this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Meta will kill small instances! Please read. (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by peppy@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.

Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.

As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:

  1. Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won't care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
  2. When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won't care. They will use Threads because its faster.

This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.

Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That's not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.

My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.

I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.

We couldn't get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.

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[–] masterspace@kbin.social -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Defederating means not interacting with the crowd Meta brings in. I have a bunch of other reasons but that's my main one. And before you suggest blocking, you can't possibly expect me to block all 10M of their users and the domain block is bugged. I know because I tried.

Your point here is that blocking all of meta's instance is too hard because instance blocking is buggy.

Besides, this place doesn't look like much of a barren wasteland since we're interacting with a bunch of people right now. I don't mind interacting with only weirdo nerds if they're nicer people. Quantity doesn't mean quality after all.

This is just refuting my characterization of this place as barren.

For the people who want to interact with Threads because of family and friends, they should just make an account there. Just don't let Meta destroy this small part of the internet.

This is saying nothing other than "Meta will destroy the fediverse", again, without articulating how that would be possible.

[–] CyanPurple@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm bored right now so I'll bite. I know arguing with you is bad cuz you shouldn't do things that make you angry yadda yadda. But I really want to tickle that brain of yours and what goes in it.

  • Why do you think Meta specifically targeted the Fediverse?

  • Given their history with Whatsapp and Instagram, how sure are you that they won't use EEE to kill the Fediverse?

  • Considering the Fediverse is what people see as an escape to corporate social media, why is it unreasonable for people to be hostile to Meta's Threads?

  • Why should we give Meta the benefit of the doubt when they're willing to sell out people's data even if it means destroying democratic institutions?

  • I saw you mention earlier about lack of moderation. How exactly would federating with an additional 10M Meta Threads user affect moderation or lack thereof?

  • How would the culture of Fediverse affect the sudden flood of Threads users unfamiliar with Fediverse?

  • Do you think Meta created Threads in good faith given the recent events with Twitter?

Your thoughts on the matter please:

  • Are you for or against federation with Meta?
  • Would your family and friends on Threads affect your decision above?
  • Do you trust Meta?
[–] masterspace@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

  1. The regulatory angle makes the most sense given the scrutiny they're under from regulators, courts, the FTC consent orders, etc. Also entirely possible that the product manager building the project was able to pitch the fediverse because it was the hot trendy thing (NFTs, metaverse, ai, web 3, decentral etc.)

  2. Given their history of buying WhatsApp and Instagram? Those aren't examples of EEE those are examples of anti-competitive corporate buyouts that should be illegal but aren't. Facebook does not have a history of EEE, and continue to be a large open source contributor, maintaining multiple open source libraries, frameworks, and protocols.

  3. Because you can just block their instance.

  4. They're scraping and selling your data regardless, this doesn't change anything.

  5. Sounds like a lot more potential moderators.

  6. I dunno probably the same way that half of Reddit posts are Twitter links. It will be fine. You can stay talking to your nerdy friends in the nerdy communities.

  7. Threads came out of New Product Experimentation (NPE), Meta's (now defunct) experimentation division that produced tons of different experimental apps to see what would stick, or in this case, to have a card to play if a rival social media network were to suddenly implode for some reason. Was it developed in good faith in regards to Twitter or creating a healthy competitive business landscape? No. Was it developed in good faith in regards to the fediverse? Yeah, they're not gunning after the dozens of Mastodon users.

  8. Until someone can actually state how federation with Meta would harm the fediverse, I'm for it. That EEE blog post that everyone keeps circulating does not do that. Its a quite frankly dumb take from someone who loved a protocol so much they didn't realize that users didn't. XMPP never had that many users, Google Talk did. The lesson to learn from that story is not that Google killed XMPP it's that a protocol's openness does not matter compared to user experience. It's awesome if you can have both, but if push comes to shove, and the protocol can't keep up, then the better UX will always win out, even if it's closed.

  9. No, I wouldn't add them or interact with them.

  10. I trust that they will do what they say want to do, which is to try and get a lot of users and make money advertising to them.

Now, I've answered 10 of your questions and I'm still waiting to hear what the problem with federating with them is that's not just someone blindly regurgitating that same blog post, or making vague accusations that they're so intrinsically evil we'll be cursed if we look at them too long.