Not willing to give them ideas so fast.

That’s something that popped in my head as soon as I started in here, not so long ago.

But there’s nothing to prevent that, right? I mean, Meta could very well create a meta instance on Lemmy or Kbin or Mastodon or in all of them, bring a bunch of users, sprinkle in some ads because why not.

Sure, they could be defederated from more restrictive insfances. In the bigger picture, every other instance could boycott them, but they would surely federate among themselves (Elon meets Mark, ugh). They also have all the computational power and would have no problem being the largest instances in the Fediverse.

Then what? Is that feasible? Probable? My utopian future about a free, descentralized Fediverse is a lie?

        • CMLVI@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          2 years ago

          I already got vote massacred cause I made a joke about displaying Nazi logos being illegal, since that neighborhood in…Chicago? outlawed the trans flag(where I was clearly on the right side) and people assumed I was making an actual, factual argument for the nazis. It’s necessary sometimes lol

      • JohannesOliver@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        2 years ago

        Beehaw defederated from some of the larger Lemmy instances due to problem users and limited moderation abilities (Lemmy as a platform, limited staff). As one of the larger Lemmy instances themselves and where many Reddit folks went, this rubbed some people the wrong way. Beehaw has a specific idea about the community they want and are proactive in protecting that vision, I don’t know how this makes them “corporate” but there you go.

  • Ungoliantsspawn@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    2 years ago

    Honestly is not a big deal. Some specific instance might start behaving like aholes because of corporate greed or anything else.

    All they can do is take their specific communities down. The affected communities can always move to other instance (that is easier than changing to a different system all together).

    Changing platforms will always be harder than just switch instance because you instance changed the rules on you.

    • _finger_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      2 years ago

      The word “millions of eyes” tends to start attracting corporate overlords. When we hit a million users I think things might start changing.

  • LostCause
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    2 years ago

    Most certainly if this grows big enough corporations will join in if only to market whatever products to the userbase.

    What you can do is to work on supporting/curating instances which don‘t want this. Try to see what kind of people are in charge and what their reaction would be. For example I‘m also on an instance (http://lemmy.dbzer0.com/) created by a r/piracy mod who I‘m fairly certain wouldn‘t federate with corporations or let his instance be controlled by them.

    Lemmy.ml which I‘m also on, probably not positive with US companies, but might federate with Chinese companies.

    What makes all this not a big concern for me is how easy it is for me to drop an instance and go to another one, but I‘m also not attached to my users in general, hopefully we can get some export/import functions for cases where we need to abandon somewhere (unless it exists and I haven‘t seen it yet?).

    • deaconblue@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 years ago

      I am just learning my way around in the Fediverse but from what I currently understand I agree with you about being able to go elsewhere if you don’t get along with some new neighbors. I do believe that if this thing gets as big as we all hope it does then the financial resources to scale it up have to come from somewhere. Whether that’s a commercial enterprise backing it for potential financial gain, or a loosely connected group of donors, at least in the west and for sure in the US, whoever puts up the money is going to want to call the shots.

      • LostCause
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        The way I see the federation system is it‘s basically like little states, except they are based on voluntary association.

        So imagine for example if a bunch of people decided: I don‘t like how this country is run and so they are immediately teleported to the country of their choice and other than losing post history (which I hope can be fixed) there is no negative like IRL (it being expensive and purposefully hard to do).

        Shitty countries that don‘t provide for their citizens would start to fall behind and fail. In a way this is happening with migration and one can hope also in business (those whining that nobody wants to work are a prime example), it‘s just the states who stop people and try to keep them captive to labor and fight and pay taxes etc.

        Now in the fediverse on the other hand, it’s as easy as making an account, so if my state turns into a corporate bureaucracy I will pack my bags and leave. Plus with some tech knowhow, if I don‘t like any of the states I‘m making my own. So yeah, I‘m excited and I hope it grows!

  • Samuel Proulx@rblind.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    2 years ago

    So when I read that, I thought you meant instances owned by corporations. I think it’d be pretty nice to go to lemmy.microsoft.com and they’d have groups for all the Microsoft products where users could get support, learn about updates, etc. And you’d know it was an official community because it was hosted by Microsoft. But you could federate, and wouldn’t have to make a forum account for every single company you wanted to interact with. I’m imagining lemmy.apple.com, lemmy.microsoft.com, lemmy.sonos.com, lemmy.linksys.com, whatever. I’d like that.

