You shouldn’t be. These companies are not here to play along, but dominate. Just like reddit played along with 3rd party developers until it didn’t need them anymore, so will Meta use the openess of the protocol to ultimately undermine it.
They are, but we should figure out how to beat them at their game. They’ll probably manage to get custody of the remainder of the decent people from twitter, being able at an individual level to follow a single person over there without having to hear from all the people over there would be a better solution.
Right now we lack the proper tools to keep them at bay without massive moderation on our end so blocking them is best, but we can eventually work out a middleground.
People are worried that they’ll embrace, extend and extinguish it. That is, join the fediverse, make Threads a better client than any of the existing ones until everyone uses their client, then use that extra reach to harm the fediverse.
I’m personally not that worried, because of who we are. We’re a bunch of geeks with anarchist leanings, and so probably wouldn’t switch to Threads anyway.
Maybe? But a lot of people have exited reddit over the last month. Maybe not the average user but not the most hardcore geek anarchist either-they weren’t on Reddit to begin with. Then there are the obvious reasons that a lot of people have left Twitter an those are the same type of people leaving reddit. So mastodon is probably more at risk than Lemmy but I don’t think for a second that meta would not throw together a Lemmy competitor if they smell any money whatsoever in it.
Either way you run risks simply by interacting with threads, even if you interact accidentally. Their entire business model is to suck every last piece of data out of you that they can so they can sell in every way they can possibly think of to monetize it.
Since lemmyworld has no intention of blocking them I’m finding another instance to move to. Better safe than sorry with a company that has a horrific record on every single issue. And that way if they federate then back out, I won’t be losing anything because I’ll have never seen that content to begin with.
Someone in another thread somewhere said it was stated on mastodon.world that they would only block in if something happens. I don’t remember what topic that was in so unfortunately I don’t have a link for you. At any rate, silence also speaks volumes.
I think the main fear would be that a few really cool communities naturally spark up, even if they’re niche, and could long term create that fracture when you have to choose between keeping with that community (and any corporate backed extensions) or not.
Facebook, Google, Apple, Zoom and others’ chat platforms are made out of defederated XMPP, being the reason XMPP, a federated chat protocol itself, has never become popular in the past 20 years.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is a tactic Western capitalist tech companies use to exploit open source technologies for profits and control over society.
Yeah, I enjoy a ton of hobbies where a lot of the people that know their stuff aren’t particularly computer savvy. If they’re not on my platform because it is too technically complex, I’m probably going to at least visit the more walled off platforms (not usually a fun experience).
Yes. Diversity of thought is great. We can enjoy our nerdy echo chambers, but in the end we get outvoted IRL. We need to both know what’s going on in the larger world, and we need some way to help educate. This theoretically allows the best of all worlds.
Please remember the example of Microsoft and open source office document formats. And in the early days of Internet Explorer with HTML. The risk here is that Threads will embrace the fediverse for a bit. Then they will incorporate features that are only available in Threads that will bleed users away from the open source options. All the while vacuuming up user data for profit while having distain for user privacy. Why would we want to allow them to cast aside the privacy for only one of our users? Are we not going to act like stewards for open source and protection of user privacy?
This us exactly the threat. They’ll start setting standards that other instances will be pressured to follow. Those standards will be ways to control the fediverse and make it a propietary data-gathering and sales/advertising platform just like everything else.
It’s simple really. If something as large as Facebook federates, you will never be able to know whether the users you are engaging with are actual people somewhere, and not just large language models.
It’s happening on reddit right now. The only value to this sort of website is engaging with actual people.
If I wanted to talk to a chatbot, I can already do that. Meta has proven again and again that it will manipulate it’s users with insidious content and moderation, and will knowingly harm users, such as by selling user data to foreign governments or deliberately fomenting depression and anxiety in its users, even kids.
If a large corporation like Meta were to join the Fediverse, there could be a few potential risks, notably:
Increase in Centralization: One of the primary objectives of the Fediverse is to maintain a decentralized network that is controlled by its users, not a single entity. However, the participation of a large corporation could potentially lead to an increased centralization, undermining the very principle of the structure.
Monetization and Profit-Driven Activities: Large corporations are generally aimed at generating profit. They could try to introduce monetization features which can change the way the Fediverse currently operates, moving away from the principle of a free and open internet.
Data Privacy and Security: Large corporations sometimes engage in data mining for targeted advertising or selling information to third-parties. Their participation could raise serious concerns about data privacy and security within the Fediverse.
