Meta's Threads is the attempted gentrification of the Fediverse
Meta's Threads is the attempted gentrification of the Fediverse
#Meta's #Threads wanting to federate with the #fediverse (if that will ever happen 🤞🏻) is a form of #gentrification. A large corporate shopping mall settles in a nice neighborhood with small local run shops and community centers. The new shopping mall says 'if we settle here, more people will come...
A large corporate shopping mall settles in a nice neighborhood with small local run shops and community centers. The new shopping mall says 'if we settle here, more people will come, and you all will benefit'. A few years later all small shops are bankrupt and the community is destroyed. What remains is a barren corporate landscape.
~~Is Threads federating? I thought it was just standalone. ~~
Searching around for “Threads Federation” or “Threads Fediverse” yielded nothingGot it - ActivityPub was the term to use
Notably, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a post that there will be no ActivityPub support at launch. ActivityPub is — a protocol that is used to post on decentralized networks like Mastodon. But the platform plans to allow interactions with other fediverse servers in the future.
At least in the original leaks it clearly said so and apparently they did talk to some large Mastodon instance admins a few weeks ago about enabling federation with them but since it was under NDA no further details are known.
I guess so that they can get their dirty hands on teh fediverse data "legally" and, I assume, have their own shiny app that pumps ads down your throat. There's a post somewhere regarding the permissions that threads asks for - pretty much everything you do on your phone will get sucked up by meta.
From what I've read, their apps are not coming to the EU (yet?), which to me sounds like they don't want to comply with the privacy laws. It could be totally different, but this is my gut reaction given Meta's reputation.
Embrace, Extend, and Enshittify.
I’m very interested to see where this goes.
I don’t think Threads poses a threat to Mastodon. It’s (mostly) a different user base. However, I do think Threads can knock out Twitter.
I’ve got my popcorn out.
Me too. I'm betting on Threads being the last nail in the coffin for Twitter. My second bet and extremely unpopular opinion is that Threads will be a good thing for Mastodon.
I do not have an Instagram account and will not be joining Threads either, but i am cautiously optimistic.
Today I learned about embrace, expand and extinguish. Many fear this is Meta's plan for the fediverse.
I have no desire to see facebook in the fediverse, but that's not really gentrification, it's more like Walmart. (Anti-competitive corporate monopoly suppressing competition and forcing everyone to serve their bottom line)
Gentrification refers to the displacement of poor and working class people, and especially people of color, by affluent people, especially white. That's not the specific dynamic here, in no small part because Mastodon has been self-gentrifying[^1] aggressively from the beginning. (It is jokingly referred to as the HOA of the internet)
[^1]: Through white techies being constantly obnoxious to POC who have the temerity to try to join the fediverse, the particular culture of content warning policing, and lack of discoverability making it hard to form community. Note: there's no reason to think facebook would improve any of this.
This is fascinating to me and there’s like 9 people here talking about it and most everyone is against Meta integrating with the fediverse. It doesn’t feel very self aware as a community. The more the merrier for the Fediverse and if you don’t like it, join a smaller project or find one with the privacy policy that suites you. Maybe I’m misunderstanding how this all works, but it seems like if this continues that this giving small projects access to an unprecedented number of users that are no stone walled by private networks. Obviously Meta will protect their self interests but if this is a way for them to break into some of the Twitter space then so be it. Perhaps they contribute funds for some fediverse back end development and it’s a win-win.
The more the merrier for the Fediverse and if you don’t like it,
join a smaller project or find one with the privacy policy that suites you.defederateThe good thing about decentralized platforms is that you don't have to immediately cede the public square to corporate ownership or resign yourself to sharing space with the worst bad actors.
The more the merrier for the Fediverse
In principal yes, but not at any cost!
Keep in mind that the Fediverse is also a distributed governance model, and it can be seriously harmed if one bad actor gets too much leverage. Meta's business model is to control as much of the users and content as possible, which runs counter to the idea of the Fediverse. They want to use it to bootstrap their new app, but they'll try to superseed it as soon as they have enough leverage to do so.
It's more like inclosure.
Permanently Deleted
Yes, the real risk here is that Facebook takes over the activitypub standard with its massive userbase