this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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How likely is a federated threads going to be used to harvest data for whatever advertising or AI purpose meta has?
Aside from ensuring their launch product has immediate content, the only reason meta would do this is for that $$.
That said, it could be a symbiotic relationship with instances who's users aren't super worried about that & find value from the addtl content it will surely bring.
There's nothing stopping them from harvesting data with or without Threads. They can just create their own hidden Lemmy, Mastadon servers and pull all the data that way. Sure, someone could catch on and block that server, but they could just spin more up wherever.
This is the main concern.
I create Threads. It gets 30 million users very quickly. Lemmy users only make up say, 1 million users.
I make changes to Threads that don't follow the ActivityPub protocol to the T, this makes the Lemmy servers glitchy when interacting with Threads content until Lemmy can be patched, but I'll just keep making these changes to Threads over and over.
User A likes Lemmy, but it's really starting to glitch out all the time. They have a lot of friends they interact with on Threads and because Lemmy has so many issues they say fuck it, hop over to Threads so they can consistently keep up with their friends/community.
Sure, its a symbiotic relationship for the people who “aren’t super worried” about it, until metas platform becomes big enough to defederate with the rest of the fediverse, taking all of its users and content with it, and leaving you on an empty network because everyone you know “just uses the meta instance”…
I'm just hoping it's a massive failure just like the metaverse. I wish no success for the Zuck fuck in any of his endeavors.
I mean wouldn't that be not a bad thing? The people who don't want to federate will be left in their own community with their posts/content intact.
Its not about when people don’t want to federate with meta, its when meta no longer wants to federate with you.
Let me put it this way. If I surveyed every person in my social circles right now, the only person who is using the “Fediverse” as we call it is myself. The others who know about it only know of it because I won’t shut up about it.
But lets say Threads.net takes off, and becomes a new mainstream social media. Maybe its easier to sign up and start using, maybe the UI is a little better, or maybe its just advertised well to current Instagram and Facebook users. Suddenly, 20-30% of the people in my circles might be using the “Fediverse” through Threads.
“This sounds awesome!” I hear you saying. Well there’s a catch. New users to the fediverse tend to just join the biggest instance. We’ve seen this already with Lemmy.world, I personally chose it because it was a lesser populated instance, but it quickly became #1 and is now the fastest growing. Well this means new users would all sign up on Threads, right? Suddenly, the fediverse is 100x larger than it once was, but 80-90% of all the content comes from Threads users.
And then, one day, now with a stranglehold of almost all content coming into the fediverse, Meta is free to defederate from the rest of the platform. Maybe they throw up ads, start selling user data, whatever. Now you and I are left here, with almost all of the traffic gone. Many users switch to threads, because thats where the content is.
Sure, the fediverse is kind of in that final position right now, but the context is much different; everyone here is excited to make this a community. In this scenario, we’d be trying to rebuild the platform. Imagine trying to get everyone to migrate back to MySpace right now, you’d be laughed at whether it was actually a better platform or not.
If it feels like I’m reaching here, look up what happened with XMPP and Google. We have been on this ride before.
I fail to see how that would generally impact people who interact from the fediverse side of it rather than Meta's own instance. Like if Meta decides to no longer federate with the rest of the fediverse, that would be like all the normies signing up for Threads.net and not interacting with Mastodon at all right?
I think you are reaching.
Right, I get what you’re saying and if they aren’t federated to begin with then I don’t think there’s any issue. The issue comes when you federate, get everyone used to being able to interact with that user base and that content, and then defederate. The end result might be the same amount of users on lemmy in either case, but i’d wager the reception at that point is totally different.
In the first scenario, there is only slow and steady growth.
In the second, there is slow and steady growth, followed by huge, rapid growth, followed by a sudden decline that would make user interaction drop off a cliff, while the content and interaction is still available, just on another platform. I’d bet most people won’t be interested in continuing to use a “dead” platform.
Not if their communities and friends leave for threads.net because by the time the defederate occurs most of the communities either are on threads.net or have threads.net equivilants.
You can't have a community without the community part of it.
Why would their existing communities and friends leave for threads.net if they are on Mastodon to begin with? Most fediverse users I find seem to be pretty passionate about the platform, I doubt they will leave just because their friends are on Threads.
I say they can just make a Threads account for when they want to interact with those friends. It isn't that hard. I use different services to check my bank balance or to pay my electric bill.
Because a lot of the new traffic is really less passionate about fediverse, and more passionate about getting away from Reddit and Twitter. Plus the friends/communities people will make that come from that group.
You're thinking too short-term and not after things have started to reach some normalcy again. And also that Meta is specifically trying to get in now while those communities are trying to form.
And what's wrong with people making that choice? I know some of the "mainstream" people on Mastodon right now left because of Twitter's craziness but would probably be open to having an account on Threads or Blue Sky. Why the paranoia about people making choices that are best for them? TBH Mastadon search sucks and finding accounts to follow is hard.
Because once these centralized services reach the point of defacto, they always just trying to push more and more of what they want. We're practically hitting a bubble at the moment of every social platform that took over trying to nickle and dime. It's the reason for all of this in the first place.
Facebook - Well it was always crap.
Reddit - killed all the forums, now trying to own all the text as content, making lives harder for it's moderators, and continuing not to pay them for the clearly thankless job. Quality of posts has degraded.
twitter - messed up the entire purpose of their checkbox, keeps trying to find various ways to make money, entire quality of platform quickly degrading due to server migration
Youtube - Has started pushing for more ads, and punishing users who don't watch said ads.
People think about the short-term too easily, and then just kick and scream when it's already too late, and moving requires a ton of coordinated work, and "putting up with", making new things work, because everyone let the last thing get screwed over.
The constant cycle of letting products get ruined and moving on gets annoying after awhile.
It's too easy to say "why not?" and very difficult to word "Because it always ends the same"
People have a tendency to flock to centralized services. Even on here the majority of activity takes place on Lemmy.world, the fediverse already has a potential centralization problem.
With your point on YouTube, a fediverse version of YouTube that has a similar level and amount of content is impossible due to hosting costs. I have yet to see anyone willing to subsidize a fediverse version of YouTube.
Tbh it’s far more likely they’ll implement extensions to activitypub that are specific only to threads & make activitypub users want them - but can’t have them - this peeling off users for them vs a slower moving, free & collaborative platform.
Imho to avoid a Google loves XMPP (they pretty well killed it) situation ActivityPub servers need to largely block Threads completely or face being extinguished in much the same way as XMPP. Don’t give them a foothold & don’t trust that a private entity like Meta will play nice, they aren’t joining to be a peer, they’re joining to either take it over or kill the competition.
I mean, how is a bot not already crawling through public sites like Lemmy and Mastodon for the purposes of AI training? Federated or unfederated, if you are providing social media services that data you have is already out there.