Context
- List of instances defederating from Threads, the Meta microblogging platform: https://fedipact.veganism.social/
- At the moment, Threads have incomplete federation with Fediverse microblogging instances: https://fediversereport.com/last-week-in-fediverse-ep-86/
- Another meme about Threads: https://feddit.uk/post/18194873
- Threads does not currently federate with link aggregators (Lemmy, Piefed)
- Threads could work with the microblogging part of Mbin
The main arguments for people to defederate are
- “Embrace, extend, and extinguish” strategy: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
- A potential federation with Threads (should Thread decide to implement it) would overwhelm Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed with millions of users (compared to the 40k monthly current active users), transforming those platforms into a threaded version of Facebook
- Defederating preventively costs nothing
LW stance: https://lemmy.world/post/1274909?scrollToComments=true
Threads hate isn’t stupid. Consider for a moment the literally dozens of people online without FB or Insta accounts. That is a choice. It’s nice to have somewhere that doesn’t have those users, with that groomed content, pumped for profit. Meta exists to make money - the Zuckdroid wants a finger in the fediverse pie to maximise profit for the share holders; not because he’s gone all in and techno-philanthropy. Having said that, the dilution of quality and nuance his user base “could” bring is the real worry though.
Federation has much less to do with profit, and more to do with showing the EU that they are attempting to embrace open standards. Everyone slamming the door on them gives them a way to justify keeping their wallet garden.
“Wallet Garden” might just be the most appropriate typo I’ve ever read… Any decision made by Meta is done in consideration of their bottom line and secondly I’m quite happy for the vast majority of their users to stay in a walled (sic) garden. The internet is busy enough as it is - we’d be overwhelmed by pure numbers.
This is similar to how bridging ActivityPub and AT Protocol would result in more federation for Bluesky, while blocking the bridge would let Bluesky remain (mostly) centralized.