Have you seen the latest update from the #Instagram Help Center? It offers insight into how #Meta views the #Fediverse. Let's take a closer look at the highlighted text together:
"#Threads is planning to use a protocol called #ActivityPub to connect with other servers that support this protocol. Our aim is to enable communication between Threads and users on different fediverse platforms that we don't own or control."
Now, considering everything we know about Meta and their business practices, you might wonder why they're doing this. Well, here are a few reasons that could shed some light:
Regulatory pressure: While Meta is doing its best to compete with #Twitter, they also want to avoid appearing like a monopolistic force. By joining the Fediverse, they can show regulators that they are simply becoming part of an existing social network.
Zuckerberg's strategy: Mark Zuckerberg has been observing what's been happening with Twitter ever since Elon Musk acquired it, and he's learned some lessons. Twitter has faced criticism for various missteps like alienating journalists, restricting API access, and even requiring logins to view tweets. Zuckerberg wants to assure people that Threads is different from Twitter and avoid those same pitfalls.
Embracing social media decentralization: It's widely acknowledged in the social media industry that the future lies in decentralization. The era of closed-off platforms is gradually coming to an end. Just as Compuserve couldn't survive the open Internet, walled garden social media platforms won't be able to thrive in the open Fediverse. Meta doesn't want to become the next Compuserve.
Early entry into an emerging ecosystem: Meta is eager to establish itself in the emerging Fediverse ecosystem, much like they tried to do with the Metaverse. Being an early player allows them to take a leadership position before other major players like #Google, #Apple, and #Automattic jump on board.
However, it's worth noting that there might be a personal rivalry at play here. There have been rumors of a rivalry between Zuckerberg and Musk, and it seems they don't particularly like each other. So, one could speculate that Zuckerberg might want to undermine Musk by taking down Twitter, the platform Musk acquired for a hefty sum of $44 billion.
Hope that provides some context and clarity on why Meta is making these moves.
What do you think about Meta’s Fediverse explainer?
Meta erwägt offenbar Abo für werbefreies Instagram und Facebook
Mindestens 10 Euro monatlich und dafür keine Werbung: Die Facebook-Mutter Meta erwägt einem Bericht zufolge die Einführung eines Abos zur werbefreien Nutzung von Facebook. Wer weitere Dienste, wie etwa Instagram nutzt, soll dafür zusätzlich zahlen.
The #DigitalMarketsAct mandates Meta to "enable end users to freely choose to opt-in to [combining or cross-using personal data] by offering a less personalised but equivalent alternative".
When I pointed out to Meta that by offering users to either #consent to #SurveillanceAds or pay € 275 per year for #Instagram & #Facebook isn't "equivalent alternative" they said, Meta has to do that because of #GDPR 😤 Really??
1/ Wer hatte denn diese Idee? 13:00 ne #Fahrraddemo? Es sind hier 32°. Im Schatten. Anpassung an die #Klimakatastrophe bedeutet auch, dass man keine Demos vor 16:00 macht.
Egal. Ich dachte, ich muss da hin.
Auf dem Weg zum Falkplatz dachte ich: Ich muss hier weg. Unterträglich.
Dann dachte ich, ich fahre wenigstens noch hin und mache ein Bild. Ihr kennt das, oder? Schnell mal nach Tokio für das #Instagram-Bild.
Na, hier ist das Bild. Man sieht sehr schön, dass alle hübsch im Schatten geblieben sind.
Wir haben übrigens auf die Polizei gewartet, die im Stau stand.
So I made a big decision today. Took me awhile. I know it’s April first too and April Fools day but, I have officially deleted my #Twitter, #Instagram, #Threads and #Bluesky accounts.
In den ersten Stunden haben sich Millionen bei der Twitter-Alternative Threads angemeldet. In Deutschland ist sie nicht verfügbar, man kommt aber trotzdem rein.
Depuis 2012 j'avais un compte #Instagram. Et depuis 2016, mon nombre d'intéractions là-bas n'a pas chuté, il est devenu presque le néant. Entre 2013 et 2016 j'y ai croisé des gens géniaux, certains sont même devenus des amis IRL. Et puis au fur et à mesure, sans m'en appercevoir, des personnes inatteignables, des corps parfaits et des marques les ont remplacés. Ceux que j'appréciaient vraiment et avec qui je partageais ont été déplacés en fin de flux. Visibles après des dizaines de pubs. Mes potes ne voyaient quasiment plus mes publications et je ne voyais plus les leurs. Donc je n'avais plus d'intéraction avec eux.
Les vidéos, reels et autres conneries ont peu à peu remplacé le partage et l'échange. Pourquoi parler quand un double-tap suffit ? Derrière j'aurai ma dose d'endorphine.
Cet été, j'ai appris après un an, qu'un instapote de l'époque était mort. Je n'ai jamais vu ses dernières publications où il parlait de son cancer. Et où il avait besoin de soutient. Instagram était trop occupé à me proposer des publicités pour des panneaux solaires et des crèmes Horace en me faisant croire que je maintenais un lien social avec ceux qui comptent. Ça m'a mis une grosse mandale.
J'ai copié alors une grande partie de mon compte vers le Fédivers ( @Pjap37 ).
Après quelques semaines à essayer de reprendre un lien et recentrer mon compte Insta, il est temps de se rendre à l'évidence. Jamais Instagram ne me rendra le service qu'il m'avait promis à l'origine.
Je viens donc de récupérer mes données et de vider mon compte.
