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Meta just showed off Threads’ fediverse integration for the very first time
(www.theverge.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The issue is that Meta's intention is to extinguish the fediverse, not to add to it. I can't believe people are still falling for this tactic.
But honestly, the fediverse is tiny and I find it's not a suitable replacement for anything at the moment. It does need to have more people joining for it to be a complete replacement.
As to whether Meta will extinguish it or not I don't know, but at least in the short term it could help. I don't think it's reasonable to pre-emptively shoot your foot off because you might get gangrene - I'd rather wait to see it and then decide.
The fediverse just needs time to grow. It's still a very new thing. Growth will take a long time, but the fediverse needs to be an alternative to corporate social media, not integrated with and dependent on it.
It will be more difficult and damaging to defederate later when Meta starts throwing its weight around, because people will become accustomed to a much larger community. The fact that threads has many more users will give Meta disproportionate power over the fediverse, but unlike other open source/free projects, their only goals are to profit and gain more influence over society.
It's best to never federate with them, even if that means losing growth opportunities in the short term.
That's a fair call.
It does run the risk that the fediverse will always be irrelevant and will never see the growth needed to actually be useful for most people.
I'd prefer the risk myself but get that others aren't.