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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I mean, as soon as Threads starts federating, Meta will be pulling shit-tons of data from those instances. I guess it’s all publically available anyhow? But federation will definitely be handing it to them on a silver platter.

    The real concern is that federating with Threads might create network effects that pull Fediverse users more and more into just using Threads, so that when it inevitably stops federating those users will essentially have been poached into yet another Facebook walled garden.

    Another concern I’ve seen mentioned is, a lot of instances have rules against advertising. Threads exists explicitly to make money off advertising (and selling users’ data). That’s a conflict of interest that all but guarantees eventual rule violations.

    And finally, Facebook is just a garbage corporation. They’ve gotten away with a lot of shit. If I ran my own instance, I’d sure as shit defederate from them.



  • Unfortunately Facebook will most likely pursue their usual goals of mass user attraction, followed by user domestication and enshittification. They’ll try to attract as many Fediverse users to Threads as possible, then slowly make it a shittier and shittier experience to use Threads unless you have an account there or something, and their federation will get worse and worse until they’ll just split off, but this time taking a shit-ton of Fediverse people with them (who will now likely have higher switching costs due to the network effects exploited by Facebook). Not to mention that Threads will be trying to collect as much data about everyone as possible (including those who just have an account on a federated instance), and will probably try to send out ads to federated instances.

    It’s possible that Threads will attract more people to the Fediverse. It’s at least as likely that Threads will end up pulling people from the Fediverse, and into an eventual walled garden.