J'en garde une période du milieu de ma trentaine géniale, que les plus jeunes ne connaîtront malheureusement pas.
Facebook ☑️
Google Chrome ☑️
Twitter ☑️
Google Photos ☑️
Instagram ☑️
Google Drive
Google gmail
Apple
TikTok
Messenger
Whatsapp
FediPact advocates are again seeing the argument "they're scraping" dredged up and thrown into their faces.
No, they're not. Meta doesn't run a general web-wide crawler (like, say, a search engine would). Meta surveils the general web with the Facebook Pixel and other trackers installed directly on websites. No need to run a global crawler when the most of the world's existing websites willingly host your surveillance tech for you.
There's also no need to guess about the unknowable mysteries of cryptoid scrapers. That activity would appear in logs, and if persistent, incur performance penalties, especially on small-to-moderate sized instances.
Why would Meta bother manually scraping 14000 separate fedi instances while they're building an ActivityPub service that will "scrape" all of them at once through federation? Answer, they wouldn't.
Offered as raw material for your own tangles with Meta collaborators. However, keep in mind what will happen on this network if you start raising points of a technical nature. Ultimately, the scraping argument is a defeatist one, like saying "privacy is dead, so why bother protecting yourself?" Whether "they're scraping" or not, we won't throw up our hands and allow this space of refuge and community to be absorbed into surveillance capitalism without a fight. Scrape this Zuckerbros
No i spoko, niech wypuszczaja - ale jak aplikacja spolecznosciowa pyta o dostep do danych finansowych albo z aplikacji Health&Fitness to cos tu jest mocno nie halo 🤨
Threads by Instagram will launch on July 6th (thanks for the heads up @dansup!) & I noticed Meta collects a lot of data. So much data!
Threads is rumored to adopt ActivityPub later on (in October maybe‽ We will see), but when it joins the Fediverse (if not on launch day), it’s data collection policies will make it easier to convince some (but not all) to migrate over to Misskey, Pixelfed, Mastodon & Pleroma.
Note: Uploading on Misskey as my Mastodon account @darnell is being fixed server side right now.
#Challenge: Put your #mouse behind your monitor for an hour and use these #MacOS#Keyboard#Shortcuts instead, Be more #productive.
You'll likely be very surprised how much you can get done with just a keyboard.
#Meta should just offer people in #Europe (& the rest of the planet) a simple option: either opt in to have your personal information sold to advertisers, or pay a fee to use #Facebook, #Instagram, #WhatsApp & #Threads.
It works for #YouTube (I pay them to avoid ads), as well as other news organizations. It’s really that simple.
UI is decently ok. Very similar to Instagram, obviously. That's the point, is to make you feel comfortable from the get go.
The feed being everything and everyone is not good. We need a toggle to show following, latest, and stuff like that.
Not being able to like or comment on a post directly from the notification screen is annoying. I don't want to click a notification, go into the post/comment to do what I want.
#Meta objective with #Threads is to attract the VIP accounts on #Twitter. Nothing else.
These accounts are 'broadcasters' in nature, they have many times more followers than people they follow, and they generate a lot of traffic.
These accounts and their traffic are 'low hanging fruit' since #Musk decided to make Twitter unbearable for its users and even risky for its own sponsors to continue paying for adds.
But Meta, with all its shortcomings, is the best positioned to grab those accounts. They have solid infrastructure, good developers, decent discrimination of bots vs humans... and even an acceptable moderation (despite the terrible mental health toll on their overseas moderators).
Now, there are basically 4 types of these VIP accounts:
1.- VIPs who are already in #Instagram - no major action needed, just the ability to post text-only instead of pictures and video. Many people already do that my posting text-made-pictures or neutral pictures with interesting captions.
2.- VIPs who are already discontented with all commercial social media platforms abusing and polluting their content with adds and other algorithm-driven content before it reaches to their audiences - these are potential candidates to once and for all decide to run their own websites or #Fediverse sites and connect directly to their audiences. They need a quick connection to their followers though, so the action here is to provide them with a quick access to the massive crowd of Instagram and they will be very happy.
3.- VIPs (high traffic generators) who are controversial standers, whose posts are sometimes even illegal... but juicy because they attract a lot of clicks. To grab these Meta needed a way to not be seen as the host, curator or publisher, but still being able to 'pipe' their traffic. Any ideas? - Yes, tell them to run their own instance and apply 2.-
4.- VIPs who are already VERY pissed with all commercial social media and have chosen to make the Fediverse their new home by joining some instance, and they are very happy with smaller audiences, our blocking and defederating patterns and our conversational way of socialising - These are very few and they will never join nothing that smells like Meta, so no action is possible.
We must note that none of these people with millions of followers can ever join any of our instances or they will immediately make them crash, so they need something rock solid and scalable.
So now I understand what all the Meta joining the Fediverse is all about... just using it temporary for grabbing those accounts.
Of course, the next action will be to tinker with their implementation of #ActivityPub a little bit, just enough to making it incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse... we've been there before.
And after all that, we will continue happily ever after as two different universes as we have always been. 😎
(08.06.23) "Here is what Meta’s upcoming - fediverse platform, and - Twitter competitor looks like." (www.theverge.com)
The Verge article covering Meta's new platform coming to the fediverse.
Instagram Is Removing Sex-Positive Accounts Without Warning | WIRED (archive.fo)
The platform has suddenly suspended dozens of high-profile accounts, cutting people off from the communities that keep them safe.