Rachel Lambert, Director of Product Management at Meta just posted about working with the #fediverse
"Working with experts to figure out how we can reshape regulations that are built for closed systems, and adapt them to more open ones"
Ah. That's probably the game.
They've performed significant regulatory capture, and they're going to come out swinging about how the fediverse is full of material that requires regulation, and that anyone participating has to implement policies that are impossible at a hobby scale.
I guess I assume private data held by meta vs public data off our servers has more resale value because they will use the bigger meta data pool to combine it all together to track the users they can.
@Hypolite Petovan - "I’m not sure yet what’s in it for Meta to federate other than increase engagement metrics to flatter shareholders."
It's the classic Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish strategy. First off, why just Threads and not Facebook itself? Because Threads is the thing that needs a boost up. Facebook already has all the "users" it needs, already vendor locked in.
Okay, let me digress a little bit ... look at Friendica vs Mastodon. Friendica has no chance to upend the dynamic that Mastodon IS the de facto ActivityPub standard. Friendica and others can try to offer different paradigms and functionality, but Mastodon has way more users than all of them put together. So, for example, the diaspora paradigm where the original poster "owns" and moderates all comments underneath the post can't really work. Mastodon won't let it.
Because of this friction in how Friendica and Mastodon work, most users will gravitate to Mastodon. It
... show more
@Hypolite Petovan - "I’m not sure yet what’s in it for Meta to federate other than increase engagement metrics to flatter shareholders."
It's the classic Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish strategy. First off, why just Threads and not Facebook itself? Because Threads is the thing that needs a boost up. Facebook already has all the "users" it needs, already vendor locked in.
Okay, let me digress a little bit ... look at Friendica vs Mastodon. Friendica has no chance to upend the dynamic that Mastodon IS the de facto ActivityPub standard. Friendica and others can try to offer different paradigms and functionality, but Mastodon has way more users than all of them put together. So, for example, the diaspora paradigm where the original poster "owns" and moderates all comments underneath the post can't really work. Mastodon won't let it.
Because of this friction in how Friendica and Mastodon work, most users will gravitate to Mastodon. It's just too confusing trying to interact with the Fediverse in a quintessentially different "way" than everyone else (or practically everyone else since they're all using Mastodon). It's less confusing to just use what everyone else is using ... Mastodon.
And this dynamic is not the fault of Mastodon devs! They're just doing what they wish to do for their own user experience! If that muscles out alternatives then that's JUST an incidental side effect.
ENTER ZUCK
The dynamic between Mastodon vs Threads? Same thing. Threads has, or will have, a massively larger user base. But the difference is that Zuck absolutely will mess around with things to make annoying friction between Threads and Mastodon. One way federation one month, one month API is "accidentally" broken, one month oops you're only seeing old posts and no comments ... crud like that.
Furthermore, the AP protocol itself helps them create vastly more friction thanks to its excessive flexibility. There are so many different ways to use it for various functionality like comments. This is where the "Extend" phase kicks in. By occasionally altering the way Threads does comments/replies/etc and "new" features like gif reactions or whatever, it small fry like Mastodon or Friendica to try and keep up supporting them or at least not breaking from them.
So, people will gravitate from Mastodon to Threads because stuff just works on Threads but stuff keeps on working badly on Mastodon FOR SOME REASON.
And after they've Extinguished Mastodon and hijacked all the users they can, they'll go, "Well, it was an interesting experiment but obviously ActivityPub is not ready for prime time. We're dropping support for this unworkable piece of garbage."
@Hypolite Petovan Yeah a million users doesn't sound like much of a prize. But he may really be going for the much bigger prize of ex-X'ers, migrating to Mastodon and then back into the loving arms of Big Billionaire Bro.
Okay, so maybe this potential mass migration to Mastodon won't actually pan out. But it doesn't cost much effort to prep for it now, while the Mastodon active user base is small enough to swamp.
clayote
•the first Threads account has federated with Mastodon
It's not all the way open yet, but, it's about time to decide if you're federating or not
Hypolite Petovan
•David
•Hypolite Petovan
•David
•Hypolite Petovan likes this.
