My guy Palestine is occupied since 1948 by Israel who, usually, “only” did sporadic bombings here and there. Now there’s an active war with some 35k dead and Israeli forces preparing to invade Rafah which has an encampment of unthinkable amounts of refugees. There’s a genocide going on right now. This kind of behaviour is encouraged, not ignored. Their ranks look bad enough committing genocide, it isn’t a few “bad apples”.
Nothing good will come of federating with meta, the fediverse should simply stay out of their reach and realize whatever potential it may have.
I think there might be another way to hurt it though that this article doesn’t seem to mention. Funnily enough, it’s also a theme of an asterix and obelix comic book, which the introduction referenced. This way would be monetization. Threads might try to “help” the fediverse by feeding the bigger instances money, therefore the hosts of the instances would be more open to negotiations with meta and accepting of their policies.
I will compare this to YouTube which started paying all it’s big creators until they became dependent on the platform for a living and then started slowly implementing more and more rules that limit their freedom of expression. Remember how much PewDiePie used to swear in his getting over it videos? In another “pew news” or whatever it was called video I happened to watch he directly mentioned that he censors himself because he isn’t going to put his job on the line just to say “fuck”. Profit invites creators to comply with YouTube’s regulations even if they aren’t enforced violently always.
The same pattern was used in the asterix comic I mention above. Ceasar decides to open a building complex almost next to the problematic for him village and so the residents flood the markets and are shocked at the low prices compared to Rome. As a result, the villagers start increasing prices and advertising their goods and services, neglecting their previous morals and ethos. In the end, however, the Romans lose again after (panoramix, I think?) makes them realize how much separation this has caused them, living only for their business. As a result they kick the Romans out of their village, once again united, and Caesar’s plans fail.
I think both these stories could serve as a potential warning to anyone who might consider selling themselves out if meta adopts such a policy.
If they didn’t why would they develop tools to federate? It’s obvious that the threads project was sped up significantly following musk’s obliteration of Twitter, so they wouldn’t go out of their way to implement such a feature if they didn’t have a very specific reason for it.
A company’s goal is maximization of profit, so don’t assume they intend anything else. The activitypub userbase is too small to be a significant addition to their userbase but in this way they can destroy it before it escapes their control. They don’t take risks. Mastodon could seriously compete with threads and it’s gaining popularity. If one more big boom happens it might be too late to stop the fediverse from competing with meta in the most cost efficient way possible. Do not be lured in by the false sense of security, meta wants us to help maximize their profit. We aren’t doing that right now so Meta wants to stop us (or limit us, whatever they deem more profitable)
You look from a position of a tech-savvy user.
You give me too much credit, I mostly learn things by hanging around here lol. It’s not difficult to follow some instructions for a few simple things.
The fact is, we are the minority.
This is kind of my point, actually. Why go so far for a minority? As you say, most people won’t even try it because it’s too big a hassle, or so they think. Those who will, however, actively engage with their systems to maximize positive user experience. As such, to simply move the goal a few more clicks away won’t make give up, but instead fuel more of their aggression. This is why this whole story began in the first place. That’s why it’s a hilariously bad plan that I can’t help but question. AdBlockers are now better than before thanks to this whole mess, so watching YouTube get beaten at their own game so effortlessly makes me suspicious.
Or maybe the CEO is stupid lol, that’s also a possibility.
Could be but it’s such a bad short term solution that I can’t help but think there’s a little more. Look at the other replies, they have some interesting perspectives on the matter.
This is likely to be going on indeed. It’s just that the drm failed (for now), so maybe they are trying to get the next best thing? For the short term it surely isn’t but a long term goal in case the drm fails to be implemented again could be a reason for these experimental actions. It isn’t bad to have a plan b I guess.
Great response, thanks.
To me it seems weird that YouTuber is doing this at all. They should know that they can’t win, I doubt their CEO is that incompetent. Especially after all this time of wasted effort on their side to overpower a very small fraction of users who actually block ads online. Could it be to draw attention from something else that’s actually more worrying?
Because as an AdBlock user, since I bothered configuring them and using only ublock I haven’t had almost any popups and my experience, especially now on the later stages, is exactly like it was before the ban.
I can’t help but think there’s more to this because they can’t be wasting resources, further damage their reputation and risk absolute monopoly on video platforms for a fruitless endeavor.
Even if YouTube isn’t profitable by itself, which, given the user data harvesting and the ads I definitely doubt, google still is. I’d appreciate any takes on this because it’s been bugging me for a while now.
And then throw bombs in the basement lol