I cam here to get away from all the corporate BS, but suddenly people want to welcome Facebook/Meta to the fediverse? I cannot fathom how people see their intentions as pure or innocent, especially since they aim to profit off of the open source software everyone has worked so hard on.
I just don’t see how the fediverse survives if it decides to let these massive companies make their instances. It feels like it’ll be a repeat of the rise of social media, where all the smaller forms got wiped out by large, consolidated social media platforms.
The problem in this debate is between open source and open choice. Open source purist are often anti choice. If you want to use a closed source, proprietary system, that is your choice. The key aspect of federation isn’t the open source (its great) but the open choice – you can choose your own server (I have my own, FWIW) or some random tech bro or some evil Corp marketeer, or Meta, the point is choice. For each user, there are compelling arguments and compelling reasons for why someone would choose Lemmy or Threads or whatever, the value is in the choice.
So in the demand for our SABDFL to make a choice, we are in effect saying that we want to restrict the choice. Why do we care if there is a great community on Meta or that a great. Community on our server is attracting a broader community? Walled gardens are walled gardens. So I have to ask, what walled garden is the community asking for: open source and closed community? Sound like hell to me.
The real problem in this debate is naivety. You are all over this thread going to bat for an objectively evil company. You had it explained to you why this is an awful idea a hundred ways. And you still want the leopard to eat your face.
I see, you want this thread to be an echo chamber? Got it.
The niavity in this debate is not realizing that most successful open source projects need both commercial sponsor and operators. When the current admin of lemm.ee decides that he’s done, or has financial troubles then this community goes away.
No one is against choice. If someone wants to go on Threads then they certainly are allowed to.
But Threads and what it stands for is the antithesis to everything ActivityPub and the fediverse stands for. Overwhelmingly large instances, even without Facebook association are already a problem through too much consolidation of power. Social networks are only valuable if they actually connect people, and link aggregators in particular do actually depend on there being a decent amount of users and activity. If too much is on one instance, and that instance decides to defederate with smaller instances, those smaller instance may very likely be killed through that due to lack of content.
This would instantly happen through the 100 times as large instance that Threads would be. Your argument of choice is non applicable imo, because as you say, if someone wants Lemmy they can go to Lemmy, if someone wants Threads they can go to Threads. The two do not need to be federated for there to be the choice you mention.
When is a large instance too large?
The bigger threat to ActivityPub right now is the admin’s credit card or legal liability due to hosted content. The most successful open source projects either become or attract commercial projects. IMO, the hobbiest operators will be the downfall of ActivityPub. The hobbiest operators are subject to life happening. I would love to see the number of Fediverse instances that have blinked in and out of existence.