Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse
Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse
What's Meta up to?
-
Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse
-
Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you're following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn't available to the rest of the fediverse – as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol
-
Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta's own ends
Since the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads, the most obvious ways of exploiting it – such as stealing market share by getting people currently in the fediverse to move to Threads – aren't going to work. But exploitation is one of Meta's core competences, and once you start to look at it with that lens, it's easy to see some of the ways even their initial announcement and tiny first steps are exploiting the fediverse: making Threads feel like a more compelling platform, and reshaping regulation. Longer term, it's a great opportunity for Meta to explore – and maybe invest in – shifting their business model to decentralized surveillance capitalism.
You're viewing a single thread.
As if Meta could give a flying fart about activitypub as competition. They could not care any less if someone gave them money to care less.
I feel fairly confident in saying that the only reason they're integrating federation is so that it won't work because we all defederate them, this is beneficial to them because it means we cannot talk family members and friends onto Mastodon, they want to connect to their friends being on Threads. However, this pre-empts any EU legislation forcing them to be interoperable. They are, "can't help it if the other side is not interoperating despite having the ability to do so".
Maybe some of that but my sense is that given how prescient FB has been on buying companies that grew to become staples, like WhatsApp and Instagram I would say what they're seeing here is something like the future of social media - even if tiny.
Unfortunately they can't buy it, but they can do the next best thing: position themselves to take advantage of it, while in its infancy, and if possible control it while they can still throw their weight about before it takes off independently.
given how prescient FB has been on buying companies that grew to become staples, like WhatsApp and Instagram
- Whatsapp was bought for 19 bil, at a time when it was #3 in the US and dominant in major parts of the world. It's buying it about 5 years too late to be "prescient" about it.
- Instagram was a better deal, but far from "buying it before it grows big". bought for 1 bil two years after it launched it was already well on track for 20 million users. If they had bought it a year earlier they would have gotten it really cheap, granted. They bought it right after it exploded.
Now, I'm not saying Facebook wouldn't love to buy competitors, but the examples are kinda weird, in particular WhatsApp. Plus again, the fediverse is so tiny the only reason someone at Facebook probably knows about it is because a lawyer told them to tell 3 engineers to get this done, by which point they didn't even read the wikipedia and just told them to do it because legal says they should.
WhatsApp had 500 million MAU when it was bought up.
That's 250x the fediverse.
They really don't care.
Yeah, it's been hilarious watching the fediverse think Meta gives a rat's ass about either reaching them with content or getting access to their horde of memes.
This is about preempting regulation.
Meta would love nothing less than having their interoperability push still end up as a walled garden, and if I didn't know better regarding their total disinterest about Lemmy or even Mastodon existing, would even suspect that the degree to which they'd be meddling in the conversion would be creating posts about how people should be irrationally upset and defederate from Threads.
Though they don't care enough to be involved in the conversation at all, and know full well that the fediverse will hit scaling issues should it ever miraculously gain traction long before it is actually a threat in any way to their market dominance.
All that said, it's still pretty hilarious to watch the inflated self-importance and slight paranoia that goes with it leading to bitter debates like this though.
The OP talks about how Meta can get a lot of what they want -- including the regulatory aspects -- just by saying they'll integrate with the fediverse, and it's quite possible that's all they'll ever do. But there's a big potential upside for them if they decided to invest in it ... not so much today's fediverse (I agree about the inflated self-importance of a lot of the commentary -- no, they're not so desperate for content that they're trying to steal it from the fediverse) but the potential of decentralized surveillance capitalism. So, we shall see.