Fediverse

Ehh mastodon and lemmy don't see a ton of cross talk. Threads is mainly going to affect mastodon instances.

They can't place ads in your feeds.

It’s not about the data, but the community. Just like how Google killed IRC, big techs are always trying to embrace, extend and extinguish the services.

@Dirk @MrScottyTay Also I think that one should ask the question, what Meta could do with the data and what it is doing with the data of their users. For their users they use the usage data to present them a feed that the users appreciate. Also they use it to place ads inside of their apps. Also they use the data to serve you ads outside of their system on ad networks that use data from Meta.

All of this is technically not possible for Fediverse users.

David Revoy.

Yeah that's the reason why I moved away from lemmy.world.

On a technical level, no. You're right. It would not be possible to capture the protocol entirely. But meta has serious cash to spend on marketing Threads. If they can capture enough of the ActivityPub market and were to collab with Bluesky and use their protocol (I forget the name), or make their own, it's only a matter of time before the drop activitypub and force users either to join threads or lose access to their users.

Threads and Bluesky are kind of an existential threat to ActivityPub given Meta and Twitter's track record with Open Graph, bootstrap, and public api's.

Other than general assumptions and track-record and being a business that sells user data, is there any actual evidence or clear and present ways that Meta could do harm to the Fediverse / its users?

All I've read is that it seems suspicious and we shouldn't trust them. I totally agree with that but I'd like someone to give some examples of what they could do as a member of the network. I've read how they could post advertising – how would that work?

I ask because, like the previous comment, the idea of following people from other, more popular, federated platforms from the comfort and security of "open source" (?) platforms is appealing. At the same time, if this is leaving me and my platform vulnerable to something specific, I'd like to either proceed with caution or not proceed at all.

The biggest loss for me when leaving Twitter was losing access to so much happening in my community and local news and government organizations. They're all still posting on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and not moving to the open social web. More and more are moving to Threads though so it would be nice to maintain / regain exposure.

XMPP didn't die, so why would the Fediverse?