Hypolite Petovan
•David
•Hypolite Petovan
•clayote
•@tek This thread on Meta's motives seems credible to me https://retro.social/@ajroach42/111580821264567850
Andrew (cold)
2023-12-14 21:10:15
David
•Isaac Kuo
•@Hypolite Petovan - "I’m not sure yet what’s in it for Meta to federate other than increase engagement metrics to flatter shareholders."
It's the classic Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish strategy. First off, why just Threads and not Facebook itself? Because Threads is the thing that needs a boost up. Facebook already has all the "users" it needs, already vendor locked in.
Okay, let me digress a little bit ... look at Friendica vs Mastodon. Friendica has no chance to upend the dynamic that Mastodon IS the de facto ActivityPub standard. Friendica and others can try to offer different paradigms and functionality, but Mastodon has way more users than all of them put together. So, for example, the diaspora paradigm where the original poster "owns" and moderates all comments underneath the post can't really work. Mastodon won't let it.
Because of this friction in how Friendica and Mastodon work, most users will gravitate to Mastodon. It
... show more@Hypolite Petovan - "I’m not sure yet what’s in it for Meta to federate other than increase engagement metrics to flatter shareholders."
It's the classic Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish strategy. First off, why just Threads and not Facebook itself? Because Threads is the thing that needs a boost up. Facebook already has all the "users" it needs, already vendor locked in.
Okay, let me digress a little bit ... look at Friendica vs Mastodon. Friendica has no chance to upend the dynamic that Mastodon IS the de facto ActivityPub standard. Friendica and others can try to offer different paradigms and functionality, but Mastodon has way more users than all of them put together. So, for example, the diaspora paradigm where the original poster "owns" and moderates all comments underneath the post can't really work. Mastodon won't let it.
Because of this friction in how Friendica and Mastodon work, most users will gravitate to Mastodon. It's just too confusing trying to interact with the Fediverse in a quintessentially different "way" than everyone else (or practically everyone else since they're all using Mastodon). It's less confusing to just use what everyone else is using ... Mastodon.
And this dynamic is not the fault of Mastodon devs! They're just doing what they wish to do for their own user experience! If that muscles out alternatives then that's JUST an incidental side effect.
ENTER ZUCK
The dynamic between Mastodon vs Threads? Same thing. Threads has, or will have, a massively larger user base. But the difference is that Zuck absolutely will mess around with things to make annoying friction between Threads and Mastodon. One way federation one month, one month API is "accidentally" broken, one month oops you're only seeing old posts and no comments ... crud like that.
Furthermore, the AP protocol itself helps them create vastly more friction thanks to its excessive flexibility. There are so many different ways to use it for various functionality like comments. This is where the "Extend" phase kicks in. By occasionally altering the way Threads does comments/replies/etc and "new" features like gif reactions or whatever, it small fry like Mastodon or Friendica to try and keep up supporting them or at least not breaking from them.
So, people will gravitate from Mastodon to Threads because stuff just works on Threads but stuff keeps on working badly on Mastodon FOR SOME REASON.
And after they've Extinguished Mastodon and hijacked all the users they can, they'll go, "Well, it was an interesting experiment but obviously ActivityPub is not ready for prime time. We're dropping support for this unworkable piece of garbage."
like this
Tio and Hypolite Petovan like this.
Hypolite Petovan
•Isaac Kuo
•@Hypolite Petovan Yeah a million users doesn't sound like much of a prize. But he may really be going for the much bigger prize of ex-X'ers, migrating to Mastodon and then back into the loving arms of Big Billionaire Bro.
Okay, so maybe this potential mass migration to Mastodon won't actually pan out. But it doesn't cost much effort to prep for it now, while the Mastodon active user base is small enough to swamp.
Hypolite Petovan likes this.