You're So Vain, You Probably Think This App Is About You: On Meta and Mastodon
You're So Vain, You Probably Think This App Is About You: On Meta and Mastodon
Those of you not plugged into the Mastodon community may not be aware of the predominant reaction to Instagram Threads. This started when it was merely rumored, reaching a crescendo with reports that...
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/fediverse/t/173527
Shared by @tchambers and originally written by @chipotle
With kbin’s microblogging integration I think this is particularly relevant for our community as well! It’s a great read please take the time to read the full post.
Relevant Paragraph:
"Look. At the end of the day, I’m a Mastodon partisan. But I don’t love its collective tendency toward self-important dogmatism. [...]
[...]
The truth is, #Threads is not about Mastodon. It’s about Meta and only about Meta, and Mastodon isn’t important enough to them to spend the considerable effort that would be necessary to destroy it. It’d be awfully damn ironic if the Fediverse decides it’s become necessary to destroy itself to stop them."
Also worth noting is that this post is not disregarding/dismissing precautions concerning Threads, as the author notes they would be inclined to silence Threads so that posts from there won't appear in public feeds, but only in the home feeds of folks that choose to follow people on Threads.
And my personal relevant portions of this post are:
So if Threads isn’t trying to overwhelm and destroy Mastodon, why have ActivityPub support at all? Two answers. First, “Look, see? We’re open!” is not only perceived as a great talking point these days, it’s perceived as a regulatory relief valve. Look, see? ActivityPub! We’re open!
Second, remember that the business model for Threads is keeping you on Threads. If 95% of your friends are on Threads but 5% are over on that weird Mastodon thing, now you don’t have to use Mastodon to follow them! Just follow them from Threads! Woo! Will Threads be a good Mastodon client? No, but it just has to hit “good enough.”
[...]
The truly toxic idea, though, is that Mastodon instances should not only refuse to federate with Threads, but they should refuse to federate with other servers that do federate with Threads.
I have to regretfully agree. I find this continuing assertion that defederating Meta properties will somehow dramatically harm the Fediverse to be unfounded. I have not yet encountered any convincing argument for how defederating Threads is any kind of suicide whatsoever. We have no Threads now, and seem to be doing quite well.
Is Beehaw still doing fine, yes? They defederated rather harshly, in a far more delicate time than now.
22Yeah we'd definitely be fine not federating and just continuing as normal, the question is whether potentially federation with meta would be a net gain or loss. Honestly it's nearly impossible to tell without it actually happening
2
Overaction or not, putting distance between your platform and Meta is just the better choice, on principle alone. They have proved their intent time and time again, there's no reason to willingly associate with them.
20I've seen so many people that want to defederate from Threads because they're scared it will get their personal data somehow. Just goes to show that not a lot of people understand how this technology works yet. The only data threads will see is the stuff you post publicly.
7The truly toxic idea, though, is that Mastodon instances should not only refuse to federate with Threads, but they should refuse to federate with other servers that do federate with Threads.
yep. The #Fediblock idea of "i don't care if they are nice people, they don't block the mean people" is crazy. At that point why not just set up your own PHPbb?
And its not new https://fediverse.wiki/wiki/The_Great_Wall_of_Mastodon
3Mr. Mastodon, tear down this wall!
1#HisNameIsJohnMastodon @johnmastodon@mastodon.social
1
To be honest I think defederating meta products is stupid, ik meta exploits it's users and everything but the fact is defederating only makes mastodon worse, and adds another hurdle to more users making the switch
"if I can't follow any of the accounts follow on threads why would I switch to mastodon or any other instance."
Really meta doesn't give a shit about mastodon, It really doesn't pose a threat sure they can catalog or scrape your posts for user info, but their energy is going to be focused on their users who use web or especially the phone app.
3