The problem I see with Threads isn't what Meta will do with fediverse data, it's the power they have with owning 97% of the entire fediverse network [1].
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Owning the vast majority of the fediverse userbase will cause them to have a large amount of power to compel users or servers to do whatever they want. What do you do when Facebook implements a new feature and all of your followers complain that your using a Mastodon server instead of joining Threads that has this feature they want? You either go against your entire community or let Meta takeover your account.
As such, the resolution is to not let anyone have this much power. It being Meta makes it easier to hate on them, but no single server should own the vast majority of the network, let alone (100M / (100M + 2M + 1M)) = 97% of it [1].
[1] Threads has 100M users and is rising fast, Mastodon was recently stated to have 2M active users, the rest of the fediverse can be estimated to be, say, 1M. As such, Threads has about 97% of the userbase.
Threads has 100m total users (that number is based on userid badges on Instagram afaik).
The fediverse has somewhere around 10-13m total users, about 8-10m of those are on the main Mastodon network, and around 2-4m MAU. It's hard to pin these down precisely because different counters disagree (it's hard), but if you're going to take the most optimistic number from Meta (the only one you'll ever see), you should take the most optimistic from the other "side" as well.
Threads doesn't have an MAU yet because it hasn't existed for a month, but it will not be anywhere near 100%. Most people I've seen on it seem to have bounced day one and user growth has stalled a lot (roughly halving every day).
Sources for fediverse/mastodon numbers:
- fedidb.org
- the-federation.info (includes some things that aren't activitypub based)
This is indeed true and we will have to see how the numbers settle as we go along.
However I would be surprised if Meta doesn’t continue to possess well above a supermajority of the userbase until another large corporation embraces ActivityPub.
>However I would be surprised if Meta doesn’t continue to possess well above a supermajority of the userbase until another large corporation embraces ActivityPub.
That's likely true. But that doesn't force me to interact with that user base (I don't interact with them now and nothing of value is lost, so why should I start?) in the Fediverse.
If I had an Instagram/Threads account, I would be forced to do so. I don't, so I'm not.
So many folks here and elsewhere complain about the garbage in their "feeds" from the centralized "social media" sites, but (apparently) don't realize they don't have to see that garbage, or advertising or posts that are about/from topics/persons they don't care about.
And so the question I'll ask you is: Why should I care how many Threads users exist? I have no interest in interacting with them and am not forced to do so.
I think that's true, though I also think the fediverse (but not necessarily Mastodon specifically) will outlive threads.
But I think the really big question will be: in 3-6 months is meta putting out DAU and/or MAU numbers for threads separate from Instagram's?
Until then you can only guess how "big" it really is. I don't personally find the numbers so far all that impressive: it's a sub-10% conversion rate from insta daily active users and I think behind the celebratory face they're putting forward that might not be what they were hoping for.
But mostly I see this trend everywhere where people give a lot of latitude to things like threads and Twitter and then give the most pessimistic read of the state of Mastodon.
If Mastodon were a startup and "centralized" its growth, bumpy as it is, would be the darling of the tech press. This is really obvious because every article about the fall of Twitter lists at least one and often several networks that have worse numbers and worse growth than Mastodon as if they're the next big thing.
Though maybe that'll change now that threads has bought its first 100m users.
The power imbalance when a semi-monopolist joins an open protocol is a really hard problem to solve.
Google all but killed XMPP by using it in GTalk/GChat/Gmail/whatever it's called now. They probably had no ill intent from the beginning, but their very presence gave everyone the need to quickly be if not bug- then quirk-compatible.
By the time everyone came around they suddenly de-federated everyone and with vague references to spam, which everyone knew was bunk. But the damage was done.
I think a potential difference here is that a substantial part of the existing Fediverse won't care if we break compatibility with Threads. Many will actively welcome it, so there's potentially less pressure to yield if the make changes people don't like.
The Mastodon corner of the fediverse is also ridiculously more well run and diverse than xmpp outside the big players ever was.
Like, when threads joins it's far far more likely to be a net contributor of spam and abuse towards the rest of the network because the people who run Mastodon instances generally actually care.
