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I think people are over reacting to the launch of Threads by Meta (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by BearPear@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.ml

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I am actually looking forward to threads taking off. I, as a mastodon user, will be able to follow my friends, celebrities, artists and interact with them when federation is activated. It is hard to get friends on to mastodon. The software is great and is better than Twitter, but the people are not on Mastodon but on Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Now, I know platforms by Meta (Facebook) are terrible and spy and leech out pretty much all the data from users. I am also aware that Meta has some hidden agenda behind the launch of threads. Yes, I also read about EEE(Embrace, Extend and Extinguish). Even if Threads decides to drop federation/activitypub, I don't think the fediverse will be harmed. I quote the founder of Mastodon

There are comparisons to be made between Meta adopting ActivityPub for its new social media platform and Meta adopting XMPP for its Messenger service a decade ago. There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.

I think many instance admins are all ready to defederate with threads. It just doesn't feel right. Imo, we should welcome users from threads and see how it goes.

What are your thoughts?

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[–] jcg@halubilo.social 16 points 1 year ago

I, as a mastodon user, will be able to follow my friends, celebrities, artists and interact with them when federation is activated

This is exactly what's scary. You might wanna check out this blog post about Google and XMPP, which is another federated protocol. Google Talk used to support XMPP, to the point that so much of the XMPP user base were Google Talk users. Then, Google Talk started implementing Google Talk specific features that other XMPP clients did not support. Yes, it made Google Talk more feature rich, but it then made regular XMPP users out of the loop. Then, the final nail in the coffin was Google Talk dropping XMPP support. Suddenly everybody's friends who were using XMPP to communicate just... went offline as far as GT users were concerned. Then of course, Google killed Google Talk. This is EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) in a nutshell, and any time corporate interests enter projects like this, you're at risk of this happening.

Don't get me wrong, the fediverse could use some upgrades, more resources, more users. But I just don't trust Meta to have the fediverse's best interests at heart in the way. They're a corporation, one of the biggest in the world, and they'll only ever care about what benefits Meta.