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I’m right in the middle of the move so I don’t have time to write anything at length on the whole “mastodon.social rolling out the red carpet for Threads/Instagram/Meta/Zuckerberg” thing.
In a nutshell:
- The *only* leverage the fediverse has over a trillion-dollar corporation is social legitimacy.
- That is exactly what the flagship instance is providing to Meta.
- It matters less whether your tiny/personal instance blocks them; given their size, you’re effectively blocking yourself.
…
- The fact we have a flagship instance and that mastodon.social didn’t close signups ages ago is a huge part of the problem. They could have set a social precedent (large instances are a no-no) – they didn’t.
- When Threads federates, it will become the flagship instance.
- Eugen is basically handing the crown to Mark.
- The fact there is a crown to start with is a shortcoming of the federated model with instances that can scale indefinitely. (How else could things be done? See #SmallWeb)
…
- This is classic embrace, extend, extinguish.
Clearly, some of you folks don’t know your classics. If you need a refresher, see this:
https://beehaw.org/post/719121
- We know the business model of Meta (people farming / surveillance capitalism). We know it’s toxic. We know that any publicly-traded trillion-dollar corporation plays a zero-sum game. There is nothing, nothing that justifies giving them the benefit of the doubt except utter naïvety, verging on malicious negligence.
…
All that said, it feels like this ship has already sailed.
The only person who can really make an impact here is Eugen – by taking a principled stance against Meta – and that’s clearly not what he’s doing.
Without that, we are witnessing the normalisation of Meta/surveillance capitalism on the fediverse.
The only time you have any power over a trillion-dollar corporation/VC-backed startup is at the start & your only real leverage is making it socially unacceptable. And we’ve surrendered that.
… As far as I’m concerned, I’ve always seen the fediverse as a useful bridge and a means of reaching like-minded folks for what comes next.
In my mind, what comes next (not in that it will replace the fediverse or the web we have but in that it will exist alongside them) is the Small Web.
Think: everyone has their own “instance of one” (to borrow a fediverse term) in a peer-to-peer web that’s designed for that from the start.
… That’s what I’m working on and that’s what I see as one possible long-term solution.
But I do love the fediverse and I see a continued need for the fediverse and what I want to see will be harder to achieve without the fediverse as a bridge so I would really love to see us not fuck it up or surrender it to the Zuckerbergs of the world.
I’ve said my piece.
Make of it what you will.
I don’t care to argue about it. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
And I’ve got boxes to pack.
@aral Thank you for your input and information.
I wonder, do you know Spoutible?
@suzantepas Thank you for bringing it to my attention but I’m not interested in proprietary software/services; especially when free and open alternatives exist.
@aral Yes, I understand. The thing is, it's not a billionaire who is the proprietor, it's set up as a community platform built by participants. Personally, I think safety/anti-harassment tools are really important.
Because the billionaires don't give a crap about (marginalised) people, and Spoutible gives a voice to people corporate media and other social platforms ignore completely.
Especially with the US Elections coming up, that's important.
But I won't bother you any further ;-)