this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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I’m all for individual users blocking Threads if they’d like to, but I think it’s a terrible idea for instance admins to make that decision for all of their users.
Personally, I don’t see why this is so controversial. I view it as a way to follow the celebs and organizations that would rather use threads, but from the comfort of Mastodon that is outside of Meta’s ecosystem.
ActivityPub and the Fediverse is designed to for natural selection to take place. So let it. The users that want to be part of the Fediverse are already here and won’t don’t leave based on what Meta does with Threads. Threads utilizing ActivityPub in the future justifies the means of the Fediverse more than anything else IMO. I despise Meta as much as the next person, but this is not the end of the Fediverse as we know it.
"natural selection" in this context is unregulated capitalism and ends in Meta owning you. No, don't "let it." Maintain boundaries between the free and open internet and that governed by corporate interests.
But that’s the risk taken when you create a protocol (ActivityPub) that anyone can tap into. You can’t create something that is open to everyone and then pitch a fit when entity you don’t like or agree decides to take advantage of it. Regardless of how big Threads get, it can’t supecede the ActivityPub protocol. If they decided to defederate down the road in attempts to extinguish the Fediverse, it won’t work, those users will still remain and Threads will go on it’s merry way. Meta can’t kill a W3C protocol.
It is completely inevitable that Meta will add Threads-exclusive functionality that is not compatible with ActivityPub, funnelling users into their own walled garden.
You can actually pitch a fit when the entity poses a genuine existential crisis. What do you think Meta will do once they're here? Give direct access to Facebook users. This will drown out the user base AND pull users away when certain features are introduced by them that just happen to not work well outside Threads. It is an EEE strategy in your face and you want to wait and see? Come on.
I don't think defederating from any Instance which plays ball with Threads for that reason only is a good idea. I do think Instance owners should see the danger Threads poses and act accordingly.