How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.
If threads uses activity pub, most activity pub users will be meta users using the meta client. Meta will not feel the pressure to conform to the activity pub implementation. They could add features as they want since all their users will use their client. This will cause a sudden incompatibility and the fediverse will have to be the one to fix the problem.
If the fediverse wants to update the protocol to add a feature, we’d have to run it by meta first since they would have to update their client. If they drag their feet it would be hard to force the update knowing it will disconnect the majority of users from the fediverse.
It’s the same situation described in the article with Google and XMPP.
I don’t see any leaps or jumps. This could be how meta kills the fediverse and we’d be walking into it eyes wide open.
When a big corporation like Walmart moves into a neighborhood it kills the small stores because it delivers most of what people want more effectively. Then when Walmart closes shops to consolidate those neighborhoods don’t go back to the way they were, they now have no stores.
There is a lot of content in the fediverse that wouldn’t exist with meta, because meta users would provide better content, more discussion, and more votes would mean more granularity so better content rises higher. That would stop a lot of the people who post content on activity pub. They would be too late and have too little engagement to be relevant. Those people don’t magically reappear if meta decides that activity pub was just a bad mistake.
I know that you have put more thought into this topic than I did and you just might be right.
But dude that wallmart analogy misses the point by a mile.
Wallmart kills the small stores by simply undercutting them, this has nothing to do with what meta might do.
And you didn’t really argue my point that people like you and I could and probably would consume meta content if it was federated.
But why would anyone that is part of the fediverse right now jump ship if meta came and went away again?
I damn sure will never create another meta account or use any meta app. Would you?
You wouldn’t create a meta account. But I know I consume a lot more content than I create. Probably 1% of social media users create 80% of the content. If meta joined, the users that make most fediverse content now will see their engagement drop. There will likely not be a good reason for them to post at all since, in all likelihood, that content has already been posted by a meta user or reposted with more engagement.
Eventually they’ll stop posting because it won’t be fun. At this point almost all content will be meta content, and most activity pub clients will be “alternative meta clients” in practice. If/When meta leaves, the fediverse will likely have a fraction of the content it has now, it’ll be a ghost town and have a long and hard road to recovery.
That’s not to mention the other problems in the article.
I don’t see any large leaps.
If threads uses activity pub, most activity pub users will be meta users using the meta client. Meta will not feel the pressure to conform to the activity pub implementation. They could add features as they want since all their users will use their client. This will cause a sudden incompatibility and the fediverse will have to be the one to fix the problem.
If the fediverse wants to update the protocol to add a feature, we’d have to run it by meta first since they would have to update their client. If they drag their feet it would be hard to force the update knowing it will disconnect the majority of users from the fediverse.
It’s the same situation described in the article with Google and XMPP.
I don’t see any leaps or jumps. This could be how meta kills the fediverse and we’d be walking into it eyes wide open.
I understand all those points.
I just don’t quite see how that would kill the fediverse.
After all wouldn’t we be exactly where we are now if meta disconnected again?
It’s not like you and I would suddenly start using threads if it started federating.
When a big corporation like Walmart moves into a neighborhood it kills the small stores because it delivers most of what people want more effectively. Then when Walmart closes shops to consolidate those neighborhoods don’t go back to the way they were, they now have no stores.
There is a lot of content in the fediverse that wouldn’t exist with meta, because meta users would provide better content, more discussion, and more votes would mean more granularity so better content rises higher. That would stop a lot of the people who post content on activity pub. They would be too late and have too little engagement to be relevant. Those people don’t magically reappear if meta decides that activity pub was just a bad mistake.
I know that you have put more thought into this topic than I did and you just might be right.
But dude that wallmart analogy misses the point by a mile.
Wallmart kills the small stores by simply undercutting them, this has nothing to do with what meta might do.
And you didn’t really argue my point that people like you and I could and probably would consume meta content if it was federated.
But why would anyone that is part of the fediverse right now jump ship if meta came and went away again?
I damn sure will never create another meta account or use any meta app. Would you?
You wouldn’t create a meta account. But I know I consume a lot more content than I create. Probably 1% of social media users create 80% of the content. If meta joined, the users that make most fediverse content now will see their engagement drop. There will likely not be a good reason for them to post at all since, in all likelihood, that content has already been posted by a meta user or reposted with more engagement.
Eventually they’ll stop posting because it won’t be fun. At this point almost all content will be meta content, and most activity pub clients will be “alternative meta clients” in practice. If/When meta leaves, the fediverse will likely have a fraction of the content it has now, it’ll be a ghost town and have a long and hard road to recovery.
That’s not to mention the other problems in the article.
That’s where you lose me again.
Why would the engagement drop if a ton more users could consume your content.
It’s not like the ratio of content creators to lurkers is any better on meta apps than here.
Btw thank you for the good faith discussion, I don’t think that would have happened at the old place.