My main concern is that this is just Facebook Meta utilizing the “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” strategy that Microsoft used against Netscape in the 90s.
I feel like our small communities here - which are just getting started - are going to be flooded by Threads users who don’t even know what federation is and then all the content, power & control will realistically be in Meta’s hands.
My gut says that is probably Meta’s goal, but what do I know? I’m just some internet person.
Decentralized networks are a threat to Meta’s entire business model which runs on advertisements. That doesn’t work very well when your users can just jump to another instance without ads.
Meta wants to nip the fediverse in the bud now before it’s too late for them to get a foothold. I think they’re gonna do it by (trying) to port their massive userbase to Threads, make other instances dependent on their content and users, and then pull the plug so they can go back to selling everyone’s information to advertisers.
Edit: https://i.imgur.com/4U0g4Bk.png
I saw this image floating around a few days ago that I think helps illustrate that even if a fraction of Meta's userbase migrates to Threads it will be enough to dominate the fediverse. Instagram has two billion users, and the entire fediverse only has around 1.5 million.
Threads, despite its name, is not a threaded discussion forum like the Threadiverse. It's more like Mastodon, a microblogging protocol. I don't think we'll be seeing Threads users flooding here because the format of these communities isn't really compatible with that.
How would power be handed to Meta just because Threads has more users? The communities are under the control of the instances where they were created, and Threads users couldn't create larger communities to replace them either since it's only a microblogging platform.
The concept is that overtime, communities and connections will organically grow. If Threads has a disproportionally large ubserbase, then overtime they will create a similarly larger number of communities. This then would give them a lot more influence over the fediverse and anyone federated with them.
For smaller instances that become accustomed to seeing those communities and content, the danger is that Meta can just “pull the plug,” defederate, and extinguish the competition, or at the very least hurt their competitor's users experiences when interacting with content from Threads. The reason they might do this is purely because it fits into their business model which is selling user data to advertisers; it is in Meta’s interest to have as much data on their users as possible, and to have those users be based on Meta’s platform.
As I said in another comment, I could be totally wrong and this could benefit the fediverse. I just think the opposite is more likely because I do not trust Meta. I think they will play nice in the beginning, but then start to flex their muscles once they feel they’ve got enough influence.
Also, there is nothing stopping them from expanding Thread’s capabilities to include the threadiverse. Kbin has already demonstrated both are possible in one app.
If they pull the plug on ActivityPub and take their users back, things would just be exactly how they are now. Since they can't create communities or magazines like we can (and it's very unlikely Meta is going to try to implement this), if they want to participate in discussion here, they'll be posting in our communities. Kbin's magazines are uniquely suited to this as well because content gets sorted into them based on hashtags, so they wouldn't even need to know that they're posting to a magazine to do it.
We're already in a situation like you describe though with lemmy.world's near monopoly on large communities, which seems concerning to me as is.
And I agree, lemmy.world does have a near-monopoly on large communities. I attribute that to lemmy being more developed and having apps ready and kbin simply not being completely ready in June (no shade thrown at ernest - he’s great and I like kbin better.) I hope overtime kbin grows some of its own large communities so it’s not so skewed towards a single instance.
Just to clarify what I mean, lemmy.world's position is bad for the threadiverse as a whole. It's where most of our users and largest communities we all post to are. If .world goes down, it'd be a major blow to our current, mostly stable, position and we'd be significantly worse off than if Meta were to come and go. Things are improving though and communities are slowly spreading to other instances! I also deeply appreciate that we have kbin as an alternative to Lemmy - thank you Ernest
Are you sure about that? They take up valuable real estate that could be better served promoting active magazines. Having a good portion of the home page filled up with empty links is not helpful at best.
None of the communities I actually need ever migrated here; most people just did not care. I still go to reddit for things relating to Japanese residency topics, finances, etc. as it is the only place I know of. I only visit those subs, though.
There are also people like me who post like one thing a year (though I comment much more).
So I’m walking around a bazaar in Nepal. I got kids following me everywhere begging for money. Out of nowhere a Nepalese guy wearing a ripped up shirt comes running up and starts slapping kids and yelling at them. The kids run off and the man starts cozying up to me.
