Meta/Instagram launched a new product called Threads today (working title project92). It adds a new interface for creating text posts and replying to them, using your Instagram account. Of note, Meta has stated that Threads plans to support ActivityPub in the future, and allow federation with ActivityPub services. If you actually look at your Threads profile page in the app your username has a threads.net tag next to it - presumably to support future federation.
Per the link, a number of fediverse communities are pledging to block any Meta-directed instances that should exist in the future. Thus instance content would not be federated to Meta instances, and Meta users would not be able to interact with instance content.
I’m curious what the opinions on this here are. I personally feel like Meta has shown time and time again that they are not very good citizens of the Internet; beyond concerns of an Eternal September triggered by federated Instagram, I worry that bringing their massive userbase to the fediverse would allow them to influence it to negative effect.
I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place, and I’m eager to hear more opinions. What do you think?
Imagine having a chat account but you couldn’t send a message to a friend because Google decided they didn’t need third party interaction anymore
Yeah, blocking is bad. It’s bad when Google does it and it would be bad if we did it.
I still use XMPP based chat services, Google’s move in this area doesn’t affect me at all because the protocol is open. ActivityPub is the same way… if Meta decides that they’re going to block all non-Meta instances then our instance isn’t affected. But as long as they’re federating with us then their users can freely switch to non-Meta services without losing access to their existing friends and communities. That would not be true if we defederated from Meta.
Beating Meta has to be done by providing a better service, not by taking a tiny percentage of their population and hiding in a bubble on the Fediverse. Meta already has the user base, they’re not worried about losing a few million users (especially ones who’re ideologically motivated to oppose them).
The best move at this point is to stay federated and to rapidly update ActivityPub to provide more features. We have to out-Extend them, we cannot prevent the ‘Embrace’ part of the strategy… the existing Fediverse userbase is too small compared to Meta’s users base.