So i’ve been trying to talk to a friend about the #Fediverse lately and they seem to think that the US Government will crack down on it because Billionaires might get annoyed if users move away from normal Social Media to move across to the #Fediverse. What do you think about this?
@SamXavia I think your friend is a looney conspiracy theorist
@Jerry Yeah I’d think that to some days, I believe it might be because they don’t like change. Sure we all have to be sceptical about what the future of the #Fediverse might be but from what I’ve seen and experienced it could truly be the future of the internet.
I agree with you on that. It’s like you get the benefits of the Internet, but also the benefits of a single point of use.
Let’s look at a lot of game companies – they have their own forums, but they also have to have facebook et al because they want to have something they totally control but they also want something accessible easily. Imagine if they federated their forums, and suddenly all these little forums have a lot more reach and the people in charge of the projects can control them more than big tech would let them. Win/win/win. And we cut out a middle-man in the process.
@SJ0 I think that’s really the full idea of the Fediverse, You can do the same with Content Creators if they wish to control 100% of there channel they can host a peertube instance and release to the world from there. Sure we might need to work out how to run a server but i’m sure it will just get easier over time especially if there modern internet requires it a bit more than it used to.
I honestly don’t think that it will ever get big enough for billionaires to even take notice. Even if we get 10% of the total social media traffic, which is a massive number in and of itself, the sharks are going to be fighting over much larger stakes.
If the fediverse does somehow manage to get large enough to attract the attention of the pigs that run the farm, I suspect they’ll just clone the (open-source) code, make their own instance running on another protocol, and throw their weight around to get everyone moved over there.
Relying on the judiciary or the legislature is a bad gamble.
@Gutotito I’m pretty sure this part is already happening, META built Threads and Tumblr has already displayed interest in connecting with the Fediverse, it seems like big tech is interested in it. TBH that’s why the confo came up with my friend in the first place.
This. Embrace, extend, extinguish.
I guess nobody remembers the Halloween Memo, because that’s the gold standard strategy for gathering up and locking in users.
@drwho TBH I don’t even know about the Halloween Memo myself, I just know that you can’t be nieve about big tech being interested in smaller things, Look at WhatsApp, Snapchat, or even YouTube; originally they weren’t big tech and now they are known as some of the top things being purchased by bigger bader companies in the process.
It’s a bit of history well worth studying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
@drwho Thank you, It’s always good to look at new things.
@SamXavia The moment this place begins to feel like you’re in a room or other enclosed space that is highly conducive to the production of echoes, particularly one that has been designed and built for this purpose… …oh wait, they’re already here…
@krzschlss I get what you mean, sure Echo Chambers seem like a nice place but it’s always good to have a different opinion, it’s one of the reasons I really support the Fediverse because you can’t choose a certain platform to get Echo Chambered in like you can currently choose Twitter if you hate Trans / Left people, You can choose Reddit if you hate Tech / Everyone else and want to keyboard warrior all day and Facebook / Meta if you want to talk to your Family or post revealing photos to get clicks, people use the current social media as personalities effecting there mental health. I really do hope people just be themselves instead of putting on a face.
That is the whole point of the internet. A decentralised platform for the US military to have a protocol of communication between computers to share information. Just in case someone nukes America. Ironically fediverse follows the same philosophy. The top down approach centralised conglomeratisation of the internet has only existed for decade and half and really took off in the last decade.
As the internet matures, we might see a boom and bust of centralisation and decentralisation of internet services might be a cyclic.
Before youtube existed, people ran their own websites and people post their own videos. In older internet media like podcasts, there is no one place to download a podcast, just download a rss feed off a website.
@threadworms Thank you, Yeah I feel as if the Fediverse was what the original idea of the internet was meant to be and I really do hope we move further in this direction. I see some people mention that they don’t really want it to grow as they feel it will be wreaked by the general public, what I see there concern but things move no matter what and we just have to be kind and welcoming to newer people and hope to keep the Fediverse a great place for people to be instead of the Toxic pit of current Social Media. Thank you for your feedback
Mastodon was first released in 2016, by 2022 it had 4.5 million users, given the social media shift the entire fediverse has grown to around 13 million users in 2023.
Instagram Threads got 100 million users on its first week. Twitter has 450 million active users on July 2023. Facebook has 2.5 BILLION users.
