- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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Meta’s new Threads app is closely linked to Instagram, so much so that you can’t delete your Threads profile without deleting your Instagram account.
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This is mentioned clearly in Meta’s supplemental privacy policy, which many new Threads users failed to read in full.
GoogleTalk once federated with XMPP/jabber, good times until their userbase was big enough to deferedate again, crippling the jabber network. It will happen again if we let it.
Metas plan is to draw users into their network and use the fediverse as an initial catalyst (“look! so much content already there!”). Once their userbase is large enough, they will deferate again claiming protocol difficulties or something equally vague, but they will just want to start rolling out advertising which would not be displayed to users from other instances. Most users will not keep two accounts and jusy stay with the big corp and leave the original fediverse again.
I would agree with this if they weren’t brining the entire user base of instagram along with them. They just want an easy way to boost their platform’s initial content. We lose nothing if they defederate. Most people here already hate their guts and would rather die than use their platform. I’d even think some of their users may miss the fediverse and migrate over if they have to.
I think they’re using the fediverse as both a free boost of initial content and possibly as an experiment to see what it would be like if they decided to federate something even bigger: Facebook itself.
Edit: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/