realize that they were in containers and then they got a browser and the whole internet was sitting out there.
The same thing cancer always does: To spread and ruin.
*metastasize
Zing!
I fully believe it has to do with moderation and wanting to offload the costs of moderation. Moderation is expensive and requires whole teams, but if they just direct that federated instances need to comply with Meta’s moderation standards, suddenly they’re not directly responsible (or legally liable) for that stuff. It also has to do with ads - once Meta becomes dominant, they can say “we will serve federated ads and you have to deal with it or defederate from us.”
Has anyone Defederated yet? Is Threads even live to Defederate from yet?
Afaik Threads hasn’t started federating with any instance so it’s still siloed for now.
I did on my mastodon instance. The known URLs are threads.net and threads.instagram.com. Threads is live apparently but not federated yet (that’s “coming soon” - I believe Meta pushed Threads early because Twitter is shooting themselves in the foot with rate limiting (individuals may not use TweetDeck but brands sure do).
Maybe a technical infrastructure shortcut, a credibility boost with certain tech-literate folks, and a sop to (mostly EU) regulators about embracing (hmmm… and THEN what?) existing open standards. It could be all of them, but I am betting on mostly #3, like “See? Mastodon and ActivityPub exist so this is no different than when Google launched Gmail!”
I think new laws in Europe have something to do with it. EU is trying to force the big platforms to interoperate. Facebook/Meta is of course one of the most targeted. So I think their thought is by signing on to the existing fediverse, they can say hey we are playing nice no need to regulate us further
Hadn’t even considered this, but I think you’re onto something. Even if it’s not the main goal, that could definitely have factored into the decision.
@[email protected] I suspect it is to whitewash the fact that they are walled gardens
“look! we are activitypub-interoperable. it is not our fault everybody wants to use our service instead of mastodon!”
That’s seems pretty likely. It really rubs me the wrong way that they specifically name drop Mastodon in the sign up page for Threads. It definitely seems like a way to avoid being held accountable for having a monopoly.
Free data.