cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9799372
What’s Meta up to?
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Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse
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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
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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.
If the plan for the fedivers is to associate with Meta, I will leave it in a heart beat.
…but meta is where the hookers actually are…
That is painfully accurate of what’s happening if instance admins do not hard block Threads.
This is one of the many reasons to just defederate from Threads.
Meta can fuck right off
So much fear mongering.
Right… because Facebook has never bought out or destroyed competitive platforms.
The Fediverse isn’t owned by a single entity, so it can’t be simply bought out.
Correct, but it will try damn hard to make everything but their own shit effectively irrelevant.
By that logic, the Fediverse is already irrelevant, because it has fewer features and fewer users than major corporate social media platforms.
So many people with no experience of big tech taking over and killing things. You know some of us are older than 20 right? We have seen this many times before. Maybe listen instead of speak and you may learn something.
Oh, believe me, I do listen, and I learn about things that I use on a regular basis. Based on my understanding of the ActivityPub protocol, I sincerely believe that concerns about Threads are exaggerated. It’s very cult-like, with talk of “pacts” and tendencies towards prophecy and a “purity” mentality.
Chill mate. This is the fedi - you get to actively allow or deny what you see.
No-one can take that away from you.
Meta can’t even keep Facebook or Instagram functional. They get worse with literally every single update. New things are broken every time I visit. They need to take care of what they have, not go looking for other things to fucking ruin. Stupid-ass anti-trust pig dogs.
I stopped reading when I saw a copy-pasted definition of the word “exploit”.
This article thinks we’re dumb as shit.
So, the Microsoft method - except that never really killed Linux.
It’s really basically number 2 to get you to move to Threads, the exploit part is going to happen on the Threads side, and is basically going to be with ads (which you can block or avoid seeing) or with selling data about the fediverse in one platform (which defederation isn’t going to be able to prevent against). But if embrace and extend is your problem, might as well defederate from kbin and mbin …
So, the Microsoft method - except that never really killed Linux.
explain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Nowadays, it’s more of a tactic for getting sued out of a couple of million.
Thanks for sharing! Really interesting history in this article. It’s scary to think what a world would look like if Sun didn’t sue Microsoft into oblivion and put an end to this strategy.
We could be living in a world where Windows is the dominant desktop OS instead of our beloved Solaris.
To be serious, though, being sued/forced to settle isn’t an indicator that the strategy hasn’t worked. In fact, as is evident by the continued doubling down on the strategy by Microsoft and the unfettered execution of this strategy with Chrome, it’s clear that the value far outweighs the cost of the occasional settlement. The only real deterrent is antitrust regulation and that has been just about entirely defanged. These concerns are especially pertinent for something like Lemmy where there’s no central entity to soak the legal fees to go to court.
how can you see who downvotes
Well, threads dot net is already fully blocked on my pleroma instance, like it doesn’t exist.
Any other urls I should maybe add to keep the big culprits out?
The ignorance and fear mongering around this topic is astonishing. Look at all the facts. It’s pretty clear what’s happening here and why it’s happening, and it’s not EEE. The whole point of federation and decentralization is that it can’t be “extinguished”. Threads can come and go and it won’t matter. The fediverse will still be here. Block it if you want but I’ll not be blocking it on my instance. I’ll let my users decide for themselves.
What I really hope is that the fediverse doesn’t end up in a fragmented mess trying to catch up with Meta’s eventual extension of ActivityPub… What this project needs is a slow and steady (technological) development driven by the communities instead of trying to fit in with the big players. That’s what really did harm XMPP too IMHO.
the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads
Is that a typo?
The best paragraph is at the very bottom
speaking of Bannon and his pals, since far right social networks Gab and Truth Social are built on ActivityPub, if Threads opens up two-way federation as planned later this year they’d have a golden opportunity to try to build on the Trump campaign’s successful work with Facebook on digital voter suppression in 2016, the “Stop the Steal” and coup planning in 2020, and QAnon conspiracy theory as well as Libs of Tik Tok and Moms for Liberty’s work. What could possibly go wrong?