Influence Over Standards and Protocols: If a large corporation becomes a dominant player in the Fediverse, they might impose their own standards and protocols, or make alterations to the existing ones.
Culture Shift: The Fediverse is largely driven by a community that values internet freedom, privacy, and decentralization. A large corporation could change the culture and nature of interactions within the Fediverse.
Bear in mind that these are potential issues and not guaranteed outcomes. The unique structure of the Fediverse itself can provide some level of resilience against these concerns.
Microsoft did this with Office document formats, effectively killing OpenDocument and dramatically reducing the power of LibreOffice, etc. Threads will incorporate features that are not available in the open source versions of lemmy, driving users to their platform and marginalizing the open source versions. All the while sucking up user data and ignoring user privacy. Are we not stewards for user privacy for ALL users, not just the savvy ones?
This is what people want to avoid. Meta is a bad actor, they intend on making their presence ubiquitous so people end up relying on it for their internet experience.
Y’know how you need a Facebook account to sign up for all sorts of things now? That’s what people want to avoid happening in the fediverse.
They will start setting standards that other instances will be pressured to follow. Those standards will be mechanisms to control the fediverse and make it a data-gathering ad & sales platform.
The will federate, try their best to suck as many users from fediverse as possible into threads, then defederate and become a walled garden again.
As for how they will suck users away:
Make their algorithms prefer posts from threads, so anyone wanting to reach a wider audience needs to move to threads
Add twitter like checkmarks that are only available for users of threads (they will say it is for security since they need to verify the idwntity of checkmarked people)
Add features that are not exposed on activity pub, so that you have to be on threads to use them (twitter did the same by for example not making polls available over API)
Intentionally make their activity pub slow and unreliable to make it look like other instances are broken and threads is fast and reliable.
Unfortunately, realistically speaking there are no users here to suck. In a few days of existence threads already grew ten times bigger than all the fediverse combined.
I’d recommend doing a dual boot sooner and slowly shifting your files & apps. It took me about 3 months to find a distro and desktop environment i like, get my apps or alternatives installed, and get used to it.
If you wait until EOL, you may be overwhelmed and frustrated, increasing the likelihood of calling quits and accepting Windows 11.
I have been running Linux for some time now, still had a Windows partition for gaming. Then I switched the motherboard and windows decided I no longer had a key for it… I stopped playing most of the windows exclusive games. Since last week I can’t even boot anymore, something about missing drivers. Spent a day trying to fix it. Today I decided fuck it and I’m just leaving it behind! It makes no sense wasting so much energy on a vastly inferior OS that actively tries to fight me.
Then I switched the motherboard and windows decided I no longer had a key for it
The reason for this is that Windows builds an identifier based on the hardware of the machine on which it is installed. When that identifier doesn't match, it throws a flag that says "Hey now ..." I think that you still get a couple of "honor system passes" before the installed OS enforces anything.
Once that gets enforced, you can call Microsoft Clearinghouse, "I upgraded my hardware," and they'll give you a new key to enter.
Whereas on Linux I recently upgraded the motherboard on my machine from a B350 to a B550, stripping it down to it’s parts and rebuilding. Different network chip, audio chip, WiFi and Bluetooth, etc, etc. 6 SSDs plugged back in in a shuffled order.
Linux booted and worked first time, adjusting which drivers it used automatically, mounting all the drives in their original locations. Similar thing when I upgraded my GPU. Admittedly the old one was AMD, same as the new one, but there was about 4 or 5 generations between them. CPU upgrades too.
I’ve got a real machine of Theseus here. I think my case and my heatsink is all that’s left from the original.
Windows will do the exact same thing. It'll even boot and run just fine, only telling you that Windows isn't activated. And you can get vendor support if you need it. I had a Windows system that started as XP and got upgraded and passed around among newer and newer hardware up to Windows 11 with nary a problem.
Apparently there is 2 types of Windows licences. The ones that are bound to the hardware and ones that aren’t. If you bought a PC with preinstalled Windows, it’s probably the first and you wont get any new keys.
I think you're right that OEM licenses are more strict on certain hardware changes, as in they wouldn't give you a pass on a single mainboard change - but you would still get a key from clearinghouse. As far as I'm aware, all retail and OEM keys are hardware bound. KMS/MAK are not.
I’m almost the opposite side of the political compass from current Chinese regime but even I must admit Sinophobia is out of control. It is totally cool to altogether dismiss and undermine any of their achievements and reduce 1/6 of humanity down to a single facet, all because popular Western propaganda says so.
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