I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.
Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.
As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:
- Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won't care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
- When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won't care. They will use Threads because its faster.
This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.
Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That's not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.
My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.
I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.
We couldn't get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.
If you don't federate with them, people will simply just go there instead of here because a larger user base.
i honestly prefer that. People can use two services and the fediverse won't centralize. Win-Win. Don't you think?
The common pattern when onboarding into the Fediverse is:
"I just left [poorly moderated place with too many people] because of [reason only tangentially relates to the denizens]".
"This place is a breath of fresh air! It feels like [the Internet at some previous reference time for the user that predated them being in spaces with too many people]."
"Everyone should experience this! We need to get [the people who made the previous location a hell hole] here!"
I don't care about the culture of this place. I just want everyone using decentralised platforms so we have more choice. You cannot live without certain platforms like Facebook because everyone you know uses it. If Facebook was on the fediverse you wouldn't have that problem.
The fediverse not dying has yet to be proven.
Everyone on here keeps acting like they're in a position of power and the fediverse is destined for success, but here's the thing, it still sucks compared to the content that's on Reddit and FB/IG, because there's still a tiny fraction the number of users. The fediverse is only going to be the great place to have a conversation about stuff if people use it, and everyone rushing to cut off a massive source of funding / users / content while the fediverse is still trying to compete against Reddit et al seems like a huge mistake.
The fediverse will grow on it's features and focus on transparency.
Growth by corporate funding, users and funding will make the entire thing centralized and it dies anyway.
Nobody will use lemmy.world if the "Threads app does the same thing but faster".
Majority of the people unfortunately don't care about privacy and transparency.
But at least we could interact with threads users from the safety of mastodon
Yeah there is more content on Reddit or FB/IG, but that doesn't mean, that the content there is useful to users in the fediverse.
I think a great many users came to the Fediverse because they were not happy with their experience on FB, Reddit et al and were looking for something that is not that. Why should those users then be expected to recreate that model, or allow that content into this community? People here have already left those massive communities, and connections, and you speak like they lament that choice.
I just don't like being tracked, unwelcome UI changes, censorship, etc. The content on Instagram and Reddit are fine.
Nobody wants to use two services.