Everyone is talking about how Meta is trying to Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish the Fediverse. Meta won’t be alone for long in this goal, there will be a lot of capitalist actors that would try to do the same in the long run.
Defederation with them will be a shot in the leg, and handicap the Fediverse movement itself. There will be users/instances in the current Fediverse that would want to federate with them, and banning such instances would create silos and echo chambers.
The way out of this is to focus on the 2nd E - “Extend”. I think we can all agree that UX of Threads app will always probably be the best out of all the federated instances. But that is something that people can still live without. Before long, Meta will tout shortcomings like lack of E2E encryption in the private messages and some other core features, that will create a bigger divide amongst ourselves. The Fediverse developers and community have to keep abreast of Meta on such core features, so that they can never extend the core of the Fediverse.
Let me know of your thoughts!
I think a promising way to defeat a giant for-profit corporation like Meta is by investing capital in many smaller non-profit corporations which can each focus more tightly on the fediverse while Meta spins off to focus on the next hype train a year from now.
Little non-profit companies can carve off small portions of the market for federated social media content and, if enough exist to carve it in small enough pieces, then giant corporations like Meta will focus on other markets that are less fragmented.
Sure, Meta might try to buy out the little guys and consolidate, but as long as the little guys keep investing in free and open source IP(not trademarked/copyrighted systems) there won’t be much room for Meta to technically differentiate themselves in a meaningful way to most consumers.
I’m not sure I totally agree with that assessment. If we compare the sheer amount of resources and talent behind Meta vs. behind the Fediverse, it’s clear that there’s no way the Fediverse can ever compete in terms on innovation and features. Not to say that there aren’t talented devs on the Fediverse - they’re all pretty talented if you ask me - but Meta can just hire hundreds of similarly talented devs without even feeling the cost.
Really, the only way to prevent getting washed away by Meta (in development, in users, in culture, in basically just about everything) is to not associate with Meta at all. Co-existence doesn’t mean we have to cooperate, after all. If the Fediverse shows that it has the userbase and staying power to withstand a full EEE “assualt” and remain standing, then I would be more inclined to take the “wait and see” approach. But I think as it stands now, Meta is very clearly trying to overwhelm the Fediverse before it has a chance to get going on its own merits
defederation. only way.
