What reason could Zuckerberg and Meta possibly have for wanting to create a federated social media site?

I think they want to destroy it. They don't want us to have freedom away from their data collection and ad bombardments.

Best way to do so is to get in. Some one posted an article about what they want to do.

Here the article https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

This is why Mete wants in.

Holy shit thanks for the link. That’s a very good write up explaining why we should be very wary of Meta’s intents. And the wiki page link was gold. Fuckers truly want to Embrace and Extinguish.
- You're welcome. I thought it was a greart write up and help me understand what was going on as well.
- Yes, a very good article. I have the feeling I have another peace of the puzzle now.
It seems so weird though. The fediverse is small. Extremely small. They are taking on Twitter. A million users on mastodon doesn’t matter when Twitter has 250 million.
- I agree that fediverse is only a few million. But the fediverse is also highly populated with refugees from twitter and reddit at the moment, who just want another stable and popular social platform similar to what they've always used.
  
  If anything, the fediverse will have people with stronger opinions: either they're willing to change social media because of a couple bad changes (and aren't too attached to the fediverse), or they're hardcore fediverse fans who are less likely to move to threads than your average twitter user.
  
  If we assume it to be a 50% split, then meta has a chance at stealing half the fediverse by promising a larger user base, thus more content, but on the false premise that Threads will be backwards compatible with the fediverse forever.
- Agreed. All this reminds me a little of some of the discussions that inevitably appear in professional-photographer circles whenever some online service with photo-sharing features changes its terms and conditions. Everyone is convinced that the giant multinational company is spending millions in a laser-focused effort to steal business from photographers, because "making money with photographs" is the lens through which they view the world. And from that point of view it's hard to see that the entire industry of professional photography is too tiny to be worth Google's or Meta's time to even try to steal.
- If their reaction is this strong even though fediverse is this small, it means we have something incredible and should fight for it and prevent coporations from gaining ANY influence over it. I doubt we will get any more chances if we blow this one.
- Twitter’s user count doesn’t even register to Facebook, either. They’re trying to be the only option
The bright side is that given the open nature of decentralized networks, nobody is forced to use whatever Meta shits out.
- Not disagreeing per se, but for sites like Twitter and its clones, you go where the people you care about are. I have a mastodon account but I couldn’t tell you the last time I opened it because nobody I follow is there, and I don’t really care about following general topics or hashtags.
  
  As opposed to a site like Reddit, the content is what matters, and I can get that content anywhere (RSS feeds, blogs, here, etc)
- Yeah but people will. And the article explains how this can lead to the "death" of the open-protocol version.
There was a big Lemmy discussion about that article 2 weeks ago too: https://lemmy.world/post/467454
I remember that. So the question begs how does the current federated ecosystem stay away from that? Never trust any company if they say they want to work together?

There a post suggesting that it's a EU law they are trying to avoid. It states that if a platform is large and a gatekeeper for information, then certain laws will apply. But by being in the fediverse that information is accessible by not-meta platforms, so the laws won't apply (they will argue).

I am personally guessing it's this option, people keep saying the idea is to EEE but I don't think this would be the most effective use of Meta resources since they should be focusing yheir efforts at beating twitter.
- What's EEE?
- 2 birds, 1 stone...

I fully believe it has to do with moderation and wanting to offload the costs of moderation. Moderation is expensive and requires whole teams, but if they just direct that federated instances need to comply with Meta's moderation standards, suddenly they're not directly responsible (or legally liable) for that stuff. It also has to do with ads - once Meta becomes dominant, they can say "we will serve federated ads and you have to deal with it or defederate from us."

Has anyone Defederated yet? Is Threads even live to Defederate from yet?
- I did on my mastodon instance. The known URLs are threads.net and threads.instagram.com. Threads is live apparently but not federated yet (that's "coming soon" - I believe Meta pushed Threads early because Twitter is shooting themselves in the foot with rate limiting (individuals may not use TweetDeck but brands sure do).
- Afaik Threads hasn't started federating with any instance so it's still siloed for now.

I think new laws in Europe have something to do with it. EU is trying to force the big platforms to interoperate. Facebook/Meta is of course one of the most targeted. So I think their thought is by signing on to the existing fediverse, they can say hey we are playing nice no need to regulate us further

Hadn't even considered this, but I think you're onto something. Even if it's not the main goal, that could definitely have factored into the decision.

