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Threads is officially starting to test ActivityPub integration
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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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I personally remain neutral on this. The issue you point out is definitely a problem, but Threads is just now testing this, so I think it's too early to tell. Same with embrace, extend, extinguish concerns. People should be vigilant of the risks, and prepared, but we're still mostly in wait and see land. On the other hand, threads could be a boon for the fidiverse and help to make it the main way social media works in five years time. We just don't know yet.
There are just always a lot of "the sky is falling" takes about Threads that I think are overblown and reactionary
Just to be extra controversial, I'm actually coming around on Meta as a company a bit. They absolutely were evil, and I don't fully trust them, but I think they've been trying to clean up their image and move in a better direction. I think Meta is genuinely interested in Activitypub and while their intentions are not pure, and are certainly profit driven, I don't think they have a master plan to destroy the fidiverse. I think they see it in their long term interest for more people to be on the fidiverse so they can more easily compete with TikTok, X, and whatever comes next without the problems of platform lockin and account migration. Also meta is probably the biggest player in open source llm development, so they've earned some open source brownie points from me, particularly since I think AI is going to be a big thing and open source development is crucial so we don't end up ina world where two or three companies control the AGI that everyone else depends on. So my opinion of Meta is evolving past the Cambridge Analytica taste that's been in my mouth for years.
You had us in the first half, but anyone who thinks theres any part of meta thats trustworthy is either paid off or an idiot. Sorry bud, but thats fresh horseshit flavor thats rinsing the CA taste from your mouth.
Facebook isnt even actually dead yet, youre 4-6 decades too early to even entertain the thought that meta is safe to conditionally trust.
That's totally fair and I knew that would be controversial. I'm very heavily focused on AI professionally and I give very few shits about social media, so maybe my perspective is a little different. The fact that there is an active open source AI community owes a ton to Meta training and releasing their Llama LLM models as open source. Training LLMs is very hard and very expensive, so Meta is functionally subsidizing the open source AI community, and their role I think is pretty clearly very positive in that they are preventing AI from being entirely controlled by Google and OpenAI/Microsoft. Given the stakes of AI, the positive role Meta has played with open source developers, it's really hard to be like "yeah but remember CA 7 years ago and what about how Facebook rotted my uncle's brain!"
All of that said, I'm still not buying a quest, or signing up for any Meta social products, I don't like or trust them. I just don't have the rage hardon a lot of people do.
Big difference between "large company tries to undermine its competitors" and "large company is working with people to advance new tech."
Meta is using open source to try and slow down its 2 biggest enemies in the field who have better funding and resources. That open source benefits the masses is incidental and likely regretful from metas perspective. They just dont have a better option to prevent themselves being left in the dust.
I'm not going to argue Meta doesn't have a profit incentive here, but if they just wanted to slow down their rivals they could have closed source their model and released their own product using the model, or shared it with a dozen or so promising startups. They gain nothing by open sourcing, but did it anyway. Whatever their motivations, at the end of the day they opened sourced a model, so good for them.
I really dislike being in the position of defending Meta, but the world is not all black and white, there are no good guys and bad guys. Meta is capable of doing good things, and maybe overtime they'll build a positive reputation. I honestly think they are tired of being the shitty evil company that everyone hates, who is best known for a shitty product nobody but boomers uses, and have been searching for years now for a path forward. I think threads, including Activitypub, and Llama are evidence that their exploring a different direction. Will they live up to their commitments on both Activitypub and open source, I don't know, and I think it's totally fair to be skeptical, but I'm willing to keep an open mind and acknowledge when they do good things and move in the right direction.
Im also sure they are sick of their reputation.
I just dont see how open sourcing a new type of tech that is riddled with ethical issues over intellectual property rights and content replacement in a way that doesnt actually really address those ethical questions has done anything to change their reputation.
Id love to see them move in a right direction. But I dont think chasing the heels of their competitors swinging a bolas in the hopes of catching a dropped lunch is the right direction.
(And if you dont wanna keep arguing it 100% fair, but they definitely benefit from open sourcing their work.)
Ok, so hold the fuck up for a second - most of what you said makes sense, but then you anthropomorphised a massive company that has more influence on global politics than most governments, and could be fairly blamed for mental health issues globally
Facebook is, and was, evil. They do not have morals, they have metrics. Their metrics have not changed.
They invented doomscrolling, intentionally - this wasn't something they stumbled upon, they did unethical psychological experiments on users.
For example, they shadow banned users. They made it so no one could see their posts, just to see what feelings of isolation would do to engagement... Luckily it didn't increase engagement. They created invisible echo chambers and artificial controversy, which did work, and is now common practice for social media
Facebook has created some of the greatest open source software in existence. React and pytorch are two that I use frequently. They were first made while the company was actively experimenting with the power to manipulate democracy
Facebook has some of the best engineers, and does a ton of great open source work. They also have some of the most amoral people in positions of authority.
They're not the same people - the teams who do AI research at Facebook? Great people doing great work
The people who do social media at Facebook? Never trust them. They have a PR problem and are treading lightly.
They want to mine the fediverse for information on users. I don't think this is an EEE plan... But I think that every time this arm of the company finds themselves in a position of control, they ask "how can we leverage this?"
All great points, maybe my view of Meta as a single entity isn't a good way to think about them. I wasn't aware of their open source work outside of LLMs so that is interesting. Your right on with your assessment of what they've done in the social media space. I disagree on the point that they want to mine fidiverse user data, just because I don't think they need to do all this work to integrate threads into activitypub to do that, there are easier ways. But I think your right to be skeptical of Metas intentions.
On the other hand, big companies adopting Activitypub could be a great thing for the fediverse. So risks and benefits. I'll keep my neutrality for now. But you make a good argument.
Of course they're doing it to mine user data - their primary business model is to run platforms to collect user data. They then sell user data both directly and by running the second largest targeted ad network.
Their public stance they made when renaming themselves meta is "we found out social networks have a lifecycle, and we want to get ahead of the curve and create/capture the platforms people are moving to"
There's plenty more to say about Facebook and big companies entering the fediverse but I kinda feel like anyone who is reading this understands the issue to a significant extent
I actually agree with this take.
but is mainstream social media