He starts asking where I’m from and follows me around for a while. Finally he cuts the foreplay and asks if I “smoke hashish”. I say yeah and we talk about that a while. He asked where I was staying and I told him Hotel Yak and Yetti. He says he’ll come by and smoke with me.
So, at the time he was supposed to show up I’m in the lobby when a hotel worker comes over and says that someone is looking for me. I walk outside and the dude is now wearing a tailored suit and is motioning for me to get in a cab.
Alarm bells go off, but fuck it you only live once. I get in the back of the cab with the guy. He has a pack of cigarettes where he emptied out the tobacco and filled them with weed. He says his cousin is the driver. We ride and smoke. I got so fucken high.
Then he’s like hey buy the rest of this pack from me. I was like dude I don’t have much money. He’s asks if I have some clothes that don’t fit. I’m 6’2” this guy was like 5’. But I’m like yeah and gave him 2 pairs of jeans.
Then I had to flush the weed because I was getting on a plane to Tibet the next morning. Staying in a Chinese prison wasn’t on my itinerary. So I had to leave the weed behind.
I was out camping in Slovenia with the scouts. We stayed in podljubelj and met an older guy (friend our campground owner, important for later) that did tours through the redstone mines and abandoned buildings in the mountains. The tour was to take 3 hours and it cost €15 cash only, so we did a quick calculation of how much we needed and got it from the atm just before the tour started.
We had a great time and got some cool memories climbing down a abandoned mineshafts and lifts while this guy was terrified for our lives😅 So the tour concludes and we go to pay him, and he almost fell over backwards when we handed him €200 which was the price we calculated + a small tip.
Turns out the €15 wasn’t per person but instead a flat rate no matter the group size. Fucking €15 for guiding a group of 12 idiots for 3 hours.
We ended up having intense negotiations with the guy for how much he was willing to take. In the end we managed to convince him to take €100 from us and we ended up giving the other €100 to our campground owner who would make sure his stubborn friend didn’t turn down “free” money.
I still can’t believe that tour was meant to be just €15
I know, I’m just providing a example to show the disparency between economic of two different countries, where as for one person the amount is minimal while for the other is significant.
(Solvenia also uses Euro, so I don’t know whats going on over there)
It was our last day in the city and had our backpacks on walking around like tourists in the wrong part of town. A crackhead saw us walking towards him and he stood up, pulled something out of his pocket and then walked directly into me. 100% on purpose.
He then very dramatically threw what I now knew was a crack pipe against the alley wall and yelled at me, “You stupid fucking American. You broke my crack pipe. You owe me crack! There was $15 worth of crack in that pipe!” I wasn’t having any of that, this was obviously a setup. I was about to kick his scrawny crackhead ass when he pulled out a tiny, I mean tiny little pocket knife at which point my buddy started laughing his ass off. Right before I was about to knock the hell out of this guy, one of the locals came up pulled on my collar whispered in my ear, “Just throw some change on the ground. You’re a foreigner. You will be the one to go to jail.”
I thought that was reasonable so I pulled about 75 cents worth of euros out of my pocket and threw it on the ground. At that point the alleged mugger got into a huge fist fight with about five other crackheads while they fought over the change I threw on the ground. They completely forgot about me and my friend so we just walked away. What was really funny was later that day we were in a different part of the town near the train station waiting for our train to the airport. That same motherfucker walks by looking for a target and I had to think real long and hard about what I was going to do. In the end I said fuck it and just left it alone.
On that same trip we went through Luxembourg. We were looking at the sites and there’s this big valley in the middle of the city with a park at the bottom and we were standing on this bridge filming and this guy just jumps off and falls at least 100 maybe 200 ft to his death. Me and my friend are freaking out and cannot believe we just saw somebody kill themselves. We are yelling for help and some guy who obviously lived there casually walks up and tells us, “First time here? This happens all the time. Luxembourg is a very fucking depressing place to live.” Then he just casually walked on. We couldn’t believe that shit. It was so run of the mill everyday business, nothing for these people. Just another guy had thrown himself off the suicide bridge. No biggie.
