this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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But isn't the core design of the fediverse resistant, if not immune, to those sorts of tactics? Should Threads be allowed in the federation, the only thing they can do is defederate, right? That means we may get used to the increased userbase and become disappointed when a large chunk of their traffic goes dark, but the remaining fediverse will have grown and benefited until then.
I think the idea is that Threads can pull in a bunch of users to the federated ecosystem using other instance's content, implement features exclusive to Threads to entice people to move from whatever instance they're on now to Threads, and then defederate Threads from everything else afterwards and remove ActivityPub compatibility to trap people on Threads and then enshittify the platform for more money.
But... if we defederate now, won't we just be trying to create a walled garden of a tiny userbase?
If the goal is to grow the non-corporate Fediverse and encourage privacy and self-hosting, I would imagine that the best way to do that is to connect with the corporate Fediverse and proselytize the benefits of moving off of Threads. In the end, the non-corporate federation will grow immensely, I imagine. Whereas if we cut ourselves off now, I fear we will actually drive people to Threads, and make it nearly impossible to convince people to get off of Threads.
The problem is that corporations can scale their own propaganda campaigns way better than we can. It's best to cut the problem off at the source than it is to try and compete with them at their own game.
Hmm, perhaps. Although if we never federate in the first place, I guess we'll never know. It seems like if we tested the waters, what we could gain could far outweigh what we could lose, and we could always cut the line if we see it clearly isn't working out.