Threads is making moves for Mastodon integration

bigotry isn't only difference of opinion

It should be possible someday

I'd love to skip into the future when all the activitypub stuff is set up nicely. Can't wait

The core of the software will be intact, but the community will be broken - because once Threads pulls the plug (EEE), instead of a stable community you'll have a shrinking one.

the core ActivityPub protocol will still be intact

Will it though? My guess is they're working on "fixing it" to what they want 24/7.

When a company uses Embrace Extend Extinguish, they are relying on network effects to drive people to their side. So let's say Threads comes out, starts federating, has a big established userbase, and then they come out with some new, proprietary killer feature. It could be great moderation tools - something kbin and the fediverse need, no doubt about it - but whatever the feature is, it draws users away from the existing fediverse infrastructure and into Threads. Threads then makes massive changes to the ActivityPub spec, building the walled garden back up again. Only this time, they've actually siphoned off some of the users you originally had in the community. The result isn't the status quo, Meta peeled away users who otherwise would have stayed.

By the way, while a "small community of tech nerds" is perfectly fine in its own right, I would argue the fediverse has already grown beyond that community. They're a large contingent no doubt, but there's also law enthusiasts, news outlets, game developers, users from Germany, Japan, France, Finland, and I follow them all. To see them leave for Threads would be a shame.

It's both, it depends on context.

Here I mean a Fediverse that is mostly controlled by Threads.

I think you mean WASN'T threadiverse already a term.

Yes, it used to be. Soon, it won't be.

That one's a classic.

The way I see it have them show through actions that they won't EEE for a good few years with whoever is willing to risk it. If they don't show any signs of EEE then, I might reconsider my stance on federation with them. Until then I'll keep threads.net on the blocked list of my instance.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out 99% of them were written by ChatGPT or whatever FBs equivalent is.

Is it really so bad that people (or rather instances) are allowed to choose who to federate with? Currently instances with spam and other unwanted commenters get constantly defederated with. Threads will just be another one of them, while some people are happy to get more content. Or am I missing something?

Edit: I read your point about EEE and the destruction of the community, but we currently also have multiple communities here on lemmy which are quite extremist and mostly blocked. I'm still not convinced people who currently use the fediverse will switch to Threads. But maybe I'm too optimistic (altough XMPP largely died with Google defederating, other systems like matrix show that there's still demand for federated messaging).

I will consider to stop using lemmy..

There are always other instances. Threads is one of the only two domains that my instance blocks. Even the second largest instance, lemm.ee, and the original instance, lemmy.ml, have blocked Threads.

Also, considering how little even Mastodon users interact with Lemmy, you guys will see close to nothing of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

I’m sure this will fall on deaf ears, but here. Threads is lacking in content. Threads gets fediverse content. Instagram promotes that content, getting people to sign up and actually use it. This includes big name content creators and celebrities, authors, journalists. People on mastodon and the fediverse get used to that content. Threads starts supporting some new features or longer length or who knows what in threads. These posts are either omitted from the fediverse or are degraded to be fediverse-compatible. This annoys fediverse users who have gotten used to all the content they are now missing or seeing degraded. A significant number of them move to threads.

And on the content creator side. Threads gains a huge market share. Content creators on mastodon get used to all the threads viewers threads decides to add enhanced security or formatting requirements or some other nonsense that regularly stops mastadon creators’ content from being seen or interacted by threads users. Or threads starts heavily deprioritizing mastadon content. Either way, the mastadon creators decide to go where the audience they got used to is o threads leaving mastadon behind.

Or something more clever than either of those. Because we know meta would want to EEE if they can and there are people who will be cleaver at doing it.

But again, Meta is first and foremost an advertising and data harvesting company, and many people aren’t happy at the idea of being subjected to this treatment from the vantage point of their own servers.

There's a concept called Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (seemingly coined, in that form, in a Microsoft antitrust lawsuit). Here's the Wikipedia page on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

As I understand, people argue that Facebook/Meta, via Threads, will use this strategy in the long-term to either kill, or make effecitvely obsolete, the open technology behind Mastodon. If not that, then they could easily make the federation part of Threads buggy & unreliable, souring their users' opinions on the "fediverse".

They don't need to control anyone; they only need to host a majority of the userbase (by being the most popular federated site). And they're not starting from a user count of 1 or 10, unlike a lot of Mastodon sites.

Obviously, Mastodon & Lemmy, and the sites that run them, can keep chugging along just fine, but it's argued that if Meta makes their federation implementation sub-par (or otherwise sabotages it), it'll hurt the user-base growth of sites that use these projects (as people will see begin to see it as unreliable or what-not).

Is it as doom and gloom as people make it seem? Idk, I haven't had time to care.

If meta has any part of the fediverse. I don't need another Facebook. Having profits be the priority will bring down the fediverse.

Do you want threads to become dominant on the Fediverse by several orders of magnitude? Do you understand the implications of such centralisation on the Fediverse?

Can confirm, my mail server does just about everything I found it needs to do to not get flagged spam. And it doesn't except for Gmail. Not even Microsoft has "Spam" filters that strict beyond checking the basic records.

On the browsers, I think in large parts Google should have never been allowed to push for their own Browser in their own products simply because the have monopolies in so many of them. Free market this and that, IRL it doesn't work without some regulations and imo (American) Tech companies have been allowed too much freedom to abuse the market whichever way they like.

The platform never really took off. It was a niche messaging platform before Facebook and Google and went back to being one after they left. I have yet to see any evidence that Google or Facebook helped or hurt xmpp, just speculation and anger that it didn't take off.