Ethiopian here, first time I saw snow I was 18, during freshman year of uni in the US. I remember seeing snow outside my dorm window for the first time one morning. Got excited and ran outside to experience it. I was disappointed when I felt the snow and realized it was wet and cold. Grateful to be back in the warmer weather :)
While in Japan, i once saw two fuzoku girls (which are basically light-prostitutes, they give “special” massages or baths to people) waiting outside a massage parlour at night, then some old dude passed them, and they went crazy and screamed “Wait! wait! wait! dont you want a massage?” and wouldnt let him go.
He just kept on walking with a serious look on his face, and not looking at them, he looked like Patrick Bateman walking around in his workplace with his headset, that kind of serious look.
I was thirteen, visiting Ireland with my parents. We were staying in a hostel somewhere in the area of the cliffs of Moher.
My parents went out for a drink in the pub and met another Dutch couple. They were staying at the same hostel. At breakfast they joined our table and my parents introduced me.
Now I do have a very uncommon first name (the only way I’m part of the 1%). This guy says 'i once met a bit by that name before, it was in Croatia, some ten years ago.
Turns out that was me. The guy had helped dive up one of my swimming shoes that had sank to the bottom of the bay, an act of heroism for the very young me.
So we met this bloke twice, in two very different parts of Europe. The bizarre thing though: if I had a slightly more common name we might never even have known.
My brother traveled to New Zealand and met another Germans there. After talking a bit they discovered they were from same city, the same district in the city … and the same street. He randomly met our neighbour from 2 houses down on the other side of the world.
Uncannyly I have a similar story. When I was in the African country of Benin, I met a Dutch couple, one of which was an architect who studied African architecture.
My home town has a museum on that exact subject, so I asked him if he knew that, he was like ‘of course, we live in that town’
Turned out he lived around the corner of where I lived.
Was in Ireland a while back and I hit a guy with my rental car. Just a love tap. Nothing serious and no one was hurt. I was pulling out of a lot and it was really hard to see and I was looking for traffic and inching (centimetering?) out. And I look and there’s suddenly a bloke there, getting pushed a little. He smacks the hood of the car and yells something, then waves his hand at me and keeps walking.
Yeah litigation is no joke. It’s wonderous to see the lengths people go to to get one up over somebody else. I think it has to do with the lack of social security or something.
I was in the US Air Force and stationed in England. In the military you use your social security number (SSN) for pretty much everything. There was a girl I worked with whose SSN shared the same first 8 digits as mine. Turns out we were born in the same hospital a few hours apart, but never met until we were in our 20s in a foreign country.
For non-Americans, the first 3 numbers are assigned by the geographical region. Then the next 2 numbers are a smaller grouping inside of that area. So, two people born in the same small geographic area have a good chance of having the same first 5 digits the same. In my case it was the first 8 that were the same. They are only 9 digits long.
Went to New York city to go see Ozzy in concert (from Canada). My first time in the US. It was me and 3 other male friends, all in our mid/late 20’s. On our way back home we got pulled over by a state trooper because my friend was speeding.
The state trooper walks up to the window and says he smells marijuana. Which was total bullshit because this was a new car and we aren’t dumb enough to bring that shit with us. He proceeds to make us all stand in the cold for 45 minutes while he goes through the entire contents of the car and finds nothing. They give us a warning then leave with all our shit just laying around.
This was like a month before they legalised weed in Canada so we figured that was why they did it. The entire time I was just scared they would plant something. I’ve been conditioned to not trust cops due to all the shit I’ve seen online. This experience just made it worse. And we were just a bunch of white guys, can’t even begin to imagine what people of color have to deal with when it comes to cops in the US.
Youre right not to trust American cops. They’re corrupt and above the law. If you had pissed him off in any way he would have certainly planted something and arrested you. He searched your car because your ages and destination. He wanted to find something.
Placeholder comment because I need to go back to sleep. Someone remind me and I’ll tell y’all about rescuing my brother from a maybe kidnapping in Mexico.
