it’s an extraordinary claim, but i don’t disbelieve it. has anyone else heard anything about this?
For those who don’t know, many fediverse devs and activitypub projects are funded in part by NLnet NGIZero grants, which are in turn funded by nonprofits like FSF (Free software foundation), NixOS, and the European Commission (!). Projects include the likes of Gitea/forgejo/forgefed (federation aspect of selfhosted git services), pixelfed, both Lemmy AND kbin, their apps like pixeldroid and lemmur, Mastodon, Misskey, Owncast, peertube, funkwhale, ActivityPub for WordPress, hubzilla, gotosocial, Matrix chat (specifically E2EE improvements), Fractal Matrix client, as well as other non-fediverse oriented projects like F-droid, Briar chat, nextcloud, jitsi meet, cryptpad, searx. (https://nlnet.nl/project/current.html)
The fediverse is very community donation and nonprofit funded right now.
I’m guessing it’s based on the new Instagram twitter-alternative that’s rumored to be based on the mastodon code base. But I’ve also heard rumors about Instagram wanting to make it on a rust code base and have been investing internally into rust a lot more lately, so it wouldnt surprise me if they’ve been consulting Lemmy or other fediverse devs for their experience
So what would be the end goal for Meta? Weaken reddit and twitter as platforms, but they don’t believe that the fediverse is able to take off in the mass market, so people will finally post on Facebook again?
Edit: A word
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/8/23754304/instagram-meta-twitter-competitor-threads-activitypub
It’s ActivityPub-based Twitter competitor.
Meta is launching their own ActivityPub service.
The great thing about an open source and federated platform: Meta buys off some of the instance admins? There are others! Meta somehow buys off ALL the instance admins? Start a new one! Meta buys off the devs? Fork it!
The whole point is that the many have more power over the platform than the few.
If an instance can defederate, then can’t the federation either not allow a Meta instance to federate, or defederate them?
yeah, there’s a whole pact going around with the goal of Gabbing any Meta-affiliated instances
What does ‘Gabbing’ mean in this context?
a mass defederation from a specific instance like what happened when Gab tried to join the Fediverse
Seems feasible considering every attempt to discuss using more Fediverse just gets ignored. Like Peertube is sitting right there, but everyone that joined Mastodon instances is sharing YouTube links.
But people are like this in general, so it might be just predictable behaviour.
Friendi.ca is a Facebook alternative, but I don’t want to leave anonymity again.
Pixelfed is a good Instagram alternative.
every platform will shit the bed eventually. i’m just grateful we have these alternatives for when they do
People are still using YouTube because it still works for them. Once Google ships something that changes that, folks will start looking for alternatives. Same goes for Owncast and Twitch.
I feel like the problem with moving away from youtube is that the larger chanels making money off of it arent going to want to move because they wont get monitized if they do. If they do move it will probably be to another corperate platform.
I really dont like what youtube is planning on doing by restricting adblockers and adding more unskippable ads though. Hopefully that moves at least some people to peertube.
I think any channel that’s able to get away with crowdfunded monetization like Ko-Fi or Patreon would be able to make the switch comfortably.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Otherwise it’s just some rumor.
it is a pretty extraordinary claim, but not unbelievable. regardless of whether there’s evidence, we should still be on the lookout for suspicious behavior
How about you search for proof before spreading rumors?
I think meta will genuinely cannibalize the rest of the fediverse if they decide to pursue this matter further. Even with the best of intentions, meta being attached to the Fediverse in any way will cause it to consume the overall connotation and understanding to the layman of what the Fediverse is and - by extension - allow meta to reshape the concept however they’d like.
I realize the above is apocalyptic and hyperbolic language for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they pursue the concept of an instance/server for it to balloon in size with registrations from people and lead to their server becoming the defacto one, which is what I’d personally be afraid of.
there’s a pact going around that has admins promise to defederate from any Meta-affiliated instances. the Fediverse will survive even if Meta tries to cannibalize it
