Okay, so right now government agencies, schools, and small business often use Facebook or Twitter for their web presence rather than start their own websites. For a few days there, while Twitter had the login-wall up and was rate-limiting, we had some serious problems wtih Amber Alerts, weather notices, safety notices and other announcements from US government entities. It looked like the government would be forced to start hiring web admins and setting up RSS Feeds and Mastodon servers to get the word out.
But now Threads is here, and they can just as easily as they were on Twitter outsource their web presence for free. They can just make Threads accounts for these public safety and security announcements.
Schools and small businesses can do the same thing, have instantly better reach than on Mastodon, and never have to worry about ActivityPub at all. All of these people remain in the Metagarden, and worst of all, we’re forced to federate to them because public safety info is there.
This will significantly slow the growth of the Fediverse.
Now, a lot of stuff has gone to pasture or become rare because of EEE… forums, personal blogs, IRC and stuff. But Linux is still going strong. So maybe there’s enough of us counterculture sorts to keep the Fediverse active and independent. But even so, Threads can very easily kill any growth beyond that AND force us to federate or at least have alternate accounts to view these necessary services.
I do not have a solution, but I think this is an aspect of the problem that hasn’t been focused on. We talk about mass defederation to save ourselves and list all these frivolous things like celebrities and journalist twitters (while assuming we have the full news feed) without taking the incredibly important government-run accounts into the conversation. Because defederating from the account that posts Amber Alerts is not a simple choice.
And one of the things that got people back in the day with BBSes, IRCs, forums…etc… was that they were in school and that was the computer culture at school. Now the computer culture at school is Facebook, and will be Threads. All we have to offer is an ad-free experience, and a knowledge/cost curve to any institutions that are choosing between running their own server and just endorsing the use of Meta’s products. This will slow down growth. It may well stop it.
I don’t know enough about the Fediverse to have a really educated opinion. At first I found instructions to block it, but then I thought, why? I basically never use Mastodon, when I left Twitter almost no accounts I was following came along. There’s just no connections there that make it a Twitter replacement in my personal case. Looking at the threads idea, of mainstream Twitter users that I used to follow go there, can’t I just follow them individually while remaining safely tucked away on the server I chose?
I may be misunderstanding, but isn’t that how things will theoretically work?
Yeah, but there’s worry that Threads will start creating shadow profiles of non-Threads fediverse users like Facebook does, will start making changes to the protocol that smaller instances can’t support or keep up with, will make itself a part of daily life and then shut off federation and require login and all manner of sneaky tricks. The solution to this is defederating to begin with, except defederation is just not a simple “no” if services like NOAA sign onto Threads. There’s articles going around about Embrace, Extend Extinguish and Enshittification that explain the whole mess.
Anything Meta does to Threads only affects Threads and any service that wants to remain compatible. The majority of the fediverse is clearly not interested in being compatible with Threads. EEE relies on the threat of incompatibility so it’s not an actual threat here.
If Meta eventually cuts Threads off from the fediverse, the fediverse will be in the exact same position it is in now. It will be a small network that exists alongside giant, corporate networks. Anybody with an account on Threads can still make an account on any fediverse instance.
I don’t think EEE is Metas intention. I think they want to use ActivityPub as a defense against monopoly arguments. If that’s true, the onus is on Meta to remain compatible with the majority of the fediverse.
I imagine Meta will simply want to ensure that all content will be added on their servers. This allows to enshittify it for everyone (Threads users and those who federated alike). Federated instances will see the amount of ads included with Threads stuff, and will have to defederate. Then Facebook says ‘hey, we made it possible to join us, but nobody wants’.
No it doesn’t. Tons of instances have your content; this is how the fediverse works. That doesn’t enable them to do anything.
The only way Meta can push ads on the fediverse is to serve them on their own domain to their own users (which doesn’t affect the rest of us) or to insert ads into the outboxes of their users. You would only see those ads if you follow a Threads user and you would likely unfollow as a result and not see anymore ads.
@0x1C3B00DA If the ads are coded like regular posts, only they’ve added an algorthm that shows them to their users first, those ads can be boosted on federated servers. If brands create their own accounts, those posts–which are all ads–can be boosted onto federated servers.
This includes Lemmy, which is federated to Mastodon in a way that a Mastodon reply to a Lemmy post will add a comment to that post. Which could lead to brands infecting and answering Lemmy threads.
Someone on another thread compared Meta to a spam email server, and that’s exactly what ads and corporate content will be: spam. Spam that CAN be boosted from Threads onto federated instances.
Yes like I said they can put ads in their own users outboxes, but you only see that if you follow a Threads user. On microblogging services with federated timelines, you may see Threads posts if any user on your server follows a Threads user. But we already have solutions for this: use smaller servers, block spammy users, and defederate bad servers. Meta knows all of this and is not spending time and money to build a service to push ads for a week until its blocked everywhere.
This includes Lemmy, which is federated to Mastodon in a way that a Mastodon reply to a Lemmy post will add a comment to that post. Which could lead to brands infecting and answering Lemmy threads.Brand accts rarely reply (beyond rote “contact us over here” messages) and usually only reply to messages directed at them. Again, these companies are not likely to pay to deliver spam on a network that they know is hostile to them and has the capability to block them and waste their money. And again we can block or defederate.
Meta’s size does not give them any extra power here on the fediverse. The fediverse doesn’t have a cohesive idea on how to handle Threads but even those who are willing to give it a chance to coexist aren’t willing to put up with ads/spam/proprietary extensions.
Makes me want to make them defederate from us by being as unfriendly to advertisers as possible.