Technology

What I hate to see, even in this thread, is people turning on each other in this "us vs. them", "you're either a part of the pact or you're against us" nonsense

Let's all remember why WE ALL CHOSE to get on the fediverse and build it. The strength of the fediverse comes from the freedom for each instance to choose how to run things. My understanding is that no one in an instance is harmed if some other instance chooses to federate or defederate from Threads.

I hate Meta. I also know that Meta doesn't need to do anything to take down the fediverse if we do it ourselves.

If you federate with something too massive though it has undue weight on the entire system. It is likely to be Embrace, Extend, Extinguish again, and it's reasonable to want to avoid that.

For people who don't remember, the pattern would be something like:

1. Federate and use the existing ecosystem to help you grow and to grow mutually (Embrace)
2. Add new features that only work locally, drawing users away from other instances to your own (Extend)
3. Defederate - the remainder is left with a fraction of the users since many moved away, so the users on the local instance don't care. (Extinguish)

It depends whether 2 actually succeeds at pulling users in. Arguably most people already on the Fediverse are unlikely to jump ship to Facebook, but you have to consider what happens in a few years if it's grown, but Facebook is a huge name which makes people less likely to join other instances.

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I think the fear is that this turns into an "embrace, extend, extinguish". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

I don't know if the fear is well rooted, but I can definitely understand how Facebook is perceived as not having established a history of trust.

They are a private company, which have placed profits above the best interests of its users.

Edit: I think you can draw a parallel with another scenario: an open and free market requires regulation. There should be rules and boundaries, such that a true free and open market exists. Similarly, there's an argument to be made than we should restrict the fediverse for it to keep existing in the way we want it to.

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.

I disagree that fediverse is inherently libertarian/anarchist. In fact, a big selling point is that you can find an instance the administration agrees with your politics and will implement moderation policy accordingly.

Sure, to a certain extent. But having an ability to opt out is far healthier than the walled gardens we have now.