Meta can introduce their signature rage farming to the Fediverse. They don’t need to control Mastodon. All they have to do is introduce it in their app. Show every Threads user algorithmically filtered content from the Fediverse precisely tailored for maximum rage. When the rage inducing content came from Mastodon, the enraged Thread users will flood that Mastodon threads with the familiar rage-filled Facebook comment section vomit. This in turn will enrage Mastodon users, driving them to engage, at least in the short to mid term. All the while Meta sells ads in-between posts. And that’s how they rage farm the Fediverse without EEE-ing the technology. Meta can effectively EEE the userbase. The last E is something Meta may not intend but would likely happen. It consists of a subset of the Fediverse users leaving the network or segregating themselves in a small vomit-free bubble.
Some people asked what EEE is:
I don’t think fedi is currently competing with any meta property? This is an opportunistic land grab from meta aiming to capitalise on twitter’s weakness. Fedi offers them a ready made protocol tested at scale.
This could very well be the case, but then why would they be considering federation? Federation would seep their users’ info into a lot of third party hands. There must be something they want from the Fediverse if they actually end up federating. It can’t be the volume of users, they have that.
Volume of users is everything here. Picking up enough share grants you a tremendous gravity as a social service. Once a service has network effect on their side it takes an extraordinary amount to unseat them - and Instagram users will pad the numbers at first but who knows if they will engage. Fedi users are demonstrably early adopters willing to put up with a new service’s teething issues. If meta can plug in and grab them it’s a big win.