Even Mastodon.social (the biggest instance currently) routinely gets silenced or blocked temporarily by other instances when it lets spam get out of control, and that is generally considered a good thing by users.
Honestly that's gonna be the main reason threads gets defederated after the first round of ideological blocks: self-defence against abuse.
Threads is still way behind Twitter, though, which doesn't even federate with Mastodon and never did. If that's your complaint, why wasn't it doubly or triply so with the last corporate overlord? "Don't use that silly Mastodon thing, everyone is on Twitter" is, in fact, the way the world has worked for the whole lifetime of Mastodon.
> If that's your complaint, why wasn't it doubly or triply so with the last corporate overlord?
I'll interpret this to mean "If the problem is that Threads owns the majority of the userbase, why didn't you complain about Twitter owning the majority of the userbase?"
I'll reply to that as: Mastodon users did. That's why they used Mastodon in the first place, because they felt too much power was controlled in a single entity, so they complained and moved.
In terms of actions to take, what power was there with Twitter that Mastodon users did not exert? With Threads, Mastodon server owners have the power to defederate and block Threads trying to intermingle with their userbase. With Twitter, Mastodon users were the ones with the power to publicly disclose their Mastodon account and tell users to follow them on there.
In each instance, Mastodon users are doing what they can to reduce corporate overlords from having power over as many people as possible. Even if Threads is more centralized because of other instances defederating with it, the overall reach of Meta is reduced.
The fact that Threads has a much larger userbase than Mastodon already means that they won't ever really feel threatened by it. The stated reasons why GChat and Facebook Messenger eventually defederated is that it was hard to keep scaling the platform while speaking XMPP, but the unstated reasons were that Messenger and GChat at the time were still very much niche technologies that were jockeying for marketshare in a crowded space.
This time around Threads is already an order-of-magnitude larger than the existing Mastodon Fediverse. Moreover, now Meta has a diverse array of different social products, so there isn't as much pressure on any one product to succeed. If Threads ends up in a dominant position in the threaded-text social network world, that already nets them more users and more opportunities for ad revenue, which they can collect revenue aside their existing properties of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. On the other hand, interoperating with the Fediverse allows them to be opinionated about what kind of content they allow on their network (e.g. if you're posting from Threads, you can't post sexually explicit content) which can keep them advertiser friendly, while offering a relief valve for the loud minority that will want content disallowed by Meta's content policies. It's a win-win really.
>Owning the vast majority of the fediverse userbase will cause them to have a large amount of power to compel users or servers to do whatever they want
Mastodon already did this to ActivityPub. Extending open protocols is important else people will stop using them in order to accomplish building what they want.
> As such, the resolution is to not let anyone have this much power.
That's not a resolution, that's a wish. But how could it be achieved though? In 6 months Threads could well have hundreds of millions of active users, the vast majority of whom probably won't care about the fediverse.
> What do you do when Facebook implements a new feature and all of your followers complain that your using a Mastodon server instead of joining Threads that has this feature they want?
Mastodon (and others) either have to compete or their users will be like the people reading email in emacs or vi (no offence intended)
I don't think you can really compare total users (how many people have created an account) and active users (how many people actually use the platform).
Take a look at Threads.net and Mastodon.social and tell me these two projects have anything in common.
Everything is open on Mastodon.social (I can even use the search box) and everything is purposefully closed on Threads.net (I can't even see the basic metadata). It's all dark patterns since day 1. Meta is not givin up a sliver of control that's for sure.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Owning the vast majority of the fediverse userbase will cause them to have a large amount of power to compel users or servers to do whatever they want. What do you do when Facebook implements a new feature and all of your followers complain that your using a Mastodon server instead of joining Threads that has this feature they want? You either go against your entire community or let Meta takeover your account.
As such, the resolution is to not let anyone have this much power. It being Meta makes it easier to hate on them, but no single server should own the vast majority of the network, let alone (100M / (100M + 2M + 1M)) = 97% of it [1].
[1] Threads has 100M users and is rising fast, Mastodon was recently stated to have 2M active users, the rest of the fediverse can be estimated to be, say, 1M. As such, Threads has about 97% of the userbase.