this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Threads got 80 million users in 48h. Those people are not gonna use Mastodon anyway. They don't care about their privacy, they don't care that some proprietary algorithm is gonna decide what they will see, they don't care that it's Facebook. Those people have no standards. The only way we can help them is by educating them and if that doesn't change their mind, then there is nothing we can do, because freedom and privacy is not something they value. People who value them are capable of making a small sacrifice of not using some website when an alternative exists.
Facebook either just wants to use the Fediverse for their own benefit or they want to destroy it before it becomes a bigger competitor. We shouldn't risk all that we have built just because we live in an ignorant society that doesn't understand technology.
Just because they won't use Mastodon now, doesn't mean they never will in the future. Especially when (not if) Mastodon sorts out some of their usability issues around signup and interacting with posts from other instances.
It would be nice to give them the option.
We need to build a strong society that isn't dependent on big corporations for being able to do the most basic things like talking to each other. The usability issues seem like a tiny price to pay for that and for privacy and freedom of speech. Those people can join Mastodon any time if they wish. But if Facebook manages to destroy the Fediverse, there will be no freedom for anyone.
It's not just about having the biggest reach, though.
I've noticed that some of the folks who are generally against defederating, whether it be between independent fediverse instances or from large companies, seem to have this impression that fediverse needs to take a huge chunk of some market share in order to compete. But the whole point of the Fediverse is that it doesn't need to compete.
It's not a company looking to increase their size, following a bottom line, and trying to increase profitability. It's a network of people who communicate and share content. There's no need to compete with anyone in order to accomplish that. We're doing it right now regardless of whatever else exists out there.
We've gotten so used to this model where there are only a few really culturally relevant social media sites, but that's literally because we've just bought into the business model of these companies as societies. Slashdot has been going strong since 1997. Is it the biggest forum or news site on the internet? No. It gets a tiny portion of the internet's traffic. But that's plenty to be what it is!
The fediverse is not facebook or twitter or reddit, and it shouldn't be. We don't want or need it to be.
I heard someone make the point recently that nobody walks into a nice, small restaurant and says they wish they were at McDonalds. Facebook is the McDonaldsification of the internet. Let's be a bunch of small mom and pop restaurants instead.