this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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So Meta is keenly aware of this and totally won't use it as a way to attract and funnel users onto their servers until one day they decide to take everyone and leave.
...
Appeals to fallacies, but refuses to consider the most reasonable form of the argument and instead assumes 'everyone' doesn't mean 'enough people that the rest don't matter'.
In fairness, I think we might already be the rest who don't matter. Threads has just passed 100 million users in like three days. The entire fediverse, in about ten years (it's tough to pin down an exact start date because "When did it become the fediverse?"), has accrued around 12 million users, of which less than 4 million are active. There's any number of things Meta might want, but I don't think greater access to 4 million geeks is at the top of their list.
I do think the embrace, extend, extinguish concerns have some merit. Meta isn't threatened by the fediverse now, but maybe they do want to kill it before it becomes a problem. In the short term, though, we're not overtaking Threads. Personally, I think another plausible theory is that Threads is using ActivityPub to demonstrate that they're not running a monopoly or gatekeeping control of social media (which the EU's new Digital Markets Act now regulates) by pointing to the fediverse--which will soon also include direct competitors Tumblr--and saying "See, we're all on equal footing! We don't control social media! Look over there at those 4 million geeks and whatever number of Tumblr users."
Because like Google+, if you have an Instagram account, you now have a Threads account.
This is untrue. Threads accounts are reserved for the matching Instagram user, but those users have to actually choose for that account to be opened. If all Instagram accounts were auto-converted to Threads accounts there'd be over 1 billion Threads accounts. The 100 million Threads users are all people who have specifically opted to have a Threads account.
yeah, but to be fair we don't have a good number of those who opted out because to delete the Threads account you have to delete your Instagram account.
A significant number may simple have noped out after seeing no follow feed.
Definitely. Meta is studiously only sharing the number of accounts registered. We have no idea how many of those are active. If we go with the old 1-9-90 rule, only about 10 million of those 100 million will become active users. Although, the rule obviously isn't a universal constant. On the fediverse, for example, it's closer to ⅓ of registered users that are active.
When we've already seen this strategy play out in the form of Microsoft's great EEE, it's hard not to assume malevolent intentions when a mega-corporation suddenly starts getting buddy-buddy with the indies (who are creating an adjacent product) out of nowhere.
You don't chop down a big tree on one go. You chop, chop, chop away over and over until eventually the trunk is too weak to support the rest of the tree.
If they can pull enough users and developers away from the Fediverse and ActivityPub, then it'll kill off (or extinguish) the whole thing.
Meta is not just Zuck. It is a rapacious corporation.
Plus, while it takes a smart man to build a house, any old idiot can knock it down