Very interesting. So the VPN that comes with Google one is useless lol. The first time I connected it routed me through Google (like it’s supposed to), then through an ad network (!), then on my way. Switching it on and off half a dozen times for additional tests, it just didn’t bother routing through Google at all, just straight through my wireless carrier and showing the same user IP each time. So neat.

This is a really interesting idea, I’m definitely considering it. I’m already giving on lemmy.world patreon more than your plans cost. I have two questions. First, just from a business perspective, how do you think about differentiating yourself from the donation based servers? Is there something of extra value that people get from your instance and service that they can’t get elsewhere?

I’m also interested in your moderation and federation policies. I think a potential barrier here is paying upfront for a year only to disagree with a federation decision down the line. Maybe you could have different instances with different policies? Like one that is federated with threads, one that isn’t, one that’s federated with hexbear one that isn’t. Maybe that’s overly complicated once you start adding up all the different combinations that people come up with (personally I’m fine with threads, meh on hexbear, and a no on explodingheads).

I appreciate your take and pretty much agree with everything you said. I’ve seen the XMPP example thrown around a lot, but the distinction you made with the benefit that Threads gets from federation compared with what Google got is spot on. I’d add that Threads is currently selling the account portability piece as a major draw for public figures warry of needing to rebuild followings on new platforms every couple of years when their current platform goes to shit. That is another benefit to keeping federation, theoretically anyway.

I really like that the fediverse is kind of in a utopian stage right now, people are volunteering to spin up servers and putting their time and energy into making them run smoothly for everyone, people are pitching in with donations, the community as a whole is full of positive early adopters excited about what this could be. Hard to predict where things go from here. Maybe Meta comes in and destroys everything like some fear. Maybe tech firms come and compete and push the small non-profits and volunteers out, and the fediverse just becomes competing big tech platforms. Maybe the tech firms and volunteers/non-profits can kind of coexist, something like the FOSS community where you have some bigger firms making money (Redhat/Canonical) working with volunteers and foundations. Even if things stayed volunteer driven, there is also the risk that an individual instance could get so big that it starts demanding changes from other instances to continue federation or throwing up targeted ads. I think with the Twitter and Reddit fiascos, Tik Tok has begun the enshitification process, we’re entering a new post-centeralized social media world, but what that world ultimately looks like I don’t know.

I’m cautiously optimistic for two reasons: 1) Threads is bringing more general attention to Activitypub, which is positive in general but especially with Meta making a big bet with their money and what’s left of their reputation, and 2) Threads is here, its impractical to think the existing fediverse community is going to erect a giant wallaround them, so I might as well hope for the best cause this shit is happening.

I think its more how do they deal with moderation while federating. When you have a closed system, you can control everything. But when you have users on Threads reading posts from Mastadon.Social or some random smaller instances, how do you effectively filter the stuff coming into your server that your users will interact with. I don’t know enough how that all works, but the CEO seemed to characterize it as a technical problem they were working to solve.

That is fair. I mostly just think its interesting that he was fairly upfront about it. Meta is a for profit business, so its not unexpected. I do think it will be interesting though because they seem pretty committed to account portability, and if they stick with that then that puts some pressure on them to maintain a good user experience. Even all the talk about embrace, extend, extinguish, all starts with the assumption that Threads will be so big it will make changes and force other instances to either comply or get defederated and the assumption is that users would flock to Threads from Mastadon rather than the other way around. Personally, I expect Meta’s move here is going to increase interest in Activitypub and more projects are going to be launched on it, both from startups and established big tech. I think its equally plausible that the better analogy is AOL opening up to the world wide web and HTML and getting swallowed in the process. There is a lot of fear about Threads, but I’m not convinced this is a doomsday scenario for the fediverse, I’m personally cautiously optimistic.

I’ll summarize what the CEO of Instagram said in an interview on the Hardfork podcast this morning. Lots of hot takes here based on everyone’s rightful skepticism of Meta, but I think it’s worth understanding what their stated plan is.

First, the CEO said he thinks federation is the future, that social media in general is going to be increasingly moving that way in the next 5 years. This gives them a chance to take a big early swing in the space and get some learning in. Remeber, as much as a lot of fediverse people are worried about Threads joining, Threads is also worried about all of you who are already on the Fediverse. Part of what they are selling is a sane and we’ll moderated social platform that regular people can use, and federating is a challenge to their moderation. They are trying to work out how they can moderate content coming into the Threads server and shown to those users without having to defederate entire servers.

Second, and similar to number one, they expect that content creators, influencers, etc will come to expect account/follower portability as decentralization of social media becomes more widespread. This one is huge, and it’s one of their main selling points. They are telling celebrities that hey you can join Threads and it will be safe and sane, but if five years down the line you hate it, you can just pack up your account and move to another platform and keep all your followers. This is a really big deal, celebrities, influencers, journalists, etc spend years building followings and the main thing holding a lot back from jumping off Twitter for example is that when they go to a new platform they start with zero followers. Joining a platform where you are assured that you can jump ship without having to start at zero everytime is a huuuge selling point, and the reason they’ve been able to get celebrities on as early adopters.

Finally, the CEO said ads will probably come some day, but they are not focused on monetization at all right now, but just building a sustainable platform that is fun to use. They expect a lot of initial interest, and then for a bunch of users to get bored and leave, and then to work on slow growth overtime.

That’s straight from the horse’s mouth (via my memory). Was he being perfectly honest, probably not. For example, he said they made the decision to push Threads out now before it was fully EU complaint because EU compliance would take months and he was afraid they could miss their window of opportunity. He wouldn’t explicitly say Twitter has gone to shit and their going after that market, but that’s pretty clearly what he was alluding to. Also, keep in mind as a corporate representative all his statements can get the company in trouble for misleading shareholders (see Musks “going private at 420 a share” tweet for example), so he’s not able to outright lie about the company’s plans. So I’d take this all with a grain of salt, but I wouldn’t run immediately to conspiracy theories.