  • krimsonbun
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 years ago

    We can always defederate and block corporate instances

  • corytheboyd@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    If it makes money, they will come.

    With social sites, money comes from ads, and ads work better served to tons of people. So, if they see millions of people active (anywhere on the internet, not just fediverse), some “marketing genius” will deem it an “untapped market” and it will begin.

    Thing is though, servers are not run by corporations (they could be, of course), so maybe it will be different. But be honest, if you ran a very popular server for free, and someone offered you $2M a year to run some ads… you’re doing it. This is inevitable given growth.

    Maybe everyone will be comfortable with server hopping anyway and it won’t be like it is with Reddit. Idk just having fun for now, actually posting on something for the first time in years because it’s small enough that real people actually talk back hah, riding that as long as I can

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    2 years ago

    Why not? With the structure of the Fediverse, it’s impossible for anyone to lock their users to their particular instance, and if their users prove to be problematic, they’ll just get defederated.

    • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 years ago

      And if someone can run an instance like a business and still federate, more power to them. Labor should be paid.

  • asjmcguire@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    2 years ago

    I’m basically all for it. The Fediverse is supposed to be an inclusive place, for everyone. Then we all get to decide if we don’t want to hear from someone and can block them from our instance, or even block an entire instance. It wouldn’t be terribly inclusive though if we started dictating who could and could not be part of the Fediverse.

  • _s10e@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 years ago

    That would be a good thing. More instances are good. More users are good.

    If meta federates with Lemmy and mastodon, we could interact with our grandparents again.

  • planish@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    2 years ago

    We probably want all instances of substantial size to run under incorporated legal entities, because then there’s a legal entity that can collect the donation money, be cooperatively owned, have a DMCA registered agent, get registered as a nonprofit, and so on. We don’t want instance operators personally owing Nintendo a jillion dollars when they try and come for the Zelda memes or whatever.

    I don’t think the important line here is individual vs. legal fiction, it’s whose interests (users vs. owners) the instance is set up to serve.

  • Cambionn@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    2 years ago

    Meta is making a Mastodon-compatible Twitter-replacement app. The Beta is already done with sone populair influences and it’s supposed to go live sometimes soon afaik.

    Otherwise, Mozilla has a Mastodon instance. Depending on how commercial/big you need to be to count as a “corperate instance” to you, there are a few more.

  • Cralder@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    2 years ago

    Tumblr has already said they are doing something with the fediverse but I’m not sure if that panned out or not as I have not kept up with the news on that.

    But really, why would that be a bad thing for the users on the smaller instances? If you use Lemmy or kbin or mastodon or whatever for an instance you trust you could interact with users on corporate instances without having to sell your soul to Zuck. I personally don’t see it a a bad thing.

      • Cralder@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 years ago

        Do you mean like sponsored posts? If you are talking about banner ads or something that would not apply if you are using an open source implementation like Lemmy or mastodon that is not run by a big corporation. Sponsored posts would also not so very well in the algorithm unless Lemmy implemented a system for it which they most likely would not do.

      • TheGayDude@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 years ago

        As long as the ads are limited to sponsor posts and banner ads I really wont mind, you can just scroll past them

      • Mininux@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 years ago

        How would they put ads on our instances ? From what I understand, the only way would be by creating true posts as regular users, in which case most instances would just defederate with them (not sure it is the correct way to say this)

      • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 years ago

        Who cares? If it helps the instance sustain itself long term, then they should get those dollars

            • taladar@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 years ago

              If they got 1 hour of a decent hourly wage for every hour of ads I watch tht might be worth it but it is probably more along the lines of 1000+ hours of ad-watching that would add up to 1 hour of pay for them.

  • Kichae@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Meta’s got a microblogging thing coming, and it’s supposed to be coming soon. Tumblr has ActivityPub support on their roadmap.

    It’s coming. There will be issues with it, possibly around advertising, definitely around spam and moderation.

    Many big instances will become small overnight, and will likely federate with corporate sites. Many small instances will suddenly be tiny in comparison and not federate with them.