The arguments I’ve heard about tracking etc are misguided and don’t understand the actual risks.
Firstly, posts on the fediverse are already likely being consumed by advertising platforms like Facebook & Google. It would be trivial for big tech companies to setup relays that act as scrapers.
Secondly, the value in platform’s tracking individuals is for advertising. There is no mechanism for these platforms to identify you browsing the we if your instance federated with threads. Your instance won’t share cookie sessions etc with threads. It doesn’t increase your exposure.
Thirdly, these platforms have the know how to deal with spam and they will be incentivised to share that tech with other federated instances.
Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is an evil company. But I haven’t heard a decent argument as to why them joining the fediverse is a bad thing. We always have the option to defederate in the future.
Change my mind.
Sorry, but I think you’re missing the main point.
The risk is not to be tracked, the issues is Eembrace, extend, and extinguish (EEE): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
They are currently competing with Twitter and Bluesky, they just need users to kickstart their new platform. That’s where the fediverse comes in. All Meta has to do is to convince the instances to give them users.
Meta has a lot of money to throw at UX, they will design a better one than Mastodon. Their instance will also be more reliable (since they have money for lots of computational resources). This will allow them to spread their influence on the fediverse (so that people follow others on Threads), growing up to be the largest instance, and then just defederate from everyone else to “stop spam”. People will then move to Threads so they keep following their friends there (because their friends signed up for meta, since it was all compatible anyway).
And only then, they will start to harvest data and put ads in front of you.
While I agree with all of that, I wonder if it’s not a good thing regarding users.
Lemmy right now feels like the reddit I joined a decade ago, content and user wise.
And these are the people I want to interact with. While reddit today, like Facebook and Twitter, have a very large user group I don’t want to interact with. Mostly memes and boomer talk, nothing original.
But that’s not all Reddit has; think of the more niche communities, like DIY, knitting, rock climbing, game-specific subs, basically anything hobby-related. Also many of the city-related communities. Those are the places people here generally miss from Reddit, and those are the places where Meta will try to make their community the largest, and will use to pull people to their instances.
Like yeah, losing /r/trebuchetmemes is no great loss. But there are other communities where the larger userbase is beneficial, and losing those is a great loss.
Agreed.
Not sure if I understand…
Wouldn’t that mean you’d prefer the fediverse to be separate from Meta as well?
I just want the general audience to be separated from each other. I am just not interested in the usual facebook / meta audience and them being pulled into their own socialverse would be a good way to get rid of their content.
And I was hoping to get away from all the memes and boomer blaming…
Boomers do deserve a lot of blame lol
Which boomers? All of them?
Anyone who supported reagan or trump basically.
Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of their actions.
The “user kick start” argument is interesting and not something I had heard. The fediverse does have active users which is valuable for growing a social media platform. However, Facebook would only need to convert 0.1% of it’s users to the new threads and it would drawf the fediverse. So I’m not sure of that’s their angle.
It’s still a free userbase that they didn’t have to grow.
They might not go down that route if they are successful from the beginning to establish a community. But they are still competing with Twitter and Bluesky, so they probably approached the instance admins to get an insurance that there would be activity from the start.
The last thing they want is to be the next Google+ (which they managed to beat). You have to guarantee buzz from the very beginning. After the metaverse flop, they cannot afford another one.