No, this will get people to leave Mastodon for Threads in droves. Really all Facebook is doing here is leaching users away from Mastodon. The average user doesn't know or care about the "perks" of non-Facebook Mastodon instances that Eugene is talking about. They will go with the service with the most name recognition every time, rather than trust an independent, small-time instance operator.

Threads is just Facebook with ActivityPub compatibility and Facebook ads and tracking, so basically they are pulling people away from decentralized networks and back to being under their control. Then the network effects Eugene is talking about will kick in, but moving people away from Mastodon and toward Threads.

Then Facebook can quietly drop support for Mastodon compatibility. Embrace (is done), Extend (with search, advertising, and tracking), Extinguish, cut compatibility with non-Facebook instances and sink the decentralized network, then finally Enshittification.

[–] fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm actually baffled that people are buying into facebooks shit. Zuck isn't doing this because he wants to help the competition.

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 5 points 11 months ago

No, he’s doing it because otherwise he won’t be compliant with the Digital Market Act, as a “gatekeeper”. That’s why this is happening at the same time as launching in Europe.

[–] Jackthelad@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If you're already up and running on Mastodon and can interact with people on Threads, there's literally no reason to swap one for the other.

[–] Wilzax@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

I agree, but remember that the last step is to discontinue ActivityPub integration so people will move from mastodon over to threads to keep up with the content they got on mastodon from threads

[–] Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If you’re already up and running on Mastodon and can interact with people on Threads, there’s literally no reason to swap one for the other.

This is about encouraging new users to join Facebook instead of one of those other Mastodon instances. Realistically, what percentage of people who join Threads will consider joining Mastodon or an independence instance instead when Facebook decides to drop support for Mastodon federation? I would guess that number at 1% or less. In other words, 99% of all Threads users are stuck there for the entire term of their service, never actually joining Mastodon.

The point of Facebook investing all of this money into setting up Threads is to eliminate competition from decentralized services. They are terrified that they are losing all of the control over the Internet that they have slowly acquired over the past 15 years or so, they are trying to take it back and destroy the competing network of federated independent services.

[–] slimarev92@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

Why would they leave if Federation with Threads improves the experience of using Mastodon (you can follow many more peoole)? I hate Facebook as much as anyone, but I don't get this argument at all.

If people just wanted an app with more recognition they would have never signed up to Mastodon in the first place.

[–] Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Those who forget the xmpp are doomed to repeat it (s mistakes)

[–] gnubyte@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago

I so badly do not want this to be true but I think you're right. Its basically a Shiticon Valley special.

[–] Smk@lemmy.ca 14 points 11 months ago

I'm just gonna say this :

Fuck you Facebook and fuck big corporations.

[–] Jackthelad@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Being able to interact with anyone regardless of what sites you're members of is a good thing. That's one of the main selling points of the Fediverse.

[–] TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If it wasn't for the fact that Zuckerberg is a conniving little shit, I'd agree.

[–] Smk@lemmy.ca -4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Say it, he is a Jew and you hate him for it.

[–] TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

What? No, he's a CEO and I hate him for it. Fuck billionaires.

[–] aodhsishaj@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Um, he's a pretty shitty jew if that's the tack you're taking with this. Considering that honesty, community, and rendering aid are pretty big tenets of the faith.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/19/mark-zuckerbergs-facebook-page-was-hacked-by-an-unemployed-web-developer/?arc404=true

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061

https://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-a-guide-to-the-trump-linked-data-firm-that-harvested-50-million-facebook-profiles-2018-3

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2018/apr/10/mark-zuckerberg-testimony-live-congress-facebook-cambridge-analytica

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-settlement-ftc-billion-privacy-2019-7

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-testifies-congress-libra-cryptocurrency-2019-10

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-internal-documents-executive-emails-published-six4three-court-leak-2019-11

https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-china-tiktok-censorship-2019-10?r=US&IR=T

https://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-a-guide-to-the-trump-linked-data-firm-that-harvested-50-million-facebook-profiles-2018-3

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-trump-protests-stance-costing-company-2020-6

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-whistleblower-sophie-zhang-willing-to-testify-congress-2021-10

[–] EccTM@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Are there actually any worthwhile accounts to follow on Threads, or is it all just instagram-lite celeb worship? I don't think this move is actually going to affect my mastodon instance at all.

[–] Drinvictus@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 11 months ago

At the moment it's pretty much the latter.

[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

I think what we'll see is a fractured Activity Pub network. One mainstream and one for all the cool kids. If done right itll only be a gateway to other activity pub networks which to me is a good thing.

[–] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You can hardly kill a decentralized network. Even if we fall back to field 1. People who actively chose freedom will stay.

[–] tobbue@feddit.de 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

You can: by making it irrelevant. It's not dead then, but not used also. And that is what's planned here.

[–] slimarev92@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Threads is already much much igger than the entire Fediverse, I don't see what is there to lose?

Currently tge Fediverse is mostly drawing in tech geeks, which are unlikely to leave either way. Federation with Threads might actually pull in "normal" users.

[–] tobbue@feddit.de 6 points 11 months ago

A natural network effect will pull in users in a network. Watering down our decentralized network with Metas network will make all of Fediverses advantages indistinguishable from the users perspective. Decentralization is not something you experience as a user anyway so there will be no obvious reason for someone coming from threads to switch over to the Fediverese. The other way round is more likely. Meta has insane design and market power to push out better Apps, faster CDNs and marketing to give users a better "Fediverse".

[–] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That solely depends on you! There will always be a need for a decentralized open source social media network and as long as there isn't any other alternative that can achieve that the people who rely on it won't go anywhere.

[–] tobbue@feddit.de 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but I advocate for decentralized social media to become the status quo and not the fallback role when corpo controlled media ends it's life cycle via enshittification again.

[–] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

You can only act yourself and try to convince others. So yes federating with threads seems to be a big step in that direction.

[–] dameoutlaw@lemmy.ml -1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It’s already irrelevant, it’s never been. The Fediverse is well over a decade old and most people don’t know it exists.

[–] christian@lemmy.ml 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's irrelevant to you, but a community doesn't have to be massive for it to be important to it's users, it just has to be big enough for people to get something out of it regularly to keep the existing userbase engaged. Lemmy pre-migration is a great example. But if enough people leave in a short timespan it's really hard to keep the remaining userbase engaged after that drop-off. XMPP is a good example of this actually happening, I had a bunch of friends on there for years. When google pulled the rug, a lot of users lost a lot of their reasons for sticking around. It's a shell of itself now.

[–] dameoutlaw@lemmy.ml -1 points 11 months ago

XMPP was largely irrelevant before Google and went back to being that way after Google and a bunch of newer tech. It wasn’t directly connected to Google. Nothing outside of someone’s blog would even indicate that. I didn’t say it’s irrelevant to me. To me is not important. Globally and in terms of social media it is in fact irrelevant. Not even sure why you said irrelevant to me that doesn’t even match the context

[–] tobbue@feddit.de 3 points 11 months ago

Relatively, yes. But look at what happened in the last two years: https://fedidb.org/