Just block the users you don’t like, sheesh. For instance I usually just block any .world users who make threads crying about “tankies”.

Sup J ;)

I told you what power the user has. Is it not undemocratic to expect instance admins to associate with people or instances that they find repugnant? Seriously, start your own instance. The barrier to entry is lower than you might think, but you may gain some appreciation for the people who run public instances for free.

How has the user lost any power? The user is always absolutely free to move to another instance. Hell, the user is absolutely free to run their own instance.

Yup, that is how it works, and how Facebook will exploit that openness. I only hope that more people will come around to my point of view and refuse to engage with hostile networks like Facebook.

Enshittification is what happens when companies have to really start making money. They often lose money in the race to build up a strong userbase. Once they have that, they start ruining the experience by showing too many ads and/or charging for access. Facebook isn’t going to invest in federation if it doesn’t have a very solid plan, devised by a huge team of well-paid professionals, to protect and grow its profit margin. Anything they touch will enshittify eventually.

Network effects are already in play even before Facebook adopts federation. I, like many others here have sacrificed the convenience of a Facebook network for a better alternative. The fediverse is growing in spite of it’s disadvantage in terms of network effect. Let Facebook die of enshittification and it’s users will find the alternatives. Rather than “direct combat” with the giant, I prefer to say “the only winning move, is not to play”.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I will personally not be on any fediverse instance that federates with threads.

Normally companies like Facebook just buy their competition, and either kill it or control it. They can’t buy activity pub so this is their strategy instead. Their goal is still the same: kill or control. Why on earth would you want to partner with someone who has that attitude towards you?

Say threads has like 100 million users. Your instance federates with 1 million users. Then you federate with threads so now you federate with 101 million. You get some new users by saying “hey check it out, interact with Facebook without having an account there”. Later you decide to defederate from threads and go back to your 1 or 1.1 million users. Who is going to stay on your instance? Anyone attracted by federation with Facebook is going to leave, along with any existing users that got used to/enjoyed federating with Facebook.

Ah but then it’s too late. You think you are going to eat facebook’s lunch, but it’s gonna be the other way around.

The fediverse is not “an emerging market”. It is in fact, competing for market share with the likes of Facebook. They don’t give a shit about the technology, they just need the users. They feel threatened that people are jumping ship, and the best thing they can think to do is make sure they own the alternatives. Facebook will use its size and power to essentially turn mastodon into a Facebook client. In some ways I admire your optimistic outlook, but I cannot share it.

We are siphoning users off corporate platforms already. Almost everyone on the fediverse has left those networks to come here. They did it without Facebook or twitter federation, and people will continue to do that without Facebook or twitter federation.

Threads absolutely not “reshape” itself to fit the fediverse. They are playing to win, and winning for them means mass collection of analytics and social graphs to sell micro-targeted ads to their customers.

The fediverse is growing at the right speed, IMO, and inviting Facebook in to play, in the hopes of luring a few users is a bargain with the devil.

People that go to Bluesky or Threads are happy in their corporate gardens. The fediverse is not really an option for most of those people, anymore than Facebook is not really an option for me. If Facebook thought that threads could possibly lose more users than it gained, they wouldn’t federate.

Facebooks interests are diametrically opposed to the fediverse’s. They aren’t “just another server”, they are a multi billion dollar surveillance capitalist juggernaut. Thinking that you can somehow benefit from any kind of relationship with them is wrongheaded, IMO.

Why do people feel like we need rapid growth in numbers? The fediverse is still under development, and past events have often strained the infrastructure. Will threads users even be ‘impressed’ by our homespun alternative if it struggles under the weight of replicating millions of paid posts?

To tell you the truth, I am disappointed and saddened by what I see as the end of this whole fediverse experiment. To think that in the end we will happily give away what we worked so hard to build.

I disagree that those are the options. The fediverse is made up largely of people that are actively seeking alternatives to the very models of big commercial social networks. We have built and are growing this alternative in spite of the ‘competition’ from the commercial players. We don’t need (or want) them. Facebook adopting the activity pub protocol does not mean we have to federate with them, and we should be beyond suspicious that they want to federate with us. No good can come of it.

The important thing for me is that the fediverse remains an alternative network, rather than simply an alternative ‘client’ for Facebook.

What do you mean by not afford to?

Why the hell would anyone (particularly fediverse users) give Facebook the benefit of the doubt? I genuinely can’t understand it.

I just had to move to a different Lemmy app.