@Hyrulian@lemmy.world I suspect it is to whitewash the fact that they are walled gardens

"look! we are activitypub-interoperable. it is not our fault everybody wants to use our service instead of mastodon!"

That's seems pretty likely. It really rubs me the wrong way that they specifically name drop Mastodon in the sign up page for Threads. It definitely seems like a way to avoid being held accountable for having a monopoly.

I think that Meta is trying to beat Twitter on microblogging. Using ActivityPub, like Lemmy and Mastodon, is just a fast and convenient way to start up quickly. The Fediverse will suffer with Thread invasion, as "colateral damage".

Until most have blocked all of the communities on their instance, at least, no?

Disagree with a lot of the stances here.

Meta has been hit hard by a series of failures over the last decade.

Continually missing first place, the company has broadly pivoted towards more open partnership in order to boost their offerings.

For example, their LLM weights being released to researchers when the product was clearly behind OpenAI and even Google.

Playing nice with federated networks fits into this.

Meta is betting that open platforms do well enough to corner a non-insignificant part of the market and are hoping to leverage compatibility with it in order to protect and differentiate their fledgling product from competition.

None of this means they aren't still going to try to siphon every detail they can to maximize ad revenue for users.

But they aren't trying to kill or sabotage the fediverse (which they rightfully don't seriously see as competition in itself). They are hoping it is successful enough that it helps give them an edge against walled garden networks backed by competitors' money.

In general, expect to see more openness from Meta in the coming years for much of what they do. They finally realized they aren't Apple and can't get away with siloing their products within the market.

I can agree with all you are saying, while also agreeing with the stance that Meta's presence is corrosive by its' very nature.
There will be a sugar rush up front, diabetes down the road.

EDIT: They WILL find a way to insert themselves more severely if and when this thing grows.

Ploum makes a very interesting point on his blog: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

They talk about examples like Google Chat being XMPP, becoming very big, changing the standards that look like other XMPP users/clients are subpar and then killing "federation" but no one complains because everyone uses their product, so it's not a big disruption.

While I don't think this is it, because Facebook is huge and ActivityPub isn't (XMPP was the most used protocol then), this happened and can't be ignored.

Microsoft pioneered (or maybe popularized, not sure) embrace, extend, extinguish. I’m sure this is a version of that.

What are they after: Money Are they going to try and infiltrate it: Obviously Are they trying to monetize it: Obviously It doesn't add up: To them it does I feel like most people...: I've got some bad news for you

The same thing cancer always does: To spread and ruin.

*metastasize
- Zing!

I've been trying to figure this out myself. The best I can come up with is that Meta wants to increase their user base as fast as possible and this is one way of doing it.

Another thought I had is that they could be thinking of getting Twitter to add ActivityPub, and then federating with Twitter. Meta could then claim all users can use their platform.

Honestly? Zuckerberg has always had an obsession with the next step as it relates to how people use the internet. He has a track record of trying to catch lightning in a bottle again and getting struck by lightning instead, to the detriment of his own company.

Just look at the Metaverse, he got obsessed with a relatively new technologies (vr and blockchain) and wasted billions of dollars chasing the same high he once got when Facebook took over.

Maybe he sees money in the fediverse, but i think Zuckerberg is just getting excited about a new technology like the rest of us. Unlike the rest of us however, he will likely end up spending billions of dollars continuing to chase that high that he got from Facebook.

Another thought is that they're not trying to kill Mastodon, they're trying to kill Twitter.

Mastodon has a bit of a community already, so by implementing ActivityPub, Meta can make its platform seem bigger than it is by pulling in Mastodon content. Gives it another edge over Twitter.

Best case scenario is Threads sees ActivityPub as just the cost of doing business. That way, even people who won't use your platform are still interacting with it. Downside, people on your platform can leave for a federated alternative and not miss out on any content. Not sure if that downside makes up for the potential gains.

I think the default approach needs to be defederate first unless Meta shows actual interest in developing the fediverse with good intentions. If Threads become the majority provider of content to the fediverse and then we defederate, we lose all that content. It could lead to Mastodon, Lemmy, and Kbin withering and dying as everyone goes where the content is.

I will block any threads communities and i think a lot of us feel that way. Right now. It's easy to say it when they're not out there sharing cat pictures. When the sub you miss from r/ shows as a threads, what will you do?
- I don’t get how threads would interface with Lemmy, I thought it was a microblogging service like Twitter?

Federation is the future of social media.

I know it, you know it, the original Twitter team knows it, and Meta knows it too.

