When Meta launched their new Twitter competitor Threads on July 5, they said that it would be compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon, and all the other decentralized social networks in the fediverse “soon”.
But on July 14, @alexeheath of the Verge reported that Meta’s saying ActivityPub integration’s “a long way out”. Hey wait a second. Make up your mind already!
From the perspective of the “free fediverse” that’s not welcoming Meta, the new positioning that ActivityPub integration is “a long way out” is encouraging. OK, it’s not as good as “when hell freezes over,” but it’s a heckuva lot better than “soon.” In fact, I’d go so far as to say “a long way out” is a clear victory for the free fediverse’s cause.
Our content will be drowned by the amount of content a mainstream Meta can output.
And if you would like for users to notice the free fediverse among that content, they would need to ignore all Meta/commercial communities. That’s not practical. It also amounts to defederating with Meta, which is practical, and what is suggested anyways. If people are curious about the free fediverse they will hear about it and find it.
Only if people consistently choose to subscribe to Meta creators and communities over the ones on the Fediverse. It’s not like people here will be auto subscribed to whatever infiniscroll algorithmic slop Meta is serving. Meta can’t forcibly implement that into other instances.
If Meta means to use the ActivityPub as a selling point, they need to show at least some of it to their users. But if they give up entirely, then there’s no need to worry about defederating anyway.
That said I’m not naive and I expect that Meta will try to play dirty, but it seems to me like the extent of what they can do is pretty limited by the decentralized structure of the Fediverse. They can’t just take other instances over, unless they downright buy the admins, and that’s a whole separate matter than federation. If they do, still, it’s trivial for users to jump into another instance away from Zuck’s scaly hands.
But even then, if it’s so easy to attract people away from the Fediverse, then it means that there is something it is lacking, and that’s not going to be solved by being reclusive and trying to stay beneath notice.