What will Meta gain from fediversing? (lemmy.world)

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

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I don't understand what Meta will gain from participating in the fediverse? Their ultimate goal is to make money of Threads and I just don't see how encouraging an open federation will help them do it? Even 3Eing the fediverse will not do them much good as they already have sooo much traffic already that killing the fediverse will not make a serious change in their figures. But OTOH it does seem like Threads is net positive for the fediverse ATM. Even if all current denizens of the fediverse will block Threads, there is a large group of people that are exposed to the concept of "fediverse" for the fist time and some of them will want to learn more. This is a good thing. Anyway, I don't know why they are doing it, but I'm cautiously glad they did it. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

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[-] jcrabapple@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago

I think they're trying to get people off Fedi and into Threads.

[-] ComptitiveSubset@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Yeah that’s a possibility. They could do something like “ohh too bad Killer Feature X is looking so badly on Mastodon. On Threads it will look so much better”. Essentially using fedi as a crappy demo for Threads. That sounds like a typical business plan to me.

[-] Aqarius@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. It's the old Microsoft playbook that Google is trying to pull with Chrome.

[-] manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

its like when AOL opened up its email and chat service to anyone though i expect with learnings on why that didn't work.

[-] arquebus_x@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

I think people around here have a vastly overestimated opinion of how important the fediverse is to other social media sites.

Within the first 7 hours of Threads, they had 10 million users.

Meta absolutely DGAF about us. They don't have to. Using ActivityPub is at worst an anti-monopoly play. But by the time they turn on federation, all of the people who were going to leave the fediverse for Threads will likely already have done so.

[-] snooggums@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Meta wouldn't have a plan to federate in the future if they didn't have an end goal of taking advantage of the federation.

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

This is what people aren't getting. The fediverse, as it is now, is irrelevant to Meta's plans for Threads. Meta views the fediverse as an inducement to get creators to join Threads. Per The Verge:

As Mosseri puts it, this is a move designed to appease creators who have grown increasingly wary of relying on the whims of centralized social media companies. “I think we might be a more compelling platform for creators, particularly for the newer creators who are more and more savvy, if we are a place where you don’t have to feel like you have to trust us forever,” he says.

[-] khazram@mastodon.social 7 points 1 year ago

@jcrabapple @ComptitiveSubset EEE. Embrace, extend and extinguish.

[-] jcrabapple@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Lol not gonna work

[-] omgarm@feddit.nl 7 points 1 year ago

"Mastodon is so hard to understand, at least Threads is easy."

Once people start saying that Meta will be in charge of the fediverse.

[-] cerevant@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

If the fediverse wants to retain its independence from Meta, the content producers of significance need to be convinced of the value of being in control of their brand while still having access to the user base of Threads. If the content producers go to Threads, the fediverse becomes irrelevant.

[-] handhookcardoor@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

The fediverse is and always will be more than microblogging instances like Threads and Mastodon.

[-] trambe@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Exactly. Ease of use can truly impact the growth of a platform.

Like, I'm sure most people on Lemmy are a bit tech savvy, but the overall user just want to make 1 account and be able to access everything.

Right now, Threads is doing a "good" job by integrating themselves with Instagram. Don't even need to create a new account if you have Insta, just pop in and start using it.

[-] Pandantic@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I don’t know, aren’t most of the citizens of the fediverse here because we are abandoning the large, profit-driven social media companies? It seems like it’s more of an invasion than persuasion - they want access to what we have, and since the AP is open, they can get access to it (mostly Mastodon, but also the content we have on the wider fediverse as well).

[-] CyanPurple@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I would bet 100 dollars they want in on the Fediverse because they want to extinguish a competitor. They did it with Instagram and Whatsapp. They'll do it again.