Over time I think this will become increasingly clear to everyone, and as a new social network pops up every couple of months and social media becomes more fragmented, it will only become more important that people are able to communicate with each other across networks. Even the average normie out there who hasn't joined the Fediverse yet because they think it's "too complicated" or "don't want to join something with servers", is starting to look at services like BlueSky, Threads and Tumblr (which have all made some level of commitment to federation) and slowly beginning to understand the value of being able to follow people on completely different networks. And the more social networks that exist, the more valuable federation becomes.

I guess what I'm getting at is that Meta and BlueSky know that social media fragmentation and federation are not only on the horizon, but here today. Meta, Twitter and TikTok would be perfectly happy to have things continue as is, with them being the center of the centralized social media universe. But the biggest collective fear of every big tech company is sleeping on paradigm shifts caused by new, disruptive technology (like ActivityPub), and thus being dethroned by some new players.

I'd argue that the fact that Meta, one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies in the world, is now planning on adopting ActivityPub is a sign that the Fediverse is winning.

It's kind of like the old days when we had AOL amd MSN, and initially the people didn't realize that they were in containers and then they got a browser and the whole internet was sitting out there.

I think Zuck looked at the hosting bills and thought: "How do I get the suckers to host their own data while allowing me to control and harvest it?"

They want your data. That’s it.

What do did they get by joining that any person can’t get just by scraping? I mean, everything we post here is public even the people who aren’t logged in, right?

Slightly sarcastic response: "What's this federation thing? IDK but Facebook has it. I guess I don't need to go anywhere. Thanks Zuck!"

My take is they see federated protocols as a threat, but they can't compete directly with them. The next best thing they can do implement them to try and keep people in their walled garden. Even if it means punching some windows into those walls. However, they won't implement the full protocol, only a subset. They may not even implement them correctly. Causing problems for anyone on the outside. Basically providing a support yet inferior experience for anyone still in the walled garden.

Those people will be none the wiser too. The average person doesn't understand technology or protocols. As far as they know, they're still be in Facebook.

They make money off the posts. If they suck in federated posts, they can monetize them.

I think it’s some sort of insurance or backup plan in case their platforms eventually die out.

Free data.

I think it's all about moderation and content management.

Before Musk, the greatest challenge facing Twitter was content moderation. There's all this legal but annoying content you do not want to host, but if you block people from your platform you're suddenly limiting free speech and there's an outrage and suddenly you're in even deeper shit.

The fediverse solves this very elegantly - throwing you off my platform is not the same as cutting you off from the public sphere the platform is part of. So Meta can be stricter in their content management than Twitter was, and possibly avoid the free speech critiques that Twitter faced.

It's already kind of visible in how the Threads developers are emphasising how they're trying to make Threads a "friendlier" space than Twitter.

Take a look back to when facebook chat and google chat where using an open protocol, but once their users counts got high enough they cut that part off.

It helps keep users on their platform.. They hope users setup or keep accounts on their instance / platform then just cut off the other stuff at some point.

Lower infrastructure and maintenance costs. It fits the current scene of all tech companies suddenly getting paranoid and chasing immediate profits.

Maybe a technical infrastructure shortcut, a credibility boost with certain tech-literate folks, and a sop to (mostly EU) regulators about embracing (hmmm... and THEN what?) existing open standards. It could be all of them, but I am betting on mostly #3, like "See? Mastodon and ActivityPub exist so this is no different than when Google launched Gmail!"

The only reasonable explanation is to destroy it and eliminate future competition. Zuckerberg himself said it's better to buy a company than compete with it. He can't buy the Fediverse because it's FOSS and community driven, but it's vulnerable to "embrace, extent, extinguish". There's nothing built in to keep that from happening.

They don't have to own the fediverse, they can just charge for access to it. People who are happy with a superficial view, will pay with their data to have a window.

You’re thinking about it to hard.

The are using the a/p code because why not? Also because it’s been around a while and that might be useful when competitors start suing.

Threads instantly will become the de facto fediverse client. If they federate for even a month, and then defed, nearly everyone from any other instance will want to move to threads to maintain that access.

There are lots of potential reason that vary from terrible to neutral. I can't imagine what's going on in Zuck's brain, thankfully, so I don't know if this is terrifying, or just a way to follow my racist aunt on Mastodon. Either way I don't exactly trust Facebook though, so I'd rather err on the side of caution and just defederate for now and see how it turns out.