Mastodon MigrationJun 24, 2023

Subject: What's going on with Meta?

To: @Gargron, @ruud, @jerry, @supernovae, @stux, @trumpet, @kev and other large instance admins

Rumors are tearing this place apart out here about secret deals with #Meta. The latest is that Meta has held #NDA meetings with some of you and they will federate with large instances under contracts providing financial support (1) (2).

This is a time for leadership, not silence. Please, what's going on?

(1) https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/110598855375585873
(2) https://mastodon.social/@alexeheath/110596207691212890

Show threadEugen RochkoJun 24, 2023
@mastodonmigration I am not aware of any secret deals with Meta. As far as I can tell people are just making stuff up. There is little to comment on until Meta's platform launches.
Show threadRobinJun 24, 2023
@Gargron @mastodonmigration and this from Meta itself ? Any comment?
Show threadChiasmJun 24, 2023
@Gargron @mastodonmigration @Chimaera What they do with the ActivityPub protocol is up to them... That announcement they have there wouldn't need any instance admins working with them; they can easily develop their own way of being part of the fediverse.
Show threadRobinJun 24, 2023
@chiasm @Gargron @mastodonmigration Meta also has a long history of consuming any company they see as a competitor. See Instagram, WhatsApp
Show threadCody Dostal Jun 24, 2023
@Chimaera @chiasm @Gargron @mastodonmigration not really possible to consume Mastodon as a whole. They can federate through ActivityPub, and that seems to be the extent of what they’re doing. No idea what they’d be talking to some instance admins about.
Show threadRobinJun 24, 2023
@dostalcody @chiasm @Gargron @mastodonmigration well this admin said no thank you. Sounds a lot like an invitation to a secret meeting https://fosstodon.org/@kev/110592625692688836
Kev Quirk (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image Yeah, that's gonna be a hard pass from me thanks, Rachel. Zero interest in having a conversation with #Meta "off the record" or otherwise. Sharing this purely to be as transparent as possible with our members.

Fosstodon
Show threadRobinJun 24, 2023
@dostalcody @chiasm @Gargron @mastodonmigration also the phrase Embrace, Extend, Extinguish has been brought up
Show threadCody Dostal Jun 24, 2023
@Chimaera @chiasm @Gargron @mastodonmigration of course it has. But since mastodon is fully open source and has tons of instances, the most they can do is become the biggest instance, which they will be. Not much more they can do IMHO.
Show threadjgeorge
@dostalcody @Chimaera @chiasm @Gargron @mastodonmigration With all due respect, I can’t tell if this comment is simply naive or intentionally obtuse. These “tons of instances” are funded out of pocket by their admins, Meta could, with little effort, flood the feed with enough data for many/most of those admins to give up for purely financial reasons. I don’t know anyone who would bankrupt themselves fighting a war of principles with Meta - pitting “no money but lots of principles” loses to “all the money and no principles” every time. Meta doesn’t have to destroy all of Mastodon, all they have to do is make it irrelevant. If 95% of Mastodon traffic comes from FB/IG, why would any new user join any instance other than that one? 99.9999% of internet users couldn’t give a rodent’s posterior about FOSS, federation, or anything of the sort. They want a place to be online and see everybody else online.
Jun 25, 2023 at 1:25pmWeb