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> Why? If they federate, I can follow people who post on Threads, but I get a chronological timeline I control and no ads. They make money on ads. So why should

> Why? If they federate, I can follow people who post on Threads, but I get a chronological timeline I control and no ads. They make money on ads. So why should they federate? To "slurp up everything"? They already have much more than Mastodon and the rest of the fediverse have. The thing you get from federation is more granular social graph data than you can obtain from public scraping. Not just "X liked this post" but also "when did X like this post?" Meta specializes in social graph analysis. More data leads to more insights, which leads to more targeting for advertisements in places they do control. There's the direct profitability angle. Additionally, it will make Meta's properties feel more "complete" or connected to the rest of the world (despite many people's distaste for Meta as a company and their business practices). Being able to stay in touch with Meta objectors through ActivityPub will lead to more social pressure (or inertia, depending on your perspective) to stay locked into Meta properties for their incumbent users. They only stand to gain from this plan. There is a cost, of course: Some CPU is expended that doesn't include adverts. But they've probably done the math and concluded that they can accept that hit and still profit.

not2b 3y ago
But if Tumblr does the same, they're just as complete. And public scraping can approximate "when did X like this post?" by just running it frequently. And you haven't mentioned the moderation costs to Meta. They'd have to decide who to federate with, which instances to block, which accounts to block.
- soatok 3y ago
  > And you haven't mentioned the moderation costs to Meta. What about my comment obligates me, in any way, to mention that? It seems like an odd thing to demand. What's going to happen is: the far-right pockets are ad-unfriendly (ad-adverse?), so they're out. But the far-left instances are anti-corporate, so they'll block Meta. What remains are heavily skewed towards the statist democrat types who are generally civil and well-mannered. I wouldn't expect the moderation burden to be too heavy from that crowd. The only significant moderation cost will be if Zucc abandons all sense and federates with instances that allow right-wing extremists. That would be an expensive blunder. (Still stupidly rate-limited on my main account, so have to reply from this one. Dang it.)
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  Tumblr is losing $30m a year. I don’t know if they have the capital or team to do that kind of pivot. It’s a risk it all move for them, not for Meta.

not2b 3y ago

But if Tumblr does the same, they're just as complete. And public scraping can approximate "when did X like this post?" by just running it frequently. And you haven't mentioned the moderation costs to Meta. They'd have to decide who to federate with, which instances to block, which accounts to block.

soatok 3y ago
> And you haven't mentioned the moderation costs to Meta. What about my comment obligates me, in any way, to mention that? It seems like an odd thing to demand. What's going to happen is: the far-right pockets are ad-unfriendly (ad-adverse?), so they're out. But the far-left instances are anti-corporate, so they'll block Meta. What remains are heavily skewed towards the statist democrat types who are generally civil and well-mannered. I wouldn't expect the moderation burden to be too heavy from that crowd. The only significant moderation cost will be if Zucc abandons all sense and federates with instances that allow right-wing extremists. That would be an expensive blunder. (Still stupidly rate-limited on my main account, so have to reply from this one. Dang it.)
nickthegreek 3y ago
Tumblr is losing $30m a year. I don’t know if they have the capital or team to do that kind of pivot. It’s a risk it all move for them, not for Meta.