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Mastodon's Founder & CEO Gives His Thoughts on Meta's Threads (blog.joinmastodon.org)

submitted 1 year ago by CthuluVoIP@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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Found this post super informative as it relates to Mastodon, and thought Lemmy might also benefit from this perspective. I'm not sure I share his optimism, but his points seem sound to dampen some of the alarm bells over Meta joining the Fediverse.

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[-] RxBrad@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Honestly, I'm kind of bummed that so many people are stomping their feet and saying they don't want the big guy to find their little cabin in the woods.

If mas.to -- where I signed up for Mastodon -- defederates Threads, I'm just going to lose access to the vast population that will simply use that easiest means of joining the Fediverse.

Defederating is just going to chase droves of people off independent servers and into the arms of Zuck.

[-] RQG@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

It does either way. As you said defederating threads makes an instance not viable for you. Many people might think that way. This defacto lessens decentralization and increases vulnerability to an eventual takeover.

And defederating threads has the issues you mentioned. Both comes with problems and in the end it might split the fediverse.

Or am I missing something?

[-] RxBrad@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

But the other side of the coin is that if they don't defederate, my instance remains completely viable. I will continue to happily chug along on mas.to in my Trunks app.

If we federate now (i.e. don't actively defederate), even the normies will learn early-on that they can sign up on a non-Threads instance & use a non-Threads app, and not have The Algorithm crammed down their throat like it is now on Threads. And they can still see Taylor Swift or Paris HIlton or whoever's posts, if they choose. Additionally, if they see non-Threads content up-front, normies have something to be upset about if Meta splits from the Fediverse in a likely inevitable dick move. And if our first move isn't to chase every normie off a non-Threads platform, there will be stuff they actually value not-on-threads-dot-net.

If we defederate from the beginning, normies don't know what they're missing, and they don't care about non-Threads instances. Anything not Threads fades into obscurity as more & more people trickle away to where the content is. And we just make the doomsday Meta takeover actually more possible.

[-] Nollij@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

That's not how people work. If they start from Threads, very few will switch to a 3rd party client. And defederation will happen anyway once Meta gets control, it's the whole point of EEE.

You do have a point though- Threads could be a threat to Mastodon even completely isolated. A lot of current Mastodon growth isn't because of its draw as a product/platform; it's simply people people leaving Twitter for something else. Threads will also be a something else, creating meaningful competition

[-] RxBrad@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Most of what I followed on Twitter was RSS feed type stuff from websites. And a few gaming/tech journalists -- people who are generally not awful.

When Elon bought Twitter, the journalists were falling all over themselves to go somewhere else: CoHost, Mastodon, whatever. Almost all of them have bailed on those platforms and reluctantly gone back to Twitter, because their livelihood is dependent on them having visibility to the masses.

Last weekend with the tweet view limit announcement, there was a wave "here's my Bluesky account" tweets from those same journalists who came back to Twitter. But that runs them into the same wall they had with Mastodon. Almost nobody actually uses Bluesky. In this case, because Jack just won't let the normies in; rather than due to lack of interest or inability to figure out the platform.