The thing that saddens me the most about the whole fedi/meta drama is a thing I can't prove, but that I think is likely because I've worked in these kinds of tech companies.
The notion that Meta is looking to embrace/extend/extinguish the fediverse is laughable. The entire fedi userbase is a rounding error for Meta. They arent looking to take down the fediverse, they're trying to take down TWITTER.
They want the celebs and journalists back. Take advantage of Twitter's tarnished reputation.
I can virtually guarantee that "let's join the fediverse!" wasn't Mark Zuckerberg's idea.
It was probably some engineer that likes the fediverse concept, who had this long-shot idea. Everyone said the top brass would never go for it, but they put together a slide deck and presented federation as a powerful tool to take down Twitter together.
And against all odds, the executive team went for it.
That engineer probably became the lead for the whole effort to federate. Reached out to some big admins to ask ActivityPub questions. Wanted to show mockups to ask the experts if ActivityPub could support their designs, so an NDA was standard.
That engineer stuck their neck out to solve their employer's business need while also supporting open tech.
Put their reputation on the line to do what they thought was good for fedi and bring millions of users.
The response must be humiliating.
Again, can't prove this. Maybe it's exactly as the detractors say, Meta just wants to crush the fediverse.
But having been in the industry as long as I have I can virtually guarantee that's not what happened, and that it's far more likely an employee or a team went to bat for this place and we made them look like fucking idiots.
@rodhilton From my experience in big tech, it rings true. My sympathy for whoever's trying to arrange this is tempered by:
1. Them not recognising that secretive NDA'd meetings with big instance admins would play very badly with Fedi, and find some way to adapt.
2. If the project went ahead, at some point engineer decisions would be replaced by leadership decisions, nothing engineers had promised would be binding, and Fun Times would ensue (maybe, but too often).
Rod Hilton
Simon Frankau