The arguments I’ve heard about tracking etc are misguided and don’t understand the actual risks.

Firstly, posts on the fediverse are already likely being consumed by advertising platforms like Facebook & Google. It would be trivial for big tech companies to setup relays that act as scrapers.

Secondly, the value in platform’s tracking individuals is for advertising. There is no mechanism for these platforms to identify you browsing the we if your instance federated with threads. Your instance won’t share cookie sessions etc with threads. It doesn’t increase your exposure.

Thirdly, these platforms have the know how to deal with spam and they will be incentivised to share that tech with other federated instances.

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is an evil company. But I haven’t heard a decent argument as to why them joining the fediverse is a bad thing. We always have the option to defederate in the future.

Change my mind.

  • Greg ClarkeOPEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    When the average user sees broken posts or can’t follow their favourite people anymore because of defederation, they just have a reason to move to a better instance.

    This is where I think the EEE argument falls apart. Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter are all currently defederated instances with far better features and more people to follow and interact with. The EEE argument doesn’t affect the existing fediverse users. Maybe if Twitter federated there would be users moving between Facebook Threads and Twitter but not from the existing fediverse.

    • SkelectusEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      I’m a bit late, sorry.

      I disagree with that. A large defederation would make an impact, which I think would cause some loss of the growing portion of normal people here.

      I guess for the final thoughts I’ll ask, how much do you trust Facebook/Meta here? I said this before, but I consider them a risk not worth taking.

      • Greg ClarkeOPEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        I don’t trust Facebook at all. But firstly, what we’re building needs to be resilient to bad actors. Secondly, it’s not a zero sum game, something can be beneficial for Facebook and the fediverse. Thirdly, let’s be honest, no one that is currently on Mastodon is ever going to migrate to threads. And something like Threads is the only way most people would join the fediverse. You can hate Facebook and still think that Threads may be beneficial for the fediverse, they’re not mutually exclusive positions.