I came out of this event much more sanguine about the way this is unfolding, a bit more optimistic about the future of the decentralized or social web, and interested to see where things go from here.
I won’t question the good intentions of the folks working on Threads. But I do question the intentions of Meta executives now and in the future.
Think of a scenario once Threads and Mastodon can talk to each other. I can see posts from Threads on Mastodon, like them, I can reply. I can follow people on Threads. And vice versa. Now users have a choice. You can choose your server; not based on where most people are but which service has the best product.
So what happens if Threads objectively has the best app the best user experience, where it’s easiest to sign up and start posting? This is a real scenario because Meta has the funds and expertise to build a good user experience. And they have the ability to scale Threads to billions of users.
Now, Meta’s board decides it’s time to make money from all the content posted into the Metaverse via Threads. Will they be cool and say, well, we‘ve got all of these users, and we can show ads on our own app and we won’t worry about all the other clients that consume our content? Or will they start to close off Threads and make it hard for users to leave? Will they stay open initially but close off Threads once they notice that users are leaving to other instances because Thread’s user experience takes a hit with ads and algorithmically curated content?
All of Metas products were very enticing at first. I had Facebook and Instagram accounts very early on. But I deleted them because they became insufferable over the years. Why would it be different this time? Meta‘s board will, at some point, ask why the company spends all this money on Threads, but there is no revenue. What happens then?
the Fediverse is not looking for market dominance or profit. The Fediverse is not looking for growth. It is offering a place for freedom. People joining the Fediverse are those looking for freedom. If people are not ready or are not looking for freedom, that’s fine. They have the right to stay on proprietary platforms. We should not force them into the Fediverse. We should not try to include as many people as we can at all cost. We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.
By competing against Meta in the brainless growth-at-all-cost ideology, we are certain to lose. They are the master of that game. They are trying to bring everyone in their field, to make people compete against them using the weapons they are selling.
ActivityPub is an open protocol. Open as in anyone can adopt and implement it. As much as we all want to break away from big-corp social media, these companies aren’t just going away. And anyone adopting open interfaces should be welcomed at this point, even if we don’t like what they have been doing in the past and will be doing in the future.
Consider this: Even if Meta builds a platform on top of ActivityPub and defederate eventually, how is that future situation different from the current situation? Mastodon isn’t compatible with Twitter, and if you want to chat to friends on Twitter, you need to use Twitter. If Meta’s new platform doesn’t implement ActivityPub, you won’t be able to interact with people on the platform.
If ActivityPub fails to develop into a de-facto standard for social networking, and that scenario is very real, it won’t be because Facebook added incompatible extensions to ActivityPub and subsequently cut off their service from the Fediverse. People don’t care about the protocols underpinning the services they use. They have needs, like staying in touch with friends and family, and they want to address their needs in the simplest way possible. If ActivityPub fails, it will be because the clients and services that support the protocol are hard to use, their design is not appealing or their feature set is limited.