this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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General off-topic chat for the crew of startrek.website. Trek-adjacent discussions, other sci-fi television, navigating the Fediverse, server meta (within reason), selling expired cases of Yamok sauce, it’s all fair game.
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Right now, we don't see any real reason to do so. If someone can identify a clear, genuine threat from Meta besides "we don't like them" (and, to be clear, we don't), we're open to hearing it. But as it stands, I haven't seen anything concrete that would be cause for concern.
If the worst-case scenario is...more people can interact with us, then I don't see what the problem is.
"Embrace extend and extinguish" has happened before, and it can happen again if corp run instances are allowed to gain traction.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
I think it is a completely valid worry that corporations will come in, capture an audience, and then force the original lemmy instances into ruin. There is also the fact that corporations will want to make money off of it, and financial motivations are antithetical to the fediverse ecosystem.
As an admin here, I'm not too worried about being "forced into ruin" - at worst, we would get bigger, and then get smaller again if Meta pulls the plug on ActivityPub.
But I can also assure you that we'll be watching closely.
Honestly looking forward to can interact with friends I currently can not.
I think the issue most are concerned with sits under the layer Admins are at. It’s not necessarily about the community administration, it’s about the software that makes up Lemmy. Threads will almost instantly make up 99% of users, so what incentive have they to play nice. The XMPP debacle wasn’t about integrating poorly, it was about specifically building a community in which was dependent on Gtalk users then mutating the protocol, eventually breaking with it. XMPP of course survived, but it died soon after, because when all the users no longer have access to their communities, why will they stay? Lemmy admins are worried that threads will become so integral to the fediverse that it’s removal will mean that users (who let’s be honest, don’t want to check more things than they need to) will go with threads.
My instinct is to shrug if off and say, "so what?" Most people looking for this sort of experience already go to Reddit. This space exists for people who'd rather not. If a bunch of users decide to go to Threads, and then Meta takes away interoperability...we'll still be here, doing what we do.
It’s a fair point, “meta bad” is poor discourse. The most prevalent concern I’ve seen is that allowing federation to Meta is setting the stage for another Gtalk-XMPP style conflict.
In effect, when a party has such a disproportionate user base, they can use that to dictate terms on the evolution of the protocols that underpin a platform.
Here’s a write up by someone who worked on XMPP and Gtalk who puts it much better than I could. Article