I just read this point in a comment and wanted to bring it to the spotlight.
Meta has practically unlimited resources. They will make access to the fediverse fast with their top tier servers.
As per my understanding this will make small instances less desirable to the common user. And the effects will be:
- Meta can and will unethically defedrate from instances which are a theat to them. Which the majority of the population won't care about, again making the small instances obsolete.
- When majority of the content is on the Meta servers they can and will provide fast access to it and unethically slow down access to the content from outside instances. This will be noticeable but cannot be proved, and in the end the common users just won't care. They will use Threads because its faster.
This is just what i could think of, there are many more ways to be evil. Meta has the best engineers in the world who will figure out more discrete and impactful ways to harm the small instances.
Privacy: I know they can scrape data from the fediverse right now. That's not a problem. The problem comes when they launch their own Android / iOS app and collect data about my search and what kind of Camel milk I like.
My thoughts: I think building our own userbase is better than federating with an evil corp. with unlimited resources and talent which they will use to destroy the federation just to get a few users.
I hope this post reaches the instance admins. The Cons outweigh the Pros in this case.
We couldn't get the people to use Signal. This is our chance to make a change.
I don't think this looks very good, but if we want a fighting chance, we can definitely do two things:
We need to make using other instances of Lemmy and kbin extremely easy. Seamless. Two taps on your phone simple. Sign up with Google. All that jazz. Then the most basic user will have an easier time choosing a non-Threads instance.
We need to, ironically I guess, advertise our LACK of advertisements. No matter how they do it, I'd bet anything Treads will integrate ads somehow, so this is a way we can quickly stand out.
On another note, users will want to go where the content lives. Of course, that makes this much more difficult. We all know Threads will be big, almost immediately. So, should we defederate with Threads like many of us are planning? This will keep us "safe" but we'll lose all the new content. Or should we instead remain federated to keep seeing the content? Of course this doesn't stop Threads from defederating from us themselves, so I truly don't know the answer.
No matter what, I think we need to stand out to average social media users in a big way. I think my two points above are just a start, though. We need to offer more.
I don't have high hopes, but I'm planning to fight like hell for our little paradise in any way I can.
Threads already has over 30 million daily active users and growing fast - I'm tipping it will be over a billion in a year or two.
The fediverse has 2 million monthly active users. Sorry, but we've already lost the content battle. Like it or not, Threads is king king and Lemmy/Mastodon are ants.
Regarding "two taps and you're signed up"... that's just never going to happen. If anything, it probably needs to be a bit harder to sign up. We don't want people using throwaway accounts.
Imo the fediverse should not try to compete with the big commercial networks on their terms. It will be much healthier when it grows slow and steady with people who want to be here because it is the fediverse. A place of freedom and lack of controlling evil players who will use your data to control your behavior (to get more ad revenue or worse, to make you act against your best interests, such as happened on facebook with Cambridge Analytica).
We're not gonna win from big dollars and vested interests. Let's not play their game. Let them play their game and let us be a safe haven for anyone who is done with being a pawn in that game.
The fediverse is already a really nice place to be. You don't need 100s of millions of users to have the network effect that creates a successful platform. We've already reached that critical mass.