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Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse (privacy.thenexus.today)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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What's Meta up to?

Embrace ActivityPub, , Mastodon, and the fediverse
Extend ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse with a very-usable app that provides additional functionality (initially the ability to follow everybody you're following on Instagram, and to communicate with all Threads users) that isn't available to the rest of the fediverse – as well over time providing additional services and introducing incompatibilities and non-standard improvements to the protocol
Exploit ActivityPub, Mastodon, and the fediverse by utilizing them for profit – and also using them selfishly for Meta's own ends

Since the fediverse is so much smaller than Threads, the most obvious ways of exploiting it – such as stealing market share by getting people currently in the fediverse to move to Threads – aren't going to work. But exploitation is one of Meta's core competences, and once you start to look at it with that lens, it's easy to see some of the ways even their initial announcement and tiny first steps are exploiting the fediverse: making Threads feel like a more compelling platform, and reshaping regulation. Longer term, it's a great opportunity for Meta to explore – and maybe invest in – shifting their business model to decentralized surveillance capitalism.

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[-] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Note: I did read your comment fully, but I'm going to address specific points, otherwise the discussion gets too long. (Sorry!)

“Some data format” is still a pretty vague handwave [...]

It is vague because there are multiple ways for Threads to screw with the Fediverse through data formats. But if you want a more specific example:

Let's say that Meta creates a new image format called TREDZ. It fills the same purpose as JPG, but it's closed source. The Threads app has native support for TREDZ images, but your browser doesn't render it.

If you access a Mastodon instance through Threads, everything works well, since the Threads app has support for other image formats. However, since your browser and current Mastodon apps have no support for TREDZ, pics in this format fail to render. You get broken content as a result, and probably some Threads crowds screeching at you because you ignored their picture, saying "u uze mastadon? lmaaao its broken it doesnt even pictures lol", encouraging you to ditch your instance to join Threads instead.

And you might say "reverse engineer TREDZ, problem solved". However:

reverse engineering is costly and time-consuming
Meta has professional coders in a paycheck, Mastodon relies mostly on volunteers
Meta could easily encumber TREDZ with all sorts of nasty legal shit, like parents, and aggressively defend them.

As such, on a practical level, it would be not feasible to reverse-engineer TREDZ. And even if it was, the time necessary to do so is time that Threads is still causing damage to Mastodon.

Of course, this is just an example that I made up on the spot. Meta can think on more efficient ways to do so.

I’m sure that Meta would just love to be able to push a button that made all their competitors die. [...]

Yup. As you said, everyone wants that button. But due to the difference in power, Meta is closer to get that button than Mastodon is.

the Fediverse seems pretty solid against attack to me.

The protocol might be solid, but the community isn't. Communities stronger than the Fediverse died; and the Fediverse has the mixed blessing of decentralisation - the death of a part doesn't drag the other parts to the grave, but the survival of the other parts doesn't help much the dying one either.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Actually, I'd say "let them use TREDZ and destroy themselves if they want, problem solved." In this day and age nobody wants a proprietary image format, and if Threads won't display in a browser they've just blown one of their legs off.

This is a general problem with trying to make Threads depend on proprietary formats, they can't do that and still have it work in an ordinary web browser.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Most people don't even know what's a proprietary image format. From their PoV it would be "shitty broken Mastodon doesn't show images properly". And they would still pressure Mastodon users to switch.

if Threads won’t display in a browser they’ve just blown one of their legs off.

I'm not sure but I think that a similar strategy could work for browsers, using a web plugin.

But even if Meta decided that Threads is unavailable from browsers, it wouldn't be blowing one of Threads' legs off. There are far more mobile than desktop users nowadays; and if they want to EEE the Fediverse, they need numbers for that.

this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023

131 points (83.2% liked)

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