Federating doesn’t prevent that either, but at least you won’t be rewarding them for it by engaging with them.
Comment on [deleted]
Corgana@startrek.website 7 months agoCan you explain how defederating prevents Meta from extending open standards (ActivityPub) with proprietary capabilities, and using the differences to strongly disadvantage Threads competitors?
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 7 months ago
millie@beehaw.org 7 months ago
The reason embracing works is because it creates connections between people using the system and allows them to piggyback off of other services.
At the moment, the wider fediverse may not have a ton of people, but the quality of content blows mainstream social media out of the water. By making it available through Threads, new users are going to be encouraged to follow their normal pattern of gravitating toward the big thing while still having access to this content. If we post on servers federated with Threads, every piece of content we add is a boon for Meta for absolutely free. The fact that they have deep pockets means they already have independent federation beat on the server end in terms of stability and long-term reliability. It makes a lot of sense for the average user to just grab a Threads account and not worry too much about which other instances have the odd hiccup or potentially stop existing.
On the other hand, if people exposed to the fediverse keep hearing about all this stuff that isn’t on Threads, there’s a better chance that they’ll get into the decentralized account model that’s natural to federation. The logical conclusion quickly becomes making accounts in places that are federated with the places you want to read and post, and if Threads isn’t connected to all those places it means it doesn’t serve to unify fediverse accounts under a corporate banner.
Threads has a resource advantage, but we have a content advantage. If we let Threads in, the content advantage dissolves, because not only do they gain access to fediverse content, they pollute it.
Thankfully the reality is that the choice will always lie with server owners, not via consensus. As long as the owners of servers with higher-quality content and better moderation don’t open the floodgates to Threads, that pocket of high quality content that a Threads account can’t have will always exist.
Personally, I suspect the above will be self-perpetuating, as connecting with a larger social media entity will degrade the quality of content.
Corgana@startrek.website 7 months ago
But how would us blocking ourselves from following Threads accounts on Mastodon stop them from… anything? That’s the part I don’t get. It feels a bit like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face, yeah?
millie@beehaw.org 7 months ago
It’s two-way. It prevents interactivity between the instances, meaning that Mastodon doesn’t get flooded with Threads users and Threads doesn’t get access to Mastodon content.
Preventing both of those things is a win for the fediverse, because it preserves its identity and purpose rather than just being 10% of a network controlled mostly by Meta.
Allowing both of these things to happen is a win for Meta, because their users overwhelm the fediverse and they get free content until it no longer exists.
WamGams@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
I am thinking along the same lines as you. The fediverse needs to remain free of commercial interests and influences.
We all came here because we were looking for community driven social media, while metavitself has largely killed the modern world’s sense of community.