this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse (privacy.thenexus.today)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9799372

What's Meta up to?

  1. Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse

  2. Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you're following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn't available to the rest of the fediverse – as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol

  3. Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta's own ends

Since the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads, the most obvious ways of exploiting it – such as stealing market share by getting people currently in the fediverse to move to Threads – aren't going to work. But exploitation is one of Meta's core competences, and once you start to look at it with that lens, it's easy to see some of the ways even their initial announcement and tiny first steps are exploiting the fediverse: making Threads feel like a more compelling platform, and reshaping regulation. Longer term, it's a great opportunity for Meta to explore – and maybe invest in – shifting their business model to decentralized surveillance capitalism.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I just want to say I completely agree with you. If we want to withstand the companies at the helm of the Internet right now, we have to make it impossible for them to extinguish us. I think that's what we've essentially done with ActivityPub, and frankly I don't see any way they can try to take us down by normal means.

I mean, what are they gonna do? Pull the VERY loyal people from kbin.social or Lemmy.world into Threads? Or the people from Mastodon?

It's safe to say the people who have been here 5 months (or even more!) are not really keen on using Facebook 2.0, and we aren't really the demographic they're targeting. We also aren't exactly the biggest demographic, with the Fediverse being a couple million people afaik.

I think if anything we have the most to GAIN from federation. People will know about our little public ad-free corner of the Internet. It's downright silly to throw up pitchforks just because "Meta bad" because - at the end of the day - HOW will they destroy the Fediverse?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The playbook is like this: first leech off the community and good will spirit of highly active content creators on the fediverse. Those are only 1% of the total user number, but they have most of the attention of the others and thus drive advertisement revenue.

They will try to lure them over if they can, but otherwise benefit from advertising to remote followers from their platform. Once Threads is basically synonymous with Fediverse as far as normal users are concerned, make it increasingly difficult to stay off Threads for the content creators as well.

At that point AP is dead as a dodo, even if technically still existing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I mean, what are they gonna do? Pull the VERY loyal people from kbin.social or Lemmy.world into Threads? Or the people from Mastodon?

No. What they will do is follow the activity pub protocol, then make their own tweaks that all the other instances are supposed to follow (despite being closed off tweaks), or we are no longer interacting with them. Eventually our open source standard is overshadowed by their new partially proprietary standard, they have 95% of the users and more functionality so they have no reason to leave, and we are the ones who are doing it wrong. Then we are extinguished and they begin the process of enshitification/extracting every cent possible.

i.e. embrace, extend, extinguish.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

with the Fediverse being a couple million people

Yes thank you as I never see this being mentioned around here. I believe the last monthly active users was 300k? While it's not nothing, meta doesn't give any shit about a one time acquisition of 300k users who don't want to use their platform.

We aren't even "worth" extinguishing right now. These decisions are being made at a level far above us. We just don't know why yet. I'm expecting them to use ActivityPub as a tie in for Threads/Insta/FB.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

We just don't know why yet.

Because an open, federated network is an existential threat to them if it ever reaches mainstream popularity.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You can't make a lot of money from advertisement to grandma sharing pictures of the grandkids as Meta is realizing on their Facebook service with an aging demographic.

They got the "valuable" livestyle and fashion advertisement market pretty much covered with Instagram, but out side of that the "valuable" demographic of content creators were on Twitter.

Threads is about capturing that demographic, and a lot of them fled Twitter to the Fediverse.

Total number of users matter little if you don't have creators other users find interesting to follow. The shere numbers Meta still has, but it doesn't have much cloud with the quality content creators.