Okay, so, me and my brother visited Mexico. It was a fairly small town, not a major place like Cancun. Had an amazing time. Ended up meeting these two bartenders that we became friends with. Their boss, who legit made everyone he met call him El Jefe, would come by and steal their tips and get drunk. We were there for a week. On the last night, I’m on the other side of the town (10 minute walk away) trying to seal the deal with this dude I’d met, and my brother was at the little bar hanging with our bartender friends. I get a call from him, panicked, as he whisper yells that El Jefe asked him to come with him to another bar he owns. He’s in the car, El Jefe is flying down the street, he’s doing cocaine off the dash. Please come get him at this other bar. He sends me one of those location pins that update in real time.
I tell dude that I’ll help him finish later, and take off to rescue my brother. He’s only like 5 minutes away, and has stopped moving. I go into the club, and start looking for him, but he’s not there. I’m asking folks if they’ve seen him, and trying to get closer to his pin. Finally, I find his phone, there’s some random ass dude who has it, and when I tell him I’m gonna need that phone, he tries to act like it’s his. I explain to him it’s my brother’s. He acts like he’s gonna swing at me, so I drop El Jefe’s name. That, combined with the fact that he’s 5’nothing and I’m 6’3 and near 300 pounds convinced him of the error of his ways. He gave me the phone, and I moved on in my search. I talked to the bartender, who explained that El Jefe had been there a few minutes ago, and had left some coke for me because my brother told him I was meeting them there (neither I nor my brother do coke). I asked could he tell me where they were headed. He gave me an address about a mile away. I took off.
I arrive at the house, by this point it is nearly 2 in the morning. It looks like just a house, but the lights are on so I knock on the door. I am greeted by a woman with the largest breasts I have ever seen in real life. They’re enormous. And she’s topless. Now, I don’t speak Spanish. I know enough to ask where the bathrooms are, and (I smokes at the time) where I could smoke at. Other than that, it was Google translate and gesturing for me.
However, I did not need Spanish to understand that this woman was a prostitute, and was very keen on the young American in front of her (or, at least his wallet). I tried to explain I’m trying to find my brother, but she wasn’t having it. Grabbing at my crotch, trying to pull me into one of the bedrooms off the (very nicely decorated for a brothel) living room. As my actions at this moment were less Liam Neeson and more Jerry Stiller, I decided to just come clean with her with one of the only Spanish words I knew “yo soy Mariposa!”
Now, I know that’s a slur, and I’m sorry if it upsets anyone. But at the time, it was the only thing I could think of. An hour before hand, the phrase had been… Relevant.
It was like a magic spell. Her entire attitude changed, and she was finally able to listen to my words. Once we cobbled together enough Spanglish to understand each other, I gave her the coke from the club as a thanks, and headed off to find my brother where she told me El Jefe had taken him next.
I arrive back at the night club I’d gotten the coke from, and I see El Jefe’s car this time. It’s parked in an alley behind the club, against an outdoor stair case. I go up the stairs and open the door to a private little fucking rave on the top floor of the club. They’ve got their own bar up here, and if I remember correctly, you can’t get from one floor to the other from within the club.
I see them at last! My brother looks mortified, trying to get to the entrance, and keeps getting pulled back by El jefe, and El jefe dancing with fucking scar face levels of coke on his face. It’s insane. I go up to them, and El jefe is all excited to see me, asks if I want some more coke, do I wanna party, he has a pretty boy all picked out for me if I want.
I tell him no thanks, we’ve gotta go. He gets pissy and says I’m being rude, stay and party. I tell him we’re leaving, and before I can react, he swings at me in all hiscoke fueled glory, completely missing me by a country mile. I stand up and tower over this man and explain we have a plane to catch in the morning. He finally let us go, and we head out.
Our plane the next day was delayed, so we ended up spending two more days there. In that time, El Jefe apologized for swinging at me, and gave us a tour of some of the apartments he rents.
We still keep in touch on Whatsapp, and he invites us to his enormous birthday party every year. He also says he’ll rent me an apartment there if I want to do private security for him. He talks to my brother more than me, though. He really liked him, and he calls me El Gigante. He really, really wants us both to come work for him. From what I gather, he basically runs the entire town we were in.
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