this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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Meta can introduce their signature rage farming to the Fediverse. They don't need to control Mastodon. All they have to do is introduce it in their app. Show every Threads user algorithmically filtered content from the Fediverse precisely tailored for maximum rage. When the rage inducing content came from Mastodon, the enraged Thread users will flood that Mastodon threads with the familiar rage-filled Facebook comment section vomit. This in turn will enrage Mastodon users, driving them to engage, at least in the short to mid term. All the while Meta sells ads in-between posts. And that's how they rage farm the Fediverse without EEE-ing the technology. Meta can effectively EEE the userbase. The last E is something Meta may not intend but would likely happen. It consists of a subset of the Fediverse users leaving the network or segregating themselves in a small vomit-free bubble.

Some people asked what EEE is:

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I believe, with Authorized Fetch (what Mastodon calls secure mode) blocking intermediaries won't be needed, as instances will have to cryptographically "authorize" themselves to receive/send data, and you can just say "no" to any requests coming from threads.net, acting basically as a "defederation enforcement mode".

I could be wrong though, haven't caught up on the exact details.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If accurate, this is awesome!

EDIT: Couldn't another solution be allowing users to block entire instances, i.e. block Threads? That way even users using an instance federating with threads would have a choice. Not a solution on a large scale, but could be useful.