I hope you’re right.

And I agree, lemmy.world does have a near-monopoly on large communities. I attribute that to lemmy being more developed and having apps ready and kbin simply not being completely ready in June (no shade thrown at ernest - he’s great and I like kbin better.) I hope overtime kbin grows some of its own large communities so it’s not so skewed towards a single instance.

And if Meta tries to pull some sort of destructive shenanigans, sure, then defederate from them. Not because they’re Meta, but because they’re pulling destructive shenanigans. There’s already plenty of instances that get defederated for that sort of thing.

In principle, I agree.

My fear is that the fediverse has no big hitter that can compete with Meta’s resources. The closest thing would be Mastodon.social, and they are still tiny compared to the two-billion instagram users Meta is gonna advertise Threads to and the 390 million Twitter X users that they are trying to poach.

I think Meta will play nice in the beginning, but eventually (perhaps even quickly) will gain a much larger userbase than everyone else. From there, it is only a matter of time before their users create more communities and content than everyone else.

Eventually, anyone who is federated with Threads is going to get accustomed to seeing and enjoying Threads content (why wouldn’t they? It’s from people.) That is where I fear Meta will start to flex their muscles because at the end of the day their business model is based on selling user data to advertisers; having users being able to interact from other platforms doesn’t really fit into that as well as having everyone be on your platform.

Obviously, I don’t have a crystal ball and all of this is theoretical, but I can see something like this happening where people start to abandon smaller platforms for Threads because their preferred platform got defederated.

The concept is that overtime, communities and connections will organically grow. If Threads has a disproportionally large ubserbase, then overtime they will create a similarly larger number of communities. This then would give them a lot more influence over the fediverse and anyone federated with them.

For smaller instances that become accustomed to seeing those communities and content, the danger is that Meta can just “pull the plug,” defederate, and extinguish the competition, or at the very least hurt their competitor’s users experiences when interacting with content from Threads. The reason they might do this is purely because it fits into their business model which is selling user data to advertisers; it is in Meta’s interest to have as much data on their users as possible, and to have those users be based on Meta’s platform.

As I said in another comment, I could be totally wrong and this could benefit the fediverse. I just think the opposite is more likely because I do not trust Meta. I think they will play nice in the beginning, but then start to flex their muscles once they feel they’ve got enough influence.

Also, there is nothing stopping them from expanding Thread’s capabilities to include the threadiverse. Kbin has already demonstrated both are possible in one app.

Look, I understand your opinion and I respect it, but I simply do not trust Meta. They are a business, and they are always going to do what is best for their business. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with that - all businesses are in the business of staying in business - but I think their track record makes them an untrustworthy actor in regards to the fediverse; they’re a big tech company joining a small (and I would argue obscure) ensemble of social networks.

Of course, I could be totally wrong and this could be a total boon for Activity Pub, kbin, mastodon, and the wider fediverse. I just think that the opposite is more likely.

I mean fuck, how many of us left Reddit for their bullshit? Inviting Meta into the mix is an even worse proposition.

Microsoft put that theory in practice with the release of Windows 2000 which offered support for the Kerberos security protocol. But that protocol was extended. The specifications of those extensions could be freely downloaded but required to accept a license which forbid you to implement those extensions. As soon as you clicked “OK”, you could not work on any open source version of Kerberos. The goal was explicitly to kill any competing networking project such as Samba.

This is a great article describing exactly how Meta can control the fediverse and destroy smaller instances with anti-competitve practices.

Right!?

Decentralized networks are a threat to Meta’s entire business model which runs on advertisements. That doesn’t work very well when your users can just jump to another instance without ads.

Meta wants to nip the fediverse in the bud now before it’s too late for them to get a foothold. I think they’re gonna do it by (trying) to port their massive userbase to Threads, make other instances dependent on their content and users, and then pull the plug so they can go back to selling everyone’s information to advertisers.

Edit:
https://i.imgur.com/4U0g4Bk.png
I saw this image floating around a few days ago that I think helps illustrate that even if a fraction of Meta’s userbase migrates to Threads it will be enough to dominate the fediverse. Instagram has two billion users, and the entire fediverse only has around 1.5 million.

My main concern is that this is just Facebook Meta utilizing the “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” strategy that Microsoft used against Netscape in the 90s.

I feel like our small communities here - which are just getting started - are going to be flooded by Threads users who don’t even know what federation is and then all the content, power & control will realistically be in Meta’s hands.

My gut says that is probably Meta’s goal, but what do I know? I’m just some internet person.

I am not super familiar with it, but my understanding is that Kbin lets users block something by domain.

So, my understanding is that yes individual users could theoretically block Threads content.

If I am wrong, somebody please correct me!

What magazine is it? I am no expert, but I think you may need to get a lemmy account to find your magazine first, and then it will start federating.

When I was having trouble finding a Lemmy community from Kbin, I had to go to that lemmy community from Kbin where I got a 404 error. After that, I noticed the lemmy community started federating with Kbin. I am assuming the same is true in reverse.

Again, I am no expert so if someone has better information, please correct me!

Account and platform support.

Right now there are no apps for kbin. There was one (Artemis) that was in development, and the developer had expressed early on that she was open to making a multi-platform app that supported kbin and lemmy.

I do not know if that is still in the cards as there has not been an update on Artemis for a while now.