This is an interesting perspective, thanks. I of course would rather we have organic growth in the long-run, I just think in the short-term this could be good to add legitimacy to the space. It's very possible I'm wrong, but I guess that's up to every instance to decide for themselves.

I've been on the internet for a few decades, thanks. If you notice, I said it isn't as damaging as Twitter, comparing the two. Elon Musk and his political and social interests, and possibly his funding sources are mostly to blame for that.

EEE has been a business strategy for a while, cool, but also if you notice that is mostly an early Microsoft strategy even according to that Wiki page. I think you'll notice that most of the biggest software company players today(with mainly the exception of Amazon) are actually making most of their money on cloud computing, hardware/software walled gardens(Apple has a bit of a unique situation) and support. While they may intend to squeeze the market into their offering, please explain to me how that works with a federated offering?

Do you think that suddenly all of these communities will cease to exist because an alternative that most of the less technical people use exists? I think looking at all of this logically it's pretty obvious this is just an overreaction and oversimplification to think that them federating is going to ruin everything. Is it beneficial to Meta? Of course. Can it also be beneficial to us? I think yes.

I totally get that people are irritated because they worry about Facebook using their influence to extinguish communities, but why would they extinguish? There is no profit incentive here on the side of small instances, and honestly, this doesn’t change that.

What I do think is a positive here, and what this does change, is that your average person actually can potentially interact with those of us on the fediverse. These are people that may take a decade to make the switch, but now they are actually able to meaningfully interact and be interacted with. I view that as a really big positive, because ultimately the problem with a lot of this, and the reason we aren’t all using Matrix right now to chat, is because sometimes the reality is that we need a critical mass to make a community worthwhile. I’m personally optimistic that this could be cool.

Just a quick disclaimer that I am not a Meta/FB fan. I also see a hugely destructive problem with the views platformed and amplified on Facebook, but I personally don’t see the algorithm as nearly as damaging as the Twitter amplification of voices, and I think I tend to be more optimistic about Threads not being as much of a harmful echo chamber.

Also, this is the same guy claiming Elon Musk was the right one to run Twitter. Ooook. This is why I’m all in on the fediverse- if we continue to just invest in monolith social networks we’ll continue to give undue power to rich fucks, no matter how good the intentions are at the start. If they can monetize it, they will.