Something I don’t understand currently about the whole Meta/Threads debacle is why I’m seeing talk about instances which choose to federate with Threads themselves being defederated. I have an account on mastodon.social, one of the instances which has not signed the fedipact, and I’ve had people from other instances warn me that their instances are going to defederate mastodon.social when Threads arrives.
I have no reason to doubt that, so, assuming that they are, why? I don’t believe instances behave as any kind of relay system: anybody who wishes to defederate from Threads can do so and their instances will not pull in Threads content, even if they remain federated to another instance which does.
I’m unsure how boosts work in this scenario, perhaps those instances are concerned that they’ll see Threads content when mastodon.social or other Threads-federated instances users boost it, or that their content will be boosted to Threads users? The two degrees of separation would presumably prevent that, so I can see that being a reason to double-defederate, assuming that is how boosts work (is it?).
Other than that, perhaps the goal is simply to split the fediverse into essentially two sides, the Threads side and the non-Threads side, in order to insulate the non-Threads side from any embrace, extend, extinguish behavior on Meta’s part?
Ultimately, my long term goal is just to use kbin to interact with the blogging side of the fediverse, but there are obviously teething issues currently, like some Mastodon instances simply aren’t compatible with kbin. I’m too lazy to move somewhere else only to move to kbin “again” after that, so in the short term I guess I’ll just shrug in the general direction of Mastodon.
To be clear, I have a pretty solid understanding of why people want to defederate Threads (and I personally agree that it’s a good idea), it’s the double-defederation I’m not sure I follow. Is my understanding at all close? Are there other reasons? Thanks for any insight.
Yep, a lot of my old friends and co-workers aren’t on Mastodon. I’m seeing them pop up on Threads.
I really want to be able to follow my friends and interact with my friends and - from my perspective - it’s this vocal minority loudly saying “YOU DON’T NEED TO TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, LET’S SPLIT THE FEDIVERSE”.
It makes no goddamn sense. If the fedipact holds you’re just going to have two separate fediverses now and users are going to fragment. I’d rather interact with my IRL friends than a bunch of nerds talking to each other on Mastodon about the last time they showered. I get that they’re trying to avoid “embrace, extend, extinguish” but splitting the fediverse into 2 is actively worse.
EEE is all about a corporation making a product that (to an average user) is better than the free alternative, and making it hard for the free alternative to keep up and maintain parity. Over time, people will leave the free version and go to the corpo version and the free version will have nothing on it but diehard nerds.
Defederating from the corpo instances is literally identical. All these people are just going to shoot themselves in the foot. You are giving people the option of “talk to all of your friends and celebrities” or “talk to us, a bunch of overbearing control freaks who jump at shadows”. Of course people are going to choose their friends and leave behind the strangers they hardly know. If the fedipact has its way, Mastodon’s core users will dwindle and dwindle until it’s just the hardcore. Note that this is the exact same outcome as EEE, but Meta didn’t have to lift a finger.
Don’t mistake me for someone who likes Meta, mind. I hate the Zuck. Not as much as I hate Elon, but I do not like Zuckerberg. But I’m given the chance to use FOSS stuff to talk to my friends? I can use apps like Fedilab and swap between Threads and Mastodon? I can follow Threads users from here on Kbin? Threads users can subscribe to my magazines and make posts?
I’d much rather make Facebook work on EEE than do it to ourselves for free.
So… I hear you. But think about where it leads if there isn’t a unified fight against Meta.
I see two possible scenarios:
Meta is acting in good faith, and they have no intention to EEE, and you get to interact with your friends on Meta/Threads/whatever forever.
You get to act with your friends for the short term, they get used to Threads, Meta gains a lot of traction and a huge chunk of the fediverse as it uses its huge sway and deep pockets to swallow up all the small servers… and then it defederates with everyone who isn’t on Meta, and not only can you not talk with your friends anymore, but also there’s so few people left to talk to because all the other instances have been swallowed up by Meta. You’re left with no choice but to join Meta if you want to talk with your friends.
It’s not that far fetched. Look at what happened with XMPP and Google Talk. I used to use Pidgin and talk with everyone using XMPP. Then Google shut it down and everyone went over to Google Talk/Chat/Hangouts/whatever the fuck it is now. Who is using XMPP these days??? It still exists, sure, but…
I’m aware of the history - I used XMPP myself, for a long long time. I’m mad it’s effectively gone.
Heck, on my Windows Phone once upon a time I could have chats with SMS, Facebook Messenger, and Google Hangouts all without leaving the stock native texting app. One by one they all broke and faded away.
But my point is - is the fedipact a better outcome?
My thought is no, it isn’t. The intention of the fedipact is to split the fediverse in two - the side that federates with corporations, and the side that doesn’t.
But the issue is that in splitting the fediverse when it’s still so young and fragile, you’re going to inherently kill it. Even if people maintain accounts on both sides of the divide, time is finite. People will make a choice to participate in one side of the fediverse or the other, knowingly or not.
My gut tells me people are going to want to go where the network effect is strongest. They’re going to go where they know the people, where Wil Wheaton or Arnold Schwarzenegger might randomly pop up in the replies to a post.
And this is going to cause people to choose the side of the fediverse that gives them that interaction. Some may still choose to stay true to the fedipact - just as people do still use XMPP and IRC - but if the fedipact goes as intended, the fediverse will splinter and most people will go to the side with their friends.
I don’t see how that world where the fedipact is successful is any different than the option 2 you laid out. The fedipact has caused 2 fediverses: one that has lost the network effect and is beginning to decay; the other dominated by a corporation. The fedipact side will have few people left because everyone left to talk to their friends on Meta.
The only way forward is to hope for option 1. Is it foolish? Maybe. Meta is a corporation that wants money. XMPP died a bad death. You can even argue that email is dead as an open protocol now - ever try sending an email message on your own server?
But we can hope for a situation like what we’re seeing with ZigBee/Matter where an open, clear standard is maintained. And maybe that’ll change in a decade, but the only thing the fedipact does is remove any hope for that at all.
What frustrates me is that it makes total sense for people who want their own corner of the fediverse to defederate liberally and keep their community small. Not every instance is trying to be Reddit; some are basically a special-interests messageboard.
But the fedipact is not a group of people building their own more private network, it’s just culture war and bullying. Instead of being a positive, it’s all negative.
Please Zuckerberg, save the fediverse!
I agree. I think people who support the fedipact greatly underestimate the network effect. To be honest, I think this place is never going to get big–it has the same issues that Linux desktop has. It’ll only ever be used by a small niche group. I still have some hope but it’s quickly draining.
The way I see it, you can still talk to your friends by making a threads account (or an account on an instance that federates with meta). If meta EEE’s the whole fediverse, you won’t have the ability to talk to unshowered strangers free of big corporations anymore.
If we buy that the reason for meta joining ActivityPub is to EEE it, that means that meta sees the fediverse as a potential future competitor that they want to nip in the bud. I would rather leave that bud un-nipped and give it a chance to one day become an actual thorn in metas side, die out on its own terms or remain a niche community for freedom oriented tech-savvy nerds.