Aral BalkanFolks, the reason #Facebook/ #Instagram/ #Meta/ Zuckerberg hasn’t launched #Threads in the #EU isn’t because the EU is determined to protect your privacy, it’s because the EU is determined to protect The Single Market (peace be upon it) from anticompetitive behaviour. It’s because they’re using Instagram to launch Threads and sharing data between them (and not with EU startups that might want to use that data too). It’s #antitrust, not #privacy. It’s markets, not people.
By the way, it’s possible that #Facebook/ #Instagram/ #Meta/ Zuckerberg’s fediverse play for Threads is related to sidestepping the anti-competitiveness/antitrust issues around the EU’s Digital Services Act.
“Hey, look, we’re not a monopoly. We’re not being anticompetitive… we’re federating using an open protocol. Here, let our friend Eugen, CEO of Mastodon, explain to you how it works in very dispassionate words…”
#eu #ec #fediverse #mastodon #antitrust #DigitalServicesAct #PR #usefulIdiots
mogwai@aral I'm beginning to suspect that they might not even implement ActivityPub at all.
Just talking about implementing it at some vague point in the future might be good enough to fool the EU regulators. By the time they realize the real intentions it'll be too late to do anything about it anymore.