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I think for a lot of mastodon users it's more about being part of a specific ideologically aligned in-group than it is about anything else (this post touches on

I think for a lot of mastodon users it's more about being part of a specific ideologically aligned in-group than it is about anything else (this post touches on a lot of stuff that makes overtures to that). The irony to me is that any chance of relevance for a protocol is obviously going to need big players like meta to sign up (and that's a good thing for the protocol). A weird set of circumstances might have aligned where meta sees an advantage in being part of a federated protocol to commoditize a threat to themselves (twitter, bluesky, etc.) and still hold a dominant position in quality of the end user clients (which is the only thing 99% of users care about). It's a little funny a lot of the mastodon hosts are up in arms about this, but not that surprising when considering what they're actually getting out of being part of it (the identity stuff that comes along with being a mastodon user). I'd guess similar stuff was said during the eternal september era of the web itself - simply being an internet user was no longer an identity that meant something culturally specific.

ipaddr 3y ago
Thread users are today's aol users. Better to keep them out of areas where real conversations happen
- dbfx 3y ago
  Then I fail to see the issue since "real conversations" aren't happening on the fediverse either.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    There's dozens of real conversations happening. Dozens!
  - treyd 3y ago
    What do you mean by this? There's over a million active users including quite a few high profile people like Cory Doctorow.
- turnsout 3y ago
  You are 100% right that Threads users are today's AOL users, and that's a good thing. If Threads actually federates, it will be another Eternal September [0], and we need that for ActivityPub to truly thrive. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
  - nobody9999 3y ago
    > If Threads actually federates, it will be another Eternal September [0], and we need that for ActivityPub to truly thrive. Please define "thrive" in this context. Do you mean DAU/MAUs? I know, perhaps, a couple hundred people and respect the opinions/ideas of perhaps a few dozen others I don't know. Those are the only people I care about interacting with and I can interact with them just fine without Meta's "offerings." AFAICT, ActivityPub is thriving. It has an active user base, is under active development and doesn't "productize" its users. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, I just don't understand how you're defining "thrive" in this context.
    - turnsout 3y ago
      ActivityPub is doing fine, but the more people who are using it, the better. We saw this with the most recent migration from Twitter to Mastodon about 6 months ago. We got more users, and that brought more developers, bug fixes, enhancements, and new ActivityPub projects.
      - nobody9999 3y ago
        >ActivityPub is doing fine, but the more people who are using it, the better. We saw this with the most recent migration from Twitter to Mastodon about 6 months ago. We got more users, and that brought more developers, bug fixes, enhancements, and new ActivityPub projects. You won't get any argument about that from me. That said, what's needed is more instances, not a single instance with a hundred million users. What's more, how likely is it that the Meta dev folks will want to share bug fixes/enhancements/etc? And even if they did, how many of them are there? I'd rather see 100 new Fediverse instances of a wide variety, with a bunch of different folks contributing than a Meta monoculture. That's not to say I object to Threads. AP is open source. Meta can use/not use federate/not federate the software as they choose. And if they actually do federate and bring new devs and instances along with them, that's great! I just don't think we need Meta for AP to thrive. It's been doing just fine so far, and will continue to do so with or without Meta.
JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
Surely you, Foss User, are aware that FB et al don't just "republish" your voluntarily published info as per GP - they doggedly track you around the internet and the physical world, 24/7, without consent, storing, profiling, and reselling you to advertisers. Example: download the supposedly privacy-focused app pCloud on your iPhone, start it up, and check what IPs it's hitting. That's right, it's hitting facebook tracking servers. This is not a tribal ingroup club thing. It's a "fuck off, megacorps" thing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ipaddr 3y ago

Thread users are today's aol users. Better to keep them out of areas where real conversations happen

dbfx 3y ago
Then I fail to see the issue since "real conversations" aren't happening on the fediverse either.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  There's dozens of real conversations happening. Dozens!
- treyd 3y ago
  What do you mean by this? There's over a million active users including quite a few high profile people like Cory Doctorow.
turnsout 3y ago
You are 100% right that Threads users are today's AOL users, and that's a good thing. If Threads actually federates, it will be another Eternal September [0], and we need that for ActivityPub to truly thrive. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- nobody9999 3y ago
  > If Threads actually federates, it will be another Eternal September [0], and we need that for ActivityPub to truly thrive. Please define "thrive" in this context. Do you mean DAU/MAUs? I know, perhaps, a couple hundred people and respect the opinions/ideas of perhaps a few dozen others I don't know. Those are the only people I care about interacting with and I can interact with them just fine without Meta's "offerings." AFAICT, ActivityPub is thriving. It has an active user base, is under active development and doesn't "productize" its users. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, I just don't understand how you're defining "thrive" in this context.
  - turnsout 3y ago
    ActivityPub is doing fine, but the more people who are using it, the better. We saw this with the most recent migration from Twitter to Mastodon about 6 months ago. We got more users, and that brought more developers, bug fixes, enhancements, and new ActivityPub projects.
    - nobody9999 3y ago
      >ActivityPub is doing fine, but the more people who are using it, the better. We saw this with the most recent migration from Twitter to Mastodon about 6 months ago. We got more users, and that brought more developers, bug fixes, enhancements, and new ActivityPub projects. You won't get any argument about that from me. That said, what's needed is more instances, not a single instance with a hundred million users. What's more, how likely is it that the Meta dev folks will want to share bug fixes/enhancements/etc? And even if they did, how many of them are there? I'd rather see 100 new Fediverse instances of a wide variety, with a bunch of different folks contributing than a Meta monoculture. That's not to say I object to Threads. AP is open source. Meta can use/not use federate/not federate the software as they choose. And if they actually do federate and bring new devs and instances along with them, that's great! I just don't think we need Meta for AP to thrive. It's been doing just fine so far, and will continue to do so with or without Meta.

JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago

Surely you, Foss User, are aware that FB et al don't just "republish" your voluntarily published info as per GP - they doggedly track you around the internet and the physical world, 24/7, without consent, storing, profiling, and reselling you to advertisers. Example: download the supposedly privacy-focused app pCloud on your iPhone, start it up, and check what IPs it's hitting. That's right, it's hitting facebook tracking servers. This is not a tribal ingroup club thing. It's a "fuck off, megacorps" thing.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]