It would be the cruelest of ironies if folks who are falling out of Reddit and trying to build a new community here on a community-controlled, non-corporate network were to find themselves getting sucked right back into invasive techbro-capitalism through a backdoor. But that’s exactly what might happen.

For those new to the fediverse, Zuckerberg is transplanting the userbase of Instagram into a new Twitter-type social network (currently labeled P92, possibly branded “Threads”) which apparently federates through ActivityPub. This service will be online soon, possibly within weeks.

When and if this happens, the scrappy little communities of the fediverse will be invaded by a single, centralized “instance” of millions, even hundreds of millions, all conversing under Zuckerberg’s draconian rule.

But it gets worse, because we’re all connected in the ActivityPub network. Lemmy and kbin are federating. Both of these networks are federating with Mastodon to at least some degree. The data - our expressions and relationships - are moving around, as intended.

When Zuckerberg federates, all of this data will then be moving to him. He will ingest it into his data-mining system for surveillance and monetization. Those expressions and relationships will again be enclosed as “free labor” for a psychopathic techbro billionaire.

We’ve all got a stake in avoiding this. Feel free to help spread the word; subscribe to the DefederateMeta magazine, and the #DefederateMeta hashtag is handy. Instance admins are particularly and respectfully invited to consider the issue and clearly state their intentions on the question of federating with Meta. We’re trying to help organize #FreeFediverse admins into a united front, ping me or magazine mod smallpatatas if you’re interested in tying in.