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.
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.
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.
They won't at the start. But they will after they made friends on threads and then threads breaks the federation again. The people in threads will not move to the fediverse because most of the people they interact with are on threads. They might not even notice that the federation broke. But for the people on the fediverse it will feel as if a large part of their social circle just disappeared.
But before that threads will already make things worse for non threads users. They will start extending the protocol in such a way that fediverse servers won't be able to keep up. They will find undefined cases in the protocol and start using them causing other servers to break/degrade. They will start one-sided slowdown of federation causing people to blame the server they are on instead of threads. Etc.
Nonsense. Even those of us who are on the Fedi most of the people we know are on the large platforms. They’re not forming new relationships. The point stands of the person you replied to, they would just continue using Big Social platforms. There’s 1.2 MAU which is nothing compared to all of Meta’s large platforms not even a blip. They’re not trying to steal Mastodon users
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 advertises itself as "interoperable with the Fediverse", which will fuel curiosity in some users. And Mastodon isn't only small-time operated instances. Creators of Vivaldi web browser created their Mastodon instance and bundle it with their browser account. Mozilla is preparing to do the same.Medium and Flipboard are another examples.
Curious users can find the fediverse anyway if there were interested in changing social media platforms. Meta has NO good reasonable use to integrate the fediverse. Compared to Metas cumulative social media user size we are but a tiny hub of users. So here again: there is NO good reason for them to just causally go "oh hi guys, let's be friends!"
The only reason is to extinguish competition before it gets larger.
It's like Starbucks slapping down a store next to your local coffee shop because "wow we both like coffee, let's be friends so our customers can enjoy coffee together and have a talk!"
It's a deceptive strategy.