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A better list of Mastodon servers that have pre-emptively defederated from Threads.net
(fedipact.veganism.social)
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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companies want to reach users, so they join Threads.
meta wants to federate Threads because it allows them to claim that they are not a “gatekeeper” under the EU’s new social media law and therefore not have legal responsibility for the content hosted by it.
a side effect of this is that I can view content posted by companies on Threads via a federated instance.
This is not necessarily the corp’s intention or them being generous. it is just a direct result of Meta using the fediverse as a loophole to get around an EU law and how ActivityPup functions.
I don’t actually think that this is an example of EEE because the Fediverse is not more popular than typical social media experiences, nor does it desire to become more popular or take over things like Facebook or Twitter. It simply wants to be a smaller alternative. I really think if it weren’t for the EU, meta would not be federating Threads.
EEE wouldn't work on something that is popular. The whole point is to destroy it before it becomes popular. Furthermore, corporations aren't okay with smaller alternatives existing at all. Their goal is to have a monopoly. Finally, Mastodon's growth has been really impressive for the last couple years, so I'm certain that other social media companies are looking for ways to shut them down.
The "gatekeeper" theory has some merit too, but not in that way. You can find the definition of a "gatekeeper" on the European Commission's website and I don't see how federation would affect it at all. That said, gatekeepers are required to "allow end users to install third party apps or app stores that use or interoperate with the operating system of the gatekeeper", and federation would meet that criteria.
Still, we already saw Twitter and Reddit move to paid APIs, and apparently that doesn't violate the DMA, so it's hard to believe that Meta would use a more open protocol without some other motivation.
Even with its impressive growth Mastodon is a drop in the bucket and I highly doubt any of the major players view it as a significant threat or competitor.
It’s a lot cheaper to consume the competition before it’s a threat.