Kev Quirk (@kev@fosstodon.org)
fosstodon.org
Attached: 1 image Yeah, that's gonna be a hard pass from me thanks, Rachel. Zero interest in having a conversation with #Meta "off the record" or otherwise. Sharing this purely to be as transparent as possible with our members.

The exchange is about Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-enabled network Threads. Meta is calling for a meeting, his response is priceless!

  • 00@kbin.social
    8·
    2 years ago

    More freely available content would be great, wouldn’t it?

    I doubt most people moved to the fediverse simple because of better content. Personally I didn’t. And quantity doesn’t mean quality.

    And certainly they are likely to be data-hungry greedy shit, but there is a chance that they are actually good ideas - there are actual people working at meta after all.

    Contributions are open for these people. But the moment the contributions are facilitated through Meta, they represent Metas business interests.

    What are the downsides?

    Control. Meta could swamp the fediverse and just because its open source the current platforms wouldnt necessarily continue to exist in the same way they currently do. We could see even bigger fragmentation or breaks, some Admins might feel forced to federate with Metas service, leading to the currently existing community breaking up.

    But maybe, just maybe, goals align here, and Meta can make money and improve the Fediverse and the Internet with it.

    Imo the last years has proven, without a doubt, that those things simply do not align.

    To conclude: We have seen these things before and they havent ended well. People here seem to undererstimate the power Meta has and the impact that this power has. Even if all current instances were to defederate from Meta, simple association, user demand caused by an influx of Meta users and hard to guess power dynamics would make the fediverse a far different place than it currently is. To make a comparison: you cant drop the gravity well of a black hole into a small, complex planetary system and expect it to be unaffected.

    • TheYang
      1·
      2 years ago

      But Meta is dropping that black hole, that’s a given at this point.

      Living in that planetary system, I’d like to talk to Meta, to maybe steer it in a direction that doesn’t completely fuck it up.

      Yes I agree Meta will have exactly this power, but not talking to them doesn’t take it away, it shows them we don’t fucking care about what they do, but we should, it will affect us.
      Maybe I’m too optimistic with the upsides, but even then one should take options to communicate to minimize the negative impacts, right?

      Even if all current instances were to defederate from Meta, simple association, user demand caused by an influx of Meta users and hard to guess power dynamics would make the fediverse a far different place than it currently is.

      This seems to be exactly the opinion from many in the fediverse, see the fedipact and people promising to preemtively block meta etc.
      It doesn’t seem like a wise approach