Corporations don’t just sit out on new technologies, and no matter how hard you try you can’t force them to. Defederating from Meta’s new project preemptively is naive, and will not do much of anything.
Protocols are going to be adopted by corporations, whether we like it or not. SMTP, LDAP, HTTP, IP and 802.11 are all examples of that. If it ends up that meta is able to destroy the fediverse simply by joining it, that is a design flaw on OUR end. Something would then clearly need to be different in order to prevent future abuse of the protocol.
FOSS is propped up by corporations. By for profit corporations. If you want to stop those corporations from killing projects, you put safety guards up to make sure that doesn’t happen. You don’t just shut them out and put your head in the sand.
It’s a design flaw when simply “outspending” other fediverse platforms allows you to dominate them. There are ways to design a system where that’s not possible.
The fact that those other fediverse platforms can defederate from the “big money instance” if they don’t like what it’s doing, for example, is a part of the design of the fediverse that can help counter influence like that. You can’t force other instances to federate with you even if you have an enormous amount of money, and even if you did manage it in specific cases other people without that vulnerability can just spin up new instances.
We’ll see whether this sort of thing is “enough”, I guess, because Meta is coming one way or the other. If it turns out that stronger defenses are needed then there are other technical methods that could be used to strengthen the decentralized nature of the fediverse.
I think defederation is not really that useful in this case, because then your users will just leave and sign up for the platform where they can view where the most content is. Although I do agree with your general premise.
Then it’s no different than them just jumping back to Facebook or other corporate owned social media like the current situation. That’s not a lost. The lost is if they are allowed to federate in the first place and people get used to it. But even then as the concept of enshittification becomes more well known more users will also be resistant to the idea.
If Meta is actually providing the content that people want, then what’s the problem?
If it’s not, then people won’t leave your instance to go sign up for a different one that’s not suiting their needs.
The situation I’m thinking of is one where Meta creates Threads (or whatever it will be called), and then a bunch of people defederate. In that scenario, there will of course be big servers who choose to federate with Threads. Given Meta’s reach and influence, they will undoubtedly have one of the bigger instances, so a lot of politicians, journalists and everyday people will go there.
Making it so people can’t see that content will just make the fediverse become more centralized, because people will just go to the bigger instances that will allow for them to see that content, or just go sign up for threads. I think that’s bad because it creates further centralization, even if they’re providing the content that people want.
Even though I know a lot of people disagree, we need all types of content in order for this place to grow. I’m not talking about any far-right nonsense, but even garbage like tabloid fodder and stupid meme bullshit will keep our networks alive and users engaging. The easier it is for the average person to use the better. If the point is not profit, then it must be to allow people to come together and talk about almost whatever with almost whoever, and wherever.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding something, but it sounds to me like you’re still saying “if Meta is providing the content that people want and it’s not available elsewhere then people will go to Meta for it.”
And that seems fine by me, in that case they’re competing by providing the content that people want. However, not everyone wants the same thing. I have no interest in “following” politicians or celebrities. A lot of the sorts of conversations I’m interested in do not benefit from having a huge number of people in them. So even if Meta is some kind of juggernaut there’s going to be people (like me) who don’t want to participate in a juggernaut. The smaller defederated instances will still be attractive.