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Federating with Threads only hurts Meta. It does not help them in any way.

This is completely false. The entire reason they’re federating is to instantly get access to a much larger pool of UGC for their users to interact with. And of course they get to also choose who to federate with and who to block, so they can choose instances that have the kind of content they want, all for free, while suppressing instances they don’t like. If your instance starts to try to “convert” people off of Threads, they can (and will) just block you.

Users who create accounts on Threads because they actually want to communicate with people they’ve heard of helps Meta. Defederating helps Meta.

Threads has more users than ALL fedi.db-tracked fediverse instances combined (Threads: 160m, Fediverse: 10m). They don’t need us for users, they need us for content. Just like Reddit, there are usually a few dedicated ‘content generator’ users on any given instance, who post the bulk of the UGC. Gaining access to those is Threads’ goal.

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helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

This is completely false.

It’s absolutely not.

The entire reason they’re federating is to instantly get access to a much larger pool of UGC for their users to interact with

Are you going to explain what UGC means?

The reason they’re federating is because of the Digital Markets Act. Same reason WhatsApp is going to interoperate.

And of course they get to also choose who to federate with and who to block, so they can choose instances that have the kind of content they want, all for free, while suppressing instances they don’t like.

Okay, and? What instances do you think they’re going to choose and why?

If your instance starts to try to “convert” people off of Threads, they can (and will) just block you.

…why would they do that? Why would they introduce something new just to turn around and try to prevent you from using it?

They don’t need us for users, they need us for content.

LOL they only need us to comply with regulations. You said it yourself, they have hundreds of millions of users, they don’t need more content. And they sure as shit don’t need content from users that overwhelmingly hate Meta.

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- t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Are you going to explain what UGC means?
  
  “User-generated content”. Posts, comments, uploaded files, etc.
  
  …why would they do that? Why would they introduce something new just to turn around and try to prevent you from using it?
  
  Why would they try to prevent users from migrating away from their service? Are you seriously asking this?
  
  The reason they’re federating is because of the Digital Markets Act. Same reason WhatsApp is going to interoperate.
  
  LOL they only need us to comply with regulations.
  
  You have asserted this in multiple comments, but the only site I can find asserting this link is a blog post by someone who admits to having only a “surface-level understanding” of DMA, and thinks that this is gaining them data portability.
  
  As someone who works at a very large company that is also affected by DMA, this is not how any company whose legal teams we’ve spoken with are interpreting this requirement. Data portability is being solved with export standards, so that users can (more) easily migrate to other services. Streaming someone’s data over to another platform where they may or may not have an account, or ever intend to go, wouldn’t fulfill that requirement, because if the user wishes to move to a non-federated instance, that would not be possible. Portability also cannot be ‘favored’ under DMA.
  
  That is a separate issue from interoperability, which only works if Threads is allowing federated instances to fully interact with their users’ posts, with no loss of functionality, which was at least originally not the plan.
  
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  - helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Why would they try to prevent users from migrating away from their service? Are you seriously asking this?
    
    No, that’s not what I asked. And you know it’s not. That’s why you tried to rephrase my question.
    
    this is not how any company whose legal teams we’ve spoken with are interpreting this requirement.
    
    Do you work with Meta?
    
    Data portability is being solved with export standards, so that users can (more) easily migrate to other services.
    
    Are you not aware that WhatsApp is also interoperating to comply with DMA? Another Meta company?
    
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    t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    No, that’s not what I asked.
    
    Yes, it literally is. I said:
    
    If your instance starts to try to “convert” people off of Threads, they can (and will) just block you.
    
    Which you then responded to by saying:
    
    …why would they do that?
    
    That is literally asking why they would block instances trying to convert users into fediverse users instead of Threads users.
    
    Do you work with Meta?
    
    Do you, to back up your claim?
    
    me: Data portability is being solved with export standards, so that users can (more) easily migrate to other services.
    
    you: Are you not aware that WhatsApp is also interoperating to comply with DMA? Another Meta company?
    
    I think you are conflating portability with interoperability. Those are 2 separate requirements.
    
    Portability is about preventing platform lock-in, making it so that users can leave a platform (i.e. Threads), and take their data with them to another platform (any platform, not just ones of the originator’s choosing).
    
    Interoperability is the ability for users of one platform to interact with users of another platform, without platform-imposed loss of functionality.
    
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- tal@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Are you going to explain what UGC means?
  
  I would guess he’s talking about “user-generated content”, given context.
  
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uis@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Even defederated instances can get UGC

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