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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Technology
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To create an Instagram account, your identity has to be validated. I prefer anonymity. Once Meta gets their foot in the door, I guarantee they will try to bully the fediverse into doing things their way. Hard pass for me.
Can you give any reasonable by means in which they could do this and succeed?
So much of this stuff just sounds like infeasible conspiracy theories. If, hypothetically, Meta did do such a thing (somehow, still not clear how or frankly why?) all that it would mean is that anyone who disagreed could defederate from Meta, or would be defederated from Meta... which given half the servers in existence seem to want to defed them up front anyway, doesn't seem to make any odds.
It's all just very confusing hearing about these lurid ideas for things Meta could do with the fediverse that simply don't make a lick of sense either in terms of motivation or implementation.
For some reason, your link doesn't work.
The second part of your comment doesn't answer my question, nor would "they want our data!!!" explain why Meta would want or need to create an instance in order to get it, or how the "data" (what data? Your posts? The ones that ActivityPub syndicates to hundreds of other servers automatically? Do you know exactly which servers your posts are on at the moment?) of other users on other fedi instances could somehow be "monetised" by them.
OK, I've read that link and it still doesn't really explain how exactly Meta intends to monetise other peoples' posts - "collect data from and monetise", how exactly are they going to monetise other peoples' posts on other instances, when they have no ability to e.g. serve ads to those people?
I don't think anyone is questioning your cynicism of Meta's intentions or motivations, but the nature of the Fediverse is specifically designed to make it very difficult (if not impossible) for any one party to control the entire thing. It's a question of how not if.
The worst thing I could see is something like the development of React where FB has an overwhelming advantage in sheer resources and ends up having a major influence on the direction of software trends. But that would still just be a popularity thing and would not actively stop anyone from doing their own thing. Maybe there is something in the license for ActivityPub that would let them pull a Google-vs-Oracle reverse engineering, but again that won't stop other instances or developers from ignoring them if they wanted.
Here's the rundown:
What? Defederating doesn't fix that.
The solution is 1: to make sure users understand that it's a bad idea to flock to meta's instance, and 2: to implement that feature in the fediverse if everyone likes it so much they're willing to leave. The solution is not defederating now because of the posibbilty that they do that in the future.
But meta cannot claim all the fediverse as accesible content. Therefore making it akin to using facebook and reddit. Separate services that serve different demographics
It's not cynicism if the other party has a track record of behaving in an anti-competitive manner. The Fediverse became a competitor once it showed non-negligible growth.
It's not cynicism, it's weariness.