I don’t think anyone is worried about the Fediverse, and I’m glad, I enjoy the less noisy ambience here.
I agree. At least from the corporate point of view, I think they see the fediverse as a small set of people who are unlikely to use the company’s product anyway.
@hoodlem As of the moment, other than what Threads has shown yes not to many companies have moved way into the #Fediverse but a lot of News Organizations have seemed to have moved to at least Mastodon with Products, Companies and Even Celebrities moving to Threads. It’s why me and many other people think the Fediverse might just explode in popularity (what could be good or bad, we are yet to see how something with so many people could work). Once Mark Zuckerberg opens those flood gates I don’t think the Fediverse will be the same, for better or worse.
@techviator Are you saying you don’t think the Fediverse could be the future of the internet?
No, I don’t think it will be. I think it’s great, just like the rest of the Open Source universe is, but reaching the masses requires mass marketing, which requires money, which means there has to be a way to monetize. And again, I enjoy not having the masses flooding our FOSS spaces.
@techviator That’s fair enough
So it seems their reasoning is as follows:
- billionaires “control” (in some way) the US government
- said billionaires have an interest in getting people to join their companies’ platforms
- therefore, they will collude to make the US government ban the fediverse
I doubt that they will readily consider the following information with a level head, but if they are willing to listen, you may want to cite the following:
- “Big Tech” is actually rather politically unpopular right now.
- The US government has actually held various hearings grilling leaders of major tech companies. Unfriendly hearings, I would add. (Your friend may just try to dismiss this as “theater”…)
- The various major tech companies see each others as rivals more than partners. Doubly so with Elon Musk gratuitously adding his own ball of stupid chaos into things. Heck, tech companies are more likely motivated by finding new disruptive technologies to undermine their competition.
- Meta and Tumblr have both expressed interest in supporting ActivityPub.
- ActivityPub, Mastodon, Lemmy, and the rest of this whole shebang is all open-source. Even if you make the flagship organizations illegal, the open-source nature of the software will lead other people to create their own hubs, and even to develop these platforms further in the absence of a flagship.
- The US government is gloriously slow to do anything.
- Hell, billionaires hate digital piracy! Have they been able to ban it? (This might be your strongest argument…?)
@GlennMagusHarvey Thank you, you’ve went through pretty much everything I could think of, I know I did argue the Open-Source aspect to them before but they do mention that they feel open source is less secure what does show you how much they know. Thank you i’ll try some of these points with them.
The only reason I could see the government moving against it is if there are high-visibility press stories about the unsavory fediverse instances.
@OutrageousUmpire They are already going for Trans People and the Fediverse is currently more Left leaning making the right who are in power most likely hate it so I can see where they would want to try and get rid of it at the moment.
Real talk, stuff like the fediverse has always always existed. Usenet, IRC, forums. Even email is a giant federated service.
The thing is, the billionaires have the resources to make something really nice and make you not want to spend time there, so the population stays relatively small.
Realistically, even among tech savvy people we see a lot of people complaining that the fediverse is too complex, and it isn’t a place that can be gamed like big tech so a lot of big names will likely stay over there.
that’s all a good thing. Stay big enough to be fun, small enough to stay off the radar.
@SJ0 That’s not a bad way of putting it, but I don’t count myself as a tech-savvy person I just picked up how the fediverse worked over the past few weeks and I find it less complex than what things like META do for there systems.
Tangential sidenote: I find the Lemmy easier to understand than Reddit.
@GlennMagusHarvey Lemmy was pretty simple when I was using it, then found about what some of the devs were saying about Genocide and moved to Kbin but it still is a well developed platform.
Could be you’re just a cut above and you didn’t even realize it! :)
Tell them it’s decentralised with most instances outside the US.
@BlackRose I’ve already tried making that argument and they stated it doesn’t matter.
what happened with tiktok that they’re cracking down on?
@merde Good point, they seem to be doing better than ever.
What…
@Izzy They just think this could be a limited time thing that will be taking away because of the us government.
I get it. It’s just absolutely ridiculous.
When bitorrent is still around how would that happen.
@NightOwl Not really sure, TBH a lot of platforms the US hates hasn’t been taken down so I don’t see a problem with it especially knowing it’s a decentralised one.
