this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Embrace, extend, extinguish. Only proven way to destroy decentralized, free, open source solutions.
First stage embrace might not even be malicious, but with corporations it will eventually lead to someone thinking: how can we monetize our position. It is just nature how business works.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
It looks like articles today are saying that Meta is delaying integrating ActivityPub at launch.
That said, I'm not seeing how we get to the last E, extinguish. By its very nature, ActivityPub is decentralized to avoid total control. So even if Meta embraces the technology and wants to monetize it (because capitalism, of course), extending ActivityPub would (hypothetically) be open source - or they would fork it, diverging and making their version closed, and otherwise not function in full with other ActivityPub instances (like with kbin, Lemmy, and Mastodon). Without buying the platform from the developers in full, I don't see how ActivityPub or the greater Fediverse dies. And I could just be missing something obvious, so if you can explain how we get there, I would really like to hear and understand.
I guess the only way I could see it is if Threads got so popular that people literally stopped using the other apps - but I also don't see that happening, because anyone already using stuff like Mastodon are using it because Twitter, Facebook, etc, suck ass and they've moved away from sites like that.
EDIT: Thanks to the one person that actually replied, I saw I was on the right track at the end, but failed to see the obvious (as I assumed).
It’s hard to predict but the extinguish part would come from bigger non-Threads instances implementing compatibility with Thread-only extensions (in the interest of their users, or for money) and fragmenting the community. Threads then becomes the defacto ActivityPub standard. Maybe some instances stay true to the standard but with extremely reduced communities because now they can’t see what other instances are publishing. So now you have to decide between your ideals and your social network. At best, you’re back to square 0.
It happens in the extend part.
Large corporation will have much more resources, they will implement features and refactoring, which small open source teams do not have capability to implement. They will start pulling users because they support features that other do not.
This also means that they will start getting control.
And then finally they just cut the communication, and split the community. All the way they can claim to be working "for the community"
It's worth pointing out that the wiki article lists several examples of Microsoft using this approach but I wouldn't class many of them as successful.
Not only was it not very successful, it's an old outdated Microsoft playbook from the 90s/early 00s and was targeted at closed source competitors and freeware, not open source software where you can just fork out a separate version.
By all means block Meta instances if you want, but they have 3 billion users, they definitely don't give a shit about a "competitor" with a few hundred thousand users. If simply the presence of a corporation in the Fediverse is enough to destroy it, then it wasn't going to last long anyways. It's embarassing that "embrace, extend, extinguish" caught on around here just because it's a catchy alliteration.
Exactly. Which is why I believe that all this fearmongering is because of Meta's reputation (rightfully so) rather than because Meta actually has a plan to destroy the fediverse. And it's not the like the fediverse can be actually destroyed, people can always start new instances at any time.
My take was that most people 1) don't want Meta/Facebook spam - low effort memes, propaganda, etc. and 2) don't want their content to be used by Meta. The former seems pretty easy - just defederate and you don't see any of their crap. The second is sort of a gray area... Whether or not you are diametrically opposed to Meta/Facebook or not, once you post your content to a public site, it's available. I haven't been here long, but defederation seems to work both ways, so FB would have to scrape content from known instances to get that content unless I'm mistaken.
FB could smoke any instance by DDOSing scrapes whether intended or otherwise, but once you post your data on a public forum, Meta could theoretically use it.
But to your comment - I don't see what starting a new instance would do for anyone for #2. Any new instance is discoverable by nature, so FB can come knocking at any time for content whether you defederate or not.
As far as (1) goes, 90% of the content on Lemmy is just a Lemmy circlejerk, the remaining 10% is memes. What influx of "low effort content" could possibly make the discussions on Lemmy worse than they already are?
As far as (2) goes, you realize your data on Lemmy is open to everyone to scrape, not just Meta? Every single one of your upvotes is public.
Let me offer a rebuttal. The fact that this playbook even exists and is well-known is a cause for concern. Yes, Microsoft’s campaign wasn’t very successful, but that doesn’t mean Meta won’t try or learn from Microsoft’s mistakes. I ask: is the probability of this happening non-zero, and if so, is it lower than you’re comfortable with? For me, and many others here, that answer is no.
Moreover, this is a greater problem: Meta is well-known and has practically infinite marketing budget. They can spin their app as the de facto, causing many people to lose control of their data. By association, some people will blame the Fediverse and not Meta. Defederating signals that we are not willing to participate with them and tells potential Fediverse users that they will not be able to engage with us—and whatever they decide, we cannot impact more.
The crux of my argument is risk management. Defederated is a conservative measure to prevent possible issues in the future.
Honestly this is just pure paranoia because nobody has given a solid reason as to why they would give a single shit about the few hundred thousand users here. Your only argument is "well it exists, so maaaybe they'll use it but better" which has no basis. As for losing control of your data, you have no control of your data here. It's public information. Any person, corporation, computer literate cat, etc can already scrape everything you post here. Don't mistake anonymity for data privacy.
Like I said, block em, defederate, whatever measures you want to take are an option, but for the love of god let's just stop parroting nonsense at eachother because it sounds clever. I came here to get away from reddit culture.