Not willing to give them ideas so fast.
That’s something that popped in my head as soon as I started in here, not so long ago.
But there’s nothing to prevent that, right? I mean, Meta could very well create a meta instance on Lemmy or Kbin or Mastodon or in all of them, bring a bunch of users, sprinkle in some ads because why not.
Sure, they could be defederated from more restrictive insfances. In the bigger picture, every other instance could boycott them, but they would surely federate among themselves (Elon meets Mark, ugh). They also have all the computational power and would have no problem being the largest instances in the Fediverse.
Then what? Is that feasible? Probable? My utopian future about a free, descentralized Fediverse is a lie?
We do it’s called ‘beehaw’
How is beehaw corporate?
Please, let’s not popularize the “/s” here
I already got vote massacred cause I made a joke about displaying Nazi logos being illegal, since that neighborhood in…Chicago? outlawed the trans flag(where I was clearly on the right side) and people assumed I was making an actual, factual argument for the nazis. It’s necessary sometimes lol
okay I laughed at this
Ultimately, that is down to user behaviour.
That would be a good thing. More instances are good. More users are good.
If meta federates with Lemmy and mastodon, we could interact with our grandparents again.
Most certainly if this grows big enough corporations will join in if only to market whatever products to the userbase.
What you can do is to work on supporting/curating instances which don‘t want this. Try to see what kind of people are in charge and what their reaction would be. For example I‘m also on an instance (http://lemmy.dbzer0.com/) created by a r/piracy mod who I‘m fairly certain wouldn‘t federate with corporations or let his instance be controlled by them.
Lemmy.ml which I‘m also on, probably not positive with US companies, but might federate with Chinese companies.
What makes all this not a big concern for me is how easy it is for me to drop an instance and go to another one, but I‘m also not attached to my users in general, hopefully we can get some export/import functions for cases where we need to abandon somewhere (unless it exists and I haven‘t seen it yet?).
This wouldn’t be a problem at all, or possibly even a good thing. If one instance is supported by shitty ads then people won’t go there and they’ll sign up elsewhere. That’s the whole value of the fediverse - choice and no lock-in.
Didn’t meta announce they were gonna make a fediverse thing?
That would be a good way to bring normal people closer and closer to using open source software and protocols.
Why not? With the structure of the Fediverse, it’s impossible for anyone to lock their users to their particular instance, and if their users prove to be problematic, they’ll just get defederated.
And if someone can run an instance like a business and still federate, more power to them. Labor should be paid.
Honestly is not a big deal. Some specific instance might start behaving like aholes because of corporate greed or anything else.
All they can do is take their specific communities down. The affected communities can always move to other instance (that is easier than changing to a different system all together).
Changing platforms will always be harder than just switch instance because you instance changed the rules on you.
The word “millions of eyes” tends to start attracting corporate overlords. When we hit a million users I think things might start changing.
Tumblr has already said they are doing something with the fediverse but I’m not sure if that panned out or not as I have not kept up with the news on that.
But really, why would that be a bad thing for the users on the smaller instances? If you use Lemmy or kbin or mastodon or whatever for an instance you trust you could interact with users on corporate instances without having to sell your soul to Zuck. I personally don’t see it a a bad thing.
The ads! Just wait for the ads!
As long as the ads are limited to sponsor posts and banner ads I really wont mind, you can just scroll past them
Who cares? If it helps the instance sustain itself long term, then they should get those dollars
Blocking ads isn’t about the dollars, it is about the malware and tracking and the waste of lifetime.
And why is your life worth more than your admin/mod’s?
If they got 1 hour of a decent hourly wage for every hour of ads I watch tht might be worth it but it is probably more along the lines of 1000+ hours of ad-watching that would add up to 1 hour of pay for them.
I don’t think that it would mean that Fediverse won’t be free anymore. With their own instances of Lemmy, the corporations could just control their side while leaving the rest of the Fediverse alone. It’s, as someone said, like email: you can have your own email account in even your own email server and get in touch with other email addresses from other email providers
I’m basically all for it. The Fediverse is supposed to be an inclusive place, for everyone. Then we all get to decide if we don’t want to hear from someone and can block them from our instance, or even block an entire instance. It wouldn’t be terribly inclusive though if we started dictating who could and could not be part of the Fediverse.
Would that even be a bad thing? Businesses like news outlets, media companies, game companies, content creators all have a presence on reddit, twitter and similar social networks. Having them first-hand in the fediverse would be a good thing, especially if they host their own instances, it would further legitimize the fediverse and expand it.
Treat federation like email. Gmail didn’t ruin email.
We can always defederate and block corporate instances
