Threads’ roadmap for integrations with the fediverse, aka the network of decentralized apps that includes Twitter/X rival Mastodon and others, has been revealed. A new blog post by Tom Coates, the co-founder of an older decentralized app called Planetary, details the events of a December meeting at Meta’s offices where the Threads team had reached out to members of the fediverse community to get feedback about the Instagram-led project to take on X with a decentralized app that will eventually interoperate with others in the fediverse by way of the ActivityPub protocol.
I agree, the entrance of large corporations into the fediverse is nearly inevitable and I am ok with that. What matters is how and when they do it and how that changes the politics, identity and community of the fediverse. WE have the cards because as you say corporate social networks that basically have monopolies are going to eventually be forced by regulation (unless we are on even shittier timeline than I thought) to join the fediverse or do something similar.
Think about the difference though between welcoming in meta to the fediverse like they are some cool popular kid that decided to join our lame party and now everyone wants to come to the party vs rejecting meta because we know their offer isn’t genuine and making them come back later to the fediverse in a much more precarious situation where they HAVE to work something out with us or they face geometrically growing legal and populist hostility that threatens the existence of their company?
Which situation is more likely to result in a relationship more advantageous to normal people and communities on the fediverse? Which one puts more power in the hands of small communities and regular people on the fediverse? Which one is less likely to result in meta hijacking the public’s perception of the fediverse and subverting the reasons that the original denizens of the fediverse came here for?
I’m not okay with it.
I’m all for cutting federation with any instance that allows them in to their space.
I think that is a good and healthy stance. No matter if it is right or not, I consider the survival of the idea of the fediverse as a separate space than corporate social networks requires there to be communities on the fediverse that reject corporate entities on principle.
To use books as a metaphor, let’s say bookstores pioneered the idea of spaces that people can get books at. This is basically what happened with social networks (I know there are probably wrinkles to this but whatever).
The fediverse may look like a bookstore superficially. We could think of it is a building with people dedicated to managing a large selection of books. People go in and out to get books. Trucks periodically come with large orders of books and those books are then distributed over time to people that visit the building.
The fediverse isn’t a bookstore though, it is a library and it’s important that we don’t let that fact be forgotten.
Nothing about the technology of the fediverse is really that special (though it is very impressive I am sure), it is the human structure and the idea of the fediverse as an entity that makes it special. In the same way that the difference between a bookstore and a library can’t really be found in different patterns of delivery trucks, book rentals or the arrangement of bookshelves in the building, neither can the difference between the fediverse and existing corporate social networks truly be found in the technical specifications. At the end of the day, the real difference is in what humans see as the goals of a library vs a bookstore, i.e. the real difference is how the people involved in creating and maintaining the fediverse conceptualize the fediverse itself.
Which isn’t to say I am against certain parts of the fediverse having companies involved, but it is very important that we win the ideological battle of defining social networks as communities to be maintained (which may or may not be a paying job for those involved) for the betterment of society, as a public service, not as an entity conceived to pursue profit.
I think it is fantastic that communities are immediately rejecting meta on principle. Nobody, no matter their position on this, should be genuinely interested in meta’s first real attempt at joining the fediverse. It is just a silly way to go about interacting with an entity that has far more to lose than you do and has demonstrated time and time again that it cannot be trusted to tell the truth or act in good faith.
We don’t have to grow at a viral rate, sure the fediverse being much larger is probably a good thing for the world and thus pushing for it can be seen as a moral imperative, but let’s not kid ourselves, this is social media and memes, this isn’t some life giving essential service. It is ok if we don’t grow as absolutely fast as possible. The people that the fediverse is truly most life changing for anyways are the people most deeply hurt and traumatized by awful experiences on corporate social media where the corporation at best is neutral about bigotry, death threats, harassment etc…… *sigh *
To bring it back to libraries, look at how the best libraries in communities have grown to be far more than just places people can borrow books from. They are fluid community spaces where interesting ideas can take hold and flourish. Bookstores never really grow past the idea of selling books, except maybe to have a cafe attached. The best modern day libraries on the other hand are spaceships of community (that happen to be stuffed with books) in a wasteland of private and commercial real estate, they are engines of culture.
Let’s not let the fediverse get stuck on just being a better bookstore…
kick em back to the curb