this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Forgive me for repeating this, but I think it's a great analogy and explains all of our thoughts about it:
I've used this analogy before, but threads is like a huge, 5k passenger cruise ship docking in a small town in Alaska. You don't have to know ahead of time that the 2 public bathrooms, one at the general store and the other at McDonalds, aren't going to be enough. You can also forecast the complaining about how everything isn't really tourist ready. It will suck for everyone. The small museum will be overrun and damaged, the people will be treated like dirt. It's an easy forecast.
Here's the important bit, just because they've never been in the cruise line business, doesn't mean you have to give them a chance to ruin your town.
Thank you, someone finally looking big picture. I see a lot of folks talking about things like "it won't harm Threads" or "the federation is all about inclusiveness and joining together" and those people, while correct on paper, are missing the point.
Put simply, many instances would prefer not to deal with that unnatural influx, and that is their choice. In fact, the best part of the fediverse is not only that they CAN make that choice it's that they can UNDO it later if need be. I can't fault some of these smaller instances for being proactive in protecting themselves when few here really know what goes into running and moderating.
Threads wants to join the fediverse to either steal the content and/or kill it, there would be no other reasons.
Yes. My personal guess is that they want to start Threads as just another Federation instance where people build communities and relationships across instances as they do already, and act like a good Fediverse instance, all friendly and open and free . . . and then once there's enough popularity and/or cross-traffic they will wall off the Threads portion and monetize access, so you're forced to either pay up to continue in the parts you like and are invested in, or walk away leaving everything you put into it to Meta and paying users.
Oh, and they'll suck up as much Fediverse data as they can too, while they're at it: anything they have access to will be hoovered up for their commercial use, just as it is now. Federating means that all federated traffic will be propagated to Meta servers in due course, and we all know Meta has zero intention of being bound by any agreements in regard to the data of others, regardless of what platitudes they mouth.
On a personal level, I don't give a shit whether lemmy.world federates with Threads, but only because I have already made the decision personally not to participate in ANYTHING Meta, and that includes here on the Fediverse.
I'm already here because Reddit pulled that same shit, and I walked away then too. I learned my lesson. No way will I knowingly cross that line into personally investing time and attention into what Meta could wall off at any time and monetize without recourse for anyone who does make that mistake.
And I'd rather they not have my data, but it's not like I'm in any position to stop or prevent it. Best I can do is stay away from all Meta products, apps, trackers, and cookies.
TL;DR: People can do what they want with Threads, federate or don't, participate or don't, just know that Meta can and will wall it off at any time and expect participants to pay in some way to continue.