What’s Meta up to?

  1. Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse

  2. Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you’re following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn’t available to the rest of the fediverse – as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol

  3. Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta’s own ends

Since the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads, the most obvious ways of exploiting it – such as stealing market share by getting people currently in the fediverse to move to Threads – aren’t going to work. But exploitation is one of Meta’s core competences, and once you start to look at it with that lens, it’s easy to see some of the ways even their initial announcement and tiny first steps are exploiting the fediverse: making Threads feel like a more compelling platform, and reshaping regulation. Longer term, it’s a great opportunity for Meta to explore – and maybe invest in – shifting their business model to decentralized surveillance capitalism.

  • @walter_wigglesEnglish
    16•5 months ago

    What happened to the “extinguish” step?

    I think it’s important to include that. Threads isn’t going to just happily coexist.

      • @[email protected]OPEnglish
        2•5 months ago

        Indeed! But here’s the relevant excerpt

        Of course, if and when Meta sees the fediverse as a significant threat, they’ll ruthlessly stamp it out.0

        But right now, they’ve got a huge potential longer-term opportunity to coopt the fediverse as a basis for decentralized surveillance capitalism. It might not work out, of course, but keeping a neutered fediverse around might still be useful to Meta as long as it’s not a threat to their dominance (just as Google subsidizes the Firefox browser).

        And in the short term, there’s money to be made – and regulators to try to influence – by exploiting the fediverse.

    • originalucifer
      6•5 months ago

      there isnt one, because even the ‘extend’ in this hyperbolic scenario isnt real

      o0o0o0 the big ‘extend’ is threads users will get to use the threads app. puhlease. thats no extension of AP

      everyones getting their sphincter tight over their own hate and nothing more.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•5 months ago

        The original sense of EEE’s extend was pushing features that were not standard (to IE). An example would be for example if Threads implemented a stickers function that only worked in the Threads apps but to us only appeared as . Any features built around AP that worsens the experience for others can be seen as “extend”.

        • originalucifer
          1•5 months ago

          if users on my system want some bell or whistle somewhere else, groovy, dont let the door hit ya on the way out.

          threads is not going to magically, silently create a dependency in my system. its exactly like SMTP. no one is attempting to EEE email.

          i am not/will not receive anything from threads not in the protocol spec, and if my users dont like that they can go somewhere else. this is not a problem for me.

          i dont care what the threads instance has to offer with regards to bells and whistles, it affects me not.

          • @[email protected]English
            1•5 months ago

            no one is attempting to EEE email.

            Yes… they are?

            Have you noticed how Gmail labels don’t work with other email providers? Folders and categories? Stars and Important? Many people have come to rely on these features and moving to other providers becomes a bit of a hassle. This is the naughty extension of e-mail.

            Another great example is github. Git is open and interoperable, but most companies using github are stuck to it because they use Github also for issues, pull requests, and many other things.

            • originalucifer
              1•5 months ago

              no i have not, i do not use google products.

              i have never, ever had a person mention my inability to use a gmail specific feature. my communication through gmail works as expected.