#Meta objective with #Threads is to attract the VIP accounts on #Twitter. Nothing else.
These accounts are 'broadcasters' in nature, they have many times more followers than people they follow, and they generate a lot of traffic.
These accounts and their traffic are 'low hanging fruit' since #Musk decided to make Twitter unbearable for its users and even risky for its own sponsors to continue paying for adds.
But Meta, with all its shortcomings, is the best positioned to grab those accounts. They have solid infrastructure, good developers, decent discrimination of bots vs humans... and even an acceptable moderation (despite the terrible mental health toll on their overseas moderators).
Now, there are basically 4 types of these VIP accounts:
1.- VIPs who are already in #Instagram - no major action needed, just the ability to post text-only instead of pictures and video. Many people already do that my posting text-made-pictures or neutral pictures with interesting captions.
2.- VIPs who are already discontented with all commercial social media platforms abusing and polluting their content with adds and other algorithm-driven content before it reaches to their audiences - these are potential candidates to once and for all decide to run their own websites or #Fediverse sites and connect directly to their audiences. They need a quick connection to their followers though, so the action here is to provide them with a quick access to the massive crowd of Instagram and they will be very happy.
3.- VIPs (high traffic generators) who are controversial standers, whose posts are sometimes even illegal... but juicy because they attract a lot of clicks. To grab these Meta needed a way to not be seen as the host, curator or publisher, but still being able to 'pipe' their traffic. Any ideas? - Yes, tell them to run their own instance and apply 2.-
4.- VIPs who are already VERY pissed with all commercial social media and have chosen to make the Fediverse their new home by joining some instance, and they are very happy with smaller audiences, our blocking and defederating patterns and our conversational way of socialising - These are very few and they will never join nothing that smells like Meta, so no action is possible.
We must note that none of these people with millions of followers can ever join any of our instances or they will immediately make them crash, so they need something rock solid and scalable.
So now I understand what all the Meta joining the Fediverse is all about... just using it temporary for grabbing those accounts.
Of course, the next action will be to tinker with their implementation of #ActivityPub a little bit, just enough to making it incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse... we've been there before.
And after all that, we will continue happily ever after as two different universes as we have always been. 😎
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